Nobel Prize Economist Friedrich Hayek on This Day in History

This Day in History: Economist Friedrich Hayek was born on this day (May 8) in 1899. He is best known for writing The Road to Serfdom which went on to sell 2 million copies, an outstanding achievement for an economics book.

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Milton Friedman once said of Hayek: "There is no figure who had more of an influence, no person had more of an influence on the intellectuals behind the Iron Curtain than Friedrich Hayek. His books were translated and published by the underground and black market editions, read widely, and undoubtedly influenced the climate of opinion that ultimately brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union."

President Ronald Reagan listed Hayek as among the two or three people who most influenced his philosophy, and Margaret Thatcher often carried one of his books into Parliament with her.

Some great Hayek quotes:

“Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion.”

“If socialists understood economics they wouldn't be socialists.”

“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine the can design.” 

“The more the state "plans" the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.” 

“'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have eroded.”

“Although we had been warned by some of the greatest political thinkers of the nineteenth century, by Tocqueville and Lord Acton, that socialism means slavery, we have steadily moved in the direction of socialism.” 

“There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal. While the first is the condition of a free society, the second means as De Tocqueville describes it, a new form of servitude.”  

Buy: The Folly of Socialism (40 Chapters) for 99 cents on Amazon

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The Discredited Sigmund Freud on This Day in History

This Day in History: Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud was born on this day in 1856. While having a very recognizable name and a far reaching influence, his ideas have not stood the test of time, "Freud has, for the most part, fallen completely out of favor in academia. Virtually no institution in any discipline would dare use him as a credible source. In 1996, Psychological Science reached the conclusion that '[T]here is literally nothing to be said, scientifically or therapeutically, to the advantage of the entire Freudian system or any of its component dogmas.' As a research paradigm, it’s pretty much dead." https://io9.gizmodo.com/why-freud-still-matters-when-he-was-wrong-about-almost-1055800815

Todd Dufresne writes: “Freud is truly in a class of his own...Arguably no other notable figure in history was so fantastically wrong about nearly every important thing he had to say. But, luckily for him, academics have been — and still are — infinitely creative in their efforts to whitewash his errors, even as lay readers grow increasingly dumbfounded by the entire mess.”

The book "Freud: The Making of an Illusion" tells of a young Freud desperate for fame and riches, which he relentlessly pursued by championing one faddish quack remedy after another, backing away when justified criticism made his position untenable, covering his tracks with misleading or even completely false claims about what he’d been up to, then bustling on to the next gold mine.

To add to this, Freud was no stranger to cocaine. According to "Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography" by Dominic Streatfeild, "If there is one person who can be held responsible for the emergence of cocaine as a recreational pharmaceutical, it was Freud." He also got his friends on cocaine as he thought of coke as a miracle drug. He would send them samples to them touting cocaine's potential application as a mental stimulant, a treatment for asthma, eating disorders, an aphrodisiac and as a cure for morphine and alcohol addiction. 

Freud was also a chain-smoker, and as a result, he underwent more than 30 cancer surgeries.

However, there is a great story about Freud and the Gestapo that is worth relating. To be allowed to leave Vienna in 1938, the Nazi Secret Police made Freud write a statement saying that he had been treated fairly. Freud wrote "I can heartily recommend the Gestapo to anyone."

See also 175 Classic PDF Books on Psychology on DVDrom

See also: The Mystery, Interpretation & Psychology of Dreams - 60 Books on Cdrom

Failed Thinker Karl Marx on This Day in History

Buy: The Folly of Socialism (40 Chapters) for 99 cents on Amazon

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This Day in History: This Day in History: German philosopher and economist Karl Marx was born on this day in 1818. Marx has had a far-reaching impact on people and event, more so than any other intellectual in the past century. As Paul Johnson wrote: "Marx was an academic; or rather, and worse, he was a failed academic." He railed against Capitalists exploiting their workers, but at the same time he had a lifelong hard-working maid that he never paid. He was a parasite all his life, sponging off his Capitalist cohort, Freidrich Engels. He had 7 children, 4 of whom died because of the poverty Marx made them endure. Two of his daughters who made it to later life (Laura and Eleanor) committed suicide. His Mother summed up his pathetic life with the following words: "I wish Karl would start accumulating capital instead of just writing about it."

