Why Left Wing Parties want things that are bad for the country.

Dennis Prager in his latest column at Townhall.com wrote that Democrats want things that are bad for America. He gave a long check-list:

(1)The first fault-line to exploit is the economic divide. By playing up resentment and envy, votrepreneurs (politicians) always call for a transfer of wealth from the more capable, frugal and diligent to those less so. This is a flaw in democracy as I pointed out in "Democracy needs a Reformation."

Prager wrote:

"The better Americans feel they are doing, the worse it is for Democrats. By almost every economic measure (the current housing crisis excepted), Americans are doing well. The unemployment rate has been at historically low levels and inflation has been held in check, something that rarely accompanies low unemployment rates. Nevertheless, Democrats regularly appeal to class resentment, knowing that sowing seeds of economic resentment increases their chances of being elected. "

This will inevitably result in a welfare state with its high taxes, high unemplyment and sluggish growth rate. Remember, its all about perception. No matter, how good the economy is, its the perception that counts. So it is in the Democrats interests to project a feeling that you are not getting what you are entitled to.

2)Racial tensions between black and white. Votrepreneurs have to champion (or at least pretend to champion) one racial group or the other. Thus it pays to portray blacks as the perpetual victims of racial discrimination even though there is very little discrimination nowadays. Prager wrote:

"If African Americans come to believe that America is a land of opportunity in which racism has been largely conquered, it would be catastrophic for the Democrats. The day that most black Americans see America in positive terms will be the day Democrats lose any hope of winning a national election. "

If racism is still a problem, Oprah Winfrey won't be so wealthy today. Nobody can accuse you of racism for switching channels. Instead of helping the blacks examine themselves to see what they may be doing wrong, they always blame others for their problems. But that is the nature of democracy. It is not in the interest of Democrats to solve this problem. As long as blacks feel victimized, the Democrats have a willing bloc of voters.

2)The Democrats oppose making English the official language because they want to court the Hispanic vote. But they also know that when Hispanics assimilate, it would vote more for the Republicans, according to Prager. But having a divided nation is bad for America. Of course, the Democrats don't care.

Prager wrote:

"If immigrants assimilate, it is not good for Democrats. The Democratic Party has invested in Latino separatism. The more that Hispanic immigrants come to feel fully American, the less likely they are to vote Democrat. The liberal notion of multiculturalism helps Democrats, while adoption of the American ideal of e pluribus unum (out of many, one) helps Republicans. That is one reason Democrats support bilingual education -- it hurts Hispanic children, but it keeps them from full assimilation -- and oppose making English America's official language. "

So instead of helping Hispanics assimilate and hence begin the climb up the economic ladder like so many early waves of immigrants, the Democrats want another aggrieved minority race that vote Democrat.

3)As I said in my earlier article, Prager also pointed out that the Democrats will benefit if the US loses the war in Iraq. So even before the "surge" in US troops was complete, the Democrats were eagerly declaring failure.

4)Prager on marriage:

"If women marry, it is bad for the Democratic Party. Single women are an essential component of any Democratic victory. Unmarried women voted for Kerry by a 25-point margin (62 percent to 37 percent), while married women voted for President Bush by an 11-point margin (55 percent to 44 percent). According to a pro-Democrat website, The Emerging Democratic Majority, "the 25-point margin Kerry posted among unmarried women represented one of the high water marks for the Senator among all demographic groups."

Perhaps that is why the Democrats are eagerly supporting homosexual marriages and welfare payments to single unmarried women. In so doing, they are undermining traditional marriages. The more unmarried women on welfare, the more votes for the Democrats. Homosexuals do not generally have children. This will have an adverse impact on the Social Security program.

Are these trends that result from the Democrat's program good for America?

Is it good for America that its Hispanics do not assimilate and you end up with a divided nation?

Is it good for America to have a welfare state which results in high unemployment and dependency?

Is it good for America to lose the war in Iraq to radical Islamists?

