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Lots of People Believe That...
You and I are flummoxed by the rise of the DSA and its promises of rent freeze, free groceries and all the rest of the socialist pablum.
You wonder: are they serious?
But then I read this piece by Michael Barone about a biography of Stalin by Stephen Kotkin. It’s a quote from Zinoviev, one of the top leaders in the Bolshevik Revolution.
“We go forward to the complete elimination of money,” Grigory Zinoviev explained to German socialists in 1920. “We pay wages in commodities. We introduce trolleys without fares. We have free public schools, free, if temporarily poor, meals, rent-free apartments, free lighting. “We are realizing all this,” he went on, “very slowly, under the most difficult conditions. We have to fight ceaselessly, but we have a way out, a plan.”
Yeah and after the whole thing failed utterly, Lenin had to reintroduce capitalism.
Compare with NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s campaign promises:
Free and fast city buses
Rent freeze
Free universal child care
Public groceries
Taxing the wealthy
I read a related piece recently on “The Long Slow Death of Social Democracy” by Ruy Teixeira. What does Ruy mean by social democracy?
a politically managed capitalism… to raise workers’ wages, with unions helping them capture a larger share of the gains, and a wide array of social programs that could guard against sickness, old age, and unemployment—the so-called welfare state.
Know why social democracy is dying, Ruy? Because it doesn’t work.
Now exactly when Zinoviev was promising socialism in 1920 Ludwig von Mises was writing his “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth.” He argued that socialism could not work because it could not compute prices. And, of course, Social Scientist Vladimir Lenin proved him right in 1921, abandoning the fantasy proposed by Zinoviev above with his New Economic Policy with
A Mixed Economy
Agricultural Reform
Private Enterprise
Reintroduction of Money
Whatabout the decline of Social Democracy mourned by Ruy Teixeira above? We have F.A. Hayek to advise us on that. In The Use of Knowledge in Society in 1945 he argued that
society’s vital information is too dispersed among millions of individuals for any central authority to ever collect and use it efficiently[.]
Curious, isn’t it. Mises put out his scholarly article on prices in 1920 just as social scientist Vladimir Lenin was proving that socialism did not work. And Hayek put out his scholarly article in 1945 just as the Attlee government began to conduct a social science experiment that showed that administrative social democratic Planning could not work.
The fact that the fantasies of the mid 20th century are erupting again among our educated young people is not, I think, a proof that kids are idiots. It is rather that it is very human to believe in a world of perfection, where everything works and I don’t have to suffer.
We have politicians to thank for identifying all the fantasies that flesh is heir to, because that is how they get elected. And we have Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt to explain what is happening. On the one hand, it is The Enemy — Jews, Robber Barons, Billionaires, Oligarchs — that are to blame. On the other hand we could salve all our sorrows with free stuff, from housing to buses to food to child care.
But there is another contributor: feminism. It promoted the idea that women were born to be independent and free, and would be, but for the patriarchy. In Simone de Beauvoir’s classic The Second Sex there is a whole chapter on “The Independent Woman.”
So what’s all the present fuss about “safety” and “unwelcome attention” and all the rest? Do you see the point? It is that the role of a human woman is not to have a career or be creative or liberated. It is to have children and keep them alive with the help of the father of the children.
I say that “women have a culture of complaint.” What do they complain about? That their needs are not being met. I say that “women expect to be protected.” From male aggression and all kinds of danger.
And then we have a whole sector of American womankind that wants to excuse Lindsay Clancy murdering her three children. What Is Their Problem?
Listen: the world is always going to the dogs and the world is full of people that just want the bad news to go away.
And so the world depends on people like George Eliot’s Dorothea Brooke:
But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
Yes. George Eliot had sweetie pies like Dorothea. But she also gave us tigresses like Mrs. Poyser of Adam Bede and the incomparable Mary Garth in Middlemarch — even if Dorothea Brooke was the official heroine.
| Fri, 04 Sep 2026 22:08:16 GMT |
Musings About AI
Bari Weiss’s The Free Press has three articles today on AI. One is that AI will blow the place up.
In short, a few weeks ago, a powerful new AI system being internally tested by OpenAI went rogue.
Yeah. It’s a problem. Youse guys figuring out how to keep AI from destroying us all? If not, why not? But regulation!
