This is so sad. . . evil in our land

“As the left has increasingly exposed itself in the Trump era as rabidly illiberal, irrational, and immoral, it is time for the right to acknowledge that the left is not merely wrong, but evil.

As an ideology, Progressivism – the rebranding of Communism – embraces totalitarianism and absolute statist control, which always and everywhere leads to misery, corruption, and brutality, and never elevates humanity.

Conservatives who believe that it is still possible to reason with the left and engage them in fair-and-square policy debates are clinging to a failed strategy, sadly. We must accept the reality that leftists have long since abandoned rational rules of engagement, if they ever had any; instead, they operate from a hate-filled mob mentality, a bloodlust for power, and a complete absence of moral boundaries. We cannot afford a lack of moral clarity about the undeclared civil war raging across the United States of America.” Richard Helmold  commenting on Mark Tapson article https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/02/leftism-not-just-wrong-evil-mark-tapson/?. . .

“The Democrat Party is the face of Moloch, the Canaanite god whom Milton called the “horrid King besmear'd with blood / Of human sacrifice.” It is a cult of criminality and death. On every political issue, Democrats take the side of chaos and destruction, crime and disorder. They hype the threat of white supremacism while whitewashing Islamic terrorism. They are actively engaged in erasing our history and undermining our rights. They support open borders over national security; sanctuary cities for criminal aliens and the abolishment of ICE over law-abiding citizens and legal immigration; infanticide over the sacredness of human life; the dismantling of Western civilization over its preservation. This is not simply wrong – this is evil.”

Does ideology matter to Trump?

Rush Limbaugh said something interesting today and I paraphrase. Donald Trump really doesn't understand the left; he isn't conservative or liberal. I think that's true--at least I've never heard him say anything about a person's ideology. I seriously doubt he knows Trotsky from Alinsky.  He's a business man accustomed to working with all types. He believes in free markets (sort of) because that's a good business principle. He thinks borders should be secure because he believes why have a border if it is ignored and drugs, criminals, etc. cross over.  It must be a shock to him to be called racist, homophobic and sexist by the middle school mean girls, since before running for President he schmoozed with all types and they fawned over him, invited him to their parties, and told him he was wonderful because of his influence. When John Civil Rights Icon says something stupid and attacks Trump, he just reacts by punching back, and doesn't delve into any socialist twaddle or diversity dribble that has kept that Icon on salary (he got to Icon status by being beaten near to death by Democrats). When the black Congressional lock step club pressure each other to not attend the inauguration and powers higher than them smack around entertainers and school marching bands, Trump takes it personally, but doesn't seem to see the fog of statism in over under around and through it where everyone has to obey, pay a fine, lose their livelihood, be shunned or jailed.

Today's young socialists have not studied history

Some of Bernie's followers (all very young adults) were interviewed with one question, "What is socialism." No one knew. Here is Benjamin Tucker's definition. He was a 19th c. anarchist (what he called the liberty form of socialism, and which sounds a lot like libertarian today) and wanted to distinguish between anarchism and state socialism. One of the best and clearest I've read.

"First, then, State Socialism, which may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by the government, regardless of individual choice. Marx, its founder, concluded that the only way to abolish the class monopolies was to centralize and consolidate all industrial and commercial interests, all productive and distributive agencies, in one vast monopoly in the hands of the State. The government must become banker, manufacturer, farmer, carrier, and merchant, and in these capacities must suffer no competition. Land, tools, and all instruments of production must be wrested from individual hands, and made the property of the collectivity. 

To the individual can belong only the products to be consumed, not the means of producing them. A man may own his clothes and his food, but not the sewing-machine which makes his shirts or the spade which digs his potatoes. Product and capital are essentially different things; the former belongs to individuals, the latter to society. Society must seize the capital which belongs to it, by the ballot if it can, by revolution if it must. Once in possession of it, it must administer it on the majority principle, though its organ, the State, utilize it in production and distribution, fix all prices by the amount of labor involved, and employ the whole people in its workshops, farms, stores, etc. The nation must be transformed into a vast bureaucracy, and every individual into a State official.