Is it good for America to have more single parent families resulting in more troubled poorly educated children?

I think the answer to all these questions is a 'no'. Denis Prager rightly pointed out that the things Democrats want are usually bad for the country. But he did not explain why.

The short answer is that they want to win the elections. Democracies do not give rise to long term planning because the votrepreneurs won't be in office when the problems come home to roost. But the long answer is that in any society, there are bound to be winners and losers. So in a two party democracy like America, one party (Republicans) will cater to the winners and the other (Democrats) to the losers.

By winners, I don't necessarily mean rich people. My defination of winners are people who have the right attitudes and values that make success likely. Some rich people are losers and some poor people are winners. I know of people born with silver spoons but because of poor work ethics ended up failures. On the other hand there are also people born poor but became successful later on. Of course, people who are diligent, frugal and keep stable marriages are more likely to be better off financially.

Therefore, the Republicans cater to the winners by promising tax cuts so that they can keep more of their winnings. The Democrats usually come up with income dstributive programs to take money from society's winners to give to the losers. This leads to welfare dependency and is detrimental to work ethics. By subsidizing losers, you end up creating more of them which is bad for the country. By subsidizing unmarried mothers, for instance, you end up with more of them because irresponsible fathers know that their children won't starve. Its the responsible taxpayer who will foot the bill.

The Democrats are the Party for Losers. (This is generally true of left-wing parties throughout the world.) So their policies are catered to the losers of society. What this means is that they must come up with policies to please their clients (ie their voters).

Thus they end up with policies that subsidize their voters and hence preserve the wrong behaviors and attitudes that cause them to be losers in the first place. Correcting the wrong attitudes and behaviors is simply not on the agenda. They can't tell them that their failure is largely their own fault because nobody likes to hear harsh truths. Instead they have to tell them its the fault of somebody else and they are entitiled to a share of the pie without having to make sacrifices.

For example, the Democrats offer to fight for bilingual education even though It is difficult for an average person to master two languages well. Lack of proficiency in English will be detrimental to job prospects and assimilation. Remaining poor and disgruntled would keep them losers and they will continue to vote for the Party for Losers. A parallel in Europe is that the left-wing parties are the ones that fight for more Muslim immigration.



The Left & Islam yesterday: Hitler and Haj Amin al-Husseini
(Hitler was a leftist)









The Left and Islam today: Red Ken & Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi






It should also be kept in mind that the Republican votrepreneurs are no better in their self interests. They too are chiefly concerned about keeping their jobs and not about the long term welfare of their country.

If their policies make better sense, its because of the clients (voters) they cater to. Their clients are the winners of American society - those whose attitudes and values benefit themselves and their country. Coming up with policies that pleases them, they effectively preserve and promote the types of attitudes and behaviors that made them successful and thus is good for the country in general. This is true in general of other Parties for Winners throughout the world.

Democracy and the Media Bias - by Fjordman

In democratic societies the press, the Fourth Estate, should supposedly make sure that the government does its job properly as well as raise issues of public interest. In practice, we now seem to have a situation where the political elites cooperate with the media on making sure that some topics receive insufficient or unbalanced attention while others are simply kept off the agenda altogether. This isn't the case with all issues but with some more than others, especially those related to Multiculturalism, mass immigration and anti-discrimination where there seems to be a near-consensus among the elites. Together they form a new political class. This trend is recognizable all over the Western world, but it has become more deeply entrenched in Western Europe than in the USA, partly because more media outlets in Europe are either controlled by or at least sponsored by the state, but mainly because the political class has become formalized through the European Union.

In Europe, politics is more and more becoming an empty ritual. The real decisions are taken before the public even get a chance to vote on them , and the media won't talk honestly about important matters. Our daily lives are run by a bloated bureaucracy which is becoming increasingly transnational. Ever so slowly, everyone is reduced from being an individual to being a cogwheel in a giant machine, run by supposedly well-meaning administrators and technocrats. They don't really care about you; they just don't want anybody to rock the boat, so they constantly grease the bureaucratic machinery with lies.

