Tag Archive for: socialism

Mandating “Equity” and Mitigating “Climate Change” – The Twin Paths to Socialism

Supporters of President Trump’s bid for reelection have accurately depicted his agenda as one of America’s last chances to stop, or at least slow down, the nation’s drift towards socialism. The Biden candidacy has been accurately depicted as the attempt by globalist corporations to reassert their complete control of American politics, wherein they will impose socialist redistribution schemes that devastate the middle class and working class, making them dependent on government and rendering their citizenship irrelevant. This, too, is mostly accurate, although slowly-boil-the-frog protocols shall be followed to obscure the transition.

When roughly half the electorate recently chose Biden to be America’s next president, however, they weren’t consciously endorsing corporate socialism. Biden voters, to the extent they believe in socialism, haven’t yet figured out that the socialist movement in the United States is largely controlled by corporations. What they believed, thanks to relentless propaganda and censorship of dissenting viewpoints, was that President Trump is a racist and a climate change denier. As such, President Trump was perceived as a menace, an object of hatred and fear, and anyone would be a better choice for president.

President Trump is not a racist, and President Trump cares about the environment as much as any reasonable person, but these two issues are much bigger than him. The issues of racial equity and environmental protection are marketed as the existential challenges of our time, and that the only effective answer to these challenges is socialism. To fight socialism, you can’t just convince people that socialism is an inherently flawed system. You have to destroy these two premises; that America is a racist nation, and that climate change poses an imminent threat to the survival of humanity. If you don’t, people will take their chances with socialism because they will see it as the only option.

Guaranteeing Equal Outcomes No Matter What

Anti-racism leads inevitably to socialism as soon as you move from offering equal opportunity to mandating equal outcomes. Despite pervasive propaganda to the contrary, equal opportunity has been institutionalized in America for several decades. But despite this fact, there remain significant disparities in aggregate group achievement by race. Conscientious liberal anti-racists look at these disparities and conclude they are the consequence of America’s historical legacy of racism that up until recently denied nonwhites access to jobs and housing and education. They add to that a belief that “unconscious racial bias” and ongoing “systemic racism” further hinders Black achievement, and explains the underachievement by Hispanics.

The problem with demanding racial “equity” to counter alleged ongoing racism is simple: What if the explanation for the underachievement of certain groups has little or nothing to do with racism? And what if, no matter what is done to counter alleged racism, significant gaps in group achievement persist? The only way to achieve equity, if that happens, is via socialist redistribution of wealth.

The good news, or what ought to be good news, is that America is not a racist nation. America is the least racist nation on earth. Many of the people spreading the racist narrative know this, but they are socialists (or corporate socialists) and they understand that complete racial equity can only be achieved via socialism. The end is socialism, and the means is convincing Americans they are racists and must atone. But it is a lie, for many reasons.

One of the most obvious repudiations of the racist narrative is the achievements of Asians, who outperform whites in almost every category of group achievement including educational attainment, household income, and net worth. And Asians are not the only ethnic group that outperforms whites. Indians and Nigerians also outperform whites. American Jews, who are white but who nonetheless endured past discrimination, also outperform other whites. Why is this?

Here is where a critical choice faces Americans. Do they listen to the divisive nonsense coming from politicians like Kamala Harris, and – at hideous cost – embrace socialist redistribution to level the achievements of every identifiable group in America? Or do they openly defy those who purport to speak for disadvantaged communities, and challenge them to either identify and fix those cultural differences that might also explain their academic and economic underachievement, or accept it.

Here also is where well established facts contradict the narrative of racism as the cause of group underachievement. In particular, there is a high correlation between children raised in two parent households and success later in life. Asians top the list, with 82 percent of households with children having both parents present. Whites are in second place at 73 percent. But only 33 percent of Black households with children have both parents present. The only external force, ironically, that might induce a married couple to divorce, would be if doing so led to enhanced welfare benefits. Racism, overt or unconscious, historical or present day, has nothing to do with members of the black community keeping their marriages intact.

Where there are broken homes, there is academic underachievement, there is juvenile delinquency, there is higher unemployment and lower income earnings potential, there are higher rates of arrests, convictions, and incarceration. It all starts at home.

But socialists don’t believe in traditional families. And they don’t believe in meritocracy, instead stigmatizing it as a “code word” for racism. But it isn’t racism that is responsible for Asians having the highest SAT scores in America, or Blacks having the lowest. More than anything else, it is because Asians have the highest rate of intact families, and Blacks have the lowest. SAT scores, currently under withering assault by socialists and possibly headed for oblivion, are one of the most reliable predictors of success in college and lifetime earnings.

