Tag Archive for: socialism

When Democrats Say ‘the People,’ They Mean ‘the Government’

In his inaugural address, Donald Trump announced that,

“today we are not merely transferring power from one Administration to another, or from one party to another — but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C., and giving it back to you, the American People. For too long, a small group in our nation’s Capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished — but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered — but the jobs left, and the factories closed. The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country…. That all changes — starting right here, and right now, because this moment is your moment: it belongs to you.”

These were stirring words, but they were the sort of thing presidents have said for ages. Back in his first inaugural address in 1913, Woodrow Wilson decried the fact that “the great Government we loved has too often been made use of for private and selfish purposes, and those who used it had forgotten the people.” In his first inaugural address in 1953, Dwight D. Eisenhower asserted that “we, the people, elect leaders not to rule but to serve.” And in his January 1996 state of the union address, Bill Clinton declared: “We know big government does not have all the answers. We know there’s not a program for every problem. We have worked to give the American people a smaller, less bureaucratic government in Washington. And we have to give the American people one that lives within its means. The era of big government is over… Our goal must be to enable all our people to make the most of their own lives — with stronger families, more educational opportunity, economic security, safer streets, a cleaner environment in a safer world.”

However, as Rating America’s Presidents: An America-First Look at Who Is Best, Who Is Overrated, and Who Was An Absolute Disaster explains, Trump’s declaration that he was transferring power back to the people actually heralded a move away from big government, not toward it. Trump’s words didn’t herald a push to expand government power under the guise of working for the people. On the contrary, he was determined to expand the freedom Americans enjoyed and roll back government power. A new era had begun in American politics: for the first time in over a century, the rule of “the people” did not mean the rule of the government.

This equation has been taken for granted since the election of 1896, when a key issue was currency. The Republican platform committed the party to the gold standard, which prevented the production of so much currency as to lead to inflation. A minority of Republicans and a significant majority of Democrats, however, supported the free coinage of silver, which would lead to inflation and thereby make it easier for farmers to pay off their debts. That rapidly rising prices were rendering the life savings of Americans essentially worthless did not trouble the silver advocates, who cloaked their case for what was essentially the government’s assumption of the debts of private citizens in the language of support for the plight of the common man. Forgotten in all the controversy was that when the government does something, it is the taxpayers who pay for it.

President Grover Cleveland supported the gold standard, but toward the end of his second term, he was deeply unpopular, and the silver forces among the Democrats were restive. At the Democratic National Convention, a handsome and vigorous thirty-six-year-old congressman from Nebraska named William Jennings Bryan electrified the delegates with a speech in favor of the free coinage of silver that is one of the most celebrated pieces of oratory in American history. “You come to us,” Bryan declared, “and tell us that the great cities are in favor of the gold standard; we reply that the great cities rest upon our broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.”

Rating America’s Presidents explains that Bryan sounded notes of class warfare that would become ever more common in American politics: “We do not come as aggressors. Our war is not a war of conquest; we are fighting in the defense of our homes, our families, and posterity. We have petitioned, and our petitions have been scorned; we have entreated, and our entreaties have been disregarded; we have begged, and they have mocked when our calamity came. We beg no longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more. We defy them!” In conclusion, he thundered: “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”

In a frenzy of enthusiasm over this populist appeal, the Democrats nominated Bryan for president. This marked a sea change for the Democratic Party, as the party that had always favored a limited central government now began to advocate for a massive increase of federal control over the economy, under the cloak of a concern for the common man.

Bryan lost, and lost two more times, but his ideas took hold. By the time of the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Democratic Party, and a significant and growing portion of the American public, took it for granted that taking an industry or sector of the economy out of private hands and placing it under government control was tantamount to giving it to “the people.” It is such a compelling sleight of hand that Communist regimes also used it for decades.

But then came Trump, who actually meant “the people” when he said “the people.” And that’s one principal reason why the statists who hitherto championed themselves as guardians of the interests of “the people” hate him with such incandescent intensity.

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De Blasio Quotes Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto in Discussion on Relationship with NYC Business Community

No pretense anymore. None. The Mayor of the capital of capitalism is imposing governance based on the most brutal, anti-human ideology in human history.

The Communists’ chief purpose is to destroy every form of independence—independent work, independent action, independent property, independent thought, an independent mind, or an independent man. Conformity, alikeness, servility, submission and obedience are necessary to establish a Communist slave-state. Ayn Rand

[…]

It is the Communists’ intention to make people think that personal success is somehow achieved at the expense of others and that every successful man has hurt somebody by becoming successful. It is the Communists’ aim to discourage all personal effort and to drive men into a hopeless, dispirited, gray herd of robots who have lost all personal ambition, who are easy to rule, willing to obey and willing to exist in selfless servitude to the State. Ayn Rand

Who will he quote next? Hitler?

De Blasio Quotes Marx’s Communist Manifesto in Discussion on Relationship with NYC Business Community

By: Zachary Evans,National Review, July 24, 2020

New York mayor Bill de Blasio quoted Karl Marx when outlining the relationship he wanted his office to have with the city’s business community, in an appearance on The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC.

Host Brian Lehrer asked de Blasio how the mayor was approaching businesses for help with recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. Lehrer said that the mayor was not known for extensive outreach to the business community given his focus on issues of wealth inequality.

“There’s an underlying truth in the fact that my focus has not been on the business community and the elite,” de Blasio said. “I am tempted to borrow a quote from Karl Marx here…”

“They’ll love that on Wall Street,” Lehrer interjects.

“Yes they will,” de Blasio laughs. “There’s a famous quote that ‘the state is the executive committee of the bourgeoisie,’ and I use that openly to say no, I read that as a young person and thought, well, that’s not the way it’s supposed to be.”

The quote comes from the first chapter of Marx’s Communist Manifesto, in which Marx outlines his theory of the progressive advancement of the class of the bourgeoisie at the expense of the proletariat.

The mayor continued in the interview, “We need to work with the business community, we will work with the business community, but the city government represents the people, represents working people….A lot of folks have just sort of hit a wall when I say guys, you’re gonna have to pay more taxes, and we’re gonna have policies that favor working people more.”

De Blasio ended by saying he knows that many businesses want to help with a “comeback” for the city, and that his administration “really appreciate[s] that.”

The interview was not the first time de Blasio has quoted a communist figure. In 2019, the mayor apologized after quoting communist revolutionary Che Guevara at a rally of striking airport workers in Miami.

“I did not know the phrase I used in Miami today was associated with Che Guevara & I did not mean to offend anyone who heard it that way. I certainly apologize for not understanding that history,” de Blasio wrote on Twitter after backlash from Miami’s Latino community, many of whom are Cuban exiles.


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Pence: ‘Socialism Has Failed … Freedom Works’ [Video]

Vice President Mike Pence warned a gathering of conservative activists Thursday about the perils of socialism and its historical record of failure.

“Socialism has failed everywhere it has been tried, in every era in every continent. Freedom works,” Pence told a cheering crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference, known as CPAC. “It was freedom and not socialism that ended slavery, ended two world wars, [and] has made America a beacon of hope.”

The vice president, tasked with leading the government’s response to the coronavirus, also said Americans “expect us to work together” to keep the public safe.

Pence repeated President Donald Trump’s vow that “America will never be a socialist country” as he noted that the ideology has gained in popularity among lawmakers on the left in Congress as well as on college campuses.


In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>


Socialism is being sold as a promise of better health care and a cleaner environment, Pence said.

“The reality of socialism is different,” the vice president said. “The truth is, citizens in the most free countries in the world earn seven times more than citizens in the least free countries.”

Pence noted Venezuela’s grave problems and shortages as the country is in the midst of a struggle for freedom against what the Trump administration considers dictator Nicolas Maduro’s illegitimate government.

“Venezuela was once the second-wealthiest country in our hemisphere,” Pence said. “Then we wake up after a decade of a socialist dictatorship. Almost 5 million people in that country have fled to neighboring lands.”

Pence spoke about a woman from Venezuela who said her grandchildren had to rise at 4 a.m. to get a ticket to stand in line to buy a piece of bread in the afternoon.

“This president and this administration will continue to stand with the people of Venezuela,” Pence said.

The vice president also said the Democratic Party has embraced socialism.

