From the WSJ:

…(E)vidence is piling up that neither government nor multilateral spending on education and infrastructure are key to development. To move out of poverty, countries instead need fast growth; and to get that they need to unleash the animal spirits of entrepreneurs.

Empirical support for this view is presented again this year in The Heritage Foundation/The Wall Street Journal Index of Economic Freedom, released today. In its 14th edition, the annual survey grades countries on a combination of factors including property rights protection, tax rates, government intervention in the economy, monetary, fiscal and trade policy, and business freedom.

The nearby table shows the 2008 rankings but doesn’t tell the whole story. The Index also reports that the freest 20% of the world’s economies have twice the per capita income of those in the second quintile and five times that of the least-free 20%. In other words, freedom and prosperity are highly correlated…

(Click to enlarge)

One thing not mentioned in the article that stands out to me - all of the top 5 and 8 of the top 10 countries were once part of the British Empire (including the UK itself).

Looked at differently, there are about 330MM people in the world who speak English as a first language. 96% of them live in one of the top 10 economically freest countries. Of the other 6.3B people who are not native English speakers, just 0.9% live in one of the top 10. And more than half of those (32MM) are Americans who speak English as a second language.

Seems a pretty strong case for the British tradition of rule of law, individual rights, limited government and capitalism.

Its hard to believe that just 200 years ago that system was locked in mortal struggle with France - the highest ranking representative of that defunct Empire (excluding French Canada) is France itself, #48. And never mind the Soviet/Communist Empire (Russia comes in #134, Cuba edges out North Korea for 2nd to last at #156).

Not sure which way the causation goes, but its noteworthy that the last time one of the top 10 countries (excluding tiny Singapore and Hong Kong) was engaged in a land war on its own territory was 1883 (War of the Pacific - Chile, Bolivia, Peru, 12,000 casualties). The last time for a top 10 country that is also English speaking was the American Civil War. If you want a war in which an English speaking country had a meaningful number of non-English speaking troops on its territory you’d probably have to go back to the American Revolution (French Troops on British Territory). For a major military engagement before that you’re probably talking 1066 or the Vikings.

Seems these countries are pretty good at avoiding or maybe just not stirring up trouble.

Something to remember next time America (or the UK, or Australia) considers outsourcing its international policy making to the UN, or subordinating our own sovereign rights to international treaties and agreements.

I saw this article about Castro endorsing Hillary on Drudge this morning and happened on the English version of Granma, Cuba’s state-run newspaper.

What is the brutal dictatorship spoon feeding its people these days? There’s an article praising Jimmy Carter. Two on climate change. One how the Gonzales resignation reveals the deep corruption of the Bush Administration. One on how WHO is predicting a massive rise in global infectious diseases in part due to climate change. And, of course, a couple of articles about US casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Who needs the NYT or CNN when we can get the same stuff from Commie agitprop?

This story is a bit stale, but I have a few points to highlight I haven’t seen elsewhere.

To recap, a week and a half ago DailyKos (probably the most popular left-wing blog) was hosting its YearlyKos conference in Chicago.

One of the panels was called “The Military and Progressives: Are They Really That Different,” moderated by John Soltz, an Iraq War veteran and founder of VoteVets, a veterans group opposed to the war. The discussion accordingly was focused on US failures in Iraq and the need to withdraw ASAP.

During Q&A a uniformed Army Sergeant gets up to argue that “the surge” is working, and that Iraqi civilian casualties are in decline. At this point Soltz completely flips out. He says the soldier is breaking the law by making political comments while in uniform, says he’s going to contact his superiors to get him a dishonorable discharge, and even threatens to “come down there,” to shut him up.

Here’s the video from the DailyKos website. Fast forward to 41:00 for the begining of the dispute.

Notably DailyKos has edited out everything the Sergeant says - we hear only Soltz dressing him down.

Fortunately PajamasMedia was there filming the event and have posted a video in which you can hear both sides.

Its obvious from the uncensored video that the Sergeant wasn’t saying anything political. He’s not terribly articulate, but he’s really just saying the surge is working. He’s not saying invading Iraq was a good idea, or Bush is great, he’s just conveying facts as he sees them. Soldiers are commenting on the situation in Iraq in interviews on TV everyday. Soltz was interjecting with a discussion of facts, not politics.