In 2007, former German president Roman Herzog warned that parliamentary democracy was under threat from the European Union. Between 1999 and 2004, 84 percent of the legal acts in Germany – and the majority in all EU member states - stemmed from Brussels. According to Herzog, "EU policies suffer to an alarming degree from a lack of democracy and a de facto suspension of the separation of powers." Despite this, the EU was largely a non-issue during the 2005 German elections. One gets the feeling that the real issues of substance are kept off the table and are not subject to public debate. National elections are becoming an increasingly empty ritual. The important issues have already been settled beforehand behind closed doors.

As British politician Daniel Hannan says: "When all the politicians agree, the rest of us should suspect a plot against the ordinary citizen. Without all-party consensus – and this is true of all the Member States, not just Germany – the EU would never have got to where it is." He believes the EU was intentionally designed this way: "Its founding fathers understood from the first that their audacious plan to merge the ancient nations of Europe into a single polity would never succeed if each successive transfer of power had to be referred back to the voters for approval. So they cunningly devised a structure where supreme power was in the hands of appointed functionaries, immune to public opinion. Indeed , the EU's structure is not so much undemocratic as anti-democratic."

In the eyes of American theorist Noam Chomsky, "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion , but allow very lively debate within that spectrum." This is undoubtedly true , which is why it's strange that Chomsky thinks that the Internet, currently the freest medium of all, is "a hideous time-waster."

In June 2004, a survey showed that 50% of all Swedes wanted a more restrictive immigration policy. Mass immigration reached the highest levels in history in 2006, yet before the general elections that year, all the major parties and the media cooperated successfully on keeping a lid on the issue. During the past few elections in Sweden , there has been virtually no public debate about mass immigration, but a passionate debate about "gender equality" in which almost all contestants call themselves feminists, and only argue over which ways to implement absolute equality between the sexes. The more suffocating the censorship becomes regarding the problems created by Muslims, the more discussion there is of ways to get rid of the straitjackets of heterosexuality. This is clearly done in order to give the citizens the sense of living in an open, free and tolerant society. Diversity of sex is used as a substitute for diversity of political opinions.

Author Bruce Bawer describes how before the rise of maverick politician Pim Fortuyn, the Dutch political scene had to a great extent been a closed club whose members, regardless of party affiliation, shared similar views in the widest possible sense. Most of the journalists belonged to the same club. If the majority of the populace didn't quite agree with this cozy elite regarding the most sensitive issues - and the most sensitive of them all was Muslim immigration - this hardly mattered much. Since all those who were in positions of power and influence were in basic agreement, the will of the people could safely be ignored.

According to Bawer, "Fortuyn had been an active politician for only a few months but had already shaken things up dramatically. Before him, Dutch politics had been essentially a closed club whose members shared broadly similar views on major issues and abhorred open conflict." Journalists and rival politicians alike - notice how they worked in lockstep - responded by smearing him "as a right-wing extremist, a racist, a new Mussolini or Hitler." Indirectly, this led to his murder by a left-wing activist who stated that he killed Fortuyn on behalf of Muslims because he was "dangerous" to minorities.

Later, the Islam-critic Theo van Gogh was murdered in broad daylight. As Bawer states, "In 2006, in a crisis that brought down the government, Ms. [Ayaan] Hirsi Ali was hounded out of Parliament by colleagues desperate to unload this troublemaker. When she moved to Washington, D.C., last year, polls showed that many Dutchmen wouldn't miss her. The elite, it seemed, had reasserted its power, and the Dutch people, tired of conflict, had embraced the status quo ante. (…) Five years ago, Fortuyn inspired widespread hope and determination. Today, all too many Dutch citizens seem confused, fearful, and resigned to gradual Islamization. No wonder many of them — especially the young and educated — are emigrating to places like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand."