“Whether it’s called ‘Medicare for All’ or a ‘Green New Deal,’ Democrats have embraced socialism,” he said. “History tells us it has literally impoverished millions of people and robbed the liberty of generations.”

Pence began by speaking about the coronavirus one day after Trump put the vice president in charge of the federal government’s response. The vice president said:

We’re all in this together. This is not the time for partisanship. The American people expect us to work together. … I promise you this administration will work with leaders in both parties, on the state and local level. This president will always put the health and safety of America first.

Pence said the White House’s coronavirus task force has met daily and that as of Thursday, 15 known cases of the disease have been detected in the United States.

“The risk to the American public remains low,” Pence said. “We are ready for anything.”

CPAC, the largest annual national gathering of conservative activists, runs Thursday through Saturday at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, just outside Washington.

COLUMN BY

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Lucas is also the author of “Tainted by Suspicion: The Secret Deals and Electoral Chaos of Disputed Presidential Elections.” Send an email to Fred. Twitter: @FredLucasWH.

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The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

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Of Workers and Wealth

Pope Leo XIII: Whether we have wealth or lack it makes no difference. What matters is to justly use what we have, especially if we are rich.


The great mistake made in regard to the matter now under consideration is to take up with the notion that class is naturally hostile to class, and that the wealthy and the working men are intended by nature to live in mutual conflict. So irrational and so false is this view that the direct contrary is the truth.

Just as the symmetry of the human frame is the result of the suitable arrangement of the different parts of the body, so in a State is it ordained by nature that these two classes should dwell in harmony and agreement, so as to maintain the balance of the body politic. Each needs the other: capital cannot do without labor, nor labor without capital. Mutual agreement results in the beauty of good order, while perpetual conflict necessarily produces confusion and savage barbarity.

Now, in preventing such strife as this, and in uprooting it, the efficacy of Christian institutions is marvellous and manifold. First of all, there is no intermediary more powerful than religion (whereof the Church is the interpreter and guardian) in drawing the rich and the working class together, by reminding each of its duties to the other, and especially of the obligations of justice.

Of these duties, the following bind the proletarian and the worker: fully and faithfully to perform the work which has been freely and equitably agreed upon; never to injure the property, nor to outrage the person, of an employer; never to resort to violence in defending their own cause, nor to engage in riot or disorder; and to have nothing to do with men of evil principles, who work upon the people with artful promises of great results, and excite foolish hopes which usually end in useless regrets and grievous loss.

The following duties bind the wealthy owner and the employer: not to look upon their work people as their bondsmen, but to respect in every man his dignity as a person ennobled by Christian character. They are reminded that, according to natural reason and Christian philosophy, working for gain is creditable, not shameful, to a man, since it enables him to earn an honorable livelihood; but to misuse men as though they were things in the pursuit of gain, or to value them solely for their physical powers – that is truly shameful and inhuman.

Again justice demands that, in dealing with the working man, religion and the good of his soul must be kept in mind. Hence, the employer is bound to see that the worker has time for his religious duties; that he be not exposed to corrupting influences and dangerous occasions; and that he be not led away to neglect his home and family, or to squander his earnings.

Furthermore, the employer must never tax his work people beyond their strength, or employ them in work unsuited to their sex and age. His great and principal duty is to give every one what is just. Doubtless, before deciding whether wages are fair, many things have to be considered; but wealthy owners and all masters of labor should be mindful of this – that to exercise pressure upon the indigent and the destitute for the sake of gain, and to gather one’s profit out of the need of another, is condemned by all laws, human and divine.

To defraud any one of wages that are his due is a great crime which cries to the avenging anger of Heaven. “Behold, the hire of the laborers. . .which by fraud has been kept back by you, crieth; and the cry of them hath entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.”

Lastly, the rich must religiously refrain from cutting down the workmen’s earnings, whether by force, by fraud, or by usurious dealing; and with all the greater reason because the laboring man is, as a rule, weak and unprotected, and because his slender means should in proportion to their scantiness be accounted sacred. Were these precepts carefully obeyed and followed out, would they not be sufficient of themselves to keep under all strife and all its causes?

But the Church, with Jesus Christ as her Master and Guide, aims higher still. She lays down precepts yet more perfect, and tries to bind class to class in friendliness and good feeling. The things of earth cannot be understood or valued aright without taking into consideration the life to come, the life that will know no death.

Exclude the idea of futurity, and forthwith the very notion of what is good and right would perish; nay, the whole scheme of the universe would become a dark and unfathomable mystery.

The great truth which we learn from nature herself is also the grand Christian dogma on which religion rests as on its foundation – that, when we have given up this present life, then shall we really begin to live. God has not created us for the perishable and transitory things of earth, but for things heavenly and everlasting; He has given us this world as a place of exile, and not as our abiding place.

As for riches and the other things which men call good and desirable, whether we have them in abundance, or are lacking in them-so far as eternal happiness is concerned – it makes no difference; the only important thing is to use them aright. . . .

Therefore, those whom fortune favors are warned that riches do not bring freedom from sorrow and are of no avail for eternal happiness, but rather are obstacles; that the rich should tremble at the threatenings of Jesus Christ – threatenings so unwonted in the mouth of our Lord – and that a most strict account must be given to the Supreme Judge for all we possess.

– from Rerum Novarum (1891)

Bernie Is a Capitalist, Whether He Likes It or Not

Sen. Bernie Sanders belatedly released his tax returns this week. The New York Times reported:

The returns show that Mr. Sanders’s earnings shot up after his first presidential bid, when he built up a vast national following. He and his wife, Jane O’Meara Sanders, reported income that topped $1 million in 2016 and 2017, lifted by proceeds from his books.

The couple had an adjusted gross income of $561,293 in 2018, according to their most recent tax return. Mr. Sanders had about $393,000 in book income last year, and he and his wife reported giving nearly $19,000 to charity.

His income now puts him within the top 1 percent of taxpayers, according to data from the Internal Revenue Service.

Apparently, nothing succeeds like penalizing success.

Sen. Sanders said, “I wrote a best-selling book. If you write a best-selling book, you can be a millionaire, too.” But his incarnation as John Galt didn’t last. In a Fox News town-hall, Bret Baier asked him“When you wrote the book and you made the money, isn’t that the definition of capitalism and the American dream?”

After an uncomfortable pause, the senator answered, “No.”

But he is wrong. Having an idea, acting on it, and making a pile of money is the very definition of successful entrepreneurship.

Sen. Sanders took a laptop costing a few hundred dollars and produced, in Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In, a document for which he was paid $795,000. Taking an input valued at a few hundred dollars and turning it into an output worth $795,000 is the essence of entrepreneurial capitalism.

And Senator Sanders is right—he deserves that money. In January 2018, an estimated 73 percent of US adults owned either a desktop or a laptop. That’s 187.4 million people. How many of them produced a word document worth $795,000? Very few. No doubt Jersey Shore’s Snooki used a laptop like Sen. Sanders’ to produce Gorilla Beach, her debut novel, but there were more people willing to pay—and pay more money—for Sen. Sanders’ book. Value is subjective, after all. By providing greater satisfaction, Sen. Sanders reaped greater rewards.

Sen. Sanders and his wife paid an effective tax rate of 26 percent, well below the levels of 70 percent or so he claims “the 1 percent”—which includes him—ought to pay. They topped this up with $19,000 in charitable donations, another 3.4 percent of their income.

But if Sen. Sanders really thinks he isn’t having enough of his income taken from him, he can solve this situation unilaterally, and he can do it today—without waiting for Congress. He can donate his money to the federal government.

On Wednesday night, Tucker Carlson asked a Sanders supporter, Nomiki Konst, why he didn’t do just that. “Because that’s not how our government functions,” she replied, “Where do you send that form? The IRS? ‘Hi IRS, here’s a cheque for 70 percent?’”

No, you send it to the Treasury, as their website clearly instructs.

“Who does that?” she went on, “I would love to see one guest on your show that has actually written an entire paycheck.” In fact, so far in 2019, the Treasury has received $3.7 million in “Gift Contributions to Reduce Debt Held by the Public.” Carlson could get one of these donors on his show.

There’s an old line that “Government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together.” Konst’s argument shows how hollow that phrase really is.

Sen. Sanders has a choice, as do the members of the so-called Patriotic Millionaires. If they truly feel that politicians are not getting enough money to spend, they can give them some more. They can choose to “Be the change.” But they don’t. They will only act on their professed desire if other people are forced to act along with them. For all their talk about wanting to give the government more money, they make such payment contingent on other people who may not want to do so being forced to by law.

