It's been 30 years since I bought my first house in Tujunga, CA, a small suburb on the edge of the San Fernando Valley. Several months after the sale, my real estate agent called me on the telephone and offered me a position near the top of “pyramid.” I said no. Rather than deter him, he countered with, he was going make his pyramid scheme better than the others by keeping the membership small. For those of you that don’t know what a pyramid money scheme is, it’s a scam that had a short, but very popular life back in the 1980’s. It was presented as a club, where you would invest $100 for a position in the pyramid. The $100 would go to the members in the level above you in the pyramid, where they would keep $50 and send $50 to those on the level above them. Obviously nobody is going to make money unless you’re near the top level, but a lot of people lost a lot of money, thinking the scam would make them rich, without really thinking it through. This is much the same argument for socialism.
As marxists, past and present, have tried to make socialism work, it continues to fail, generally degrading into violence and death. Still, the so-called Intelligentsia keeps trying to re-package socialism, hoping this time they’ll get it right. Socialism always sounds like the right thing to do. Socialism is based loosely on “to each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”. It’s the belief that every job in the collective is equal and necessary and anyone who raises himself above the collective, is doing so on the back of the common worker. So, the money of the rich is re-distributed through the government. The government takes that money, along with a large portion of the workers income, and re-distributes it back in the form of entitlements. The entitlements of socialism are food, housing, employment, healthcare, and education. While the Declaration of Independence states that government shall not deny a person’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, socialism demands they are the responsibility of government. To many, this sounds to good to be true, which it is. The problem with socialism is it sounds good, but it never works. Like the pyramid scheme, it has fundamental flaws. The most basic flaw is socialism does not take into account the human condition. First and foremost entitlements are very expensive and socialism has no economic engine to pay for them. So, like Greece, the state runs out of money to re-distribute and the workers face crippling debt and fiscal austerity.
Still, those that espouse socialism believe themselves on a higher intellectual level. President Obama's statement “So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations”, shows the elitists attitude of all socialist; The message is pretty straight forward, the American people are stupid; they’re stupid and racist; they’re a bunch of stupid, racist hillbillies, clinging to their guns and religion.. ; and we hear this mantra over and over. It’s the Bill Maher syndrome, “You can’t get Americans to agree on anything. Sixty-percent? Sixty-percent of people don’t believe in evolution in this country. He just needs to drag them to it. Like I just said, they’re stupid”, and racist, Bill, don’t forget racist. The truth of course is nothing is farther from the truth. The mere fact that the left is using race to try and silence dissent, shows how sensitive the American people are to the issue race, but the Obama administration continues the baiting unabated.
There is one area where the Left is correct, many Americans are ignorant; but ignorant of socialism. This is the result of the Progressive Left hiding their agenda from the American people. They know that if the American people really understood socialism, they would vote it down into oblivion like they did the progressive agenda in 1940’s. President Obama in a recent statement, described his political reality saying information is now a "distraction" and “putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy.” Really? And all this time I thought information and knowledge was good for our democracy. Failing that, the Left attempts to frame socialism as a bastardized version of Martin Luther King Jr's fight for “social justice,” but rather than justice they offer an overreaching government, seeking equality using the re-distribution of wealth. But the good thing is, Americans do not need to know about socialism, because they already know that freedom and liberty are god given rights. Unlike any other country, Americans define themselves by their Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Despite the revisionist history currently taught in our schools, the American people believe in freedom beyond all else. We maintain the freedom to protect the possibility of becoming successful, at the risk of failure, as the rest of the world resigns itself to mediocrity. Americans believe not only in their exceptionalism, but in the exceptionalism of the individual. We are not part of the collective, we are Americans and we know tyranny when we see it. We may not know the genus or species of the tyranny, but we know how to kill it.
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Brad, I recognize and understand that capitalism is the engine that drives a democratically and free nation.
ReplyDeleteBut what happens to society, a nation, when the Country’s leading capitalists appears to have have sold out their Country? Whether utilizing Harvard financial engineers to design a systematic funnel of funds found in a loophole, or [non]regulation, until the system fails leaving taxpayers to foot the bill of recovery; or, the ongoing gutting of industries- overpaying execs, overloading debts, loss of employee pensions, until the doors shut and jobs outsourced to Malaysia, in the factory newly built. Or simply reducing work hours to less than 30 per week, removing all types of “full time” benefits for the sake of profits. Like WALMART, whose part of employee training is how to apply for foodstamps, welfare, etc. and has added over 2 billion in welfare/medical costs because they choose not to pay a living wage; while a textile plant in Malaysia burns down, killing over 200 workers, locked inside the factory as it burned, made 19 cents per hour, 18 hours a day, 7 days a week, no breaks, no vacation, no medical- even for the few survivors…. This is actually how CORPORATE AMERICA, would like to do business here, but wishes not to answer to mass murder complaints.
Meanwhile, all the money that has risen to the top, slipped through loopholes, hid away in offshore accounts is doing absolutely nothing to stimulate the economy. Whether you like it or not social security, medicare and welfare has accomplished many of it’s tasks; easing much economic pain, that was not available in the 1930’s.
And considering history, the biggest threat of bringing communism, socialism into America is the behavior of greedy old men who believe in nothing but money and power. And feel more powerful the more they watch the people of the Country struggle, sacrifice, go hungry, lose hope.
When power and greed corrupt the very people a nation is dependent on to inspire, encourage and nurture it’s greatness, and when the people know and have the drive and desires but keep finding themselves crushed, or their family.. actually I am inclined to start labeling ECONOMIC TERRORISTS, revoke citizenships, confiscate all US holdings, and property, apply this to debts or programs and send them to live in their tax haven country, but not in America. With Countrymen like this, we are doomed anyway.
We are not doomed but the current state of our government and especially the control of the world banking cartels means it is inevitable that the system will collapse. The nature of government is the larger it gets the more corrupt it will become. When the collapse comes we can either re-instate our Constitutional Democratic Republic or allow Socialism and it's lies and broken promises to remove all individual rights and bring on the tyranny of collectivism. This is the battle we must win.
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