Saddam Sillies

Sabri, Freitag, 18. April 2003, 00:43 (vor 7889 Tagen) @ Sabri

When asked to abandon their welfare state, Old
Europeans have declined, stating that it is
immoral to expose poor workers, as the Americans
do, to the law of the jungle. Sure the cowboy
capitalists have higher economic growth, but their
society is so unjust that it will inevitably
become unstable. The oppressed will rise up
against the capitalist Americans much as the
French peasants rose up against the oppressive
royalty.

Our conflict with al Qaeda and Iraq, then, is our
own fault. If we had been more concerned with
social justice, and less concerned with the spread
of global capitalism, then the poor aggrieved
terrorists would not have attacked us.

Desperate measures are for desperate people. The
view that socialism helps the poor has been
defeated by the data. A recent Columbia University
study by economist Xavier Xala-I-Martin, for
example, identified the spread of capitalism as
the key force reducing poverty around the world.
Such well-documented views have spread to the
voters as well, even in Old Europe. Schroeder´s
popularity, judging from the polls, is approaching
the Jeffrey Dahmer level. But the Gramsciites have
one last play. If capitalism eventually will lead
to unrest, then perhaps turmoil in the Middle East
can prove them correct. Having lost the economic
battle of ideas, European socialists have turned
into rabble-rousers, even selling illegal arms to
Iraq, as was recently reported by William Safire
of the New York Times.

Terrorism and chaos is the only thing between
their failed philosophy and the dustbin of
history. Chirac and Schroeder are doing their best
to defend their faith.

— Kevin A. Hassett is resident scholar at the
American Enterprise Institute. This article was
published on National Review Online on April 2,
2003.