Well, yesterday was Inauguration day.
It was a good day.
It was a good day not just because we got rid of an American president that has been quick to react to crisis with the use of force … who has tried to hide his weaknesses at home under the guise of foreign wars … but a president who has been at constant war with the same constitution he solmenly swore to uphold.
It was also a good day because the president that was sworn in, in his place, is a symbol that racial bigotry can be transcended and overcome, and who makes people believe that while things look dark, there is a way out of it.
I know from bitter, personal experience that in the grips of deep depression, the first step to get out of it has to be a determination to do so … and the second step has to include optimism that it is possible. Barack Obama embodies both these things. That is not to say his success is assured. He has the absolutely thankless task of following in the footsteps of a fiscal incompetent and trying to rebuild the United States economy at a time where the debts owed to other countries exceeds the Gross National Product by a factor four. It’s a daunting task to put it mildly and to be honest, I don’t believe it can be achieved in the span of one presidential period. It may be possible in two. However, he can take the first steps, and he will, by creating jobs for people who have lost theirs.
Few people understand that when a country hits depression, they must spend … not save up. The natural inclination of us all is to huddle down and defend what we have when the going gets rough. But if everyone reacts like that, no one will buy anything. More people will lose their jobs that way and soon, you’ve entered a vicious, horrible downward spiral that can be next to impossible to break.
That is the ultimate failure of pure market economies and unbriddled capitalism. It is what will happen to all systems based on true capitalism in due course. It has happened before and it will no doubt happen again in the future.
In a situation like that, a nation faces two simple choices. Continue adhering to the creed that ‘the state can’t solve the problem, the state is the problem’ to paraphrase Ronald Reagan, or increase public spending massively to make sure people have an income to spend again like Franklin D. Roosevelt did in the thirties with his ‘New Deal’-concept …
If one chooses the former option, one assumes that sooner or later, the citizens themselves will break out of their slump and suddenly start spending the money they had sown into their mattresses. Not little by little, not a few of them at a time … but that all over the country, a spontaneous reaction from millions of people at once would result in massive increase in private spending in a short period of time, which will kickstart the economy. Throughout history, since the concept of the modern market economy was formulated by Adam Smith, to my knowledge there hasn’t been one single example of that happening anywhere in the world, yet diehard capitalists still cling to the fantastical idea that it will and does.
The latter option means that the state has to spend money to show citizens the way. It has to spend money in a concerted, directed way that not only give workers an income, but which will enable the country to benefit long-term from the investments made. That means one thing, and one thing only. One word:
Infrastructure.
It means new roads. New bridges. New railroads. New public transportation systems that aren’t run down and beaten to a pulp by decades of vandalism in trains and busses. It means new and better schools to give children and young people places to receive tuition where they don’t have to wonder whether they’ll catch something nasty when visiting the toilet and where they don’t have to fear the roof falling on their heads because of neglect in building maintenance. It means hospitals to help EVERYONE … not just those who can still afford medical insurance … recover swiftly from illness and injury.
These things need to happen. Spending money left right and center doesn’t work, unless there is a goal to work towards. Unless there is a strategy for the spending. I believe President Obama has such a strategy, and he has surrounded himself by capable men and women to help him carry it out.
Therefore, I breath a little more easily today, knowing that the world has a bit more reason for optimism than it did two days ago. I breathe more easily because we are rid of a president whose administration is perceived as criminal in large parts of the free world. Because Richard Nixon’s words to David Frost, that if the president does something it means it’s not illegal had begun to sound familiar again, and because we are now past that.
I disagree politically with Barack Obama on a large number of issues, but I do hope and believe he will be an immeasurable improvement over what we’ve all had to live with for the last eight years. And I say we … because George W. Bush’s policies impacted everyone in the western world.
So much for the good.
Now for the bad.
And it has nothing to do with the American election.
It has to do with racism and right wing fundamentalists.
These past few days, I have seen a number of internet blogs sprout the same kind of message. It is not new, and I have seen it for years … resurfacing every once in a while. Lately, it’s come up again, and I feel compelled to respond to it.
The claims made in these blogs are as follows, and mind you, THESE ARE NOT MY OPINIONS:
1: Islam is deliberately evil. No muslim can be a decent, law-abiding and open-minded person in a western society, because he or she will always work to undermine society to introduce Shari’a and to become overlords of the nations they live in, in order to subjugate everyone else and introduce the world-wide Khaliffa.