Everything must be done on the cost principle, the people having no motive to make a profit out of themselves. Individuals not being allowed to own capital, no one can employ another, or even himself. Every man will be a wage-receiver, and the State the only wage-payer. He who will not work for the State must starve, or, more likely, go to prison. All freedom of trade must disappear. Competition must be utterly wiped out. All industrial and commercial activity must be centered in one vast, enormous, all-inclusive monopoly. The remedy for monopolies is monopoly."

Yes, deaths by war and criminal gun violence are bad—but governments are worse offenders

George Weigel writes that the 19th century ended in August 1914 with the start of WWI and ended in August 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. That was the bloodiest 8 decades in the history of the world, he says.

Yes, there were a lot of wars in the 20th century, but most of the millions who suffered the massacres, tortures and deaths died from governments killing their own people--Soviets starving the Ukrainians, Turks killing the Armenian Christians, Communist Maoists wiping out millions of Chinese, Nazis killing German Jews, the genocide by Pol Pot in Cambodia, Saddam Hussein killing the Kurds and fellow Muslims, genocidal mass slaughter of the Tutsis by the Hutu lead government in Rwanda  and so forth. Their common thread for ruling was statism, sometimes with some ethnic or religious hatred used on the side to make their case.

It comes in many names and versions, but the state owns the people and knows best. In the United States, “we the people” are supposed to control the government.  We have documents that insure this.  So the next time a 9-12 group or a Tea Party gathering demands a smaller government, at least give it some thought.

The state of statism

In our largest cities we have one party control.  That’s statism on a smaller scale--the belief that a government should control either economic or social policy, or both.  Arlington County where all the DC politicians and worker bees live has a 100% Democrat city council and they are asking for more taxes while promising to cut 20 jobs and give up one holiday, but still want a raise for government employees.  Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?  Tiny cuts (which usually don’t materialize for 10 years), big tax increases (which begin right away).  It’s the one party way. Protect your folks, the public service unions.

Also left of center, and siding with the Democrats, is our “free press.”  We don't have a watch dog for the public, so in the largest one party cities like Detroit and Cleveland (Columbus has a Democrat mayor, but has not yet gone completely under due to the state government offices which are more balanced) schools will not educate, the streets and bridges will be unsafe, the crime rate will be high, fathers will not be in the home because mothers are paid to keep them away, and children have no role models.

It is a serious thing to want no conflict between philosophies and parties, or to say "they are all the same." Once upon a time the black man had to go to the back of the line for a job or education. How much better off is he if there is no line at all--which is what Obama's "recovery" has given us by passing out the stimulus money to the unions, banks and weak companies that needed to go bankrupt.  Blacks went to the polls in November with the October labor report showing 40.5 percent unemployment for young blacks, rising from 36.7 percent in September. But none of that mattered to them.  It is a one party system for American blacks, and they’ve got a man, working against their interests, in the White House who promises free stuff without working.

What has Obama done for blacks?

After the election results showed 95% of blacks voted right down racial lines for Obama, someone observed, "But he hasn't done anything for the black community!" Oh, but he has. What do blacks with an unemployment rate of over 14% need most? A job, or course. What has he done for them? Given them free stuff and guaranteed they will be right where he needs them to be while he's off partying with black celebrities at the tippy top of the 1%.

What is harder to imagine is what has he done for evangelical Christians and Roman Catholics.  And yet, many voted for him.  Maybe 50% of Catholics.  They are voting to destroy the finest social system in the world with a network of schools, hospitals, training programs, social workers  through the tearing down of the first amendment rights of all Americans.

Not only have we become America, the land of the takers, but even the givers won’t be allowed to help those in need. The government wants all the power, all the control, all the values.  It’s name is statism.