Under Marxism, more than one hundred million people have died.

Marx and Hitler were two sides of the same coin: "Without a doubt, ideologically, economically, and politically, Karl Marx and Adolf Hitler were almost indistinguishable. Like father and son, they were two social justice warriors, determined to weaponize intolerance, socialism, racism, and nationalism for the greater good. In big ways, Marx and Hitler seamlessly fit a similar political profile as both fraternal comrades and combative siblings." L.K. Samuels

Samuels adds: "Don’t let the squabbling between the National Socialists and the communists thugs fool anyone. Socialists are always killing other socialists or communists on a grand scale. These violent duels for power and egos is innate in militant collectivists’ DNA. Stalin killed millions of his Russian comrades, including Trotskyites, old Bolshevik diehards, Soviet military leaders and soldiers, and even German communists. A slew of communist nations have invaded and laid waste to other communist nations over petty ideological differences. Collectives do not get along well together. Just examine Marx’s erratic behavior towards his own comrades, viciously insulting and vilifying his socialist colleagues across Europe. Marx always had to be the center of attention; when one of his devotees outshined him, he would verbally abuse them with racist insults, level patently false accusations, or accuse them of having syphilis." ~Was Adolf Hitler the Son of Karl Marx?

5 Things Marx Wanted to Abolish (Besides Private Property)

https://thebookshelf2015.blogspot.com/2017/11/5-things-marx-wanted-to-abolish-besides.html

Thought-Provoking Quotes about Socialism

https://thebookshelf2015.blogspot.com/2018/08/thought-provoking-quotes-about-socialism.html

How Marx Got on the Wrong Side of History

https://thebookshelf2015.blogspot.com/2018/05/how-marx-got-on-wrong-side-of-history.html

The Stupidity of Karl Marx By Henry Strickland Constable 1896

https://thebookshelf2015.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-stupidity-of-karl-marx-by-henry.html

Bernie Sanders is Not a Social Democrat; He’s a Marxist

https://townhall.com/columnists/johncgoodman/2016/02/13/bernie-sanders-is-not-a-social-democrat-hes-a-marxist-n2118509

"Socialism not only fails to work in reality, it is also malicious in its ethics and morality—even if most of its current adherents believe themselves humane and well-intentioned. At its core, socialism is a difficult and costly system of political economy that the specific conceptions of its moral values do not justify.” - James Otterson in "How Socialism Fails", University Press

“The problem with capitalism is capitalists.
The problem with socialism is socialism.”—Willi Schlamm, Austrian ex-socialist

“A government can’t control the economy without controlling people. And [America’s Founding Fathers] knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose.” -Ronald Reagan

"Someone once said that if an acquaintance says they believe in Astrology that their respect of that person is severely reduced. I feel the same way of someone who says they believe in Socialism." Heinz Schmitz

"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery." -Winston Churchill

"Socialism states that you owe me something simply because I exist. Capitalism, by contrast, results in a sort of reality-forced altruism: I may not want to help you, I may dislike you, but if I don't give you a product or service you want, I will starve. Voluntary exchange is more moral than forced redistribution." -Ben Shapiro

"Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it." -Thomas Sowell

"As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents." George Orwell

"I was guilty of judging capitalism by its operations and socialism by its hopes and aspirations; capitalism by its works and socialism by its literature." – Sidney Hook

"The difference between libertarianism and socialism is that libertarians will tolerate the existence of a socialist community, but socialists can’t tolerate a libertarian community." – David D. Boaz

"War has all the characteristics of socialism most conservatives hate: Centralized power, state planning, false rationalism, restricted liberties, foolish optimism about intended results, and blindness to unintended secondary results." – Joseph Sobran

"Socialists make the mistake of confusing individual worth with success. They believe you cannot allow people to succeed in case those who fail feel worthless." – Kenneth Baker

