Letters by a modern St. Ferdinand III about cults

Post modernism is a cult based on a false and painfully immature analysis of history, ecological destruction, the role of a military, economics, direct and indirect support for the Arab and militant Islamic world, a belief in the relevancy of the corrupt United Nations and above all an ignorant deification of government mandated socialism. The Post Modern cult leads to government ownership, protectionism, weak militaries, silly foreign policies, anti-Semiticism, anti-Americanism, media and education control, and the rewriting of history. It also inevitably leads to an obsession with Western guilt, angst and self-loathing and apologia for tyrannical Arab, fascist, and oppressive regimes and a complete disregard for the history and struggle of human freedom.

This cult is best exemplified by small, weak nations such as Canada, Spain, Belgium, France and Holland. These socialist organizations are archetypes of a sedated, media controlled and heavily managed state. Liberalism runs amok in these countries – from tax and spend fiscal improvidence – to huge schemes of welfare, redistribution, subsidies, corporate hand-holding and vote buying programs of all varieties, all bound up in media glorification of the country in question being ‘nice’, ‘cosmopolitan’, ‘not American’, and ‘tolerant’. These labels are used to cover-up corruption which is endemic in all post-modern societies. Even in herring happy Holland business leaders have been indicted on graft charges and government monies famously are misplaced. Belgium, France and Spain are champions in the corruption and kickbacks endemic in socialized politics and business. Canada is now officially controlled by the Quebec mafia disguised as a political party, mired in corruption that would find a pleasant home in Castro’s fascist Cuba, Putin’s KGB organized Russia, or the madness of Zimbabwe. Chirac and his friends in Paris acquired hundreds of millions in kickbacks from export contracts many of which were Iraqi based. The UNO managed the largest financial fraud in history – the Iraqi Oil for everything program – in which $24 billion is unaccounted for sitting apparently quite nicely, in French banks.

There is historically a direct correlation between government size and corruption. Soft and hard corruption certainly exists in the US where governments ‘only’ control about 1/3 of the GDP. Soft corruption can take the form of the Byrd Amendment, a tariff policy in which taxes on foreign products in sensitive areas, in violation of WTO regulations, are directed back to various firms in certain industries and states that are politically important. Hard corruption can take the form of bribes in money, jobs and other goodies given to procurement managers at large government agencies or in contracts at various government levels awarded to friends, political donors and family members. But such hard and soft corruption exists everywhere including in the supposed ‘morally enlightened’ post-modern versions of state dominated nations.

The US is not a free market capitalist society. The eyes and hands of Big Brother are everywhere. Bureaucracies have their own life force and developmental logic. Like taxes, bureaucracies only grow. The US suffers from over-regulation, taxation and a confusing mix of local, state and federal laws and rules. Government’s share of the economy in the US was 25 % 30 years ago and is now about 34 % with much of the rest subject to various levels of approvals or regulatory regimes. Mercantilism in the 19th century was standard US policy as it strove to match British industrialization and it is hard to argue that such a philosophy has been disregarded in the modern era. Though tariff levels are thankfully only at 5 % of 1946 levels a host of other impediments to trade exist on international traffic as well as domestic US trade. Protectionist pressures in sensitive trade areas and states, still dominates political policy. The cries for a trade war with China to protect US jobs, or the withdrawal of the US from the world’s trading system to avoid the evils of ‘offshoring’, are recent examples of mercantilist paranoia.

The US is however, regardless of the self loathing and hatred of its liberal media and population, far better positioned than the post-modern nations. Economically there is no competition between the US and post modern Europe and Canada. The post moderns have no productivity, growth rates that are 50 % of US levels, and higher structural unemployment. If one normalizes the budgets of the post moderns to account for a real military spend, then Canada would be running federal budget deficits of 3 % and France and Germany, already breaking EU laws in running deficits greater than 3 %, would be far worse off. This says nothing of the immorality of free-riding off of the US military, pharmaceutical and health care industries. US budget deficits with the end of agricultural and business subsidies, a reduction of entitlement spending and a reduction in government could be eliminated overnight. It remains to be seen if US politicians have the courage to stop spending other people’s money.

Even on ecology the US has some of the strictest green regimes in the world – indeed after Germany the US is the second cleanest economy on the planet. US laws are however, largely overdone and excessive. Due to various rules in place since the 1970s there is no oil refining capacity in North America leading to rising energy costs, inflation and economic slowdown. Drilling for natural gas, oil and other minerals are subjected to a bewildering array of ecological oversight, approvals, protests, legal actions, rules and perforce costs. Environmental protectionism is used by Trade Unions and their political masters to limit trade and discriminate against poor nations. Kyoto was not signed by Bush and the US Senate not only because the science behind it is junk, or that economic growth and dislocation would be great, but also in part because the US’ own eco-regulations on greenhouse gas emissions are extremely stringent. The fact that human induced global warming is largely nonsense has certainly not dissuaded the Texan cowboys from using it as a good excuse to further increase government power. Bush has in fact increased the budget of environmental oversight agencies by 30 % since 2000.

