The Discerning Texan

Isn't it funny that all the countries of Eastern Europe who lived under the tyranny and misery of Socialism for so long are now the biggest defenders of freedom, free markets, low taxes, and individual rights. The Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Poland: if you went around spouting Socialism in those countries, you could easily end up with a bloody nose. All the real Marxists after the Wall fell have migrated to the West. (Does the name Soros ring a bell?)

Isn't it funny that even those Western European countries who have flirted with Socialism: countries like Ireland, Sweden, France, Germany, and Denmark come to mind--are increasingly heading in the same (Conservative) direction? It is pretty easy to fool enough people to get elected promising "equality to all", but inevitably Socialist economic policy leads to a lower standard of living for everyone and a stagnant economy. When everyone gets the same wage and is treated equally (horribly "progressive" taxation has the same effect), there is no incentive to become more productive in order to rise above it all. It gets more unfair the more productive you are and the higher in the monkey house you rise.

Eventually the people figure it outt: it's a lie, and always has been a lie; it's a utopian pipe dream thought up and championed by people who don't live in the real world. Playing to the least common denominator is and always will be a recipe for disaster.

Eventually all those promises and lies catch up to the liars; and many times a whole lot of people have to be killed and/or imprisoned first by the "utopians" in power before they are willing to give it up. Ask anyone who has escaped Fidel, Mao, Stalin, Ho, or Pol Pot. Or even some Tibetans or North Koreans these days...

And so we now turn to London, where "Red Ken" Livingston has been presiding as Mayor with a regime that could easily be mistaken for Hugo Chavez. This week the citizens of London rose week finally had their fill of this lunatic. Such a crying shame...

Wretcherd observes:

"Red Ken" Livingstone has gone down in defeat before Conservative Party candidate Boris Johnson. The position of Mayor of London has become, since its recent creation, one of the more interesting political experiments in Britain. And Livingstone sought to set his stamp on it. One of Red Ken's bright ideas was to charge motorists fifty dollars in congestion tax if they wanted to drive into central london. Like many initiatives of this sort it will be impossible to wholly roll back and once the electoral wheel turns again the tax python will constrict its coils another quarter-inch more. "Johnson insisted on reforming the £8 (US $16) congestion tax imposed on drivers entering the downtown area. Signed contracts make it impossible for a new mayor to abolish the tax completely." But for the moment there is mirth among the Ewoks and celebration all across the forest moon of Endor.

Pat Dollard notes that "Labour’s London campaign chiefs reported that the ethnic-minority vote had turned out for Livingstone, but the white working-class vote had been increasingly hostile to him." DNC take note. Livingstone disparaged Boris Johnson, who looks like an older version of Owen Wilson, as a "joke". Who's laughing now?

Well I am, for one...

UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal sees this as a big defeat for that lamest of lame PM's, Gordon Brown. Could this also portend a Conservative PM to continue the European trend away from the very Socialism that Democrats seem so bound and determined to move toward here in the States?