Churchill on Socialism

 On this day:

1789
Alexander Mackenzie finally completes his journey to the mouth of the great river he hoped would take him to the Pacific, but which turns out to flow into the Arctic Ocean. Later named after him, the Mackenzie is the second-longest river system in North America.
1789
French Revolution: citizens of Paris storm the Bastille.
1790
French Revolution: citizens of Paris celebrate the constitutional monarchy and national reconciliation in the Fête de la Fédération.
1798
The Sedition Act becomes law in the United States making it a federal crime to write, publish, or utter false or malicious statements about the United States government.
1916
Start of the Battle of Delville Wood as an action within the Battle of the Somme, which was to last until 3 September 1916.
1933
Gleichschaltung: in Germany, all political parties are outlawed except the Nazi Party.
1965
The Mariner 4 flyby of Mars takes the first close-up photos of another planet.
1969
Football War: After Honduras loses a soccer match against El Salvador, riots break out in Honduras against Salvadoran migrant workers.
2003
To discredit U.S. Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, who had written an article critical of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Washington Post columnist Robert Novak reveals that Wilson’s wife Valerie Plame is a CIA “operative”.

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Online American speech could be geo-blocked within the EU if it is judged to be “disinformation” or “hateful” and, worryingly, there is even precedent from the Court of Justice of the EU, such as Glawischnig-Piesczek v. Facebook Ireland, that platforms could be ordered to remove content across the whole world.

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Australia may pass the first tax on "unrealized capital gains" for people with over 3MM AUD in assets (about 2MM USD). A great blow to wealth and stability--but only the first shoe to drop.
But the Left works slowly, has more appendages than an octopus, and, thus, many shoes to drop on its awkward march to economic destruction.

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Bitcoin has become the world’s fifth-largest asset by market capitalization, behind only Gold, NVIDIA, Microsoft, and Apple.

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The Pirates have the best ERA and the worst Batting Average in the league. Does that mean the management was 50% successful?

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Mamdani has disappeared from the news. Wonder why.

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Churchill on Socialism


From Winston Churchill’s first election broadcast on June 4, 1945:

....there can be no doubt that Socialism is inseparably interwoven with Totalitarianism and the abject worship of the State. …liberty, in all its forms is challenged by the fundamental conceptions of Socialism. …there is to be one State to which all are to be obedient in every act of their lives. This State is to be the arch-employer, the arch-planner, the arch-administrator and ruler, and the arch-caucus boss.

A Socialist State once thoroughly completed in all its details and aspects… could not afford opposition. Socialism is, in its essence, an attack upon the right of the ordinary man or woman to breathe freely without having a harsh, clumsy, tyrannical hand clapped across their mouths and nostrils.

But I will go further. I declare to you, from the bottom of my heart, that no Socialist system can be established without a political police. Many of those who are advocating Socialism or voting Socialist today will be horrified at this idea. That is because they are shortsighted; that is because they do not see where their theories are leading them.

No Socialist Government conducting the entire life and industry of the country could afford to allow free, sharp, or violently worded expressions of public discontent. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance.

And this would nip opinion in the bud; it would stop criticism as it reared its head, and it would gather all the power to the supreme party and the party leaders, rising like stately pinnacles above their vast bureaucracies of Civil servants, no longer servants and no longer civil. And where would the ordinary, simple folk—the common people, as they like to call them in America—where would they be, once this mighty organism had got them in its grip?