Why Socialism Breeds Racism

Why Socialism Breeds Racism
By Ben Shapiro
10/27/2010

This week's Sports Illustrated featured an article on French soccer star Thierry Henry. Henry, who is black, signed with the New York Red Bulls this season after spending over a decade playing in Europe. What shocks Henry most about America? Whereas European fans routinely insult and slur black players, Americans don't.

"I've been to a lot of arenas to watch NBA games and the Yankees, and I have never heard anyone have a go at a guy because he's from Puerto Rico or the Dominican or Africa or wherever," Henry marveled. "I can understand why people in America are kind of shocked [by European racism], because that doesn't happen in their sports."

Europe is far more racist than America. Yet the left is in love with European values. They love Europe's emphasis on promiscuous sex. They love Europe's redistributive economic policies. Most of all, they love Europe's willingness to abandon all principle in supposed gratification of multiculturalism.

Unfortunately for the left, Europe has proved itself a failure on each of these elements. Europe's emphasis on free love without commitment has created a childbearing holocaust -- Europe is not reproducing at even replacement rates. That failure to reproduce is hastening the decline of Europe's suicidal economy, which is so top-heavy with aging union workers that it makes Dolly Parton look like Keira Knightley. That failing economic structure means more and more reliance on impoverished immigrants, who are not interested in assimilating into what they perceive as a morally bankrupt culture. And that failure to assimilate destroys precipitating societal fragmentation.

As Europe collapses, however, the left clings even more tightly to the European model. They cannot allow the utopian socialist dream to die its well-deserved death.

How, then, do they bolster that dream? By proclaiming that they stand not for economic decay or familial destruction, but for tolerance. They blame capitalism for economic downturns, then state, as President Obama has, that tough times produce racism. In this view, capitalism produces racism.

It's false. Capitalism requires individual responsibility and accountability. People are seen as atomized units in a capitalist system -- they are either useful or they are not. They are not seen racially or ethnically or religiously. They consume and they produce, and those are their only relevant characteristics.

This seems cold, but it isn't. It's profoundly fair and profoundly anti-discriminatory. It creates a colorblind system -- the only color that matters is green.

Socialism, by contrast, requires a justification for why certain individuals should give money to other individuals for no apparent reason. Socialism has no moral justification whatsoever; poor people are not morally superior to rich people, nor are they owed anything by rich people simply because of their lack of success. Charity is not a socialist concept -- it is a religious one, an acknowledgment of God's sovereignty over property, a sovereignty the left utterly rejects.

How, then, can socialism justify itself? By pointing to capitalistic "exploitation." There's only one problem: true capitalism doesn't exploit. Capitalism invariably boils down to barter between two willing parties, neither of whom uses force to work with the other.

Socialism's answer is ingenious -- it points to phantom "institutional racism." Because white forefathers oppressed black forefathers, today's rich whites owe today's poor blacks money. Because most minority groups once experienced discrimination at the hands of majority groups, today's high-earners -- who, by and large, come from majority groups -- now owe today's minority groups cash.

Then, socialism rests on seeing people as members of groups, not as individuals. Rich sons are responsible for the existent or non-existent sins of their fathers; poor sons are due benefits because of their fathers' tough lives. Racism is a critical element of the socialist agenda -- focus on group identity provides the only supposed moral justification for redistribution of wealth. It's no surprise that when socialism fails, racism bubbles beneath.

Now, though, the left is running scared. They fear that the tea party culture and its attendant economics will do away with socialism's long-running cultural and economic dominance. That's why they attack the tea party as racist -- because if the tea party isn't racist, the socialists' moral raison d'etre is utterly defeated.

On Nov. 2, 2010, Americans will reject the socialist agenda and its race-tinged propaganda. Then socialists will truly panic. They will ratchet up the rhetoric; they will mine minority communities for race warriors; they will play racial dirty tricks. It will fail. Americans are not racists, and they are not socialists. That is why America is on the rise, even as Europe falls.
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Editorial: Europe rethinking the welfare state
2010-10-25 16:27:55
Orange County Register.

The United States and Europe offer a fascinating political contrast just now. In Europe, notably in Germany, France and Great Britain, political leaders facing yawning deficits are trying to cut back on social spending. They're not really reconsidering whether they should continue to have the welfare states most European countries committed to after World War II, but they're trying to make welfare spending somewhat affordable and responsible – and at least in France face massive demonstrations that threaten to tie the country in knots. In the United States our current political leaders are working assiduously to beef up the welfare state to the kinds of levels that threaten to bankrupt European governments – and the demonstrations we hear about are Tea Party aficionados seeking to get the government to exercise a modicum of fiscal discipline.

In France the government has proposed to raise the retirement age from 60 to – quelle horreur! – 62. This has sparked protests, mostly organized by unions, which have included blockades of gas stations and fuel depots, strikes at refineries, rock-throwing and looting. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has ordered police to quell the demonstrations and seems determined to push his proposed reform through the parliament. But the uproar demonstrates how difficult it can be to take back a special privilege or a promise of "free" money once it has been proffered.

In Great Britain, where the news is that the advice of the late British economist John Maynard Keynes – to get out of recession by government "stimulus" spending – is being ignored in favor of the most extensive government spending cuts in 60 years, some cows are still sacred. Free (i.e., taxpayer-paid) eye tests, prescription drugs and bus passes for the elderly will remain. Even as Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne announces cuts of $130 billion in government spending by 2015, he announced that spending for the National Health Service would increase, as would spending "in real terms" on education. Spending on police is slated to be reduced by 4 percent, but spending on "anti-terrorism" measures would increase.

Still the seriousness of the United Kingdom's effort to reduce government spending is apparent. Mr. Osborne says about 490,000 government jobs (about 8 percent of the 6 million such jobs) will be eliminated by 2015, many through attrition. The official retirement age will be raised from 65 to 66, and even tax money for Queen Elizabeth's household will be cut by 14 percent. A 12-month limit will be placed on jobless benefits.

When (or if?) such spending reductions actually go into effect, it is quite possible we will see protests in Great Britain as well.

What implications do such developments have for the United States? Even in European countries staring large-scale deficits in the face, reducing government overspending is difficult. A lot of people running for office in this country have promised to take a scalpel (or even a meat ax) to government spending, but, if elected, will they have the nerve to carry through? The most-recent Republican president, backed by solid congressional majorities, not only didn't really try, but expanded domestic discretionary spending faster than at any time since the days of LBJ's Great Society.