The Left and Their Unique Selling Point

The new Dutch Labour leader, Job Cohen (Nohen) who just sustained a disastrous mock Obama (Nobama) launch, showed us yesterday how desperately out of touch the Left really is.

Enjoying a public holiday every five years on May 5, the commemoration of liberation in World War II, Cohen just proposed to turn it into an annual affair. Just what we need, another public holiday! With the economy tanking, talk of raising the state pension age to 67, the European Union on the brink, and a Euro that just plummeted to a staggering 1,04% against the dollar, the lowest mark in over a year, the Left is calling for an extra day off the job!

- Caption: protesting Greece's austerity measures in a country with little welfare fat on the bones - 

The desperate situation in Greece is entirely on the plate of the unions and their limitless appetites, and the weak back Governments that were unwilling or unable to perform 'a Maggy'. Today it's make or break, and even now they do not seem to get it. But apparently, neither do we.

Needless to say, the unions and other socialistic parties were soon aboard Cohen's proposal. So this sad piece of ill concealed bribery is how Labour proposes to win the general elections next month! Desperate indeed ... and completely out of touch with reality. This just proves they're too irresponsible to govern and too out of touch to drag the country out of the economic quagmire.

Even more infuriating is, that Cohen is said to launch this idea out of 'respect' for liberty and the freedom of expression. As the former mayor of Amsterdam, Cohen enjoyed quite a few afternoons having 'tea summits' with Moroccan hooligans and other n'ver-do-wells, wont to terrorize entire neighbourhoods out of its indigenous populations.

This is how Cohen, the multiculturalist, proposes to 'keep the country together". As for the freedom of expression, don't provoke him! - before you know it he's triggered his own version of Brown's 'bigotgate'.

The man has no concept of the word Liberty! To the Left, liberty means freedom not to live under the collectivist Right's jackboot (as opposed to the collectivist Left's jackboot). To them, negative rights, the essence of true liberty, mean "neglection by the state". After all, it's now apparently the duty of politicians to offer the population "hope and consolation". Government has now in actual fact usurped the role of the God head: statism is no longer an abstraction, but a real state of mind.

Even more desperate is the British Labour Party, starting with Gordon Brown. The entire Left has abandoned them and jumped on to Nick Clegg's LibDem bandwaggon. The Labour Party doesn't stand a chance. Of course the state-run media would never, ever paint the Conservatives as a genuine alternative.

Current cohort of media workers do not even know anymore what Conservatism stands for. It's quite some time since I've heard a practicing journalist explain the details of the political philosophy, let alone provide a level playing field. The sole meme emanating from the lamestreamers is, "this is public enemy number one".

Labour has been in power in Britain for the last thirteen years; how it is then, that "the rich have gotten richer and the poor have gotten poorer"? Chatter has it, that the gap has become ever wider so that it's quite necessary to vote in ... more Labour.

As an explanation it is implied that somehow this feature is inherent in British class society. But the truth is, this is happening in every country, city and borough that is ruled by Leftists.

When are people going to catch on to this racket?

The Left is it's own unique selling point. Obama conveyed the notion correctly ... we are the people we've been waiting for ... vote Labour so as to mitigate our own policies!

Related articles

Washington Times: "Greek lawmakers pass austerity bill"

Related dossiers

- "Doing a Maggy"
- "Money & Economy"
- "London Calling"
- "Socialist Causes Explained"

The Re-re-re-invention of Socialism

It has been in the works for some time. The process of the umpteenth Socialist transformation may be close to completion in the US, where the Democratic Party has been taken over by postmodern, hard, pragmatist reds.

The Dutch Labor Party on the other hand has just woken up to the need for a new coat - the old Liberal gown now all worn out. Leftist political ideologues have been overheard pleading for a return to old-fashioned, red authoritarianism. But this transformation is still an ongoing process at this point in time.

The metamorphosis was also on the agenda Monday night when the Dutch Labor leader and the Finance Minister, Wouter Bos delivered the so-called Den Uyl Oration (Den Uyl being the Dutch Barack Obama, a Socialist firebrand dating back almost four decades). The speech offers a rare insight into the statist, Socialist mindset.