"It is a socialist idea that making profits is a vice; I consider the real vice is making losses." – Winston Churchill

"All socialism involves slavery." – Herbert Spencer

"Political leaders in capitalist countries who cheer the collapse of socialism in other countries continue to favor socialist solutions in their own. They know the words, but they have not learned the tune." – Milton Friedman

"There seems to be an attitude that government ownership of land is good as long as you call it 'open space'" … All it is is socialism. – Douglas Bruce

"Statism survives by looting; a free country survives by production." – Ayn Rand

"The essential notion of a capitalist society … is voluntary cooperation, voluntary exchange. The essential notion of a socialist society is force." – Milton Friedman

"Government-to-government foreign aid promotes statism, centralized planning, socialism, dependence, pauperization, inefficiency, and waste. It prolongs the poverty it is designed to cure. Voluntary private investment in private enterprise, on the other hand, promotes capitalism, production, independence, and self-reliance." – Henry Hazlit

"A traffic jam is a collision between free enterprise and socialism. Free enterprise produces automobiles faster than socialism can build roads and road capacity." – Andrew Galambos

"The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism, they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened." – Norman Thomas

"Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all." – Frederic Bastiat

"There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism — by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide." – Ayn Rand

"Democracy is indispensable to Socialism." – V.I. Lenin

"Since we are socialists, we must necessarily also be antisemites because we want to fight against the very opposite: materialism and mammonism… How can you not be an antisemite, being a socialist!". Hitler

"The Nazis, who touted their socialism proudly and implemented socialist policies with great consistency, were now being referred to as capitalists for no reason other than they did not fit cleanly into the Soviet-Marxist worldview, and this false narrative survives today." -Chris Calton

"The line between fascism and Fabian socialism is very thin. Fabian socialism is the dream. Fascism is Fabian socialism plus the inevitable dictator." -John T. Flynn

"Democracy is the road to Socialism." – Karl Marx

“Socialism is workable only in heaven where it isn't needed, and in hell where they've got it” -Cecil Palmer quotes

"An inevitable consequence of socialism is the division of society into two groups: those who are consuming government “services” and those who are paying for them." – Lee Robinson

"Socialists like to tout their confiscation and redistribution schemes as noble and caring, but we should ask if theft is ever noble or caring." – Robert Hawes

"Under capitalism man exploits man; under socialism the reverse is true." – Anonymous

"The fatal flaw in socialism is twofold: first, the conceit inherent in the desire to plan the lives of others; second, the force necessary to impose that plan on unwilling subjects. This is not a formula for freedom but for tyranny." – Jim Peron

"We cannot restore traditional American freedom unless we limit the government’s power to tax. No tinkering with this, that, or the other law will stop the trend toward socialism. We must repeal the Sixteenth Amendment." – Frank Chodorov

"Public schools are government-established, politician- and bureaucrat-controlled, fully politicized, taxpayer-supported, authoritarian socialist institutions. In fact, the public-school system is one of the purest examples of socialism existing in America." – Thomas L. Johnson

“Socialism is the religion people get when they lose their religion” -Richard John Neuhaus

"Socialism itself can hope to exist only for brief periods here and there, and then only through the exercise of the extremest terrorism. For this reason it is secretly preparing itself for rule through fear and is driving the word “justice” into the heads of the half-educated masses like a nail so as to rob them of their reason… and to create in them a good conscience for the evil game they are to play." -Nietzsche

"But, as an universal condition of Society, as a panacea for present evils, as the hope of the proletariat, Socialism, in its complete conception, is an absolute and a hideous impossibility."
http://thebookshelf2015.blogspot.com/2018/05/socialism-absolute-and-hideous.html

“Socialism is simply Communism for people without the testosterone to man the barricades” -Gary North

“Socialism is the same as Communism, only better English” -George Bernard Shaw

“For socialists, not just the wealth, but the guilt, must be redistributed” -Andrew Sandlin

“A young man who isn't a socialist hasn't got a heart; an old man who is a socialist hasn't got a head.” -David Lloyd George