This is a curious form of generosity. It is an even more curious form of choice. Where is the choice for the people who think they already pay enough in tax? Government is not simply the name we give to the things we “choose to do together,” it is the name we give to things where 51 percent of people choose something, and the other 49 percent have to go along. As economist Milton Friedman once wrote, “You may get to vote once a year—on what? On a long, long list of propositions, with very little relationship between your vote and what ultimately happens.”

Sen. Sanders claims to be a socialist, and socialism is often described as “sharing.” But there is nothing inherently socialist about sharing. You can just as easily share under capitalism. Indeed, the latest World Giving Index produced by the Charities Aid Foundation listed the United States, New Zealand, Canada, Australia, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands—all seven of them capitalist countries—in the top 10 most charitable countries over the last five years. By contrast, Venezuela, formerly Sen. Sanders’s poster child for “democratic” socialism, ranked a miserly 115th in 2017.

In 2011, the year when Sen. Sanders was boosting Venezuela, it ranked 118th compared to first place for the capitalist USA. But then, according to the World Bank, in 2011, GDP per capita in the US was $49,000 compared to just $14,000 in Venezuela*. Under capitalism, you actually have something to share. As Margaret Thatcher once put it,

No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions; he had money, as well.

Giving your money voluntarily—what most people would think of as sharing—is not what socialists actually mean by the word. That is why Sen. Sanders and the Patriotic Millionaires refuse to give the federal government their money voluntarily while a mechanism exists to do so and others are already using it. Their idea of sharing is that the government takes money from somebody else to hand it out as it sees fit. We already have a degree of this in capitalist societies. Today’s socialists want to increase the amount of people’s wealth that passes through the hands of the government.

The socialist notion of “sharing” is nothing of the kind. Sharing is voluntary, this is coerced. It is not sharing but coercion that is the essence of socialism. As the British author Kingsley Amis—a youthful socialist who came to support Thatcher—put it, “if socialism is not about compulsion, it is about nothing.”

* In constant 2010 dollars

COLUMN BY

John Phelan

John Phelan is an economist at the Center of the American Experiment and fellow of The Cobden Centre.

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‘Put Socialism on Trial,’ Larry Kudlow Urges

Larry Kudlow, director of the president’s National Economic Council, called Thursday for putting socialism “on trial”—and convicting it. 

“I want you, and everybody in this room and your friends and your neighbors, I want you to put socialism on trial, that’s what I’m asking,” Kudlow said, speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference just outside Washington.

“I don’t want us to stand idly by,” he told the CPAC audience. “I don’t want to let this stuff fester. I want it challenged. I want it debated. I want it rebutted. I want to convict socialism.” 

The top economic adviser to President Donald Trump noted the emergence of support for socialism among young voters and among Democrats in Congress. 

He singled out the so-called Green New Deal, a proposal backed by congressional Democrats in the form of a resolution sponsored by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass. 

The Democrats’ plan would move the country away from fossil fuels while implementing a raft of liberal initiatives. 

Kudlow called the proposal “central planning on a grand scale.” 

“The Green New Deal would literally destroy the economy. Literally,” Kudlow said. “It would knock out energy, transportation, airlines, jobs, business. We’d probably lose 10 to 15 percent of our GDP. That’s remarkable. But that’s what our opponents and critics are saying.” 

Kudlow added: “About $75 trillion is the total cost of the Green New Deal and its associated policies.”

He called for Americans to be armed with facts. 

“Tax the rich. Tax wealth. Wealthy, successful people don’t pay their fair share,” Kudlow said, echoing the left’s arguments. 

“The top 1 percent of income earners pay about 40 percent of taxes,” he said, ticking off some facts. “The top 10 percent pays nearly 70 percent. The bottom 50 percent pays 3 percent. So, who pays the taxes? Successful people.”

“So don’t let this ‘tax fairness’ debate go by,” Kudlow urged his audience. “Use the numbers.”

CPAC, the largest annual national gathering of conservative activists, runs through Saturday at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, just outside Washington.

COLUMN BY

Portrait of Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Send an email to Fred. Twitter: @FredLucasWH.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column with images is republished with permission. The featured image of Karl Marx is by Wikimedia Commons.

Globalism: Persuading the Individual to Stop Being an Individual

If society understood the reality of collectivism instead of the promise of collectivism then their support for collectivism would vanish.

The elite globalist leaders selling collectivism know this to be true and so they have had to rebrand collectivism as Globalism. Songs are written about globalism – John Lennon’s classic song “Imagine” is the globalist anthem. The successful marketing of collectivism requires the names to change from already rejected Communism and faltering Socialism (think Venezuela) to the promise of a New World Order renamed GLOBALISM that disingenuously pledges social justice and income equality.

Globalism is the new word for the old lie about collectivism – that surrendering individual rights and national sovereignty will deliver social justice and income equality.  

Philosopher Ayn Rand understood the sinister nature of collectivism and and wrote extensively about socialism/communism and how it persuades the individual to stop being an individual:

“Socialism is the doctrine that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that his life and his work do not belong to him, but belong to society, that the only justification of his existence is his service to society, and that society may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be its own tribal, collective good.” 

The Islamization of Europe and the West demonstrates how mass social indoctrination toward collectivism leads to cultural suicide and the death of the individual.

Ayn Rand writes:

“When you consider socialism, do not fool yourself about its nature. Remember that there is no such dichotomy as “human rights” versus “property rights.” No human rights can exist without property rights. Since material goods are produced by the mind and effort of individual men, and are needed to sustain their lives, if the producer does not own the result of his effort, he does not own his life. To deny property rights means to turn men into property owned by the state. Whoever claims the “right” to “redistribute” the wealth produced by others is claiming the “right” to treat human beings as chattel.”

Europe’s surrender of its national sovereignty began after WWII with the 1957 Treaty of Rome that created the European Economic Committee (EEC) which eventually became the European Union(EU) of today. Internationalizing Europe’s sovereign nation states into the EU left the United States as the single greatest obstacle to one-world government.

Macron’s victory in France is a victory for collectivism at the expense of French sovereignty and French individualism represented by Marine Le Pen. It is a surrender to postmodern moral relativism, and historical revisionism designed to destroy democracy and its incomparable individual rights and freedoms. The question is WHO benefits from Macron’s victory?? The globalist elite of course. Socialism (total government control) is the death of democracy and is the prerequisite for internationalizing nation states and the imposition of one-world government Globalism. The greatest single obstacle to one-world government is the nation state. National sovereignty is to a country what individual sovereignty is to a human being.

The left-wing liberal agenda seeks to destroy the socio-political capitalist infrastructure of America and transform it into a dependent European-style socialist state with cradle to grave control by the government. Their strategy is to destroy American democracy by dismantling the supporting American institutions of family, religion, and education that promote independence, adulthood, individualism, and ego strength – the same qualities that made America great.

Ayn Rand warns us:

“Socialism is not a movement of the people. It is a movement of the intellectuals, originated, led and controlled by the intellectuals, carried by them out of their stuffy ivory towers into those bloody fields of practice where they unite with their allies and executors: the thugs.” 

American education, our elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, and universities, are a specific target and field of practice. The anarchists, socialists, and hippies of the 60s have become the teachers and professors now indoctrinating their students toward collectivism. The problem, of course, is that these narcissistic intellectuals have never lived under collectivist tyranny – they are armchair pundits living in subjective reality. Anyone interested in the objective reality of collectivism should be listening to those who have escaped from its tyrannical rule.

The entire narrative of the Left is designed to induce regression through educational indoctrination and the media – as Hillary Clinton famously remarked they need “an unaware compliant public.” Unaware and compliant are the hallmarks of childhood. The pitch might sound good to a childish mind who is seduced by candy from a stranger but the adult mind understands the sinister end-game. Once the public is entirely dependent on the government they lose all individual rights and national sovereignty as the socialized state becomes part of the internationalized one-world government. The doors of the car lock and there is no escape – only exploitation and enslavement.

One-world government is the big lie of the 21st century. It promises redistribution of wealth and social justice. What it delivers is unapologetically described in chilling detail by globalist elite English aristocrat Lord Bertrand Russell in his 1952 book The Impact of Science on Society.

