La France

Hurrah for France!

Finally people of the EU are standing up to the lie of globalization. When I hear a meretricious media speak of "leveling the playing field", I cringe violently.

"Leveling the field" means that if I make $40/hour and someone in China makes $2/hour, our Ministry of Welfare has the objective to see both of us to end up around $42/2 = $21/hour at best. This is a windfall for China and a tragedy for me. (Note: I've gotten into the habit of speaking of the present government as if we were in the novel 1984. Of course, the ministries were self-contradictory to our way of thinking, the Ministry of Truth being devoted to Misinformation. Now you've got the idea.)

There is nothing inherent in the capitalist system which leads to globalization. It is a choice to increase the Rate of Return on investment. Please notice that the choice not to implement certain safety measures in West Virginia mines could also be seen as a choice to increase the Rate of Return.

Now that unpleasant events have forced mine owners to put these safety measures into effect, they will be forced to wait a few more years for their desired full return on investment. My daughter listens to Bill O'Reilly. I cannot. When I do, I feel like Alex in Clockwork Orange forced into behavior corrective discipline. He was speaking to an author, Jeff Faux, a few nights ago. Mr. O'Reilly had an arsenal of penny-candy notions strung out on his fingers, which he uses as an abacus to tally his debate points. The problem here was the author seemed to have been picked to be agreeable, and he could not, because he was actually an independent thinker. So Mr. O'Reilly would say that the French could not fire anyone from a job and Mr. Faux would say that this was not the case. And so on. And so on. An appropriately absurd update of Alphonse and Gaston.

The display was almost as memorable as that of certain people on the right arguing against global warming because lefties were using it to criticize the President on Hurricane Katrina. Note to righties: do NOT pick a fight with the global climate! It WILL win! Ask Hurricane Epsilon. Mr.O'Reilly seems to support globalization. One does not support a historical force which cannot be denied. Therefore, it is a choice of certain powerful people. It must be sold to the people of the US, they must be forced to "take their medicine" as Stephen King has so aptly and macabrely put it in his stories. What is the result of this medicine? Nothing more but continued subservience to those who caused your pain. And now they must devise new ways to increase their rate of return upon your backs. Not bad work if you can get it.

The point of all this being, I have actually read Leo XIII's encyclical Rerum Novarum for the first time in my life. "...charity... whose Godlike features are outlined by the Apostle St. Paul in these words: 'Charity is patient, is kind, . . . seeketh not her own, . . . suffereth all things, . . . endureth all things.' " If you do not know who Leo XIII is, if you never heard of Rerum Novarum...(I'll make it easier: if, in Spring 2003, you had never heard that William Tecumseh Sherman said "War is Hell!"); then you have just won the Babylonian lottery, first prize being the chance to repeat the bad stuff of History ad infinitum.
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