Pim Fortuyn was indirectly murdered by the political , cultural and media elites whereas Theo van Gogh was murdered by Muslims. Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been driven from the country. Islam-critic Geert Wilders is still there , but he is subject to similar smears as Fortuyn was about being a racist, receives daily threats from Muslims and not-so-subtle hints from the establishment that he should tone down his criticism of Muslim immigration. The Dutch spirit appears to have been broken, at least for now, and things are slowly returning to normal. The extended political elites are once again firmly in control of public debate, and the embarrassing peasant rebellion has been successfully struck down.

I've suggested before that native Europeans face three enemies simultaneously when fighting against the Islamization of their lands: Enemy 1 is the anti-Western bias of our media and academia, which is a common theme throughout the Western world. Enemy 2 are Eurabians and EU-federalists, who deliberately break down established nation states in favor of a pan-European superstate. Enemy 3 are Muslims. The Netherlands from 2001 to 2007 is a clear case in point where enemies 1, 2 and 3 have successfully cooperated on breaking down the spirit of the native population through intimidation and censorship and by squashing any opposition to continued mass immigration.

The fact that members of the media and the academia tend to be more, sometimes a lot more , left-leaning politically than the average populace is well-attested and documented in the Scandinavian countries. Senior members of the BBC in Britain frankly admit that they are biased and champion Multiculturalism in their coverage. During the 2005 Muslim riots, it was openly stated by several French journalists that they downplayed the coverage of the riots because they didn't want it to benefit "right-wing parties." Judging from anecdotal information it seems fair to assume that this trend is universal throughout the Western world.

Bill Dedman, investigative reporter at the MSNBC, made a list of American journalists' political campaign contributions from 2004 through the first quarter of 2007. Of the 143 journalists surveyed, 125 had donated money to the Democratic Party. Only 16 of them had donated money to the Republican Party or conservative causes, and two to both parties.

Dr. Chanan Naveh, who used to edit the Israel Broadcasting Authority radio's news desk, mentioned, with no regrets, examples in which he and his colleagues made a concerted effort to change public opinion: "Three broadcasters - Carmela Menashe, Shelly Yechimovich [later a Labor party Knesset Member], and I - pushed in every way possible the withdrawal from Lebanon towards 2000... I have no doubt that we promoted an agenda of withdrawal that was a matter of public dispute." As Charles Johnson of American anti-Jihad blog Little Green Footballs commented: "Journalists are no longer in the business of simply reporting facts and events; increasingly, they see their job as 'activism,' and the points of view they promote are invariably leftist and transnationalist. Honest journalists will admit this outright , and we see the pernicious effects of this information manipulation and filtering everywhere."

But why is the situation like this? One could claim that this is the effect of the Western Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, or alternatively a product of the Cold War. But if you believe the esteemed Friedrich Hayek, the trend was discernable already in the late 1940s, before the Cold War had left a major impact. How do we explain that ? One plausible hypothesis could be to assume that those with conservative viewpoints will generally direct their energies towards business and commerce , while those with left-leaning sympathies desire to get into positions where they can influence people's minds. Over time, this could mean that in an open society, the media , the academia and the intelligentsia will tend to gravitate towards the political Left and become dominated by people sympathetic towards Utopian ideas. Because of the positions they have gained, their political bias will significantly influence what information is presented to the general masses, and how.

In his essay The Intellectuals and Socialism, Hayek noted already around 1950 that "Socialism has never and nowhere been at first a working-class movement. It is a construction of theorists" and intellectuals , "the secondhand dealers in ideas. The typical intellectual need not possess special knowledge of anything in particular, nor need he even be particularly intelligent, to perform his role as intermediary in the spreading of ideas. The class does not consist of only journalists , teachers, ministers, lecturers , publicists, radio commentators , writers of fiction , cartoonists, and artists." It also "includes many professional men and technicians, such as scientists and doctors."