These inconvenient truths elude the race baiting socialists, but they don’t elude Black conservatives who actually care about their communities. From elder statesmen like the venerable Thomas Sowell and the aptly named Larry Elder, to young and passionate patriots like Candace Owens, Kash Lee Kelly, and Malcolm Flex, there are Black leaders and influencers who reject socialism and champion the rights and potential of individuals.

If you work hard and with integrity, you can make it in America. There is no such thing as utopia. We do the best we can. That is the healthy way to look at this nation, and it is the healthy way to look at life. If you want your community to log higher aggregate achievements, stay married. While you’re at it, stand up to the teachers union monopoly and implement education vouchers and school choice.

Saving the Planet by Any Means Necessary

If anti-racist socialism will determine whom we can hire, promote, fire, patronize, live with, study with, work for and associate with, all done in a manner designed to take from the overachievers and give to the underachievers, saving the planet will determine where you live, what you eat, what you wear, what you drive (if anything), where you travel; it will micromanage every detail of your life on earth.

As part of the mandate to reduce the human “carbon footprint” to preindustrial levels within a few decades, the climate alarmists and their corporate backers are prepared to destroy the fossil fuel industry and invest in solar, wind and battery technologies that will become obsolescent right about the time they’re finally deployed at any significant scale. And how feasible is it for human civilization to run on “renewable” energy?

The following pie chart, below, relying on data from the BP Statistical Review of Global Energy, shows the percentage that renewables contribute to global energy usage. At 5.5 percent, this includes everything, wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, and biofuel. Imagine this replacing everything else, bearing in mind that the climate alarmists, inexplicably, do not accept nuclear or hydroelectric as viable energy sources to expand.

To further put the potential of renewables into perspective, consider the next chart, below, which reflects the socialist dream of redistributing energy consumption equally among nations. Note the area of this pie chart; nearly twice that of the previous one. This graphically represents how much more energy would be required if every person on earth, per capita, consumed energy at half the rate of current per capita use in North America; that’s the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. This illustrates a stark reality: If everyone on earth used half as much energy as North Americans use today, global energy production will have to double. Accomplishing that is impossible without fossil fuel.

Fossil fuel isn’t the only culprit, of course. Anything that results in increased greenhouse gas requires monitoring and regulation, from bovine flatulence to the size of the windows permitted in your home. Suburban “sprawl,” which is the only way to maintain an affordable equilibrium in housing, must be stopped because it leads to more “vehicle miles traveled.” Lawns, gardens, and long showers cannot be tolerated, because the collection, storage, distribution and treatment of water requires energy, and energy must be rationed in order to minimize use of fossil fuel.

The level of micromanagement headed our way if the climate alarmist lobby isn’t stopped is literally unbelievable, but these people are dead serious. “Smart growth” policies will pack people into increasingly dense urban areas, as rural areas are systematically depopulated. “Smart homes” will monitor and manage everything the inhabitants do, controlling and correcting their use of water and energy. To please gullible libertarian enablers, instead of explicitly rationing resource consumption, acceptable thresholds will be set, with punitive pricing tiers designed to “incentivize” people to restrict their behavior. Want to have a lawn? Better be a billionaire.

There’s so much wrong with these policies its difficult to know where to begin. Telling people they’re bigots if their skin is white, and victims if it is not, and training them all to believe this, is not a recipe for social cohesion. It’s a recipe for resentment and hatred. Moving beyond this divisive rhetoric to actually confiscating wealth and income and limiting opportunities to people if their skin is white, and transferring it to people whose skin is not white, will destroy the character of a population by telling them their work and their abilities are secondary to the color of their skin.

Similarly, putting a stop to fossil fuel development at precisely the moment when the entire global population is finally moving beyond poverty is not a recipe for peace and prosperity. It’s a recipe for misery, rebellion and war. Attempting to carpet the world with wind turbines and solar farms, backed up by millions of tons of batteries, when abundant natural gas and clean coal would deliver reliable energy at a fraction of the price, is epic folly. In a wealthy nation like America, it will cause economic stagnation. In emerging economies around the world, to impose such destructive policies would be a form of neo imperialism that only a delusional climate fanatic could fail to recognize.