2: Indigenous left wing voters are traitors to their own people and their own countries who, in full knowledge of the wrongness of their action or in ‘willfull unwillingness’ to accept the obvious, support this by allowing Muslims to remain in the country in any way, shape or form, and by always defending criminal Muslims. Bleeding Heart Humanists as they are, they thereby undermine the stability and safety of their fatherland, and consequently furthering a left-wing agenda should be treated as high treason and anyone who follows such an agenda should be treated accordingly.
3: Every single mass murdering, totalitarian dictator in history, was a socialist. Every one of them. From Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse Tung to Adolf Hitler. They were all socialists. Particularly Hitler who was, after all, a National Socialist.
4: Modern socialists are either unwilling to accept that they carry a joint responsibility for what Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Hitler did sixty years ago, or unwilling to accept that what they did was wrong in the first place. More commonly the second of the two options prevails, and this proves that modern socialists are all supportive of mass murdering, totalitarian dictators as was amply proved when modern socialists by and large objected to the invasion of Iraq to depose the pseudo-communist dictator Saddam Hussein.
5: Modern socialists are anti-democrats and should therefore be forbidden or even locked up. They are fifth columnists working to overthrow democratic systems in any country in which they exist, and who will object firmly to any attempt to introduce democracy in countries where it does not already exist. It is impossible to be a modern socialist and believe in the system of democracy, as the two cancel each other out.
I REPEAT: THESE ARE NOT MY OPINIONS!!
These are opinions that can be read, more or less in exactly those words, on a large number of political blogs everywhere. I find them either slightly laughable … or very tiring, depending on the highhandedness of the individual blogger.
The point, of course, is that those five points are all nonsense. I will respond to each of them in turn, but before I do so, I have to stress that no amount of sound reasoning, logic, proof or good intentions will convince these people that they are not absolutely right. In fact, they will consider you a suspect personality no matter what your political beliefs are, if you don’t readily agree with all of it.
Anyway, to respond:
1: Islam does include a group of very vocal and outspoken fundamentalist bastards. People who will readily kill others wholesale for not agreeing to live by their rules. These are the people who claim that since the world Islam means to subject yourself to the will of God, free choice in the matter is anathema. If people will not convert willingly, they must be forced to be good muslims, and if this doesn’t work they must be killed off. This is undeniable. Al’Qaeda functions on these principles. I do not deny that it is true. I do deny that the same thing goes for the millions of Muslims out there who specifically ran away to escape these people and who have made good, productive lives for themselves in their new homes. I also deny it goes for every Muslim still living in the Muslim parts of the world. I am definitely in favor of opposing the fundamentalists, but I am strongly against creating MORE of them by labeling every Muslim around as one of them. And here we get to a very central issue in this post. Every time there is a terrorist attack, every time there is a story in the newspapers of young third generation immigrants vandalizing a train or a building, and every time an Imam makes an idiotic statement about the rights of women, the right-wing fundamentalists get up on their moral high horses and loudly proclaim that this is evidence that all Muslims are bad by nature. They then also call on ‘moderate Muslims’ to speak up and reject what their ‘brethren’ has done. They call on these people because if it happens, they can react in one of two ways. Either by publicly rejecting that the apology is sincere, or by saying ‘look, even the Muslims admit that they are bad’. However, whenever a Dane rapes a Dane, or a Dane burns down a school or a Dane robs a bank … you don’t see the same fundamentalists get up on the barricades, calling for Danes everywhere to denounce these people. You will see them be offended and angry … sure. But they will not start asking the rest of us to publically expose ourselves to reject the actions of the few. Why must I personally apologize because my neighbor’s great cousin twice removed’s dog’s former owner has burnt an Israeli flag in a public square, just because said person happens to have the same religious beliefs as me or the same skin-tone? I had absolutely nothing to do with the idiot burning a flag … so why must I get up there and assume joint responsibility by apologizing?
They would NEVER ask that of Danes, but they call for it every single time Muslims make trouble.
2: I love my country. I’m a card-carrying socialist and I will stand by that to my dying day. I love my country and would not see it destroyed by any group. Muslim, Right Wing, Left Wing. I don’t care … I don’t want my country to suffer. I agree that the most vocal Left Wing extremists (typically young Socio-Anarchists) refuse to accept that any Muslim can do any wrong, ever. That is as stupid as taking the view that no Muslim can ever do anything right. The world is not black-and-white. The world is made up of shades of grey. I will gladly see a Muslim rapist incarcerated, and I wouldn’t dream of defending his actions. However, I would feel the exact same way about a Dane committing the same crime. I believe in integration of minorities, but not at any cost, and I do not believe in assimilation of minorities. I very much support laws that allow us to deport people with ties to another country, to that country if they commit criminal acts of a certain severity. I’m not going to be apologetic on their behalf, whimpering about ‘oh but they had a tough life’. If they do the crime, they do the time. Simple as that. And anyone claiming I’m a traitor to my country can take it up with me, face to face. I would get a right royal laugh out of it at least.