"The most brilliant and successful teachers are today more likely than not to be socialists." According to Hayek, this is not because Socialists are more intelligent, but because "a much higher proportion of socialists among the best minds devote themselves to those intellectual pursuits which in modern society give them a decisive influence on public opinion. Socialist thought owes its appeal to the young largely to its visionary character. The intellectual, by his whole disposition, is uninterested in technical details or practical difficulties. What appeal to him are the broad visions."

He warns that "It may be that as a free society as we have known it carries in itself the forces of its own destruction, that once freedom has been achieved it is taken for granted and ceases to be valued, and that the free growth of ideas which is the essence of a free society will bring about the destruction of the foundations on which it depends. Does this mean that freedom is valued only when it is lost, that the world must everywhere go through a dark phase of socialist totalitarianism before the forces of freedom can gather strength anew ? If we are to avoid such a development, we must be able to offer a new liberal program which appeals to the imagination. We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage."

During a conversation I had with a Swedish friend and a lady who grew up in the Communist dictatorship of Romania , we concluded that Westerners are at least as brainwashed by Political Correctness and Multiculturalism as they ever were with Communism. There never was a universally shared belief in Multiculturalism in Western Europe, and the percentage of True Believers is declining by the day. Still, it is probably accurate to say that more people believed in Multiculturalism in Western Europe in 1998 than who believed in Communism in Eastern Europe in 1978. But how is that possible?

Ideological indoctrination is most effective if the people maintain the illusion that they are free and that they are being served balanced information. Citizens in Communist states knew that they participated in a large-scale social experiment, and since ideological hegemony was upheld at gunpoint, this left little room for doubt that they were being served propaganda to shore up support for this project. Yet in the supposedly free West, we are taking part in a gigantic social experiment of Multiculturalism, seeking to transform our entire society, and still we refuse to acknowledge that we are being served ideological nonsense by the media.

The differences, particularly on issues related to Jihad and immigration, between the information reported in blogs and independent websites and the information presented to us by the established media are so great that it shocks many ordinary citizens once it dawns upon them just how much censored propaganda we are spoon-fed every day. This experience has shattered the myth of free, critical and independent Western media, at least for some.

In the view of blogger Richard Landes, the media play a critical role in the global Jihad's success. The major media outlets "are the eyes and ears of modern civil societies. Without them we cannot know what is going on outside of our personal sphere , with them we can make our democratic choices in elections, assess foreign policy, intervene humanely in the suffering around the globe. But as any paleontologist will tell you , any creature whose eyes and ears misinform it about the environment, will not long survive."

This can be compared to being attacked by an angry and hungry polar bear, while your eyes and ears, the media , tell you that it's a cute koala bear who just wants to be cuddled. Meanwhile , your brain has been indoctrinated to think happy thoughts about diversity and smile to all creatures, regardless of their nature or intentions. This is pretty much how the entire West is today. The heavy bias of our media and our education system constitutes a very real threat to our survival.

Why are the worst mass murderers from the left?

The worst mass murderers from the twentieth century and possibly for all time were Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Hitler - all left wing dictators.

Did I say Hitler? I think that most people would not object to my calling Mao, Stalin and Pol Pot left wing dictators. But Hitler? Many people think of him as a right wing dictator but that is not correct. Why is Hitler a creature of the left?

To begin with, the Nazi party stands for the German Workers' National Socialist Party. Hitler claimed in a speech on May 1, 1927:



"We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions."

The Nazi Party campaigned on a recognisably leftist platform. Here is an excerpt from the 1920 Nazi party manifesto:

"10. The first duty of every citizen must be to work mentally or physically. The activities of the individual may not clash with the interests of the whole, but must proceed within the frame of the community and be for the general good.

Therefore we demand:

11. That all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished.

12. Since every war imposes on the people fearful sacrifices in life and property, all personal profit arising from the war must be regarded as a crime against the people. We therefore demand the total confiscation of all war profits whether in assets or material.

