Tag Archives: socialism

IT WAS NOT ONLY ABOUT STUFF

Posted on November 11, 2012 | Leave a comment

Rush Limbaugh and much of the punditry have been charging forth with the exclamation that Obama’s victory was all about “free stuff.”  It was about free stuff but it wasn’t all about free stuff.

If it were all about free stuff how would you explain George Soros.  He didn’t back Obama to get a free phone and food stamps.  If color didn’t play a part how do you explain why 97% of voters in 13 heavily black Philadelphia districts voted for Obama?  If it was all about getting free stuff how do you explain the overwhelming support of millionaires and billionaires in Hollywood who stand to see their net incomes disproportionately reduced by Obama’s vow that he will raise their taxes?

It was about free stuff from phones to Obamacare, but it was also about color, guilt and a collection of true believers, the supporters who Lenin dubbed useful idiots.  The election was about a lot of things.

When over the years you have lost academia, the youth, the main stream media, the entertainment industry, voting immigrants, the Jewish vote and even the conservationists, by what reasoning do you think you can win an election against a black man who, in addition to the above has over 90% of the black vote?

The Great American Experiment lifted more people out of poverty than any other form of government in history but now we are going to try something else.  To paraphrase Winston Churchill the voters have chosen to abandon the path of unequal prosperity and start down the road to equal misery.

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Posted in Political philosophy, Uncategorized

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THE WORD “AUSTERITY” IS PROPAGANDIC

Posted on October 25, 2012 | 1 comment

Many words are chosen and brought into common use to further an agenda.  Our favorite example is “Capitalism”, a term that implies a system based on money, a system based on wealth.  Thus a system which is based on the freedom of everyman to exchange goods and services with his neighbor has become known by a name that implies something quite different.  The word “Capitalism” comes with an agenda.  Words that come with an agenda are propagandic.  Most people would look unfavorably on a system built around wealth but who could be against a system built on ‘pleasant companionship with friends or associates’?  There was a reason Karl Marx chose to identify the two systems as Capitalism and Socialism rather than as Free Markets and Government Controlled.

Now we look at “austerity.”  Say what you will about European Socialism, it does provide a comfortable life style.  Savor six week vacations, short working hours, retirement at age 55 on a government guaranteed income sufficient to live in modest comfort.  Some would argue that you give up many individual freedoms in exchange for that.  However, I ask how can you give up something you never had?

Merriam-Webster defines austerity as “stern and cold in appearance or manner, giving little or no scope for pleasure.”  That is not at all what advocates of “austerity” in Europe are calling for.  What they want is a responsible government that does not spend what it doesn’t have.  Yet they allow themselves to be known by a word that would identify them as seeking an uncaring government that leaves little or no scope for pleasure.  Thus applied, the word austerity is propagandic.

The irony of propagandic is the acceptance and use of words by the targets against whom the term was coined.  Even Milton Friedman called the Free Market system Capitalism.

 

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Posted in Political philosophy

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OBAMA’S BRAND OF SOCIALISM

Posted on October 20, 2012 | Leave a comment

The problem with pure (Marxist) Socialism is it impoverishes the people. The problem with European Socialism is it is not sustainable. The problem with Capitalism is it rewards people according to their capability, which is to say unequally. An additional problem with Barack Hussein Obama’s socialism is it is based on rage not on benevolence.

For a prime example of pure socialist government we need look no further than Russia following the 1917 Revolution. The Revolution was born of rage and led by a man obsessed with power. The people were impoverished before Lenin came to power and remained impoverished for nearly 200 years after. Lenin didn’t debate his political adversaries; he simply killed or imprisoned them. Marxist socialism is only sustainable by tyranny. More recently, consider the need for the Berlin Wall and the desperation of the Cuban boat people.

Socialism can be born of intended benevolence as well as rage. Fidel Castro’s Cuba is a good example. After more than 50 years of Socialism that began with benevolent intent, only Michael Moore and Rev. Wright believe the Cuban people are better off in Cuba than the American people are in America. Pure Socialism, which usually goes by the name Communism, has no private sector to generate wealth and thus it impoverishes the people from the outset.

On the other hand, it can be argued that Western European Socialism which allows for a private sector provides greater benevolence to the people for a time, but only while the money lasts. Then what? The world is about to find out, if not in this European crisis then in the next one.

And what of Obama’s brand of Socialism? It doesn’t matter because he is not going to be re-elected. If we are wrong, tyranny won’t be very far behind. In fact, soft tyranny has already started; ask the former GM dealers who didn’t support Obama.