“There can be no socialism without a state, and as long as there is a state there is socialism. The state, then, is the very institution that puts socialism into action; and as socialism rests on aggressive violence directed against innocent victims, aggressive violence is the nature of any state.” -Hans-Hermann Hoppe

"We are Socialists, enemies, mortal enemies of the present capitalist economic system with its exploitation of the economically weak, with its injustice in wages, with its immoral evaluation of individuals according to wealth and money instead of responsibility and achievement, and we are determined under all circumstances to abolish this system! And with my inclination to practical action it seems obvious to me that we have to put a better, more just, more moral system in its place, one which, as it were, has arms and legs and better arms and legs than the present one!" by Nazi Gregor Strasser


Six Miracles of Socialism:

There is no unemployment, but no one works.
No one works, but everyone gets paid.
Everyone gets paid, but there is nothing to buy with the money.
No one can buy anything, but everyone owns everything.
Everyone owns everything, but no one is satisfied.
No one is satisfied, but 99 percent of the people vote for the system. – Anonymous

May the 4th Be With You - Today is Star Wars Day

Joseph Campbell and the Mythology of Star Wars

This Day in History: Today is Star Wars Day. May the Fourth be with you. Decades ago I listened to the amazing Bill Moyers/Joseph Campbell interview and learned that the themes in Star Wars are derived from Mythology. Joseph Campbell’s book, "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" tracked common mythological motifs and argued that myths from around the world that have been passed down through generations—like Beowulf or King Arthur—share a basic anatomy. According to Campbell, “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won; the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”

Another writer that many believe Star Wars borrowed heavily from is E.E. 'Doc' Smith, whose science fiction writings included spherical, moon-sized spaceships, smaller, spherical, jet-less fighters with accumulators for beamed power, light swords, telepathic powers, tractor beams, the force, benevolent guardians seeking to fight evil, a dark, unseen enemy seeking galactic domination, special powers running down through family lines, with twins playing a significant role, epic space battles involving fleets of ships, large-scale weapons including a free-roaming planet-sized fortress, training using a helmet with a blast shield, yet able to 'see' due to special powers, passing a ship off as a chunk of loose metal and numerous uses of the word coruscant, a term which had declined in use after the 19th century.

See also Over 250 Books on DVDrom on Mythology, Gods and Legends

See also Norse Mythology and Viking Legends - 115 Books on DVDrom

For a list of all of my disks click here

American Singer Franki Valli on This Day in History

 

This Day in History: American singer Franki Valli was born on this day in 1934. Frankie Valli (whose real name is Francesco Stephen Castelluccio) was known as the frontman of the Four Seasons beginning in 1960. Valli scored 29 top 40 hits, such as "Sherry" (1962), "Big Girls Don't Cry" (1962), "Walk Like a Man" (1963), "Rag Doll" (1964) and "December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night)" (1975). Valli's recording of the song "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" reached number two in 1967. As a solo artist, Valli scored number-one hits with the songs "My Eyes Adored You" (1974) and "Grease" (1978).

"Joe Pesci, the actor well known for his roles in John Hugh's Home Alone and Scoresese's Goodfellas, played a pretty major role in the formation of the group. Growing up near Newark, N.J., young Pesci was friendly with Tommy DeVito and the rest of the band. He connected DeVito with Bob Gaudio, who would later write nearly all of The Four Season’s most popular songs. Later,  when Pesci starred in Scoresese’s Goodfellas with the name Tommy DeVito. To take the inside joke even further, at one point in the film, one character confronts another by saying 'Who the hell do you think you are, Frankie Valli or some kind of big shot?'"  

https://www.greenvilletheatre.org/single-post/2019/05/01/frankie-valli-and-the-four-seasons-fun-facts

Billy Joel's song Uptown Girl was a response to the Four Season's song Rag Doll. 

Franki Valli and the Four Seasons sold 100 million records between 1962-1978, and they've been immortalized in the stage production of The Jersey Boys which was also made into a 2014 movie of the same name, which was directed by Clint Eastwood.

The King James Bible (and the Atheists that Admire It) on This Day in History

 

This Day in History: The King James Bible was published on this day in 1611. Also known as the Authourized Version or the Common Bible, it has cemented its place as a monument in English literature, so much so that it is praised even by atheists. 