3: I HEREBY DECLARE THAT I VOTE CONSERVATIVE, AND THAT I STRONGLY SUPPORT GEORGE W. BUSH’S POLICIES!
Do you believe me? No?
Drat!
Blast it.
DOH!!
But I just SAID it? Why don’t you believe me? Ohhh…because my ACTIONS disprove it. I see. Alright. Fair enough.
Hitler was a national socialist … that does not make him a socialist. Simply using the word doesn’t make it so. I could claim to be a conservative until my tongue turned blue and my eyes popped out from strain, but that would not make me a conservative. Hitler’s politics were right wing from the word go and in fact he only attained power because the National Conservatives like Franz von Pappen supported it. In two months after taking over, Hitler saw to it that more than four thousand political opponents were put in Dachau and other early concentration camps … mainly communists and social democrats. As opposed to letting the state control the means of production (the most basic socialist ideal of the age) he enriched the capitalists wildly … such people as Willy Messerschmidt, the Krupp family and many others made fortunes on the fact that Hitler was their greatest protector. Furthermore, Hitler was not an internationalist. He was specifically a NATIONALIST … who wanted his country to take over every other country within reach and preferably those outside his reach as well. It wouldn’t be an international brotherhood of nations, but one Grossdeutches Reich. Not a benevolent brotherhood but a harsh dictatorship. Hitler was not a socialist. Ever.
4: That being said, I acknowledge that men like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Kim Il Sung, Pol Pot and other such maniacs WERE in some way inspired by socialism. I can’t say I agree with them or their political methods or goals, but yes, they were usually communists of the worst kind. That does not mean I have to agree with them. Again, the world is not black and white, and I find them just as reprehensible and loathesome as Hitler. However, it would be pleasant to see the right wing of politics acknowledge that their past history involves nasty examples of dictators too. It will probably never happen but hey, one can dream. Furthermore, they carry no more responsibility for what Hitler did than Germans born after the collapse of the Third Reich do. Just as I carry absolutely no responsibility for what was done in Stalin’s Gulags or in the Killing Fields of Cambodia. Neither moral nor practical responsibility can be assigned to people in such a way. It is, in fact, a basic fundamental principle of the rule of law, and it is somewhat tiresome that the people who claim that socialists want to undermine the rule of law do so themselves.
5: This is the most idiotic of them all. ‘We must protect democracy, and therefore, we must forbid people with certain opinions to have those opinions, and possibly lock them up so we can keep check on them’. See above concerning Hitler’s treatment of political adversaries, if you please. I am a democratic human being, raised in the understanding that we all have a right to vote at elections, and that we must protect this fantastic institution that allows each of us to be heard in some small way. It is one of very few causes I consider worth dying for, and I am offended and personally insulted every time I am confronted by the view that just because I vote for a left-wing party, I am automatically trying to destroy the country I live in. I vote as I do because I believe that modern socialism is the only humane way to lead a country. I believe that each individual human being has value, and that we should all be allowed to strive to become the best people we can be. Critics say that socialists believe all people are born equal and that consequently, we are all the same. This is wrong. I believe all people are born with equal rights, and should be given equal opportunities. If a boy or a girl is born and grows up, wanting to be a doctor … should he or she not be allowed to become a doctor, just because his parents can’t pay for the expensive tuition? If a child of a fabulously wealthy family wants to be an artist or a carpenter … why should that child not be allowed to do so? I believe the state has an obligation to actively help each person achieve his or her dreams, not simply get out of the way and say ‘okay you’re allowed if you can get there on your own’.
I believe in the value of a human being.
I believe that when I look at a newborn infant that child is as good as any other newborn infant in the maternity ward, irregardless of his or her parents bank-account. I believe that child has the same rights as the other children there. I believe he or she should have the same chance to grow up happy, living a good, full life.
And I believe we all share a responsibility to help that child get there. Regardless of race or creed, for us or the child. We all have that responsibility.
All of us.
I believe that the only form of evil come from the people who can look at a child and say ‘you are not as good … or as worthy … as me’.
Thank you for reading.