The philosopher David Hume warned us not to mistake “constant conjunction” for causation. It’s good advice, though it is not the sort of universal disturbance in the force that some philosophers, eager to jettison old certitudes, believe it to be.
Hume himself eventually rejected that “pretended skepticism” as a juvenile affectation. Like the rest of us, he recognized that reasoning from induction, from observed realities, introduces us to that great guide in the cognitive adventure of life – probability. Don’t let the appearance of a black swan down under disturb you: good mental hygiene and faith in the soundness of inductive reasoning go together.
I indulge in this preliminary expectoration (apologies to Søren Kierkegaard) because I arrived in London on June 22. Was the conjunction of my arrival with Keir Starmer’s announcement of his resignation a coincidence? Perhaps.
The socialist wave cresting in blue municipalities breaks against the juggernaut that is MAGA
But then came the news from New York that three wackos (aka “Democratic Socialists”) endorsed by the Beaming One, Zohran Mamdani himself, had triumphed in the Democratic primaries. That happened just a few days after I left New York. Another coincidence? You tell me.
But even if the cosmic web of implication remains as gnomic as the Pythia of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, a few realities have snapped into focus. Regarding the departure of the moist-eyed Starmer, one card on X remarked that the “United Kingdom begins annual ritual of picking a Prime Minister that is worse than the last one.” It hasn’t yet become an annual festival – not quite. But with what will be seven PMs in the last decade, it is getting close. And the general entropic trend is pretty obvious.
As I write, Starmer’s government is arresting an average of 30 people per day for saying things online that he doesn’t like. His likely successor, Andy Burnham, the former mayor of Greater Manchester, is a less weepy, T-shirt-and-sneaker-sporting duplication of Starmer. The current word is that he favors the socialist Ed Miliband for chancellor. I can understand that. The British economy, though gasping, stubbornly continues to show some signs of life. A Burnham-Miliband dose of increased taxes, Islamophilia, more censorship and an avid pursuit of ruinous net-zero energy policies might well deliver the wished-for coup de grâce. (Speaking of “Islamophilia,” I see that the satirical website Babylon Bee reported on Starmer’s departure with the headline “Prominent Muslim Leader Resigns.”) Will Nigel Farage head off the terminal dégringolade by precipitating an early general election? Stay tuned.
If you like your conjunctions to be constant, rather than intermittent, try socialism. Wherever it triumphs, it brings economic immiseration and coercive state meddling, i.e., tyranny. Is this a matter of causation, an “If A then B: A, ergo B” situation? Who knows. What we do know is that in the real world, it is a reliable prescription for bad things.
The question is, why, given its dismal record, does the dream-that-is-a-nightmare of socialism persist? What makes the human heart so susceptible to the blandishments of socialism? A full answer would take a book, not a column. But the two main ingredients, I think, are a certain species of emotional incontinence on the one hand, along with an envy-inspired “by-any-means-necessary” activism on the other. Jean-Jacques Rousseau is a grandfather of this toxic compact. He loved mankind but was not too keen on particular instances of the species – his numerous illegitimate children, for example, all of whom he consigned to the orphanage (and therefore an early death). Rousseau was all about “changing human nature,” “altering the constitution of man for the purpose of strengthening it.” His heir, Robespierre, articulated the governing spirit of the process when he spoke of “virtue and its emanation, terror.”
For those impervious to the siren call of socialism, its activities in the world seem like the truth according to Hegel, “a bacchanalian whirl in which no member is not drunk.” The sitting New York Democrats that Mamdani’s new squad just defeated are pretty far left. But they are the soul of moderation compared to the newcomers.
Darializa Avila Chevalier, who will be the Democratic candidate for New York’s 13th district, wants to abolish prisons, abolish ICE, abolish borders and defund the police. She thinks “all deportations are wrong” and has called the United States an “effing disgrace.” “I forgot to get napkins,” she wrote online, “so I just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me.”
Claire Valdez (NY-7) and Brad Lander (NY-10) are cut from the same cloth. Grant citizenship and voting rights to illegal aliens? Yep. Seize the property of “bad landlords”? You betcha. Eliminate private health insurance and make taxpayers pony up for all transgender procedures? But of course. Abolish ICE, forgive the $2 trillion of student-loan debt, pack the Supreme Court? Can you doubt it?
A standard option in all current models of socialism is a ferocious anti-Israel sentiment fed, although you are not supposed to notice this, through a noxious current of apparent anti-Semitism. “Israel doesn’t exist,” Chevalier tells her followers, while all three support Hamas and think that Israel’s actions to defend itself in Gaza count as “genocide.”
What will be the upshot or outcome of these political perturbations? The disclaimer found on many financial statements offers a useful reminder: past results are no guarantee of future performance. A persistent gremlin affecting our prognostications is the temptation to extrapolate simply from current trends to future realities. It is easy to discount the presence of countervailing forces.
In Britain, the current of sentiment represented by Nigel Farage’s Reform party and Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain is proving to be irrepressible.
In the US, the socialist wave cresting in blue municipalities breaks against the juggernaut that is MAGA. It is possible that the socialist fantasy overwhelms and impoverishes us all. But since socialism is contrary to human flourishing, it is probable that the socialist onslaught will fail. Reality contains a self-correcting guidance system. That is reason for confidence, though not for complacence.
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