The first article in this series can be found here.
Last time we touched on the ideas of two clear thinkers, 20th century Austrian-born economist Friedrich Hayek and 19th century French philosopher and historian Alexis de Tocqueville. Both predicted the temptations to which fairness mongers would succumb if loosed on a democracy receptive to their paternalistic notions of government. We noted that President Barrack Obama and the Democrat Congress are taking us down the socialist road. Now let’s get as specific as we can in the following 949 words.
Dumbing down the citizenry
What Tocqueville called “the supreme power” has taken “the community in its powerful grasp” and “fashioned [that community] at will.” Government has climbed into bed with teachers’ unions, who now seek to pull highly-performing charter schools into the fold with poorly-performing union schools. Abysmal high school graduation rates, horrific math and verbal skills, and non-existent knowledge of history are producing adult mushrooms conversant in multiculturalism for multiculturalism’s sake and diversity for diversity’s sake. Products of our schools are also afflicted with the mental mushiness engendered by moral relativism. No right or wrong, only infinite pastels which demand that enlightened minds “tolerate” all behaviors and philosophies while rejecting clear thinking. Ninety percent of university non-science professors are tradition-spurning liberals who reject capitalism’s goodness. The state has joined with “educators” to rot our culture’s intellectual tone.
The conservative American Enterprise Institute and liberal Center for American Progress joined together to report that each year 1.2 million students drop out of high school. Education entrepreneurs cite the “lack of a performance culture in K-12 public education.” The AEI separately found that only 60 percent of first-time university students graduate from four-year colleges within six years, with many schools’ rates settling considerably lower—such as New Orleans’s Southern University at 8 percent. High performance orientation is an early casualty of socialism.
Sexual free-for-all
Since the if-it-feels-good-do-it ’60s, unrestrained libidos have been the rage—aided by the decline of religion. History’s big socialist movements have expunged religion, for most religion fosters something that kills socialism deader than dead—wholesome values, especially sexual restraint. Allowing for exceptions such as 1400 years of radical Islam and 350 years of Spanish Inquisition Catholicism, religion has generally molded morally upright adults. Socialism is allergic to moral uprightness. America now suffers courts, a President, Congress, an education system, and news and entertainment media dominated by secular-progressive zealots contemptuous of time-honored values. The overall out-of-wedlock birthrate of 30 percent and astronomically high rate of 70 percent for Blacks betray the moral breakdown inherent in socialism.
Tribalism
Progressives have segmented America into victimhood-oriented special interest groups. Author Ayn Rand called them “tribes” with a “self-arrested” mentality stuck at the “perceptual level of development.” She used the example of a Canadian who “would kill and die for the privilege of printing on every postage stamp the word ‘postage’ for the English-speaking and the word ‘postes’ for the French-speaking citizens…” Tribalists fight “to protect their level of awareness, their mental passivity, their obedience to the tribe, and their desire to ignore the existence of outsiders.”
Democrats lavish preferential treatment on Blacks, Hispanics, and women, treatment that enables these three groups to cordon themselves off from and resist healthy participation in society. This faux-remedy breeds helplessness. Truly, such fairness-mongering nonsense would fall on the deaf ears of self-reliant achievers if there were no “victims” to feel “deprived” of a “right” to wealth. American socialism gained ground with FDR’s Social Security, hit its stride with LBJ’s Welfare, Medicare, and Medicaid, and now stands at the point of no return with Obama’s nationalized healthcare. Most of these panaceas are ostensibly meant for the “needy,” but specifically target the tribes.
Pravda USA
Anyone who denies the media’s overwhelming liberal bias is either lying or so ideologically blinded that they’d also not notice a 12-foot gator gnawing their leg. The liberal worldview prohibits mean old reptiles. American socialism is growing, aided by the fascistic relationship in which media have engaged with their Washington idols. The dishonesty of ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and most big city newspapers stops truth from reaching most people, who are also sadly disengaged or disinterested in that truth.
The parasite culture
Ultra-liberal California coddles a huge illegal immigrant population with devastating economic consequences. The generational government dependency among Blacks, which engulfs New Orleans, took center stage when, after Hurricane Katrina, the media featured rooftop-dwelling and water-wading Blacks while ignoring non-Blacks who lost everything. These images, now indellibly burned into our memories, preview where America could be headed.
Power-hungry Democrats will bleed taxpayers to feed non-taxpayers. The Heritage Foundation found that entitlements in relation to Gross Domestic Product will increase 221 percent before considering nationalized healthcare, unless Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are slashed. Shortfalls will require $12,072 more annual taxes per household unless “every other government program” is killed. The 35 and 25 percent tax brackets will leap to 77 and 55 percent. Whence prosperity? That’s the dirty secret: Socialistic economies languish—they languish horribly.
I want you, comrade
“We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded [as our military]. … People of all ages, stations, and skills will be asked to serve.” That’s what Barack Obama said in 2008 about what has now become a $5.7 billion boondoggle involving groups like AmeriCorps, whose inspector general exposed Obama crony and Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson’s abuse of taxpayer money. The President fired the inspector. What will 250,000 volunteers actually do? Work on “community renewal” and “social justice” projects. “Ministry of Propaganda” comes to mind.
Death to the private sector
Bush and Obama established government control over the banking and automobile industries. Now Obama wants the Federal Reserve to have unprecedented regulatory power with “rules of the road” for the entire financial system. Can you say “central planning?” And don’t count on executive pay caps being applied only to bailed-out companies. Blaming Wall Street for a “culture of irresponsibility,” Obama ignores irresponsible politicians and borrowers without whom the current recession would not have happened. Socialism thrives on glorifying government as it slaps down capitalistic devils.
We’ve cursorily examined but a few ways in which fairness mongers are transforming America to a socialistic society. Next time, we’ll discuss how the zealots would love to keep anything resembling a free-market economy from ever blossoming in America again.
Click here for third article in series.