So the US is not the free market, free wheeling cowboy society of myth, destroying its ecology. In fact less than 10 % of the US landmass is under civilization’s footprint. So what then to make of the soft weak post modern liberal states ? Post modern futures don’t look so rosy. Financial crises loom as unfunded liabilities and low population growth ensures massive budget gaps and economic slowdowns. Canada in spite of its dumb political system and anti-American elite might survive since 50 % of its economy is directly tied to the US market. But the rest of the post-moderns, when not busy obsessing about Gays and being sensitive to Islam, will not be so lucky.

Post modern cults in Europe dancing naked in the forest chanting bromides to post modern nature gods, face an impressive list of issues. The Single EU Market is failing to halt economic decline and improve living standards and provide jobs. The Europeans did not even have the energy and military power to stop a civil war in the Balkans. Iraq and the corruption endemic in German and French contracts whilst 300.000 innocents were butchered reveals the failure of so-called European cultural superiority. Working hours and working lives shrink as vacations and entitlement demands escalate. A declining demographic mandates increased Islamic immigration certain to derange EU politics and turn the EU into a slave state of Greater Arabia. The expansion eastwards to now encompass 25 nations will partition European politics into various camps – with eastern and central Europe far more interested in a pro-US policy and needful of US investment and technological know-how, than the current regimes in France and Germany. The elitist drive to incorporate the Oriental, Sunni society of Turkey, into a supposedly Western-Christian club leaves most normal people baffled. The implosion of the EU Constitution reflects voter unease with creating a Federal, non-responsive and pro-Islamic European unit.

The Post Modern cult leads inevitably to ruin. Not having a military means the nation state, whose first priority is defense and security, has broken the ‘Lockean’ contract with its citizens. It makes up for this by free-riding off the Americans. Government controlled sectors do little to help innovation, job creation or the improvement in the lives of the poor in the third world who need open access to markets in the northern world to reduce poverty. The poor in Africa and elsewhere don’t need dumb Live aid concerts or Bono debt reductions, they need access to rich markets. Hating your own history, set of institutions and denying your own country’s developmental experience might appease the media, buy some votes, and ‘send the right message’, but it does nothing to thwart the on-rush of reality and societal dislocation. In case the post-moderns have not yet found out – multiculturalism is a dead horse better left to the glue factory – and protectionism, jingoistic media, extortionary taxation, and appeasement have long inglorious pedigrees of failure.

The inexorable resting place of the Post Modern cult is state socialism exemplified by China or Soviet Russia. For those who truly believe, like former Canadistan Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, who of course is a Canadian god, that ‘Siberia is the future’, then take a tour throughout the ruins of modern Tomsk, Omsk, Lake Baikal, Novosibersk, or other locales and witness the economic, moral, ecological and societal destruction witnessed upon innocents by the glories of Big Brother. The stupidity of Trudeau’s statement is premised on a world view of arrogance, ignorance of economic and political forces that shape the international world, and a conceit that a group of egoists, mired in their own corruption and distorted lies, can make the world a ‘better place’ if only everyone else would just shut up and follow orders, and not mind too much if a few dollars here and there end up in the elite’s private bank accounts.

Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, Castro’s Cuba and modern China are examples of the disgrace that obeying a post-modern cult ensures. Post modernism is not a recent phenomenon. ‘Intellectuals’ used the very same words to justify the destruction of 30 million Soviet citizens and the creation of Hitler’s ‘ubermensch’ Germany. HG Wells, the Fabian society, Orsen Wells, a long list of academics and journalists, Jung, Nietzsche, all called for a radical new world – in which ‘greatness’ and not the drab living of everyday democratic life would predominate. In this regard they apologized for the human and societal destruction as Germany and Russia defied reality and imposed a utopian world on unsuspecting and often times, terrified citizens.

The post modernism of the 1920s and 30s was utopian and demanded strong leaders wielding stronger governments. Max Weber published the ‘Nature of Charismatic Domination’ in 1922, stating that crisis breeds a strong leader and that such strength was necessary for a society in transformation. About the same time Carl Jung produced, ‘The Development of Personality’ a treatise on why great personalities dominated history and why social movements were derived from the actions of great men. In Russia Maxim Gorky wrote about the need for a ‘Superman’, a modernist update to Nietzsche’s ideal of supreme national will power embodied by dominant great men who would create a non-liberal, non-decadent and heroic society – under the tutelage of big government. Fast forward to 2005 and we see the ubermensch liberal elite crying for the same – in the name of love, poverty reduction, Islamic appeasement, gay Marriage, ecofascist regulation, protectionism and massive redistribution of confiscatory taxes.

It not surprising that the same echoes from the 1920s and 1930s can be heard in 2005. Post modern utopianism is not new, nor novel. It is just merely dangerous. It has been tried and failed before. Liberals in their obeisance to the theory of relativity don’t believe that history is important so it is not a surprise they would like to repeat it. The only question is if the populations in post-modern nations, and especially the US, are smart enough to kill off liberal insanity or go down with history’s sinking ship. This question is the crux of the future.

CraigRead.com ©