George Handlery about the week that was. Shove trouble into the future beyond the legislative term.  Aid: invest, not consume. Criminality and its excuses. Demanding equal treatment for co-religionists is not PC.. How come Islamist killings are executions and hitting back is an assassination? The Dictator‘s Tantrum: more oil than decency.

1. Let me share with you an intelligent commentary. It reacts to the policies designed to overcome the present‘s economic vicissitudes. It also deals with solutions that shove today‘s troubles into that future that begins beyond the term of current legislatures. (For the sake of readability, the original is shortened.) „The glorified progressive economic policies are to expropriate ever-increasing parts of higher incomes and to employ the funds so raised for financing public waste and to subsidize the most powerful pressure groups. Some fail to realize that, ultimately, the funds for public spending must be taken from the same people who are supposed to profit from them.“ Have you digested this commentary? Fine. Now swallow again. Your appreciation of the point is about to grow. The up-to-dateness of the quote is an invention. The text is lifted from Ludwig von Mises. You find the original in his chapter 4 -The Keynesian Miracle. Some old  insights are of lasting validity. This can be so because some old mistakes are being repeated. It is done by those who make us ignore the past in order to be enabled to determine our present.
 
2. Two numbers have made your correspondent think. Defying in a significant way the international trend, Africa‘s poverty rate went from 11% at the end of colonialism to 60% today. At the same time the equivalent of six Marshall plan‘s were pumped into the continent. An explanation is possible. Aid can unleash opposite reactions.  Those who went from well-being to poverty will use aid to reanimate production. This was the case with Europe‘s West after WW2. If aid is extended to a culture that has no experience with an advanced economy and its plenty, there will be a temptation to consume the succor and not to invest it. Unstable institutions will bolster the tendency. Investment means foregoing the pleasure of consumption for the advantage of a later return. Therefore, a taboo-free discussion of aid and its limited use, respectively of the kind of help that considers the condition of the receiver, is needed. Doing this would do more good than documentaries asking for more by showing underweight children can ever achieve.
 
3. Every innovation that redirected the world‘s progress began with an idea that did not fit the mainstream of the then dominant conventions. Therefore, the concept‘s source was likely to have been proclaimed nutty and impractical.
 
4. Criminality by the under-aged is growing. This suggests that socialization without the traditional family, relying on the electronic media, and guided by educationalist theories, is failing society. What distinguishes this criminality is that the attacks have a shrinking economic motive. This indicates that the roots are not in poverty but that they lead back into missing societal norms. Mercilessly brutalized are those that cannot defend themselves -and this even includes wheel-chair users. Much if these criminal acts are committed by people with a „migration background“. PC demands that excuses be found. A legitimization comes from the kind of politics that teaches us not to be „judgmental“. It shows creative excellence in blaming everybody except the obvious culprit. A favored version is that the delinquents are the combatants of either the right or left wing. The implication is that the extremes can offer legitimizing motives. They are also able to extend protection by organizing well-articulated support. So do the professional absolution dispensers.
 
5. Muslims expect to be protected from hostile majorities outside of their turf. The social-political leadership of such societies uses its power to maintain this protection. The outrage caused by tolerating the violation of the local value system would be strong. At the same time, neither Moslem societies nor their leaders protect the elementary human rights of the adherents of other religions in their midst.  Odd is that in cases, the recent lynching in Pakistan of Christians for allegedly desecrating the Koran comes to mind, does not provoke much indignation. Even the media coverage is abashed. Nevertheless, outrage would be justified given the protection that Mohammedans enjoy and expect were and while they are a minority.  Therefore, the question arises why is the demand of equal treatment regarded as lacking cultural sensibility and of extremism.
 
6. More about equal treatment. Lula da Silva, Brazil‘s leftist President blames „blonde, blue-eyed“ bankers for the world economy‘s current crisis. Imagine outcry if a public figure in the „North“ would blame some ailment on „slit-eyed dwarfs“ or „lazy curly-haired darkies“.. Here again, the issue arises whether demanding equality is a sign of radical intolerance.
 
7. The news was spread that the CIA has contemplated the killing of bin Laden. The item‘s presentation made it obvious that the reader was to be shocked by such moral turpitude -to be expected of the Americans. Had the plan that was considered been carried out with success, it would have been called an „assassination“. Here, as in the above cases, the observer is impressed by the unfair use of unequal yardsticks. When Islamists murder a hostage and demonstratively decapitate him, the action is quickly filtered through the PC-sieve and so it becomes an „execution“. This implies that the killing had something legal about it. Those who use such labels selectively like to describe executions after the fair trial of a common criminal according to laws on the book as „murder“. Apparently a kangaroo „court“, before which the crime is the identity of the accused, and the judgment that a gang that is the accuser, judge and executioner pronounces, rates higher than the findings of normal courts. Those upset by the planned assassination also ignore that bin Laden fights his „war“ by „irregular“ means and with an organization that disregards „Geneva“. Like it or not, bin Laden fights by „serial assassinations“. Killing him by any practical means would amount to making him swallow his own medicine.
 
8. Since the rise of modern dictatorship -essentially since the Enlightenment- the main enemy of substantive democracy has been formal democracy. Elections devoid of choice, unapplied liberal constitutions, spontaneous mass demonstrations on command, Beloved Leaders murdering those who lack of enthusiasm, are part of this Potemkin village. The consequence is that, while tyranny is legitimized, democracy is blemished. Dictatorship begets alternative dictatorships and long endured slavery proves to be an inhospitable training ground for people fit to live in liberty.
 
9. The Dictator‘s Tantrum. Your correspondent must admit that he is surprised by the unending subject he picked by accident. Well, having lost count of the „how manyeth“ chapter of the saga this is, there is still a need to report a new, but by no means final, version of the ongoing comedy. Angered by the short detention of his son for maltreating servants in Geneva, Gadhafy has asked for an apology. He also demands money for the insolence of treating Mr. Son like any native by the police of the constituent of a federal state. Recently the „celebrated“ author suggested that offending Switzerland, whose system he does not understand, should be dissolved for its impertinence. While waiting, the dictator has still custody of two Swiss. It has seemed that in an exchange for her regrets for the upset, the August 1st 718th birthday of the country might be a good excuse to close the matter and release the hostages. The anniversary has passed. Contemptuously, after having removed a few billions from its prudently held „in case of forced early retirement“ accounts here, Gadhafy continues to hang on its human trump cards. All those that make deals with the tent-based tyrant should remember the case when they deal with the eccentric authoritarian who has more oil than good sense and decency.