And when did the left wing suddenly get so concerned about people not using a military uniform for political purposes? It is true that the political speech of soliders is limited by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. DoD Directive 1334.01 3.1.2 prohibits wearing a uniform,

During or in connection with furthering political activities, private employment or commercial interests, when an inference of official sponsorship for the activity or interest may be drawn.

This is why Generals called to testify in Congress are so careful what they say, sounding stilted as investigators try to goad them into endorsing one political plan or another. Same thing with military interviews or press conferences. And its a good rule - we don’t want guys using their military uniforms grabbing political power from elected civilians.

Most of us don’t, anyway. John Kerry clearly violated the rule when he testified in front of Congress in uniform in 1971. He wasn’t presenting factual information, he was aggressively attacking the elected, civilian leadership of our country. And he wasn’t just making a political statement, he was launching a political career. In less than a year he was running for congress.

Kerry’s Presidential campaign was more overtly military than anything we’ve had in this country since US Grant. He arrived for the DNC convention on a replica navy boat, and started his first speech of the gathering with a salute. He started his grab for power by abusing his military uniform, and he almost made it all the way to the top promoting his alleged marshall virtues.

The left loves this stuff. Just look at how their younglings dress. Castro tee shirts, Mao tee shirts. Images of lifetime dictators who siezed power in military coups and spent almost their entire public lives dressed in military garb. Che is pehaps the purest, and thus most popular, of the type. He never had a post-revolution plan, he just kept on killing. Is there a more popular image among American leftists than Che’s face peering up from under a military beret?

But the left doesn’t like all things military. Defending America - bad; promoting democracy abroad - bad; helping tsunami victims - no comment; giving poorer Americans a chance to pay for a college education through their own hard work - bad. Exterminating 50 Million Chinese in a Marxist revolution - good; taking power in Venezuela then tossing out their fragile constitution - good; expanding the government by force at the expense of individual liberties - can’t get enough.

The shouting down of the sergeant has gotten a fair amount of media attention. I’ve seen no commentary on Wesley Clark’s opening comments (starting at in 8:05 above video).

He starts off by saying “I joked during my Presidential campaign that I wasn’t just a Democrat, I grew up under socialism…In the military all our kids went to the same schools, we all got the same healthcare, shopped at the same stores, got paid the same, its the perfect communist society, you could say (laughs).” He goes on to talk about how living a military life informed his progressive politics. Everybody works together, everyone is treated the same - this is his vision for America.

I’d add that this perfect society he chose to live part of his life in is also completely authoritarian. Its a place where there is no right to a trial by jury. Not following orders can be a capital crime. Corporal punishment for minor infractions is standard. You can’t dress the way you like, or wear your hair as you please. Its illegal to be gay. There is no freedom of the press, or of speech. As we learn later in this same video, any political expression at all is against the law.

Sounds a lot like China, or Cuba, or any number of other leftist paradises. Clark is right, in some was a country dominated by marshall law, and a country run by “progressives” have a lot in common.

Two stories that will get zero attention in the American mass media.

First, Cuban Doctors sent overseas to promote that country’s enlightened system of socialist healthcare are defecting in droves to the US. From the Lancet:

Growing numbers of Cuban doctors sent overseas to work are defecting to the USA, following a change in US immigration policy. Critics say the policy is immoral because it takes medical professionals away from some of the world’s poorest nations. Michael Ceaser reports.

Andres—a 36-year-old Cuban physician—decided to get out even before he had got fully in. When Cuban medical authorities tapped him for a medical mission in Venezuela, he did not see an opportunity to help the poor of an allied nation, but rather an opportunity to make his way to the USA. “I didn’t arrive in Venezuela to work; I arrived and deserted right away”, he said while waiting for his US visa in Bogota, Colombia.

And a related story:

Two Cuban boxers who defected during the games signed five-year contracts to fight for a cable television outlet in Germany. Guillermo Rigondeaux, a bantamweight who won gold at the 2000 and 2004 Olympics, and Erislandy Lara, an amateur welterweight world champion, signed with Arena TV.