There is an easier choice. It is the choice that President Trump offered, and its rejection by the elites is more a statement of their avarice than an indictment of his vision. And as previously noted, that vision, and the policies on offer pursuant to that vision, are much bigger than President Trump. Americans must reject the bigotry of reverse racism and without reservations they must insist on a colorblind meritocracy. Similarly, Americans must embrace the concept of resource abundance, supporting projects and policies that develop all forms of cost-effective conventional energy while at the same time encouraging innovations that will lead to leapfrog technologies that render today’s renewables obsolete.

The drawbacks of socialism ought to be obvious, and increasingly, voters are realizing this fact of history. To counter this dawning enlightenment, America’s socialists, backed by corporations that profit from central planning and mandated markets, have come up with the demons of racism and climate change. To stop socialism, Americans must stand up to the alarmists that claim bigotry and fossil fuel are existential threats. They’re not.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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The Delusional Premises of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez

“Do we see largely that it’s the global south and communities of color that may be bearing the brunt of the initial havoc from climate change? – Without a doubt. – And in terms of that wealth, the people that are producing climate change, the folks that are responsible for the largest amount of emissions, or communities or corporations, they tend to be predominantly white, correct? – Yes, and every study backs that up.”
– Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Congressional Hearings on Climate and Race, October 2019

Welcome to yet another example of the nexus between climate change alarm and a socialist redistribution agenda that relies on fueling racial resentment. That may be old news to those of us paying attention, but thanks to birdbrained stooges like “AOC,” the blatant race baiting rhetoric is being turned up a notch.

And why not? If you’re a socialist, or a globalist, there is only upside to tagging nations of European heritage with guilt for the problems facing their “communities of color,” or the problems in the rest of the non-European world. It would be far too painful to consider the alternative explanation, which is that socialism, in all of its antecedents and derivatives, is the primary cause of the societal afflictions that plague “people of color” both in America and abroad.

Deconstructing Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s convoluted logic isn’t intellectually hard, but the implications are hard indeed, at least for anyone who shares her delusional world view. Her arguments rest on three premises that build upon one another, and all of them are easily shattered by hard facts. Those premises are the following: White racism is pervasive and explains income inequality, climate change is an ongoing catastrophe that primarily harms “people of color,” and socialism is the solution.

To get the most obviously flawed premise out of the way first, examine the plight of “communities of color” both locally and globally. The immediate fact that destroys this premise is that there are examples of “communities of color” that are prosperous and thriving. Most of East Asia falls into that category. As for the “global south,” Singapore comes to mind. Sitting just one degree north of the equator, it is a sun drenched, monsoon swept city, situated in the absolute heart of the tropics.

Singapore’s success comes despite it being a multicultural nation overwhelmingly populated by “people of color, coping with a supposedly hideous legacy of colonial oppression; its territory is a steaming jungle with no natural resources. Yet it is one of the wealthiest nations on Earth.

You can look to communities within America and make the same myth busting observations. According to a 2018 study conducted by Pew Research, the richest ethnic group in the United States are Indian Americans, with a median household income just over $100,000 per year. And according to U.S. Census Bureau data, “the median income for households led by someone of Nigerian ancestry, for example, was $68,658 in 2018, compared with $61,937 for U.S. households overall.”

Why? Why do some “communities of color” thrive, outpacing whites in education and income, while others do not? Could it be that those communities that are relatively unsuccessful are not victims of racism? After all, if that were true, why in America are people of Asian, East Indian, and Nigerian descent, along with many other ” communities of color,” evidently exempt from the impact of racism?

Could it be that socialism, or its antecedents – welfare, unionized public education, affirmative action, leftist indoctrination, a victim mentality, and the pure, venal corruption that plagues big Democrat ran cities in America – have combined to all but destroy these “communities of color?” Destroyed their families. Destroyed their work ethic. Destroyed their faith in themselves, their faith in their community, their faith in America itself? There is no “racism” in any of that. Or to put it more precisely: in all these policies promoted by or associated with Democrats, there is none of the white, conservative, Republican sort of racism that seems to concern AOC.

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez may look at her reflection in the mirror, and believe herself to be a crusader for social justice and a “green new deal,” but in fact she is becoming part of a rich, grasping, inter-generational gang of parasites who build their careers and their bureaucratic empires by spouting racist, quasi-Marxist trash to keep down the people they claim to care about. AOC’s predecessors have not only created the poverty they claim they’re fighting, they need that poverty the way a virus needs a host.