Rousseau

Glenn Beck's been hitting the progressives pretty hard--and much of what those of us my age and younger (that would be most of the nation) know as the good old USA. Needless to say, we're getting a bit defensive. Oh sure, Hitler and Stalin are flip sides of the same coin and need a good smack, but Teddy Roosevelt? This morning in reading a piece by Nancy Pearcy editor at large of The Pearcey Report, I read this:

"Most of the ideologies that bloodied the 20th century were influenced by Rousseau. His writing inspired Robespierre in the French Revolution, as well as Marx, Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler, and Mao. So if you get a grip on Rousseau's thinking, you have a key to understanding much of the modern world."

She goes on to describe how he hypothesized that human relationships "are not ultimately real; instead they are secondary, or derivative, created by individual choice. . . . his most influential work opens with the famous line, "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." He did not mean chains of political oppression, as we Americans might think. For Rousseau, the really oppressive relationships were personal ones like marriage, family, church, and workplace." And what will liberate us according to Rousseau, she asks?

"The state. The state would destroy all social ties, releasing the individual from loyalty to anything except itself. Rousseau spelled out his vision with startling clarity: "Each citizen would then be completely independent of all his fellow man, and absolutely dependent on the state." No wonder his philosophy inspired so many totalitarian systems."

Rousseau and his mistress abandoned their five children on the steps of a state-run orphanage, Pearcey writes, even though most died or became beggars. Rousseau thought the state better qualified to raise children than the parents. In his own case, he might have had a point.

Today the government approves and encourages aborting them if they are inconvenient or not perfect; it spends their money before they are born turning them into beggars more dependent on the state.

Quotations from "Rousseau," A Faith and Culture Devotional, Daily readings in art, science and life, by Kelly Monroe Kullberg and Lael Arrington, Zondervan, 2009, p. 225-226.

Sarah Palin's charge of death panels

In an article at American Thinker on the existence of “death panels,” the author, Joseph Ashby, says it’s not in HR 3200 because it already exists: “H.R. 1 (more commonly known as the Recovery and Reinvestment Act, even more commonly known as the Stimulus Bill and aptly dubbed the Porkulus Bill) contains a whopping $1.1 billion to fund the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research. And on this council is Dr. Death himself, Rahm Emanuel’s brother, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel.

One of the commenters at this post, Redhawk, analyzes the role of statism in our Congress’s health care plan.

When you get past all the doubletalk, this is what the people who are advocating a government-run healthcare system truly believe. The foundation of the statists' philosophy is that the people in a society are in essence the property of the state. Given limited resources and the state will always claim to be short of resources, the state will decide the extent to which a person will be medically treated for a serious illness, depending upon that person's perceived value to society. To the statist, this makes perfect sense. Of course in actual practice, the final decision can be heavily influenced by how many friends in Washington one can petition, which is a storyline right out of Atlas Shrugged; how one's success in life and in this case life itself will be determined by political pull. Washington apparatchiks and their hangers-on will of course automatically receive the best of care.

I have not read whether this is happening in Britain, but I would be surprised if it were not, since such a system invites corruption. There you can be denied cancer treatment even if you are willing to pay for it out of your own pocket or you may be denied stints if you are above the arbitrary age limit of 59; unless of course you lucky enough to have friends in high places who can make an exception in your case. Otherwise, you have a duty to die. They may or may not decide to pay for the pain medication to relieve your final suffering, since it is all subject to the whim of some bureaucrat. This is the type of system to which we are heading unless we can stop it. We are being asked to quietly accept a socialist plan that promises to improve the healthcare of roughly 20% of the population, many of whom are here illegally, but in doing so will intolerably degrade the healthcare for the rest of us.

HT Murray

Did you see that Sarah's book is already #3 on Amazon and it isn't published yet, and that Glenn Beck's new book is outselling the Kennedy memoirs?