“Each time in history that a society has tried to materialize a utopic vision of a perfect world, it has produced the most brutal and criminal regimes.” – Mario Vargas Llosa

Nobel Laureate and Atlas Templeton Leadership Fellow, Mario Vargas Llosa, was once a typical left-wing artist.  But after witnessing first-hand the evil regimes created by government socialism, he is now one of the world’s most important free market advocates.

Watch the short video here:

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The Fourth of July weekend is a time when we Americans expect our 1400 newspapers to take a reprieve from their endless ridicules and criticisms to dutifully celebrate all that is good in our nation. We look forward those beautiful front page pictures and stories about patriotic parades down Main Street and glorious fireworks displays. We appreciates the Op Ed letters that express heart-felt thankfulness for the sacrifice of our troops serving in harm’s way; uplifting stories of the values that unite us as a beacon for freedom, and tales of rugged individualism that define our spirit. But there will always be one tabloid that will stand alone in failing to appreciate the true meaning of Fourth of July; the New York Times.

When the Times refers to itself as: “All the News That’s Fit to Print”; the paper expects all the unwashed proletariat must show subdued homage to the superior intellect. For this July Fourth weekend, they have achieved a new pinnacle of negativism and defeat. In contrast to joyous patriotic faire; the Times offers a despondent middle-aged woman bowing to a symbolically torn American flag forlornly fluttering in the total desolation of tornado-ravaged Joplin, Missouri.

Having established a morose mood; the Times stifles our spirit with Front Page headlines; American Folly”, “Declaration of Endurance, and “Fears of Declining”. Having sufficiently documented America as a despairing empire; Times Op Eds indict our moral decay with: “The Moral Logic of Survivor Guilt”, “It Gets Even Worse”, and “Corporate Cash Con”.

“The Moral Logic of Survivor Guilt” introduces us to the “absurdity” of U.S. military veterans who often suffer pangs of “survivor guilt” for leaving their combat units when they return home from war. The writer analyzes “just how irrational those feelings are” with the help of 19th Century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche; who is most famous for his belief in existential nihilism that confirms life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value; consequently God is Dead. Nietzsche describes such military self-doubt as due to a “bad conscience” for what “I ought not to have done.” Having thoroughly defamed our military; the Times offers no fair and balanced opposing writer to extol the virtues of our sons and daughters who risk the ultimate sacrifice to answer to the high moral callings of honor, duty, and valor.

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It seems hypocritical that MIT faculty member and recent Nobel Laureate, Peter Diamond, would lash out in a New York Times Op Ed titled: “When a Nobel Prize Isn’t Enough”, for not being confirmed by the U.S. Senate to the Board of Governors of the U.S. Federal Reserve. It was only after twice failing to receive Senate support that the good professor miraculously received his Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in October of 2010.

Nobel Prizes were once considered to be prestigious honors awarded by panels of impartial experts in recognition of lifetimes of cultural and scientific achievement in the fields of Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace. But with Peter Diamond in 2010 joining Barak Obama in 2009, Paul Krugman in 2008, and Al Gore in 2007; the Nobel has been reduced to just another example of a left wing political action committee bestowing faux credibility on fellow travellers to influence American political policy.

President Obama on April 29, 2010 nominated Janet Yellen, Sarah Bloom Raskin, and Peter Diamond to fill vacancies on the Federal Reserve Board. Ms. Yellen, a liberal, and Ms. Rasking, a moderate, were quickly confirmed based on their sterling intellectual credentials and known discipline in maintaining the type of confidential information necessary to lead America’s central bank. But the nomination of labor economist Diamond came as a stunning surprise to the financial community. Dr. Diamond had absolutely zero professional experience with Fed’s day to day regulation of banking, implementation of monetary policy, or setting of interest rates. The only relevant credentials Dr. Diamond could muster was his ardent “policy preferences” in favor President Obama’s $800 billion spending stimulus, big bank bail-out package, QE1 stimulus, QE2 stimulus, Obamacare, and demand for higher taxes.

Dr. Diamond was never shy about trumpeting his intention to use the clout he would gain as an unelected member of government to advance his Keynesian dreams of mandating that the banking system implement social policy initiatives.

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55 years ago, Rosa Parks helped launch the modern civil rights movement.

Today, the government is bulldozing her old neighborhood.  Here’s the real kicker:  The homeowners are forced to pay the cost of demolition.

Nobel prize-winning libertarian economist F.A. Hayek famously wrote that “the great aim of the struggle for liberty has been equality before the law.”  There is no better example of this fundamental struggle than Rosa Parks, known today as The Mother of the Freedom Movement.