Most people in Cuba live as slaves. This gives American Leftists a natural affinity to the Cuban dictatorship. Leftists form the core of the Democratic party, the party against which the anti-slavery Republican party was founded. This core belief in fixed social class, ideally with an enslaved underclass, remains the cornerstone of their ideology today.

So bizarre its hard to know what to say.

Cuba is criticizing the US for not allowing more of its citizens to escape. From the Miami Herald:

Cuba said Tuesday the United States has fallen behind in the number of visas allotted for Cubans, suggesting this was a deliberate attempt by the Bush administration to stir trouble on the island…

…The foreign ministry said the United States should stop ”the manipulation of the migration issue with political ends” and criticized Washington’s policy of allowing Cubans who make it to the U.S. mainland to stay while returning those caught at sea, a policy known as “wet-foot, dry-foot.”

Let me get this straight. Cubans hate their home country so much that thousands swim/float/paddle for it every year. We grant legal resident status to anyone who makes it all the way to Key West. But people we pick up in the open ocean are not automatically extended the same generosity.

Might be an interesting domestic political debate - should anyone who can swim within 90 miles of our coast automatically be given legal residence status? Practically speaking, we might have 6.6 billion legal residents in a hurry.

But its a bit of a stretch for a country emitting so many aspiring migrants to insert itself into the debate. Question for Fidel (or the idiot brother he shares dictatorial power with) - What’s worse: The US turning back aspiring Cuban migrants, or Cuba summarily executing them for trying?

From UN Watch:

Dictators Fidel Castro of Cuba and Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus will be celebrating the UN Human Rights Council’s likely adoption tomorrow of a reform package that will see both regimes dropped from a blacklist, while Israel is placed under permanent indictment.
 
Contrary to all the promises of reform issued last year, the proposal released today by Council President Luis Alfonso de Alba targets Israel for permanent indictment under a special agenda item: “Human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories,” which includes “Human rights violations and implications of the Israeli occupation of Palestine and other occupied Arab territories”; and “Right to self-determination of the Palestinian people.” No other situation in the world is singled out — not genocide in Sudan, not child slavery in China, nor the persecution of democracy dissidents in Egypt and elsewhere. Moreover, the council will entrench its one-sided investigative mandate of “Israeli violations of international law”—the only one not subject to regular review after a set term—by renewing it “until the end of the occupation.”

From Sunday’s Washington Post article Assault on an Ally:

COLOMBIAN President Álvaro Uribe may be the most popular democratic leader in the world. Last week, as he visited Washington, a poll showed his approval rating at 80.4 percent — extraordinary for a politician who has been in office nearly five years. Colombians can easily explain this: Since his first election in 2002, Mr. Uribe has rescued their country from near-failed-state status, doubling the size of the army and extending the government’s control to large areas that for decades were ruled by guerrillas and drug traffickers. The murder rate has dropped by nearly half and kidnappings by 75 percent. For the first time thugs guilty of massacres and other human rights crimes are being brought to justice, and the political system is being purged of their allies. With more secure conditions for investment, the free-market economy is booming.

In a region where populist demagogues are on the offensive, Mr. Uribe stands out as a defender of liberal democracy, not to mention a staunch ally of the United States. So it was remarkable to see the treatment that the Colombian president received in Washington. After a meeting with the Democratic congressional leadership, Mr. Uribe was publicly scolded by House Majority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), whose statement made no mention of the “friendship” she recently offered Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Human Rights Watch, which has joined the Democratic campaign against Mr. Uribe, claimed that “today Colombia presents the worst human rights and humanitarian crisis in the Western hemisphere” — never mind Venezuela or Cuba or Haiti. Former vice president Al Gore, who has advocated direct U.S. negotiations with the regimes of Kim Jong Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, recently canceled a meeting with Mr. Uribe because, Mr. Gore said, he found the Colombian’s record “deeply troubling.”…

…Some, like Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), reflexively resist U.S. military aid to Latin America. Colombia has received more than $5 billion in economic and military aid from the Clinton and Bush administrations to fight drug traffickers and the guerrillas, and it hopes to receive $3.9 billion more in the next six years. Some, like Rep. Sander M. Levin (D-Mich.), are eager to torpedo Colombia’s pending free-trade agreement with the United States. Now that the Bush administration has conceded almost everything that House Democrats asked for in order to pass pending trade deals, protectionist hard-liners have seized on the supposed human rights “crisis” as a pretext to blackball Colombia.

