Tyrants of all kinds LOVE slogans—the more vacuous and innocuous sounding the better. They are meant to be devoid of real meaning, or to camouflage precisely where they are taking society. Most often, the actual results are the exact opposite of the slogan’s purported aspirations. The Bolshevik’s “Peace, Land, and Bread,” gave them war, an invasion by the Germans and mass starvation. Likewise, Mao’s “Serve the People” and the “Great Leap Forward,” resulted in 36-45 million deaths. And we all know where the infamous “Abreit Macht Frei” went.
And here we are once again, subject
to an onslaught of slogans. But this
time, it’s from within. The slogans and
messaging are back, in an effort to reshape society. But this time, they are being broadcast in
the West, in an effort to reshape free societies into something different. Once again, as in the case of the Bolsheviks,
the Maoists, and the Nazis, they are the propaganda tools of the central
planners. It’s scary stuff, and scarier
still that today’s central planners have a propaganda reach to be able to manipulate
the population through social media that the Bolsheviks, Maoists and Nazis
could only dream of.
Build Back Better
The alliteration rolled off the tongues of all the Western leaders from Macron
to Biden to Merkel to Boris Johnson. It
seemed to gain traction after the horrendous policy decisions to shut down Western
societies in response to the COVID pandemic.
And it sounded great, especially in America, where we thrive on
innovation, fresh starts and renewal.
But it never answered fundamental questions. Who was going to do the building? What, exactly was being built? With what money? A high speed rail like the one in California
that cost millions with not an inch of track being laid? Millions
of electric cars with no infrastructure to service them?
Social Emotional Learning
SEL is marketed as a way of developing emotional control, empathy and facilitates
students “feeling and showing empathy toward others” and establishing “equitable
learning environments.” It can help “address various forms of inequity.” All of this sounds nice. Who isn’t FOR empathy? But the more you read about SEL, the more you
realize that this is simply the State elbowing its way into the space that
should be occupied by family and church.
It is state education sticking its nose where it doesn’t belong. It's the role of parents and pastors to form
identities and teach empathy and cooperation.
SEL is simply an academic sounding slogan to displace family and faith
and substitute the state.
Environmental, Social and Governance
Like SEL, ESG is being applied to corporations and states. And like SEL, it’s hard to argue
against. Who doesn’t want companies and sovereignties
to be environmentally aware? Who can be
against the health and safety of employees?
ESG is deliberately formulated to be a direct counter to Milton Friedman’s
theory that a firm exists primarily to satisfy its shareholders. Like SEL, ESG exists to promote an
agenda. It assigns a score to companies
and sovereignties WITHOUT REGARD TO FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE. It ignores an essential truism of economics
and of life itself—that all problems involve tradeoffs, constraints and
boundaries. Further, all of the issues
that ESG purportedly is set up to address are amply dealt with in federal law, various
state laws, and administrative bodies. It
is highly duplicative of the EPA, Department of Labor, EEOC, the SEC and various
state corporate laws.
Critical Race Theory and Diversity, Equity and Inclusiveness
CRT and DEI and their corrosive effects on higher education, corporate life and
society in general have been amply written about by writers like James Lindsey,
Gad Saad, Jordan Peterson and others, and I will not attempt to regurgitate what
they have said here. All I will say on
these topics is that, like ESG, they ignore actual performance as a measure of
success. And both ignore the social good of social cohesiveness as an end in
itself. CRT and DEI have led to the
diminution of standards across academia and corporate life, and in a host of
other environments. About the only place
they have not corrupted is competitive chess.
Rankings are formulaic and color blind.
There are no diversity quota for grandmasters. You either make the cut or you do not. Period.
Black Lives Matter
Black Lives Matter was probably the most clever of the three word slogans. It’s impossible to argue the converse. But it is an inherently racist statement. Black lives do, indeed, matter. But so do white lives, Asian lives, Indian
and Pakistani lives, Hispanic lives, and Indigenous lives. Further,
Black Lives Matter the organization was conflated with the notion that black
lives matter. And as we saw, Black Lives
Matter was a scam, a shakedown of monumental proportions, that leveraged the
death of George Floyd to enrich its founders like Patrice Cullors. The organization collected millions, but
bestowed nothing on HBCUs, or health organizations or anything else for that
matter that actually enriched Black lives.
The three word slogans have become
endemic in our society. They are
vacuous, antithetical to a democratic, capitalist society, and are leading to
the degradation of standards, of innovation, and of excellence. They are all deliberately designed to be
difficult to argue against. They are
constructed in threes because that is easy to remember and impound But each is
also designed to convey power to the State and to the central planners and will
end with the Sovietization of America.