The left-wing liberal lemmings are the useful idiots who are too arrogant to understand that they are participating in their own destruction. They have been indoctrinated to believe they are fighting for “social justice” when in fact they are helping to establish the dystopian nightmare of one-world government where there is no middle class, no upward mobility, no national sovereignty, and no individual freedoms. There is only the ruling elite and the enslaved population who service them.

The left-wing liberal lemmings in Europe and in America should take a break from marching and “resisting” and start reading Bertrand Russell’s The Impact of Science on Society written in 1952. They will learn that their script was written 65 years ago by the globalist elites who dreamed of one-world government – a binary socio-political system of masters and slaves.

The globalist elite’s New World Order was their self-serving answer to the Malthusian problem of the earth not having enough resources to sustain the population growth. Tavistock Institute was exported to America with the purpose of indoctrinating Americans via education and the media – particularly television – the greatest vehicle for mass social engineering ever invented. The Hollywood glitterati and the protesting hoards should take a pause and understand there is no place for them in the New World Order – they are simply useful idiots who will be destroyed.

The aristocratic Lord Bertrand Russell and the late David Rockefeller had no moral problem with eliminating the useless eaters any more than Hitler with exterminating Jews, Islamists with exterminating infidels, or the Chinese Emperors with burying their concubines alive to service them in the afterlife. The point is elitism is supremacist – there is no egalitarian respect for human life only the pretense of humanitarian considerations. The Left and the Islamists have common cause in trying to destroy America from within – but it is the globalist elites who finance and disingenuously facilitate both groups because the social chaos they each engender is a prerequisite for imposing globalist one-world government. For the globalist elite whether in Europe or in America, the Left and the Islamists are BOTH useful idiots.

Socialism will never provide social justice – it will only provide the pathway to one-world government where no individual rights or self-determination exist. Socialism strips the individual of his selfness and transforms that individual into property of the state. The individual who willingly forfeits his selfness for socialism has been successfully persuaded to stop being an individual. Socialism is not a free ride it is slavery.

Your Socialism is Bad and You Should Feel Bad by Daniel J. Mitchell

I’m tempted to say that statism is sort of like a cult. Proponents of socialism and other big-government ideologies have a dogmatic zeal that blinds them to reality.

For instance, no nation has ever become rich with big government. But that doesn’t stop leftists from advocating in favor of higher taxes and more coercive redistribution.

They are equally capable of rationalizing that economic misery in places such as Greece and Venezuela has nothing to do with bad policy, and you can even find a few zealots willing to defend basket cases such as Cuba and North Korea.

So long as they don’t burn me at the stake for my heretical views, I guess I won’t get too agitated by their bizarre fetish for statism.

But I will periodically mock them. And that’s the purpose of today’s column. We’ll start with this nice comparison between a capitalist grocery store and a socialist grocery store. I have no idea, by the way, if the lower image actually is a supermarket in a socialist country, but let’s not forget that a real-world version of this comparison is one of the reasons there’s no longer an Evil Empire.

But the bad news about socialism is not limited to economic deprivation for the masses.

The system also leads in many cases to totalitarianism (see this article by Marian Tupy, for example).

Venezuela is a particularly poignant example. Once the richest nation in Latin America, it now is an economic laggard and also is a cesspool of oppression.

Which makes this set of images from Reddit‘s libertarian page both funny and sad.

As you might expect, Milton Friedman had some very pointed observations on this topic.

The really good part starts shortly before 2:00. He explains very clearly that socialism is based on force and coercion.

I’ve saved the best for last.

The PotL sent me this collection of risky temptations and it perfectly captures the attitude of many statists. No matter how many times socialism has failed, they never learn the appropriate lesson. It just hasn’t been tried by the right people, they tell us. Or been imposed in the right circumstances.

So they want us to give it one more try, just like a person with no willpower will eat one more bite of chocolate.

Which is the same message you find here, here, and here.

Incidentally, this analysis not only applies to socialism, as technically defined, but it also applies to redistributionism. Which is definitely more benign, but nonetheless produces bad results.

The bottom line is that statism is a recipe for stagnation and free markets are a route to prosperity.

Republished from International Liberty.

Daniel J. Mitchell

Daniel J. Mitchell

Daniel J. Mitchell is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute who specializes in fiscal policy, particularly tax reform, international tax competition, and the economic burden of government spending. He also serves on the editorial board of the Cayman Financial Review.

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Karl Marx’s Flight from Reality by Richard M. Ebeling

Though it may seem strange, Karl Marx was not always a communist. As late as 1842, when Marx was in his mid-20s, he actually said he opposed any attempt to establish a communist system. In October 1842, he became editor of the Rheinische Zeitung [the Rhineland Times], and wrote in an editorial:

The Rheinische Zeitung … does not admit that communist ideas in their present form possess even theoretical reality, and therefore can still less desire their practical realization, or even consider it possible.

In 1843, Marx was forced to resign his editorship because of political pressure from the Prussian government and ended up moving to Paris. It was in Paris that he met his future lifelong collaborator, Friedrich Engels (who already was a socialist), and began his deeper study of socialism and communism, leading to his full “conversion” to the collectivist ideal.

Feuerbach and the Worship of Man Perfected

From his student days in Berlin, two German philosophers left their imprint upon Marx: George Hegel (1770-1831) and Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872). From Hegel, Marx learned the theory of “dialectics” and the idea of historical progress to universal improvement. From Feuerbach, Marx accepted the idea of man “perfected.” Feuerbach had argued that rather than worshiping a non-existing supernatural being – God – man should worship himself.

The “true” religion of the future should, therefore, be the Worship of Mankind, and that man “perfected” would be changed from a being focused on and guided by his own self-interest to one who was totally altruistic, that is, concerned only with the betterment of and service to Mankind as a whole, rather than only himself.

Marx took Feuerbach’s notion of man “perfected” and developed what he considered to be the essential characteristics of such a developed human nature. There were three elements to such a perfected human being, Marx argued:First, the Potential for “Autonomous Action.” This is action undertaken by a man only out of desire or enjoyment, not out of necessity. If a man works at a blacksmith’s forge out of a desire to creatively exercise his faculties in molding metal into some artistic form, this is free or “autonomous action.” If a man works at the forge because he will starve unless he makes a plow to plant a crop, he is acting under a “compulsion” or a “constraint.”

Second, the Potential for “Societal Orientation.” Only man, Marx argued, can reflect on and direct his conscious actions to the improvement the “community” of which he is a part, and which nourishes his own capacity for personal development. When man associates with others only out of self-interest, he denies his true “social” self. Thus, egoism is “unworthy” of a developed human being.

And, third, the Potential for “Aesthetic Appreciation.” This is when man values things only for themselves; for example, “nature for nature’s sake,” or “art for art’s sake.” To view things, Marx claimed, only from the perspective of how something might be used to improve an individual’s personal circumstance is a debasement of the “truly” aesthetic value in things.

Capitalism Keeps Man from Perfection

Feuerbach believed man was “alienated” from himself when he was not “other-oriented.” To change from self-interest to altruism was mostly a state of mind that man could change within himself, Feuerbach argued. Marx insisted that the problem of “alienation” was not due to a person’s “state of mind,” but was conditioned by the “objective” institutional circumstances under which men lived. That is, the political, social, and economic institutions made man what he is. Change the social order, and man would be changed. “Capitalism,” Marx declared, was the source of man’s alienation from his “true” self and his human potential.

How did this “alienation” manifest itself?

Capitalism, Marx declared, was the source of man’s alienation from his “true” self and his human potential.

First, there is the Stifling of Autonomous Action. In the marketplace, forces “outside” the control of the individual determine what is produced and how it is produced. The individual “reacts” to the market, he does not control it. Thus, market forces are external constraints on man. He responds to the market out of “necessity,” not out of free desire.Furthermore, to enhance production and productivity, man is “forced” to participate in a division of labor to earn a living that makes him an “appendage” to a machine, a “slave” to the machines owned by the “capitalists” for whom he is “compelled” to work.

Second, there is Diminished Other-Orientedness. In the market, the individual sees others only as a means to his material ends; he trades with others to get what he wants from others, merely in pursuit of his own self-interest. Work is not considered a communal “cooperative” process, but an antagonistic relationship between what the individual wants and what is wanted by the one with whom he trades.

