Essays in Idleness

The essence of democratic capitalism is theft; the essence of revolutionary socialism is murder; and then there is democratic socialism which is approximately halfway between theft and murder. Given the choice, I am partial to being robbed.

The (“democratic”) Canadian government has published its annual fiscal showpiece, in which spending will be increased by $67 billion and taxes by $12 billion. Both numbers may be considered “conservative” estimates.

Mr Stephen Harper, the last formally Conservative prime minister, noted that the current deficit is in excess of his last entire budget. (He was thrown out of office in 2015.) In other words, had he eliminated the income tax, sales taxes, customs, excise, and every other source of revenue, and merely spent what he proposed to spend, he would still have run a smaller deficit than his much-photographed successor, Mr Justin Trudeau.

Some similar observation may be made on behalf of citizens in most other “democratic” states. This is what happens when government is put in the hands of persons of cruelly limited intelligence, but narcissistic charm. We have no reason to envy the Americans, or the British, or the Dutch, or the Germans, or the French, &c. I currently except the Italians and Hungarians, but only until their next election.

Spending is out of control throughout the West, with inflation following, and economic self-destruction has been redoubled by phanatic environmental legislation. This is not a summary of the deceit that underlies all liberal politics: I merely indicate where our hopes should not lie. The old Churchillian argument, that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others, prevails chiefly among its elected beneficiaries.