He dealt with the temporary adoption of Liberalism by the Left, now with thinly veiled distaste referred to as Neo Liberalism. Obviously the Left have been wearing the Liberal coat much longer, but it didn't come to the Netherlands before Bill Clinton and Tony Blair toted it as "the third way".

The Labor leader enjoyed brief popularity last year when the voters credited him with "having saved the banking sector" after he nationalized and bailed out a number of banks considered too big to fail.  He and his party are now at an all time low in the polls.

Bos refers to the market in terms of an out of control monster: "Third way progressives fell asleep with the markets tamed, but woke up when the monster had broken its chains" (I kid you not).

Bos has accepted the Obama as the ideological leader of New Old Labor movement after Obama "proved that transnational corporatism (globalism) is man-made and makeable; it's not a natural process and unavoidable as Neo Liberals have been falsely telling Social-Democrats for years". Apparently Bos just figured out that the regulation of markets is a distinct possibility and politicians can dictate what bankers may earn, without capitalism crashing down to earth in shock. Principle is a stranger to these pragmatists.

The same is apparently true of the "Neo Liberal" plea for limited govenment, known in continental Europe as the Anglo-Saxon model. The Scandinavian system is paraded out, proof positive that big government, economic growth, wealthspread and sustainability are all possible at the same time. So, there are alternatives to the Neo Liberal model (as we've also seen in China where mega economic growth is unconcernedly combined with a communist dictatorship).

You might be excused for concluding that Bos is pleading for a return to classical, red, state intervention. But that isn't the case. According to Bos that would be "substituting one failure for another". Rather, he's proposing the erection of a protective barrier between the private and the public sector.

At this point the analogy hits the circus world: the market behaves like a wild, performing animal; you may think you have it under control, but at some point it's bound to act in accordance with its nature. A motte-and-bailey may in the end offer more security than regulation.

In its zeal to tame the beast, the state finds it easier to deal with larger corporations. Therefore rules and regulations have consistently punished small to medium sized businesses to a larger extent than bigger ones. It has created a convergence of interests of the state and big business, which Mussolini defined as corporatism, or fascism.

Bos blames the present crisis in third-way-ism on the contemporary form of cut-throat capitalism, which has more to do with mergers, shareholder value and take-overs, than with entrepreneurs and human resources.

But as Ann Coulter points out in "Can't We At Least Get a Toaster" this "risk-free Clintonian state capitalism" is the product of the third way, rather than unadulterated laissez faire capitalism.

Throughout every bailout, congressional Republicans were screaming from the rooftops that this wasn't capitalism. It was "Government Sachs." As Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) put it, the same rules that apply to welfare mothers "ought to apply to rich Greenwich, Conn., investors who are multimillionaires." But Wall Street raised a lot of money for the Democrats, so Clinton bailed them out, over and over again. Before you knew it, once-respectable Wall Street institutions were buying investment products even more ludicrous than Mexican bonds: They were buying the mortgages of Mexican strawberry-pickers.

It's the same story, over and over. State interventionism creates a monster, calling for more interventionism. Symbol for all that, stands the greedy banker's bonus, and banks not in the service of the "real economy" but as moneymakers in themselves, as Bos puts it.

Bos never gets concrete anywhere, so it's still a matter of conjecture what this motte-and-bailey between the public and the private sector will turn out to be. The entire history of progressivism warrants utmost prudence and vigilance. Ignore the latest transformation at your peril.

Bos' conclusion is sure proof that Liberalism has been abandoned: in the past he would have thought twice of indulging so freely in unfettered elitist moralism. He concluded his speech, expressing the need of instilling into the elite (they wear this now as a badge of honor), a sense of service and civic duty towards public interests. He even sounds ominous when classical progressivism gets a hold on him: "our desire to lift up man extends to the elite as well."

Update:

Sure enough, last night from the Socialist Party (Maoist) convention platform it was announced that it and (new) Labor have committed themselves to a government coalition. As the hated NeoLib feathers are being shed entire new combines enter the horizon. The SP is much more populist, less elitist, and deeper red. The time will tell what horrors this marriage of convenience will produce.

Related posts:

- NRC: "Dutch support for Obama plan to restrict banks"
- DutchNews: "Labour leader Bos leaves 'the third way'"
- Politeia: "The New New Left: the Return of Authority"