About
1980. Ronald Reagan is elected for President of the United States, on a platform of vindicating America and consigning communism to the ash-heep of history. Newly elected prime minister Margaret Thatcher tells the conservative party “You turn if you want to. The Lady’s not for turning“, as a response to allegations that she will renege on her hard-nosed economic strategy. In Denmark, my place of birth, the economy is balancing on the verge of total collapse after decades of social-democratic mismanagement, a fact even the Social Democrats must eventually come to terms with. It eventually paves the way for a decade of liberal/conservative rule. In the US a cultural revolution is slowly mobilizing as Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson and other no-nonense individualists, have started a landslide of movies that rail against the choking, pencil-pushing bureaucracy and patronizing maternalism that has engulfed the government in the wake of the revolution of 68. It is truly a triumph for liberty and the progression of mankind. Oh yea, and during the winter, I am born.
Today the right-wing revolution has worn off, and more or less transformed into ideological apathy. Inexplicably, large parts of the left-wing still feel caught in an incessant blizzard of right-wing tyranny – but I suppose this is more of a testimony to their delusional perceptions of reality, than evidence produced by rigorous, fact-based analysis. On the contrary, at least in Europe, the ghost of socialism continues to haunt humanity, as capitalism and free markets are frequently associated with social mass-graves, rampant poverty, disenfranchisement and militant warmongering. Keynesianism is being construed more as an economic truth, than a disputed theory in high-school material, and the view of the world economy appears conspicuously medieval, as the recurring mercantilist arguments against free-trade in the media are a testimony to. The fact that George W. Bush is so frequently being construed as a protagonist of classical liberalism, capitalism and minimal-statism, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, demonstrates how warped ideological perceptions have become after almost half a century of undisputed left-wing cultural dominance. The aim of this blog is to bring more nuances to the debate, and correct some of the most blatant errors that are being reproduced on a daily basis. Being critical can actually mean other things than being left-wing.
Oh, and the name? Well, first of all, you gotta have a name for a blog, second I did not want to find my self locked in with the political views of some specific ideology or person (real or fictitious), so that excluded any sort of political name. I always liked to draw, and I once wanted to make a site called ”The Vanishing Point” with some of my drawings, but since I gave up on that project long time ago, I thought that the name could act as a suitable allegory for the theme of this site (“Framing Issues in a Deeper Perspective” – well, that and maybe my predilection for American 70s muscle cars).
March 2008
Martin Rannje