Third, there is Limited Aesthetic Appreciation. In the market, people see nature, resources, and the creations of man not as things to be intrinsically valued in themselves, but as marketable objects – as means – to personal ends. Acquisition of things – possessiveness – becomes the primary goal of economic activity for making a living.

Communism’s Liberation of Constrained Man

Communism, through collective planning, would make work an “autonomous” act, rather than “constrained action.” When democratically regulated by the workers as a whole, Marx asserted, collective planning would emerge from the desires of all the members of society as their communal choice and consent. It would be consciously planned and directed through the participation of all the members of society, thus generating an “other-oriented” sense of a “common good” for which all worked.

No one would be forced and constrained to do what another made them do in the division of labor anymore. Indeed, communism would free men from the “tyranny” of specialization. In Marx’s words, from The German Ideology (1845),

In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow; to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind.

In this new communist world, no one will have to work at anything he did not like or want to do. In addition, under communal planning, production would rise to such a height of productivity that the work day would be shortened to the point that each person’s time would be free to do only the things he enjoyed doing.

Selfishness would be eliminated as a human trait, and altruism would become the dominant trait.

Communism would also enhance social consciousness and other-orientedness. All that was communally produced would be distributed on the basis of “need” or “want.” No longer would scarcity impose constraints on man’s desires. As a result, the urge for “possessiveness” and acquisition of “things” would diminish and finally disappear. Selfishness would be eliminated as a human trait.Others would no longer be viewed as “competitors” for scarce things, but as social collaborators for attaining “higher” ends of social importance. Altruism would become the dominant trait in man.

In addition, communism would result in the flowering of aesthetic appreciation.

Man would not create so he could earn a living, but for the pleasure of the activity itself. Work would not be a source of “alienation” but an activity reflecting the free – the “autonomous” – desires of man for the “beautiful.”

Communism would liberate man in all ways and all things, said Marx:

With a communist organization of society, there disappears the subordination … of the individual to some definite art, making him exclusively a painter, a sculptor, etc. … In a communist society, there are no longer painters, but only people who engage in painting among other activities.

With the end of capitalism and the arrival of communism, there would come a heaven on earth. There would be enough of everything for all. Man would be freed from working for survival, he would be unchained from the division of labor, he would be liberated to follow whatever gave his heart pleasure. With Communism, man becomes like God – free and powerful to do whatever he wants.

Marx’s Denial of Self-Oriented Human Nature

Let me suggest that what Marx was objecting to – revolting against – was human nature and the existence of scarcity. Man can never escape from or get outside of being an individual “ego.” We exist as individual human beings; we think, remember, imagine, choose, and act as distinct and unique individual men and women.

Our experiences are our experiences; our thoughts and beliefs are our reflections and ideas; our judgments and valuations are our estimates and rankings of things of importance to us. Even when we try to put ourselves in another person’s shoes, to try to sympathize, empathize, and understand the meanings, experiences, and actions of others, it is from our perspective and state of mind that we do so.It is the individuality of the person in these and other facets of our distinct nature and character as conscious, conceptualizing creatures that make for the unique differences and diversities of our minds as self-oriented human beings. This is the source of the creativity and plethora of possibilities that can and have emerged from seeing the world in the distinct and different ways of self-oriented and self-experiencing people when pursuing their own improvement. As they consider what is most advantageous for themselves and others they “selfishly” care about, they support and encourage an institutional setting of peaceful and voluntary market association.

Marx’s Denial of the Reality of Scarcity

Marx also objects to the reality of the necessity to have to produce in order to consume and to have to view one’s own labor as a means to various ends, rather than simply being somehow provided with all that we want and our labor being “free” to be used as a pleasurable end in itself.

Likewise, he revolts against men viewing each other as a means to their respective desired ends rather than as purely human relationships, a “club” in which all get together and freely associate for “good times” with no concern for how or who provides the things without which good times cannot occur.

Nor can he abide men looking upon nature and man-made objects as the means or tools of producing the necessities, amenities, and luxuries of life, with the assignment of a “money value” to a house, a work of art, a waterfall, or a sculpture being “dehumanizing” for Marx.

However, the only reason such things are given values by people in society is that they are wanted but also scarce and because the means to achieve them are scarce as well. As a consequence, we must decide what we consider to be more or less valuable and important to us since all that we would like to have cannot be simultaneously fulfilled at the same time.

Marx’s hatred for the division of labor is an outgrowth of this worldview. Man is seen as somehow less than whole by specializing in a task and selling both his labor and his fraction of the total output to achieve the ends and goals he considers more important than what he has to give up in return.

Marx’s Misconception of Action and Choice

The entire Marxian conception of man, society, and happiness can be conceived, therefore, as a flight from reality. It can be seen in Marx’s distinction between “autonomous action” and capitalist “choices.”

“Action” is, in fact, nothing more than choice manifested: we undertake courses of action only after we have decided what it is we wish to do. That is, we decide which among the alternatives available to us we shall try to bring about, and which shall be set aside for a day or forever because not everything we desire can be had, due to the constraints of nature and the existence of other human beings.

Marx talks of people fishing in the morning and hunting in the afternoon – does that not mean that the person’s time is scarce? Is he not “frustrated” that he cannot do both at the same time, or be in two places at once?

“Action” is, in fact, nothing more than choice manifested.

If every man is to be “autonomously free” to hunt and fish whenever and to whatever extent he desires, what happens when the various members of the community wish to kill the forest animals or catch the fish at such a rate that they are threatened with extinction? Or what if several people all want to fish from the same place along the river or lake bank at the same time, or from the same “cover” position while out hunting?Marx might say that a “societal orientation” on the part of everyone would result in some form of “comradely” compromise. But is that not just other language for “mutual agreements,” “trade-offs,” and “exchanges” concerning the use and disposal of scarce resources – the disposition of the communal property rights among the members of society?

There is no certainty that all of the members of such a society will always like the communally agreed-upon outcomes, with some of them considering themselves “exploited” for the benefit of others who have out-voted them. And, therefore, they may be “alienated” from their fellow men and from nature even in the communist paradise to come.

Nor can there simply be the idea of art for art’s sake or nature for nature’s sake.

Resources for art and gifts of nature (unless cultivated to expand them) are always limited. The use of forests for primitive contemplation versus industrial use versus residential housing would still have to be made in Marx’s magical communist society. And, certainly, not everyone in the bright, beautiful communist society may agree or like the decisions that a majority of others in the blissful societal commune make about such things.

The paint for the artist’s pallet is not in infinite supply, so some art would have to be forgone so other art might be pursued; similarly with the ingredients going into the manufacture of paints versus being used for other things. To assume that men would never conflict over how to dispose of these things is to escape into a complete fantasyland.

Also, it is a physical and psychological fact that men differ in their relative capacities and inclinations in terms of various tasks needing to be performed. It is a physical and psychological fact that men tend to be more productive when they specialize in a small range of tasks as opposed to trying to be a “jack-of-all-trades.”

The Reality of Communism Versus the Reality of Capitalism

As a result, the division of labor raises both the productivity and the total production of a community of men, standards of living rise, leisure time can be expanded, and more variety and quality of goods can be produced.

Indeed, it has been free market capitalism that has provided humanity over the last 200 years with that actual relative horn-of-plenty wherever a fairly free rein has existed for self-interested individual action in pursuit of profit in associative relationships of specialization based on the peaceful use of private property.

Capitalism has been the great liberator of ever more of mankind from poverty, want, and worry. It has freed people from the hardship and drudgery of often life-threatening forms of work. The free market has shortened the hours of work needed to generate levels of material and cultural comfort for a growing number of people and provided the longer, healthier lives and increased leisure time for people to enjoy the wealth that economic freedom has made possible.The “de-alienation” of man from his everyday existence, in the sense that Marx talked about it, has also, in fact, been brought about through the achievements of capitalism. It has relieved more and more of mankind from the concerns of mere survival and subsistence through the capital accumulation and profit-oriented production that has raised the productivity of all those who work and expanded the available supply of useful goods and services. The free market has enabled people to have the means to fulfill more of the enjoyments and meanings of life as ends in themselves.