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KRUGMAN ARGUES THAT GREECE AND SPAIN ARE VICTIMS

Posted on September 28, 2012 | 2 comments

Paul Krugman, ever the liberal, is less vituperative than usual in today’s column in the New York Times.  It is entitled Europe’s Austerity Madness and is well worth reading.  Not for the column’s correctness but for its clarity.  He outlines with rare accuracy the predominant views of the cause of Europe’s financial woes and the solution for them.

First we must note that what passes for the Right in most of Europe would be called Liberal in the U.S.  This places Krugman’s argument more in the Socialist camp than Liberal.  He says of the European Right,

Talk to German officials and they will portray the euro crisis as a morality play, a tale of countries that lived high and now face the inevitable reckoning.

And fear of a backlash from voters who believe, wrongly, that they’re being put on the hook for the consequences of southern European irresponsibility leaves German politicians unwilling to approve essential emergency lending to Spain and other troubled nations unless the borrowers are punished first.

Despite the insertion of the word “wrongly”, Krugman has done a good job of stating the argument coming from Europe’s Right.  One other fault to find, it’s not punishment that’s sought; it’s bearing the consequences of one’s own decisions.  If you choose to live beyond your means don’t ask someone else to pay for it.

In Krugman’s view,

More austerity serves no useful purpose; the truly irrational players here are the allegedly serious politicians and officials demanding ever more pain.

Consider Spain’s woes. What is the real economic problem? Basically, Spain is suffering the hangover from a huge housing bubble, which caused both an economic boom and a period of inflation that left Spanish industry uncompetitive with the rest of Europe.

Spending was not the problem and austerity is not the solution.  Greece and Spain are victims of a housing boom and collapse that occurred in the private sector.  The fault is with other nations in the Eurozone that are failing in their moral obligation to redistribute some of their relative wealth to where it is needed.  Inferred in that view is the notion that the greed of capitalism was the source of the problem and socialism is the solution.  Get the cause wrong and so it will be with the solution.

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Posted in Economy, Opinion, Political philosophy

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THE ANTITHESIS OF WINSTON CHURCHILL

Posted on September 23, 2012 | Leave a comment

President Barack Hussein Obama

One of the first things Barack Obama did upon occupying the Oval Office was to remove the bust of Winston Churchill from the White House and send it back to the people of England.  It was a deliberate insult, equivalent in diplomatic circles to the secular act of attending a cocktail party and walking up to one of your best and oldest friends and saying straight to his face “I now despise you.”  It was an incivility unbecoming of any person, beneath the dignity of a world leader and confirmation that we had elected our first un-American president.


Common wisdom says Obama’s act of returning the sculpture was the product of an unsatisfied rage over Britain’s history of colonialism, particularly with respect to Kenya.  And that is probably correct.  But there is another reason why Obama might harbor a great bitterness toward Churchill.  Winston Churchill stood strong against Barack Obama’s chosen style of deep Socialist government.

Sir Winston said,

You may, by the arbitrary and sterile act of Government—for remember, Governments create nothing and have nothing to give but what they have first taken away—you may put money in the pocket of one set of Englishmen, but it will be money taken from the pockets of another set of Englishmen, and the greater part will be spilled on the way.

And another,

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 is no longer with us and no man of his stature is alive to speak for us today.  The job is left to smaller voices, like this very small one, to convey messages of success in place of failure, common sense in the face of ignorance, messages of love and ambition to counter the gospel of envy and to tell the story of virtue inherent in a system that leads to the sharing not of misery, but of prosperity.

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ABOUT CHAPT 6 of RADICAL-in-CHIEF

Posted on August 16, 2012 | Leave a comment

 

The revelations in Chapter 6 of Radical-in-Chief would be devastating to Obama’s chances of re-election if those revelations were better known.

Spending the nation into bankruptcy may be just overzealousness on the President’s part.  It is, however, totally consistent with a strategy promoted among hard core socialists in the community from which Barack Obama emerged.  Socialist scholar Peter Dreier advocates driving the United States into insolvency as a plan.  Others put it forth as one alternative in a win-win situation.  You pile on the social programs and entitlements until you either have a socialist nation or an insolvent one.  In either case you win because in the latter case, capitalism takes the hit as a failure leaving socialism to proclaim itself to be the cure.

In either case America would be transformed into something it has never been.  And that is exactly what Obama said was his goal.  Our first part of the Chapter 6 review will be published on Sunday.