Christopher Hitchens paid tribute to the King James Bible by saying, "Though I am sometimes reluctant to admit it, there really is something 'timeless' in the Tyndale/King James synthesis...For generations, it provided a common stock of references and allusions, rivaled only by Shakespeare in this respect...It resounded in the minds and memories of literate people, as well as of those who acquired it only by listening."

Richard Dawkins said of the King James Bible, "Ecclesiastes, in the 1611 translation, is one of the glories of English literature (I'm told it's pretty good in the original Hebrew, too). The whole King James Bible is littered with literary allusions, almost as many as Shakespeare (to quote that distinguished authority Anon, the trouble with Hamlet is it's so full of clichées). In The God Delusion I have a section called 'Religious education as a part of literary culture' in which I list 129 biblical phrases which any cultivated English speaker will instantly recognise and many use without knowing their provenance: the salt of the earth; go the extra mile; I wash my hands of it; filthy lucre; through a glass darkly; wolf in sheep's clothing; hide your light under a bushel; no peace for the wicked; how are the mighty fallen...A native speaker of English who has never read a word of the King James Bible is verging on the barbarian."

Atheist horror author H.P. Lovecraft wrote of the King James Bible: "It is also important that cheaper types of reading, if hitherto followed, be dropped. Popular magazines inculcate a careless and deplorable style which is hard to unlearn, and which impedes the acquisition of a purer style. If such things must be read, let them be skimmed over as lightly as possible. An excellent habit to cultivate is the analytical study of the King James Bible. For simple yet rich and forceful English, this masterly production is hard to equal; and even though its Saxon vocabulary and poetic rhythm be unsuited to general composition, it is an invaluable model for writers on quaint or imaginative themes."

H. L. Mencken described the King James Version as “a mine of lordly and incomparable poetry, at once the most stirring and most touching ever heard of.” To Mencken the KJV was "the most beautiful piece of writing in any language."

Atheist Melvyn Bragg, who actually wrote a book about the KJV (The Book of Books: The Radical Impact of the King James Bible 1611-2011) states: "The King James Bible was the steel of will and belief that forged America and other British colonies. It has inspired missionaries around the globe and consoled the hopeless in their desperation. It was used by the enforcers of slavery and later by the liberators of slaves, and transformed into liberation theology by the slaves themselves. It became the bedding of gospel music and the spirituals which set in motion soul, blues, jazz and rock, the unique cultural gift of America to the world. It has defined and re-defined sexual attitudes. It has fortified and provoked philosophy."

See also Rare Olde English Bibles on DVDrom (Tyndale, Matthews, Coverdale, AV1611 ) and The King James Version Bible Companion: 100 Books on DVD and The History of the English Bible - 125 Books on DVDrom - For a list of all of my ebooks (DVD and Amazon) click here

See also Over 60 Different Editions of the King James Bible on DVDROM

Buy my published Kindle book on Amazon on Forgotten Bible Versions for only 99 cents 

The Mass Suicide of the Town of Demmin on This Day in History

 

This Day in History: On this day (May 1) in 1945, hundreds of people (if not a thousand) killed themselves in the town of Demmin, Germany. The suicides occurred during a mass panic that was provoked by atrocities committed by soldiers of the Soviet Red Army, who had sacked the town the day before, and the feared return of the Russian soldiers was too much to bear. This was the largest mass suicide ever recorded in Germany. The suicide was part of a mass suicide wave amongst the population of Germany where, at the end of the Second World War, 10,000 people killed themselves.

The hatred between Germany and Russia was intense. One Russian intellectual, Ilya Ehrenburg, wrote that, “If you have not killed at least one German a day, you have wasted that day...If you leave a German alive, the German will hang a Russian and rape a Russian woman. If you kill one German, kill another — there is nothing more amusing for us than a heap of German corpses.”

This Kindle book is now available on Amazon by clicking here...and it is only $1.99
See my blog listing for this here.

The Mysteries of Death - 250 Books to Download