The other flawed premise, fundamental to the socialist goal of global redistribution of wealth, is “climate change,” once known as global warming. The “climate crisis” is the boogeyman that AOC hopes to ride into the White House with president-elect Biden. Heading up his “climate task force,” she has made demagogic fearmongering in the name of the planet a big part of her act. But it’s wearing thin, because unlike the far more convenient threat of imminent death from a global pandemic (however overhyped that may or may not be), anyone with an IQ north of room temperature realizes by now that the climate apocalypse deadlines have come and gone, and come and gone, and come and gone.

As an aside, how sad it has become that the corporate Left, in its odd marriage with hardcore socialists like AOC, have managed to intimidate conservatives into silence on the issue of climate change. Conservatives are so scared of being targeted as “deniers” that they’ll challenge the economics, but not the science. They stammer diffidently about the vast economic costs, the sheer impracticality of shutting down the entire fossil fuel and nuclear energy industries, fearing for their careers if they become too outspoken. They lack the enraged indignation that is appropriate and necessary when challenging these devastating lies. Don’t they understand that if their warnings go unheeded, politicians really will destroy the global economy – permanently – to save the planet. Don’t doubt that they’ll do it. They’re engaged in a dry run for that right now.

Why don’t conservatives also challenge the scientific theory that anthropogenic CO2 is causing catastrophic climate change? Because the “science is settled” and “science” is sacred? “Science” has become so sacred, in fact, it’s become like an Aztec God that must be appeased. Cut a beating human heart out on the altar of Huitzilopochtli. Or throw a human sacrifice into the cauldron of Pele. Or bash in someone’s skull and bury them in a Polynesian pit. The God of Science must never be questioned, and AOC is a high priestess.

This preposterous paradox remains more or less unexamined, that “science” has become weaponized by a gang of green theocrats. But science is no longer science when it is “settled” and is instead used to stifle scientific inquiry and debate and healthy skepticism.

Just as “racism” does not explain disparate outcomes for people of varying ethnicities, “climate change” is not conclusively demonstrated to be associated with burning of fossil fuel, and what climate change we do observe is not demonstrated to be catastrophic. In fact, the net effect of increased concentrations of CO2 may be mostly positive both for humans and ecosystems.

And climate change policies, misguided and misanthropic, have lowered the credibility of environmentalists at the same time as they have flattened the trajectory of solutions to genuine environmental challenges. Clean up the filthy air in New Delhi, for example. The unhealthy pollution has nothing to do with CO2, and everything to do high-sulfur fuel and inadequate exhaust controls. Quit incinerating rainforests to monocrop ethanol from sugar cane and diesel fuel from palm oil. Quit asphyxiating women across the global south who have to cook with wood because natural gas is not “carbon neutral.” Quit pouring finite resources into crony green corporate boondoggles.

Finally, to shatter the core premise of the Left: socialism is obviously not the cure for racism, nor is it the cure for economic inequality. AOC is invited to identify one nation or society, today or throughout history, where socialism delivered freedom, prosperity and social justice. She’ll find instead a hideous legacy of tyranny, poverty, and murder. Even those wonderful Scandinavian economies, held up as examples, do not qualify. They are mixed capitalist economies with (until recently) culturally homogeneous populations. They don’t count. They’re not socialist.

Capitalism, despite its flaws, and requiring judicious regulating, is the only system that can provide equal opportunity. But it cannot provide equal outcomes, nor should it. Because without private property, which is guaranteed in a capitalist system, nobody tries, nobody cares, competence doesn’t matter, effort and ability don’t matter, all that matters is who you know and who you bribe. Socialism, at its core, nurtures resentment, cynicism, corruption, dissipation, decay, despair, and despotism. It is a seductive illusion, promising everything in exchange for nothing. Its adherents are a perilous mixture of the evil and the naive.

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez is not evil. She is an ignorant, mostly unwitting demagogue, and she is a puppet. The premises that underlie the world view she promotes – racism, socialism, and climate “science” – are dangerous deceptions. They will deliver the most harm to the people they rhetorically aim to help the most. All three of these premises must be challenged without apology, without rest, without quarter.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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The Great Cull, or the Long Boom?

When people look back on world history one hundred years from now, what will they see? It is reasonable to suggest they will see a global civilization, back in 2020, that was facing unprecedented challenges and transformations.