First, without effective oversight by the executive branch or Congress, AI labs are taking swaggering risks.
Oh yeah. That’s gonna work. Let’s put Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) in charge to make sure that billionaires don’t take over the world.
But then there are two pieces about AI in school.
One writer says “Why I Let My Students use AI.” He makes AI part of the process.
The other says “Why I Banned AI in my Classroom.” Because students are lazy and use AI to cheat.
Then there’s a piece that says AI has already taken over the university.
Students used AI to summarize required readings, finish their homework problems, and review their notes for exams. By the time I graduated in May, many students around me could no longer synthesize a difficult text, draft a paper, or form opinions without first consulting the machine. My experience was not unique. A 2026 survey of British undergraduates found that 94% of students used generative AI to help with assessed work, a trend that holds true across American institutions.
So I say burn the whole thing down and start over.
See, I have developed my own ideas about education.
First of all, how do kids learn as infants? They learn to crawl and walk and talk with a bit of help from Mom and Dad.
They learn to ride a bike on a “balance bike” which doesn’t have any pedals, but allows the kid to balance himself with his feet on the ground until he’s learned to balance.
Kids learn about a bunch of things by asking Mom, and then following up with: “Why?”
Learning to read? Honestly I don’t know how I learned to read. I think I learned before I went to school. But I did learn to write in pre-school.
Back in the day, of course, only the monks and scribes learned to read and write. Then came the printing press and the Gutenberg Bible and suddenly the middle class wanted to learn to read.
Then came the 19th century and universal schooling. With teachers teaching a class full of kids.
Whatabout today? I googled “how to use ai to learn to read” and it replied with:
Microsoft Reading Coach
Google Read Along
Immersive Reader
Whatabout Math? I googled “how to use ai to learn basic math.” Well, that’s more complicated.
Seriously. Before the printing press we didn’t really have schools. After the printing press books were still expensive so it made sense to have teachers teaching from the book and writing in chalk on blackboards.
But now? With computers and internet and AI? Should we still send kids to school to be taught by teachers for pre-K through grad school?
I say we can do better than schools. Have kids teach themselves with AI
And end child labor laws. Put the kids to work.
But doing what?
It’s like Robotaxis and Cybercab. What will happen to the taxi drivers?
| Thu, 03 Sep 2026 22:04:00 GMT |
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Christopher Chantrill
He runs usgovernmentspending.com, the go-to resource for government finance data, and is a frequent contributor to the American Thinker. He lives in Seattle, Washington. Click for more.
“I love this guy.” — Steve Ballmer
A Commoner Manifesto
Commoners have nothing to lose but their shame
Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence — Napoleon Bonaparte
The political is the distinction between friend and enemy — Carl Schmitt
The simplest way to understand human society is as Three Layers such as Nobles, Yeomen, and Serfs.
My take on Three Layers is my Three Peoples Theory of Creatives, Responsibles, and Subordinates.
I believe that we moderns live in Three Worlds: the War World of politics, the Market World of the economy, and the Life World of family and neighborhood.
And the trouble with politics is that it reduces human society to a war against the enemy, as determined by Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt.
The world that we all live in today is the one created by the German Turn in philosophy, psychology, science, and meaning.
But our modern elite, the educated elite, has taken, I believe, a Wrong Turn and has imposed a cultural Great Reaction on the world, a lurch back to the primitive. This manifests in the elite’s conceited Activism Culture and its patronage of Subordinate people as its Little Darlings.
The principal reason for the elite’s Wrong Turn has been that it does not understand and does not want to understand how the Three Peoples’ Religions are necessarily different.
The root of the educated elite’s Wrong Turn is its conceit that it knows what the world needs. I think there is a better way; I call it “A Good Life Better than the Left”.
ABC of Politics – Activism Culture – “Anatomy of Revolution” – Allyism – Critical Theory – Downstream-ism – Dutch Finance – German Turn – Good Life – Great Reaction – Little Darlings – Perfect Plan – Women in the Public Square – Ruling Class – Three Layers – Three Peoples – Three Peoples Religion – Tribalism – Two Cultures – Wrong Turn
Today’s topic: The Left Has Got Just About Everything Wrong