Furthermore, as Austrian economist F. A. Hayek and others have pointed out, the advantage of the free market system is precisely that it does not require all of the members of the society to agree upon and share the same hierarchy of goals, ends, and values. Each individual, under competitive capitalism, is at liberty to select and follow their own purposes and pursue happiness in their own way. Using each other as the voluntary means to their respective ends in the arena of peaceful market exchange allows a much larger diversity of outcomes reflecting differences among people than if one central plan needs to imposed on all in the name of the interests of a collectivist community as a whole.

Marx’s flight from reality, on the other hand, was the wish to have everything capitalism, the division of labor, and competitive exchange can produce, but without the cost of work, discipline, specialization, and selecting among alternatives. It is like the cry of the child who refuses to accept the fact that he cannot have everything he wants, right there and then and, instead, expects someone or something to provide it to him and everyone else in a blissful fairyland of material plentitude.

Richard M. Ebeling

Richard M. Ebeling

Richard M. Ebeling is BB&T Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Free Enterprise Leadership at The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina. He was president of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) from 2003 to 2008.

New Board Game ‘Socialism’ parodies Monopoly, satirizes Hillary Clinton

PHILADELPHIA, PA /PRNewswire/ — What would America look like under Socialism? Startup Company, Diogenes Games says they don’t know, but developed a satirical version of Monopoly to find out. They call it SOCIALISM: The Game.

The small startup is proud to announce the commencement of a Kickstarter campaign to promote their parody tabletop game “SOCIALISM”.

A hilarious sendup of the classic board game Monopoly, SOCIALISM: The Game has a radically different goal than the original – the object of the game is to achieve total fairness and equality through the renting and selling of property under a modern, progressive, and populist public policy. The game is over when everyone has $300or less, and uses caricatures of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders to replace the game’s original mascot, Rich Uncle Pennybags.

“We discovered that our game was a fun way to hypothesize what might happen if trends in public policy, trends that have recently entered mainstream political debate, were extrapolated to their logical conclusions in the capitalistic world of Hasbro’s real estate trading game Monopoly,” said John Elliott, CEO and founder of Diogenes Games.

Elliott says the results “aren’t pretty,” but thinks that they just might change the way people think about campaigns, elections, and politics in general. One of the ways the game accomplishes this is through an “enlightened” rulebook that contains sarcastic-yet-realistic changes:

  • There’s no more “banker” – all dealings are with the Federal Directorate of Redistributive Services
  • You don’t “go to jail,” you “go to rehab”
  • You don’t have title cards, you are granted a public “concession” to manage a property
  • No more hotels; public “housing towers” are the highest and best use
  • Chance and Community Chest? Nope. “Fat Chance” and “Communism Chest”

The “Fat Chance” and “Communism Chest” cards also reflect the satirical nature of the game, with gems like “Advance to income tax” and “Bernout! Power grid fails on a cloudy windless day. Flick the lights off, pay the player on your right $100 for a black market generator.”

After months of development, design, and play testing, the game is currently in production and is expected to ship in June, if not sooner.

SOCIALISM: The Game on Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/333308942/socialism-the-game

SOCIALISM: The Game Website: https://www.SocialismGame.com

EDITORS NOTE: This game is political satire, or is it?

Civil War: America’s Enemies Hiding in Plain Sight

Russian born American writer and novelist Ayn Rand wrote, “The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow. They come to be accepted by degrees, by dint of constant pressure on one side and constant retreat on the other – until one day when they are suddenly declared to be the country’s official ideology.”

Janie Johnson posted the above photo of Black Lives Matter (BLM) protestors on her Twitter page. Janie wrote, “On [the] bottom of the signs is the inscription: revcom.us. To see who printed them, go to: .”

The organization that printed these BLM posters is the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (RCP-USA). The stated strategic approach of the RCP-USA is to:

“Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution…to take up a revolutionary viewpoint and revolutionary values and morals as they join with others to resist this system’s crimes and build up the basis for the ultimate all-out revolutionary struggle to sweep this system away and bring in a whole new way of organizing society, a whole new way of being…to become emancipators of humanity.” [Emphasis RCP-USA]

The RCP-USA signs brought to mind several banners carried by BLM protestors in Ferguson, Missouri.

FergusonPalestine

Robert Spencer in his November 2014 column Islamic supremacist groups connect their jihad to Ferguson riots wrote:

In the photo above (thanks to Kay), Leftist demonstrators relate the strife in Ferguson to the “Palestinian” jihad. And Pamela Geller has a great deal of information on how Islamic jihadists and supremacists, including the Hamas-linked terror organization CAIR, have tried to co-opt the Ferguson riots as part of their own jihad. Most noteworthy is the active presence in Ferguson of “Palestinian” jihad activist Bassem Masri.

The connection between Ferguson and “Palestine” (and the global jihad in general) is clear: both the Islamic supremacists and the Ferguson rioters think that the American system is corrupt and must be brought down.

isis banner ferguson

Islamic State banner carried by Black Lives Matter protestors in Ferguson, Missouri. Photo: CNN

In a November 2014 column Ferguson: The beginning of an American Intifada I wrote:

This spiral of death and destruction scenario is used across the globe to incite riots, mayhem and violence. It is used to recruit those with real or perceived grievances against those in authority. It is being used by the Islamic State to recruit in Ferguson, Missouri.

Ferguson is the beginning of the American intifada in the black community. This same strategy is being used by terrorist organizations like HAMAS, Hezbollah, Boko Haram and al Qaeda. Grab the headlines and make your point via political violence. The problem is the narrative is routinely false, even based upon lies, but by the time the facts are presented it is too late. The damage has already been done.

Lessons learned from Ferguson:

  1. Appeasement of the protesters leads to more violence.
  2. Coalitions of outside organizations including radical homosexual, Muslim and minority groups makes for a deadly mix.
  3. The targets are the law and law enforcement. The demand is for two legal systems, one for minorities and one for whites.
  4. The creation of no-go zones where police and firefighters cannot or will not go due to the threat of violence.
  5. The manipulation of the media in the name of “equality” and “social justice” to create a scenario where a radical agenda may be furthered that denies both.
  6. The use of violence even when blacks, like President Obama, call upon their fellow blacks to be non-violent.
  7. The creation of a atmosphere where law enforcement officers will hesitate to enforce the law or ignore the law in order not to become a target.
  8. Lawlessness with an anarchist’s political objective – to destroy the status quo.

A race war is upon America because some minorities want it more than they want to be Americans.

I fear that these groups will once again come together in Cleveland to disrupt the Republican National Convention and Donald Trump’s nomination. This Red/Green/Rainbow alliance has already showed itself at Trump rallies. The Red/Green/Rainbow alliance is emboldened and becoming more violent.

These protestors want to bring a civil war to America in order to fundamentally transform the country. 

America is a land of laws and requires order. Protest if one wishes but to become violent demands police action and people, organizations and institutions to be held accountable.

We shall see what happens in Cleveland. Stay tuned.

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Shakedown Socialism: Second edition, improved and expanded

The positive response to my first book was overwhelming. Many readers on Amazon praised Shakedown Socialism for its insights, style, and originality, regretting only that it was too short. By popular demand, I have republished it with more relevant material and a new, more attractive cover.

Shakedown SocialismHere is one such review:

I’ve bought books on Amazon for a while but never felt the need to write a review before. This is not a typical anti-socialist book at all. None of the familiar rhetoric you might be expecting. While not an academic work by any means, the author makes some of the most compelling arguments I’ve ever read, and from an angle you seldom think about. His anti-union argument is so perfect, I will be repeating it in conversations for the rest of my life. Some serious mental ammunition for arguments with any unfortunate, collectivist-leaning friends you may have. Even if they refuse to read it, the images (on practically every page) might catch their attention if you can get them to flip through it. Do not click off this page without buying this book.

It inspires me to write and publish more books, and I already have a few good ideas.

For more information, see the updated and improved ShakedownSocialism.com.

You can look inside the new edition, read the reviews, or even buy the book on Amazon.

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If you are a fan and would like to support the author and the People’s Cube, buy it directly from the printer at CreateSpace – the price is the same, but I’ll be getting a bigger royalty.

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But if you really want to support the author, order an autographed copy!

Buy book button

If you like to read on Kindle or any other tablet, there’s an eBook:

Buy book button

Here’s a fun promotion of the first edition: The Best Book Promotion Ever!

Obama reads Shakedown Socialism

Brwzhnev reads Shakedown Socialism

Shakedown Socialism

EDITORS NOTE: To learn more about Shakedown Socialism and The Peoples Cube click here.