The primary challenge, arguably, is a global population that has quintupled between 1900 and 2020. The most transformative factor, an explosion of technology that has taken us from steel and steam in 1900 to quantum mechanics and genetic engineering in 2020.

An optimist would look the last few decades and conclude that, despite the challenges, humanity is on a relentless march towards a better quality of life for everyone. An article published by the BBC earlier this year lists several reasons “why the world is improving,” including rising life expectancy, falling infant mortality, falling rates of fertility, ongoing GDP growth, less income inequality, the spread of democracy, and fewer armed conflicts.

This argument for what Wired Magazine once called the “Long Boom” is embodied in the philosophy of “New Optimism,” with its principal proponent the Danish economist Bjorn Lomborg. According to Lomborg, “air and water are getting cleaner, endangered species and forests are holding their own, and the risks associated with global warming are exaggerated.” He contends that “more people than ever before, living in all parts of the globe, are becoming healthier, richer, and better educated; that the human race is living longer and more peaceably; that we’re considerably freer to pursue our happiness.” Lomborg predicts that in one hundred years, today’s most underdeveloped nations will enjoy per capita wealth two to four times what developed nations enjoy today.

These are encouraging thoughts, but clearly there is another point of view. A deeply negative, pessimistic, alarmist point of view, oriented around two obsessions – environmentalism and racism. With respect to the planetary environment, headlines scream apocalyptic warnings every day. From the Washington Post last January, “We only have 12 years to save the planet.” From the Guardian, “We have twelve years to limit climate change catastrophe.” From Smithsonian, “The World Was Just Issued 12-Year Ultimatum On Climate Change.” And on, and on, and on.

Rooted in climate change alarmism is a deeper malaise that addresses economics and culture. In general, the more alarmed someone is about climate change, especially if their political leanings are left-of-center, the more likely they are to also believe that European capitalism and European racism is to blame, not only for the allegedly imminent climate catastrophe, but also for economic inequality. Their answer is to adopt socialism and multiculturalism. In parallel, they are likely to believe that the planet has passed well beyond its “carrying capacity,” with resource scarcity and ecosystem collapse inevitable unless dramatic changes are made.

Who is right? The optimists or the pessimists? Are we on the verge of the great cull, or the long boom?

Back in 2004, Bjorn Lomborg convened a panel of economists with the goal of identifying the most urgent challenges facing humanity, and coming up with practical solutions. While his critics would say he relies too heavily on cost/benefit analysis, his findings remain compelling. Lomborg’s so-called “Copenhagen Consensus” was updated most recently in 2012. The projects identified as most promising, based on a hypothetical $75 billion budget, were the following:

Towards the Welfare of Humanity – The Copenhagen Consensus

  1. Bundled micronutrient interventions to fight hunger and improve education
  2. Expanding the Subsidy for Malaria Combination Treatment
  3. Expanded Childhood Immunization Coverage
  4. Deworming of Schoolchildren, to improve educational and health outcomes
  5. Expanding Tuberculosis Treatment
  6. R&D to Increase Crop Yields, to decrease hunger and fight biodiversity destruction.
  7. Investing in Effective Early Warning Systems to protect populations against natural disaster
  8. Strengthening Surgical Capacity
  9. Hepatitis B Immunization
  10. Using Low‐Cost Drugs in the case of Acute Heart Attacks in poorer nations.
  11. Salt Reduction Campaign to reduce chronic disease
  12. Geo‐Engineering R&D into the feasibility of solar radiation management
  13. Conditional Cash Transfers for School Attendance
  14. Accelerated HIV Vaccine R&D
  15. Extended Field Trial of Information Campaigns on the Benefits From Schooling
  16. Borehole and Public Hand Pump Intervention

The prevailing theme in these suggested priorities is their practicality, and their focus on the individual’s quality of life. They rest on the assumption if we can eliminate disease and malnutrition, primarily through targeted investments in technology and infrastructure, most of the other challenges facing humanity will become much easier to solve. Contrast this program with the proposed “Green New Deal,” being offered up by America’s Democratic Socialists:

Towards the Welfare of Humanity – The Green New Deal

  1. Ensuring that any infrastructure bill considered by Congress addresses climate change.
  2. Meeting 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources.
  3. Upgrading all existing buildings in the United States and building new buildings to achieve maximal energy efficiency, water efficiency, safety, affordability, comfort, and durability, including through electrification.
  4. Zero-emission vehicle infrastructure and manufacturing.
  5. A Green New Deal must be developed through transparent and inclusive consultation, collaboration, and partnership with frontline and vulnerable communities, labor unions, worker cooperatives, civil society groups, academia, and businesses.
  6. Providing resources, training, and high-quality education, including higher education, to all people of the United States, with a focus on frontline and vulnerable communities.
  7. Ensuring the use of democratic and participatory processes that are inclusive of and led by frontline and vulnerable communities and workers.
  8. Ensuring that the Green New Deal mobilization creates high-quality union jobs that pay prevailing wages.
  9. Guaranteeing a job with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to all people of the United States.
  10. Obtaining the free, prior, and informed consent of indigenous people for all decisions that affect indigenous people and their traditional territories, honoring all treaties and agreements with indigenous people, and protecting and enforcing the sovereignty and land rights of indigenous people.
  11. Providing all people of the United States with (i) high-quality health care; (ii) affordable, safe, and adequate housing; (iii) economic security; and (iv) access to clean water, clean air, healthy and affordable food, and nature.

The contrast between these two visions is reflected in several contexts. One is practical, the other is ideological. One focuses on specific projects, the other devotes inordinate space to “process.” One is optimistic and inclusive (without making a point of it), the other emphasizes restitution and redistribution. One is global in scope yet sets achievable priorities, the other is tribal in tone and presumes to solve everything at once. One is specific and concrete, the other is grandiose. One is derived from cost/benefit analysis, the other is heedless of economics. One faces reality, the other engages in fantasy.

One may question whether the world is on the invariably improving trajectory that Lomborg promotes. But the apocalyptic warnings of the climate alarmists and their Democratic Socialist backers are likely to be self-fulfilling. The goals of the Green New Deal – government funded universal healthcare, guaranteed employment, guaranteed housing, 100 percent “renewable” energy, and “equity” (whatever that means) for “frontline and vulnerable communities” (whatever that means) – are self-contradictory. Empowering the government to guarantee all of these benefits requires full-blown socialism, and socialism has always failed, and always will fail, because it removes the incentives for ambitious people to do honest work.

Whether humanity over the next century will endure a great cull, or enjoy a long boom, depends on which vision of the future prevails in the next few decades. Will it be the New Optimism of Bjorn Lomborg, or the Democratic Socialism of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? And it’s worth wondering: Do people smarter than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez welcome the rise of socialism precisely because socialism will cause societies to catastrophically fail? Do some of the elites wish for the great cull?

A recent superhero film, “Avengers: Infinity War,” pits the entire Marvel Comics menagerie, including Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Hulk, Black Widow, Black Panther, Star Lord (of Guardians of the Galaxy fame) and others too numerous to mention, against “Thanos,” an “intergalactic despot” who wants to “rebalance the universe” by destroying 50 percent of all biological life.

What was surprising about the film was the surprise conclusion. Thanos wins. Moreover, his character is not depicted as malevolent, but rather as resolved to “make the hard choices.” During the film, when Thanos attempts to justify his objective, he discusses the unsustainable burden of biological life on available resources in the universe. While everything will no doubt be unwound in the inevitable sequel, the moral message of the movie was ambiguous, and this is unlikely to have been by accident.

Embedding and popularizing apocalyptic themes in culture is nothing new, but usually the good guys win, and the world survives. But why wouldn’t there be cadres among the elites who desire a rapid cull of human population? Why be an optimist, or, more to the point, why be so unselfish as to care about the common hordes? Why work, as Lomborg and others do, promoting practical steps that will lead eventually to a prosperous global civilization, stabilized at around 9 billion souls? Why try to help so many people? Why muster the courage to hope that much?

Here is where Democratic Socialism is most dangerous. Behind the popular rhetoric and deluded masses lurk fanatical eco fascists and implacable elites who dismiss concern for human life as mere sentimentality. Conspiracy theorists may go overboard when they suggest that such overt evil may have inspired Agenda 21, or the Georgia Stones, but they’re not wrong to be concerned. To anyone who thinks like Thanos, the great cull is nothing more than a tough moral choice. It offers the greatest shortcut of all to a sustainable future, and socialism takes us down that cataclysmic path.

Here as well is where American leadership offers the best hope for humanity to escape the great cull, and fitfully continue to pick its way to a better life and a healthier planet. But for America to have the strength to midwife the emergence by the 22nd century of a peaceful, prosperous world, better off than ever, Americans have to reassert their cultural and economic identity today.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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