13. We demand the nationalization of businesses which have been organized into cartels.

14. We demand that all the profits from wholesale trade shall be shared out.

15. We demand extensive development of provision for old age.

16. We demand the creation and maintenance of a healthy middle-class, the immediate communalization of department stores which will be rented cheaply to small businessmen, and that preference shall be given to small businessmen for provision of supplies needed by the State, the provinces and municipalities.

17. We demand a land reform in accordance with our national requirements, and the enactment of a law to confiscate from the owners without compensation any land needed for the common purpose. The abolition of ground rents, and the prohibition of all speculation in land."

The party manifesto does not call for free market capitalism. Calling for nationalization, confiscation of land are things that Socialists or Communists call for. Of course, you can say that Hitler or any votrepreneur (politician) will say anything to gain power. His rhetoric gained him the support of mostly lower income and middle income Germans. Ultimately, its what he did that counts. Action speaks louder than words. So what did Hitler do when he came to power?

Hitler took over control of nearly all means of production like a good Socialist or Communist would. He did not nationalize all assets of production like what Lenin or Mao did. The nominal ownership was left in private hands. But the substance of ownership passed to the state.

This is explained in an article by George Reisman writing for the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Drawing on the writings of the great economist, Ludwig Von Mises, Reisman explained why Nazism is Socialism and why Socialism leads to totalitarianism.

When Hitler took power in Germany, the "owners" of assets of production (eg factories, farms etc) had every major economic decision decided for him by the state. The state (or some central planning bureaucrat) told you how many workers you must employ, how much to pay them, how much to charge for your products and services and how much dividends the owners get. The government also practiced wage and price controls in 1936.

(The government had to impose wage and price controls because of the runaway inflation as a result of increasing of its money supply to fund its huge programs of public works, subsidies and rearmament. To keep the people happy, he gave them cheap subsidised holidays to the Alps and the Canary Islands. )

When your rights to your "property" such as a factory or farm or rental apartments etc are so eroded, the state effectively owns them. You are "owner" in name only. Thus I would put the Nazi party left of say the British Labor Party but right of the Communist Party of Soviet Union.

Since Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot and Stalin were people who claim to be Socialist or Communist, is there something in Socialism that leads to totalitarian government?

The answer is a yes.

I will sum up the arguments. Firstly, Socialism calls for state control of all means of production. This means that all workshops, farms, factories etc are to be controlled by the state. What to produce and how much will be centrally planned.

The state will decide what to produce, how much to produce and sell at what price. It has no way of telling what consumers want. In a capitalist economy, all these questions will be settled by the market as each individual pursues his own self interest. If a product is in demand, then its price will go up.

Other independent producers will see a profit opportunity and increase production for the product. As production increases, the price will drop. In a command economy the bureaucrat decides all this.

Since prices are controlled, shortages or gluts will be the result since it is hard for the bureaucrat to get it exactly right. That is why in the former Soviet Union, you end up with long queues - which is an unproductive way of spending your day. The Soviets also sold staples like bread very cheaply. The result was wastage as people fed the bread to their pigs.

Of course, there will be people who want to sell at a higher price than the officially sanctioned prices so as to gain a larger profit. So to enforce the system, the state will have to make it a crime. This means that they will employ an army of spies to detect black market activities. People will fear one another for anybody could be a spy. Even your girl-friend might be a spy.

Punishment for profiteering is severe since a fine would merely be regarded as a business expense. Since a jury is unlikely to send a man to the firing squad for selling a bar of soap at a higher price, you need state appointed judges to do the dirty work.

The result is a complete loss of freedom. To enforce Socialism then you need a totalitarian system where everybody is suspicious of everybody else and power is concentrated at the top. This was what happened in Nazi Germany and the United Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

Once the state has so much control over the lives of its people, all sorts of nasty things can happen - including mass murder. That is why the worst mass murderers of the 20th century were all creatures of the left. The more concentrated the power, the more abuses are likely and Socialism has a tendency to concentrate power.