She refused to be treated as a second-class citizen.  But her hometown of Montgomery, Ala., segregated blacks on public transits.  Minorities were forced to sit in the back, forced to give up their seats to whites, and sometimes were left standing on the side of the road after paying their fare.  Rosa stood up to the Big Government Bullies and said enough is enough.  Her demand for equality before the law forever transformed America.

Rosa once said:

I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free . . . so other people would be also free.

Indeed, she made the world a better place.  So how despicable is it that today officials in her old hometown are forcing people to give up their homes?  The government is tearing down houses against the property owners’ will and then sticking them with the bill.

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Paul Krugman has been on a roll the last two weeks. After announcing that America is in its “Third Depression” last week, he provided an encore last weekend, by blaming U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke for his concerns about the evils of deficit spending for failing to increase economic stimulation of the economy. During the Great Depression President Franklin Roosevelt brushed away concerns regarding the wisdom of deficit spending by saying; “If we can boondoggle ourselves out of this depression, that word is going to be enshrined in the hearts of the American people for years to come.” Perhaps Professor Krugman is frustrated that so many Americans have not enshrined the boondoggle of deficit spending in their hearts the same way he has.

Our good Professor just won the Nobel Prize for economics in October 2008, for his theory, that to be economically dominant, industries must concentrate their producers and suppliers into a common metropolitan area near their customers to maximize economies of scale and transportation savings. His model perfectly explained the 1950’s and 1960’s success of the U.S. auto industry’s tight concentration of assembly plants, steel foundries and parts suppliers in and around the city of Detroit; and within one days delivery to the bulk of their big city customers.

But Krugman’s theory of economic dominance through concentration has been rendered meaningless by modern supply chain management revolution that interconnects competitive vendors from across the globe. China has a massive balance of payments surplus because they can competitively ship products 10,000 miles to Detroit and beat local parts manufacturers on price and quality. Just nine months after our Nobel Laureate picked up his $1.8 million check and Norwegian hardware, General Motors, the poster child of the Professor’s industrial policy, filed the largest bankruptcy in the U.S. history in September 2009 with only $82 billion in assets, but $172 billion in debt.

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The Thesis: The Nobel Peace Prize means nothing. It is now just another paragon of political correctness manifested on the world stage. It’s the international equivalent to “Student of the Week” or any other unearned, self-esteem-based prize.

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The Norwegian Nobel Committee wanted to let everyone know that they really like Barack Obama. They approve of his political views and they want him to remake the world according to his vision.  Okay, we get it.  The Norwegians, one of the most homogeneous societies in the world, whose sole significant imprint on the world stage is the annual awarding of this increasingly worthless prize, arrogantly assume the role of moral arbiters of United States politics.  Thanks.  Appreciate it. 

It is blatantly absurd to award the Nobel Peace Prize to a nine-month president with absolutely no foreign policy achievement of note.  Especially when there are so many other fields where the Academy could justify lavishing glory, (and money–one wonders what POTUS will do with the cash?) on their secular savior. 

 President Obama has written two highly acclaimed (by the left) books.  Dreams from My Father is his accounting of his unique life story and his journey to understand his roots and his father’s abandonment of him and his mother.  It was called, “the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician,” by fawning sychophant Joe Klein.

 His second book, The Audacity of Hope (the first campaign flier published by Crown) was his soaring vision of a nation and world guided by the kind of social justice that only a community organizer can envision.  No less a literary critic than Gary Hart called Obama a, “figure who possesses perseverance and writing skills that have flashes of grandeur.”  The book occupied the New York Times Bestseller List for thirty weeks and won a Grammy to boot.

Almost any writer would kill to have sold as many volumes and have his or her books become so influential.  Surely the Nobel Prize for literature would have been much more justifiable.

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From an email to Newsweek:

“The Nobel gang just suicide bombed themselves. Gore, Carter, Obama, soon Bill Clinton. See a pattern here? They are all leftist sell-outs. George Bush liberates 50 million Muslims in Iraq, Reagan liberates hundreds of millions of Europeans and saves parts of Latin America. Any awards?… Obama gives speeches trashing his own country and for that gets a prize, which is now worth as much as whatever prizes they are putting in Cracker Jacks these days.”

“This fully exposes the illusion that is Barack Obama. It is a greater embarrassment than losing the Olympics bid. And with this ‘award’ the elites of the world are urging Obama, THE MAN OF PEACE, to not do the surge in Afghanistan, not take action against Iran and its nuclear program and to basically continue his intentions to emasculate the United States. They love a weakened, neutered U.S and this is their way of promoting that concept.  I think God has a great sense of  humor, too.” (more…)

Open thread here.

From the AP:

OSLO (AP) – President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in a stunning decision designed to encourage his initiatives to reduce nuclear arms, ease tensions with the Muslim world and stress diplomacy and cooperation rather than unilateralism. (more…)