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Tuesday, December 13, 2016

Competing Visions



Rush Limbaugh gave a very good presentation today on why what passes for conservatism in America is nothing of the sort.  Consider what he praises:  ruthlessness, brutal competition, big corporations, the Rockefellers (some of the biggest supporters of Globalism out there), restlessness, unquestioning support of new technology, etc.  Note especially the apt pairing at the end of one of his sentences:

And so Tillerson is described here as working at Exxon, which is the direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, which is organized on the principles of ruthless capitalism and Protestant faith [emphasis added--W.G.].

Here is some more from Mr Limbaugh:

 . . .

Now, ExxonMobil is part of the Rockefeller oil monopoly -- Standard Oil -- and it is said that of all the oil companies that resulted from the breakup of Standard Oil, that Exxon is culturally the closest to John D. Rockefeller and the way he ran Standard Oil, which means that ExxonMobil is organized on principles of capitalism. Mr. Coll describes it as ruthless capitalism.  I think all of capitalism is ruthless.  This is just what people don't know.  Competition, real competition for sales of anything, competition for ideas, competition is ruthless, period. 

It's not ruthless to people that doesn't like it.  It's not ruthless to people don't compete.  But it can be brutal.  And it's not a bad thing.  Competition is where innovation comes from.  Competition is where leadership comes from.  Don't misunderstand.  I'm not a person that sees perfection in things.  Everything has its problems and faults.  No individual is perfect.  No group of people is perfect.  But I am not one who believes that capitalism is flawed by virtue of its existence.  The left is. 

The cutthroat capitalism, just to bring it down to an understandable level, the cutthroat capitalism in high-tech would boggle your mind.  The cutthroat competition in capitalism going on between Apple and Samsung or Apple and Google or Google and Microsoft, it's brutal, folks.  You oftentimes don't see it, but it is.  And it's certainly brutal in the oil industry, in the energy field.  And so Tillerson is described here as working at Exxon, which is the direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, which is organized on the principles of ruthless capitalism and Protestant faith. 

 . . .

So Exxon hires a bunch of former government workers to help it do business.  It hires former CIA agents.  It hires former State Department employees.  Exxon hires people that used to work in the Pentagon.  This is serious business.  The oil business is serious business.  The world could not survive without oil.  Our world as we know it could not survive.  The United States standard of living would plummet if the left succeeded in getting rid of oil.  Airplanes would not fly.  Automobiles would cease to be useful.  You couldn't heat or air condition your home for long. 

Getting rid of oil would take us back to the 17th or 18th century.  It would be an absolute disaster.  It is serious business!  Oil is also a very serious geopolitical issue.  It's not just a game.  It's not just oil wells and J.R. Ewing in Dallas. It is very, very serious -- and it's highly competitive.  It's cutthroat competitive.  You can't make oil.  You have to go find it where nature has made it.  In some places, it's hard to get it.  Other places, it's easy.  There's all kinds of competition to get it.  Everybody wants to have as much of it as they can. 

 . . . We need people who look at America and love it.  We need people who love and respect America and believe that America's greatness is the best thing for the world, because it is.  It always has been. 

That's not a braggadocios statement.  We are the people of the world who, because of our freedom, have created a standard of living and a technological innovation record of progress unlike any that has ever been seen, and it is because of our documented freedom in the founding of our country, the belief in the power of individuals pursuing excellence and the best they can be.  Doers, shakers, people that make things happen.  As opposed to people who look at the United States and think that it's the problem in the world. 

 . . .


Over against this is the Christian agrarian tradition (which would rejoice at a return to the ‘backward’ 17th or 18th hundredyears), of which the South partook in great measure in her better days and which also finds good expression in many ways in the Japanesse farmer and writer Masanobu Fukuoka.  We invite all to listen to his wisdom in this video


or to read his book One Straw Revolution


and see if the virtues and way of life he promotes are better for a man than those of Mr Limbaugh and the so-called Right in the [u.] S.

(Thanks to Cristian for the links on Masanobu Fukuoka.)

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð!

Anathema to the Union!

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