This has not fortunately not happened in any western democracy even those which are run by parties that call themselves Socialists. But the tendency for greater state control over your lives are always there. Its just embedded in Socialism.

For example, in the year 2000, France's leftist government of Lionel Jospin created the Department of Work Police. The Work Police will catch people who work too hard! (2)

At a time when countries try to compete to by working harder, the French Socialists wanted to do the opposite!

Here is a comment by Fjordman from the Gates of Vienna that I believe is relevant to
this blog :

gatesofvienna

"When I criticize democracy, this should not be taken as an indication
that I believe in elitist rule. I criticize it because it clearly
doesn't automatically ensure freedom of speech and security for life
and property, which is the hallmark of true liberty. Another problem
is that it isn't always the best system for long-term decisions
because people tend to prefer short-term gains. I still believe,
however, that there should be a powerful element of real public
influence, to curtail the potential for absolute rulers and abuse of
power. We have clearly veered too far in the direction of the latter
with the EU, where the ruling elites have skillfully eliminated any
constraints on their power.

The democratic system has significant flaws, but it worked to some
extent as long as there was sense of being a demos, a people with a
shared identity and common interests. What we are witnessing now is
the gradual breakdown of this demos, starting from the top down.
Powerful groups frequently have more in common with the elites in
other countries than they have with the average citizen in their own.
If you no longer believe in your nation as a real entity with a
specific culture, it simply becomes a tool for obtaining power, a
stepping stone for your global career. Without a pre-political
loyalty, emotional ties or even a pragmatic interest in supporting
nation states, the democratic system becomes a vehicle for
distributing favors to your friends at home and abroad, for fleecing
the voters while in power and hopefully ensuring a lucrative
international career along the way. You will have few moral
inhibitions against importing voters from abroad for maintaining power
or because your business buddies who give you financial support desire
it. This process is related to technological globalization, but it has
gone further in the self-loathing West than in any other civilization.

Average citizens who still identify with their nation states thus keep
electing people who betray their trust. Since the elites identify
little with the nations they are supposed to serve, more power to them
will only make matters worse, as it already has in Europe. Corrupt and
incompetent individuals will always exist. If you get a corrupt leader
every now and then you are dealing with a flawed individual. If you
constantly, again and again, get corrupt leaders you are dealing with
a flawed system. Our political system is now deeply flawed. The
problem is that I cannot easily see how to fix it."

Fjordman is a great thinker who also realises that the democratic system has flaws in it. This blog is dedicated to people who think likewise and wish to discuss ways of reforming democracy.

Vote buying in Canada

This article came to my attention courtesy of Fjordman, the insightful Scandinavian writer:

Vote buying in Canada

"Naresh Raghubeer is executive director with the Canadian Coalition for
Democracies

Ontario Auditor-General Jim McCarter reported that the province's
Immigration and Citizenship Ministry has been dispensing millions of
dollars in grants to ethnic groups under a process that is "not open,
transparent or accountable." In many cases, groups got money simply
because their members were chummy with ministry insiders.

He documents a taxpayer-funded political black market based on
"ethnic" vote-buying. Dalton McGuinty's government marked the 2006 and
2007 fiscal year-end by rushing $32.5-million dollars out the
treasury's door. Destination: cultural and religious groups likely to
vote Liberal in the coming October elections. The Iranian-Canadian
Community Centre's $200,000 grant was disbursed despite there being
"no written request for funding."

Whose interest is served when politicians play vote-bank politics with
Canadian tax dollars? We risk importing into Canada the tribal
politics that afflict the countries from which many of our immigrants
have fled."


Here you can clearly see the votrepreneurs do not have the country's interests at heart. All they care about is their re-election. For them, democracy is about vote buying, not with their own money but with taxpayer's money. As I said in my earlier essays, we must reform the system such that the personal interests of the political elite co-incides with the national interests.