Socialism Is Harder than You Think by Scott Sumner

Suppose you wanted to switch to socialism — what would be the ideal place to do so? You’d want a country with extremely high quality civil servants.

That would be France.

You’d want a country where socialism is not a dirty word, and capitalism is.

That would be France.

You’d want a country with the Socialist party in power, a party that was committed to enact the ideas of Thomas Piketty.

That would be France.

So how did things work out in France, when they tried to adopt a Bernie Sanders/Thomas Piketty approach to taxes?

IN THE eyes of many foreigners, two numbers encapsulate French economic policy over the past decade or so: 75 and 35. The first refers to the top income-tax rate of 75%, promised by François Hollande to seduce the left when he was the Socialist presidential candidate in 2012. The second is the 35-hour maximum working week, devised by a Socialist government in 2000 and later retained by the centre-right.

Each has been a totem of French social preferences. Yet, to the consternation of some of his voters, Mr Hollande applied the 75% tax rate for only two years, and then binned it. Now he has drawn up plans that could, in effect, demolish the 35-hour week, too.

Mr Hollande’s government is reviewing a draft labour law that would remove a series of constraints French firms face, both when trying to adapt working time to shifting business cycles and when deciding whether to hire staff. In particular, it devolves to firms the right to negotiate longer hours and overtime rates with their own trade unions, rather than having to follow rules dictated by national industry-wide deals.

The 35-hour cap would remain in force, but it would become more of a trigger for overtime pay than a rigid constraint on hours worked. These could reach 46 hours a week, for a maximum of 16 weeks. Firms would also have greater freedom to shorten working hours and reduce pay, which can currently be done only in times of “serious economic difficulty”. Emmanuel Macron, the economy minister, has called such measures the “de facto” end of the 35-hour week.

At the same time, the law would lower existing high barriers to laying off workers. These discourage firms from creating permanent jobs, and leave huge numbers of “outsiders”, particularly young people, temping.

For one thing, it would cap awards for unfair dismissal, which are made by labour tribunals. Laid-off French workers bring such cases frequently; they can take years and cost anything from €2,500 to €310,000 ($2,700 to $337,000) by one estimate.

Unfortunately, while France is moving away from these polices, the US is like to move some distance in their direction. Of course there are differences. Our minimum wage is still lower than in France, and our top income tax rate is closer to 50% in states like California and New York. But all the momentum is with the socialists, who are especially numerous among the younger voters.

Socialist ideas are superficially appealing. Paul Krugman (who favors very high income tax rates on the rich) often says that reality has a liberal bias. Actually, reality has a neoliberal bias, and if you don’t take incentive effects into account, you may end up disappointed.

Back in the US, Sander’s single payer approach also has problems:

A costing of Mr Sanders’s plans by Kenneth Thorpe of Emory University, using more conservative assumptions, found that the plan was underfunded by nearly $1.1 trillion (or 6% of GDP) per year. If Mr Thorpe is right, higher taxes will be required to make the sums add up. In 2014 Mr Sanders’ own state, Vermont, abandoned a plan for a single-payer system on the basis that the required tax rises would be too great.

Vermont is one of the most liberal states in the union. Now think about the fact that they gave up on the idea, despite it having been previously approved and signed into law. Then think about the concept of rolling out a multi-trillion dollar plan at the federal level, soon after the only experiment at the state level failed to get off the ground.

Is that evidence-based liberalism, or wishful thinking?

This post first appeared at Econlog.

Scott SumnerScott Sumner

Scott B. Sumner is the director of the Program on Monetary Policy at the Mercatus Center and a professor at Bentley University. He blogs at the Money Illusion and Econlog.

Why Students Give Capitalism an ‘F’ by B.K. Marcus

bernie sanders half of a sign socialismNot only are young voters more likely to support Democrats than Republicans, they are also more likely to support the most left-wing Democrats. In recent polls of voters under 30, self-declared democratic socialist Bernie Sanders beats the more mainstream Hillary Clinton by almost six-to-one.

Former professor Mark Pastin, writing in the Weekly Standard, acknowledges some of Clinton’s flaws as a candidate, but concludes that “the most compelling explanation” for young Democrats’ overwhelming preference for Sanders “is that young voters actually like the idea of a socialist revolution.”

I’m embarrassed to confess that when I was a young voter, I probably would have been among the “Sandernistas.”

I don’t think Pastin is right about the revolution, though. Much of Sanders’s success in defanging the word socialism is in pairing it with an emphasis on democracy, as George Bernard Shaw and the Fabians did in an earlier era. Democratic socialists — at least among my comrades — preferred the idea of evolutionary socialism, and we tried hard to distance ourselves from the revolutionary folks.

Whether by evolution or revolution, however, what we all sought was less competition and more cooperation, less commerce and more compassion. Above all, we wanted greater equality.

“When I asked my students what they thought socialism meant,” Pastin writes, “they would generally recite some version of the Marxist chestnut ‘from each according to ability and to each according to need.'” That sounds about right, but add to that the assumption that it’s government’s job to effect the transfer.

My father, gently skeptical of my politics, pointed out a problem confronting American socialists: we tended to imagine ourselves on the receiving end of the redistribution — rob from the rich and give to the rest of us. “However poor we may think we are in the United States,” he told me, “we would have to give up most of what we now have in order to make everyone in the world equal.” This was strange to hear from someone always behind on the rent and facing ever-growing debt.

Pastin makes a related point: “I’ve always thought that socialism appealed to students because they have never not been on the receiving end of government largesse.”

As an informal test of his students’ egalitarian beliefs, Pastin “would offer to run the class along socialist principles, such as the mandate to take from the able and give to the needy.” Specifically, he proposed subtracting points from the A students and transferring them to those who would otherwise earn lower grades.

Even the most ardent socialist students balked at this arrangement. In fact, according to Pastin, the highest-performing students were both more likely to be self-declared socialists and more likely to meet his proposal with outrage: grading, they argued, should be a matter of merit.

Is it pure hypocrisy on the part of these rhetorical radicals, or is there a logical consistency behind this apparent contradiction in their values?

Trying to recall the details of my own callow political folly, I seem to recall three main issues behind my anti-capitalistic mentality:

  1. “Capitalism” was just the word we all used for whatever we didn’t like about the status quo, especially whatever struck us as promoting inequality. I had friends propose to me that we should consider the C-word a catchall for racism, patriarchy, and crony corporatism. If that’s what capitalism means, how could anyone be for it?
  2. Even when we left race and sex out of the equation, our understanding of commerce was zero-sum: the 1 percent grew rich by exploiting the 99 percent.
  3. For whatever reason, none of us imagined we’d ever be business people, except on the smallest possible scale: at farmer’s markets, as street vendors, in small shops. Those things weren’t capitalism. Capitalism was big business: McDonald’s, IBM, the military-industrial complex.

I don’t know how many of today’s young socialists hold these same assumptions, but a question recently posted to Quora.com sounds like it could have been written by one of my fellow lefties in the 1980s: “Should I drop out of college to disobey the capitalist world that values a human with a piece of paper?” (See Praxis strategist Derek Magill’s withering advice to the would-be dropout.)

Even if a different array of confusions drives the radical chic of millennial voters, what is clear is that they see American capitalism as rigged. “Crony capitalism,” from their perspective, is redundant — and “free market” is an oxymoron. They’re not necessarily opposed to meritocracy; they just don’t see what merit has to do with the marketplace.

Grading that would penalize the studious to reward the slackers is obviously unfair, and a sure-fire strategy to kill anyone’s incentive to do the homework. It’s not that the socialist students are applying the principle inconsistently; it’s that they don’t see what merit has to do with commerce. Some of that may be intellectual laziness, some is the result of indoctrination by anti-capitalist faculty, but much of it is also based in the reality of America’s mixed economy.

Not only have young voters spent most of their lives sheltered from the productive side of the commercial world, schooled by men and women who are themselves deliberately insulated from the marketplace, but time spent in the reality of the private sector is hardly an education in what the advocates of economic freedom have in mind when we talk about the free market.

If my own experience is any guide, today’s democratic socialists will have to spend a lot of time unlearning much of what they’ve been taught.