Perhaps Mr. Uribe is being punished by Democrats, too, because he has remained an ally of George W. Bush even as his neighbor, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, portrays the U.S. president as “the devil.” Whatever the reasons, the Democratic campaign is badly misguided. If the Democrats succeed in wounding Mr. Uribe or thwarting his attempt to consolidate a democracy that builds its economy through free trade, the United States may have to live without any Latin American allies.

Today Bob Novak picks up the story in the Chicago Sun Times:

Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe returned to Bogota this week in a state of shock. His three-day visit to Washington to win over Democrats in Congress was described by one American supporter as “catastrophic.” Colombian sources said Uribe was stunned by the ferocity of his Democratic opponents, and Vice President Francisco Santos publicly talked about cutting U.S.-Colombian ties.

Uribe got nothing from his meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders. Military aid remains stalled, overall assistance is reduced, and the vital U.S.-Colombian trade bill looks dead. The first Colombian president to crack down on his country’s corrupt army officer hierarchy, and to assault both right-wing paramilitaries and left-wing guerrillas, last week confronted Democrats wedded to out-of-date claims of civil rights abuses and to rigidly protectionist dogma.

This is remarkable U.S. treatment for a rare friend on the South American continent, where Venezuela’s leftist dictator Hugo Chavez can only exult in Uribe’s embarrassment as he builds an anti-American bloc of nations…

…Hopes that the Democratic majority in Congress might perceive the importance of supporting Colombia were dashed April 20 when Al Gore canceled a joint appearance with Uribe at an environmental event in Miami. Gore cited allegations of Uribe’s association with paramilitary forces a decade ago, charges denied by the Colombian president.

Gore’s snub legitimized what the new congressional majority is intent on doing anyway. Democrats follow both left-wing human rights lobbyists and AFL-CIO President John Sweeney’s protectionist campaign against the Colombian free-trade agreement.

What the hell is the matter with the Dems? Are they completely fixated with taking the wrong side of every possible issue? These people have no problem cuddling up with thuggocrats in Syria and Venezuela, but will go out of their way to offend and undermine a popular, legitimate, effective American ally.

In the five years since Uribe was elected president his country’s GDP has grown 24%. According to Bloomberg monthly kidnappings have fallen from 314 in May 2002 to 13 in December 2006.

But its a tough neighborhood. Venezuela shares a long land border with Colombia, and is already making territorial claims on 62% of Guyana, its neighbor on the other side.

For the DNC everything seems to be an opportunity to play petty politics, no matter the cost to the US. Its hard to believe American’s would ever trust a member of their party with the top job in 08.

Much has been written about the convergence of ideals and rhetoric between Radical Islam and the left. This convergence is treated as something of a curiosity - that the ostensibly liberal and secular left would align with a reactionary religious movement seems counterintuitive.

This piece in today’s WSJ is typical:

There were plenty of leftish people in the 20th century who excused communism, but they could at least say that communism was a left-wing idea. Now overwhelmingly and everywhere you find people who scream their heads off about the smallest sexist or racist remark, yet refuse to confront ultra-reactionary movements that explicitly reject every principle they profess to hold.

The author attempts to explain the apparent contradiction in the alliance between what should be diametrically opposed ideologies. He identifies specific factors that may have influenced the left’s attitude toward Radical Islam: multiculturalism; pervasive belief that Iraq is a disaster; rising antipathy towards the US’ growing cultural and economic influence; visceral hatred of George Bush.

The article is well reasoned, but its completely off the mark. There is no contradiction in the convergence of the left and Radical Islam. Their respective core beliefs are identical -both represent the negation of classical liberalism.

On every important point the left stands in opposition to liberalism:

• Group rights vs individual liberty
• Central planning vs free enterprise
• Race laws vs race blind institutions
• Speech codes vs free expression
• Obscurantism vs open inquiry
• Influence vs merit
• Majority absolutism vs individual rights

These are the core beliefs of the modern left, and on every point they align with Radical Islam.

Orwell wrote near the end of WWII:

…there is a minority of intellectual pacifists whose real though unadmited motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration of totalitarianism.

Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writings of younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States. Moreover they do not as a rule condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defense of western countries…

…All in all it is difficult not to feel that pacifism, as it appears among a section of the intelligentsia, is secretly inspired by an admiration for power and successful cruelty.

What Orwell wrote of pacifists then applies equally well to the left today.

Observers in the 1930s were similarly perplexed with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the formal alliance between Soviet Bolshevism and German National Socialism in 1939. There should have been no mystery at all. The two systems were in direct competition but shared the same ultimate goal: annihilation of individual liberty. It is rarely recalled how fascinated some prominent American leftists were with Hitler and his confiscatory economic programs in the 1930s.

Hayek wrote in 1944:

The Nazi and the Communists are cut from the same cloth. Both ideologies lead to the same end: Totalitarianism.

In 2002 Margaret Thatcher wrote a piece in the Guardian titled Islamism is the New Bolshevism. From that article:

Islamic extremism today, like bolshevism in the past, is an armed doctrine. It is an aggressive ideology promoted by fanatical, well-armed devotees. And, like communism, it requires an all-embracing long-term strategy to defeat it.

And just as Bolshevism won accolades from the left in its day, so Radical Islam finds sympathizers on the left now.

The left today applauds coercive regimes in Cuba and Venezuela, and sees liberal democracies like the US and UK as the real source of evil in the world. The only two countries where large numbers of Arab Muslims can vote in authentic elections, Iraq and Israel, are the states the left most wants reformed or destroyed.

The definition of the term “liberal” has been so perverted in the US that it now used in place of the opposite of its formal definition. Occasionally someone from abroad comes to remind us of the true meaning of liberalism. From a recent Hirsi Ali interview:

I consider myself nonpartisan, but I’m a liberal—not in the American sense, because Americans seem to refer to communists as liberals.

50 years ago this champion of women’s rights and confessional freedom might have been welcomed by self identified liberals in America. Today she finds her home among their foils.

Florida Democratic Senator Bill Nelson has worked hard to keep oil countries from exploiting deposits off his state’s coast.

I wonder if he’ll mind some commies helping themselves.

One day soon — possibly before the end of this year — an oil rig will maneuver into position in waters less than 100 miles from the coast of Florida. A drill will plunge into the inky sea and begin chewing its way into the ocean floor, hunting for oil.

But the drilling rig won’t belong to an American company, and any petroleum it discovers won’t do a thing to curb the USA’s addiction to foreign oil. Instead, any new sub-sea gusher will belong to Cuba. 

At least those evil capitalists at Big Oil won’t profit from it. Maybe Cuba can join Venezuela in donating oil to Joe Kennedy III’s charity.

 From today’s Telegraph: 

“Fidel has starved us,” he whispered. “Yes, there is a lack of food but it is more than that. We are starving for information, for opportunity, for freedom. We want to enjoy the same things as those people over there,” he said as a fresh batch of tourists spilled out of the doors of a tour bus.

Cubans struggle to survive on an average wage of less than £10 a month to supplement the state rations which provide them with basics such as rice and beans and either one small bar of soap or tube of toothpaste a month.

Visiting foreigners can spend almost double that on a taxi ride to the airport or a meal in one of Old Havana’s state-run restaurants.

 There’s a nice natural experiment going on in Cuba now. The economy is bifurcating into two parts: an impoverished one trapped under communist control; and a capitalist one, with its own currency and exposure to Western wealth.

Cuba’s society has been split into those with access to the CUC, the convertible currency used by tourists and sent in remittances from those abroad, and the majority of the population who must rely solely on their salary paid in Cuban pesos.

Castro introduced the dual currency in the 1990s as a means of the boosting the economy after the collapse of the Soviet Union when Cuba threw open its doors to foreign tourists. Last year almost 2.5 million foreign travellers, mainly from Canada, Britain, Italy, Spain and Mexico, visited the Caribbean island…

…”You can’t buy anything with Cuban pesos,” said Mr Espinosa. “Anything worth buying – soap, cooking oil, shoes – must all be purchased in convertibles.

“We are in a situation where a bell hop or a chambermaid can earn many times the salary of a doctor or civil engineer. What incentive is there now to train to be such a thing?”

In how many societies could someone say they’d rather be a chambermaid than a doctor?