 

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ROMNEY PICKS PAUL RYAN FOR VP SLOT

Posted on August 11, 2012 | Leave a comment

Ryan is a high risk high reward choice.  High risk because he will not bring in any particular voting group, such as Rubio would have done with Hispanics for instance.  High risk because it leaves the team vulnerable to attack for lack of experience in the field of foreign affairs.  Neither of the candidates have good credentials in this area.

High reward because there could not be a better team for saving the country from bankruptcy.  And if bankruptcy were allowed to occur it would spell the end of capitalism in America as we know it.  Prosperity would fall across the board along with it.  You saw what happened in France.  When threatened with insolvency the solution cannot be to continue down the same path and even add a benefit or two.  Yet that’s what the voters chose and hard core Socialists knew the people would choose it.

Austerity never sells very well in the voting booth.  On the other hand, the promises of Socialism are very appealing.  It’s only the reality that stinks.

If Obama sticks with Biden, you wont want to miss the VP debate.

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OBAMA IS RIGHT ABOUT THAT!

Posted on July 17, 2012 | 2 comments

At a campaign stop in Cincinnati Obama paused in the lobby of the Music Hall to say a few words to the waiting crowd. He told them “This is going to be an even more important election than 2008 because we’re going to be talking about two fundamentally different visions for the country.” He could not be more correct.

However, he doesn’t spell out exactly what his vision is. In 2008 the mantra was Hope and Change. Hope for what? Change to from what to what? Barack Obama was speaking to two audiences with the same words. One audience heard more openness in government, better education, tax reform, more accomplishment and less politicking in Washington. These were people who believe in America, wanted to improve it and voted for him.

The very same slogan of Hope and Change spoke to the other audience as a promise for total transformation of America as we know it. This message is the one heard by people like Michelle who can find nothing in America’s past or present to proud of, but who see only a country that enriched itself on slavery and continues to be an oppressor to this day. The free market system that Marx called capitalism is the problem; socialism is the answer; total transformation from one to the other is the promise of hope and change.

The latter is Obama’s true message but only a small group knew it in 2008. People like Saul Alinsky’s son, Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright and the denizens of community organizing were aware of the goal. Four years later Barack Obama still remains an enigma to many. He defines his vision for America simply as “Forward”. Forward to where? Forward to what? He doesn’t say. Progressives know. Do you?

You should, because you will be voting for one of two fundamentally different visions for the country.

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Posted in Opinion, Political polemics

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INCOME DISPARITY

Posted on April 19, 2012 | Leave a comment

A picture of income disparity

Vertical scale = per capita income Horizontal scale = population segments

This chart was published in Mother Jones to make some point or another about the shame of income disparity in America.  The chart is taken from a book titled “The Haves and the Have-Nots,” by the World Bank economist Branko Milanovic. I don’t know why Milanovic selected these countries and can only surmise it was because they were the three fastest growing major economies in the world over some recent time frame.

What the chart says to me is (1) the poorest group in the U.S. is infinitely better off than the poorest group in the other nations, (2) income disparity is the least in the U. S.  This is apparent all along the scale from the most impoverished to the wealthiest as shown by the relative flatness of the U.S. curve, (3) whatever faults the American economic system may have, they are insignificant when compared to the other systems because every group is better off in America, particularly the lower income ones.  Mother Jones picked a rose and called it a thorn.

China is a socialist country; India is not; Brazil is somewhere in between.  Nevertheless, the chart is a good illustration of the superiority of an economic system that incentivizes individual entrepreneurialism and protects the rewards for success with a healthy respect for property rights.  It’s a fact of life that equal treatment is bound to produce unequal results because people are not equal.  The capitalistic system gets the best from the best; socialism does not.  And if China can be taken as an example, socialism doesn’t reduce income disparity either.

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Posted in Economy, Political philosophy

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OCCUPY OAKLAND – THE MOST TELLING

Posted on October 18, 2011 | Leave a comment

This is a powerful video.  If you still have questions in your mind on what the Occupy movement is about, this is the video will remove all doubt.

The existence of sizable groups of people embracing the beliefs expressed in the video is not a new phenomenon.  As Stanley Kurtz explains in his book  RADICAL-IN-CHIEF, Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism, this is the world Obama chose in his youth.  The question is did he ever leave it?  His actions as President are consistent with the notion he did not.

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Posted in Opinion, Political philosophy, Political polemics, Videos

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