Pastin’s informal experiment is an illuminating first step, and it’s a powerful way to expose the conflict between his students’ understanding of merit and the socialists’ understanding of equality. But there’s also a danger in comparing the economy to the classroom. By offering his grade redistribution as an analogy for socialism, Pastin seems to imply that the merit-based grade system better resembles a free market. But that’s silly.

For one thing, studying hard for your next exam may improve your own GPA, but it probably doesn’t help your classmates. In contrast, an unhampered marketplace makes everyone better off, however unequally.

More significantly, in a free economy, there is no one person in the role of the grade-giving professor. In the absence of coercion, power has a hard time remaining that centralized. Yes, wealth can be seen as a kind of grade, but in the free market, an entrepreneur’s profits and losses are like millions of cumulative grades from the consumers. A+ for improving our lives. F for wasting time and resources.

That kind of spontaneous, decentralized, self-regulating prosperity is every bit as radical as the visions of young socialists, minus the impoverishing effects of coerced redistribution. It’s almost certainly not what they imagine when they say they oppose “capitalism.”

B.K. MarcusB.K. Marcus

B.K. Marcus is editor of the Freeman.

Why the Holocaust Should Matter to You by Jeffrey Tucker

People tour the nation’s capital to be delighted by symbols of America’s greatness and history. They seek out monuments and museums that pay tribute to the nation state and its works. They want to think about the epic struggles of the past, and how mighty leaders confronted and vanquished enemies at home and abroad.

But what if there was a monument that took a different tack? Instead of celebrating power, it counseled against its abuses. Instead of celebrating the state and its works, it showed how these can become ruses to deceive and destroy. Instead of celebrating nationalist songs, symbols, and stories, it warned that these can be used as tools of division and oppression.

What if this museum was dedicated to memorializing one of history’s most ghastly experiments in imperial conquest, demographic expulsion, and eventual extermination, to help us understand it and never repeat it?

Such a museum does exist. It is the US Holocaust Museum. It is the Beltway’s most libertarian institution, a living rebuke to the worship of power as an end in itself.

I lived in Washington, DC, when the Holocaust Museum was being built, and I vaguely recall when it opened. I never went, though I had the opportunity; I remember having a feeling of dread about the prospect of visiting it. Many people must feel the same way. Surely we already know that mass murder by the state is evil and wrong. Do we really need to visit a museum on such a ghastly subject?

The answer is yes. This institution is a mighty tribute to human rights and human dignity. It provides an intellectual experience more moving and profound than any I can recall having. It takes politics and ideas out of the realm of theory and firmly plants them in real life, in our own history. It shows the consequences of bad ideas in the hands of evil men, and invites you to experience the step-by-step descent into hell in chronological stages.

The transformation the visitor feels is intellectual but also even physical: as you approach the halfway point you notice an increase in your heart rate and even a pit in your stomach.

Misconceptions

Let’s dispel a few myths that people who haven’t visited might have about the place.

  • The museum is not maudlin or manipulative. The narrative it takes you through is fact-based, focused on documentation (film and images), with a text that provides a careful chronology. One might even say it is a bit too dry, too merely factual. But the drama emerges from the contrast between the events and the calm narration.
  • It is not solely focused on the Jewish victims; indeed, all victims of the National Socialism are discussed, such as the Catholics in Poland. But the history of Jewish persecution is also given great depth and perspective. It is mind boggling to consider how a regime that used antisemitism to manipulate the public and gain power ended up dominating most of Europe and conducting an extermination campaign designed to wipe out an entire people.
  • The theme of the museum is not that the Holocaust was an inexplicable curse that mysteriously descended on one people at one time; rather the museum attempts to articulate and explain the actual reasons — the motives and ideology — behind the events, beginning with bad ideas that were only later realized in action when conditions made them possible.
  • The narrative does not attempt to convince the visitor that the Holocaust was plotted from the beginning of Nazi rule; in fact, you discover a very different story. The visitor sees how bad ideas (demographic central planning; scapegoating of minorities; the demonization of others) festered, leading to ever worsening results: boycotts of Jewish-owned business, racial pogroms, legal restrictions on property and religion, internments, ghettoization, concentration camps, killings, and finally a carefully constructed and industrialized machinery of mass death.
  • The museum does not isolate Germans as solely or uniformly guilty. Tribute is given to the German people, dissenters, and others who also fell victim to Hitler’s regime. As for moral culpability, it unequivocally belongs to the Nazis and their compliant supporters in Germany and throughout Europe. But the free world also bears responsibility for shutting its borders to refugees, trapping Jews in a prison state and, eventually, execution chamber.
  • The presentation is not rooted in sadness and despair; indeed, the museum tells of heroic efforts to save people from disaster and the resilience of the Jewish people in the face of annihilation. Even the existence of the museum is a tribute to hope because it conveys the conviction that we can learn from history and act in a way that never repeats this terrible past.

The Deeper Roots of the Holocaust

For the last six months, I’ve been steeped in studying and writing about the American experience with eugenics, the “policy science” of creating a master race. The more I’ve read, the more alarmed I’ve become that it was ever a thing, but it was all the rage in the Progressive Era. Eugenics was not a fringe movement; it was at the core of ruling-class politics, education, and culture. It was responsible for many of the early experiments in labor regulation. It was the driving force behind marriage licenses, minimum wages, restrictions on opportunities for women, and immigration quotas and controls.

The more I’ve looked into the subject, the more I’m convinced that it is not possible fully to understand the birth of the 20th century Leviathan without an awareness of eugenics. Eugenics was the original sin of the modern state that knows no limits to its power.

Once a regime decides that it must control human reproduction — to mold the population according to a central plan and divide human beings into those fit to thrive and those deserving extinction — you have the beginning of the end of freedom and civilization. The prophets of eugenics loathed the Jews, but also any peoples that they deemed dangerous to those they considered worthy of propagation. And the means they chose to realize their plans was top-down force.

So far in my reading on the subject, I’ve studied the origin of eugenics until the late 1920s, mostly in the US and the UK. And so, touring the Holocaust Museum was a revelation. It finally dawned on me: what happened in Germany was the extension and intensification of the same core ideas that were preached in the classrooms at Yale, Harvard, and Princeton decades earlier.

Eugenics didn’t go away. It just took on a more violent and vicious form in different political hands. Without meaningful checks on state power, people with eugenic ambitions can find themselves lording over a terror state. It was never realized in the United States, but it happened elsewhere. The stuffy academic conferences of the 1910s, the mutton-chopped faces of the respected professorial class, mutated in one generation to become the camps and commandants of the Nazi killing machine. The distance between eugenics and genocide, from Boston to Buchenwald, is not so great.

There are moments in the tour when this connection is made explicit, as when it is explained how, prior to the Nazis, the United States had set the record for forced sterilizations; how Hitler cited the US case for state planning of human reproduction; how the Nazis were obsessed with racial classification and used American texts on genetics and race as a starting point.

And think of this: when Progressive Era elites began to speak this way, to segment the population according to quality, and to urge policies to prevent “mongrelization,” there was no “slippery slope” to which opponents could point. This whole approach to managing the social order was unprecedented, and so a historical trajectory was pure conjecture. They could not say “Remember! Remember where this leads!”

Now we have exactly that history, and a moral obligation to point to it and learn from it.

What Can We Learn?

My primary takeaway from knitting this history together and observing its horrifying outcome is this: that any ideology, movement, or demagogue that dismisses universal human rights, that disparages the dignity of any person based on group characteristics, that attempts to segment the population into the fit and unfit, or in any way seeks to use the power of the state to put down some in order to uplift others, is courting outcomes that are dangerous to the whole of humanity. It might not happen immediately, but, over time, such rhetoric can lay the foundations for the machinery of death.

And there is also another, perhaps more important lesson: bad ideas have a social and political momentum all their own, regardless of anyone’s initial intentions. If you are not aware of that, you can be led down, step by step, to a very earthly hell.

At the same time, the reverse is also true: good ideas have a momentum that can lead to the flourishing of peace, prosperity, and universal human dignity. It is up to all of us. We must choose wisely, and never forget.

Jeffrey A. TuckerJeffrey A. Tucker

Jeffrey Tucker is Director of Digital Development at FEE and CLO of the startup Liberty.me. Author of five books, and many thousands of articles, he speaks at FEE summer seminars and other events. His latest book is Bit by Bit: How P2P Is Freeing the World.  Follow on Twitter and Like on Facebook. Email.

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