Saturday, October 31, 2009

NATIONAL HEALTH CARE

There's been so much debate on national health care that I'm sick of hearing all the whining from both sides of this issue; the D’s verses R’s.

Is our health care system in American really broke and does it need fixing? If so what kind of fix does it need? Should we use the same system of health care that Canada and Britain uses, which is socialism and won't work, or should we, model our health care after the form used in Germany or Taiwan? Which does work. Either way be prepared, taxes will go up!

The current form that Congresswoman Nancy Palosi (D, CA) and Senator Harry Reed (D, NV) are backing and pushing through Congress is socialism and needs to be questioned and debated by us, the American people, not the politicians in Washington. Let us make that decision, (it called freedom of choice.)

Given the track record of the United States Government and the Bureaucrats within government the only beneficiary’s will be special interests groups. Not the Individual American!

Here’s what you’ll get under the current plan.

The courtesy of the I.R.S.

The efficiency of the Post Office

The effectiveness of FEMA after Hurricane Katrina.

Is this what you want, be careful, you may get what you want and as I’ve learned in my short life, “what I want is not necessarily what I need."

Thursday, October 22, 2009

A Warning to all Americans


Oct. 22, 2009

From Naval Aviator, Commander Jerry Wilson

We lived in California during the winters of 2007 and 2008. We became addicted to Fox News and watched O'Reilly and Hannity and Colmes every night. When we got back home, we upgraded our cable to get Fox. I watched the Presidential campaign very closely. Initially because I thought the Democrats would nominate Hillary Clinton and then in astonishment when they chose an even more hard-left candidate. All of last year I told everyone I could that Obama was not a Democrat, he was a Marxist. He is far to the left of any European leader and even our far left party, the NDP.

I read Saul Alinsky when I was in the University. I studied him and his writing carefully. When Bill Ayers and his idiot wife were bombing and killing people at random in the Weather Underground. Weather Underground and the Black Panthers were closely allied. I read David Horowitz's account of changing from a Marxist to a conservative after seeing that the government was afraid to prosecute members of the Panthers for murdering his personal assistant. He suddenly understood the evil that Marxism really was.

After the student radicals failed in creating a Marxist revolution in the United States by violent means, they embraced Alinsky. You would be wise to read "Rules for Radicals" because it outlines how Hillary and Obama planned to get into power, and what they intended to do when they got it.

Socialism is not the correct descriptor for what Obama and the Democrats are doing. They are going to be much more far reaching than anything Sweden has ever been able to do. Obama is following Alinsky's plans, those set out in "Rules for Radicals" and his other writing. The Democrats are attempting to create one party rule in the U.S. and in achieving that, will create crisis after crisis by their own actions and use those crisis to nationalize the means of production in the U.S. You are in the middle of a communist revolution and few in the U.S. can actually see it for what it truly is.

The U.S. is now on the path of financial destruction. The Constitution has been shredded and individual human rights are being trampled. In less than 8 months. Obama has used a recession to take over the two largest industries in the U.S. He will debase the Dollar and is on the road to creating an incredible energy shortage that will allow him and Congress to take over the energy industry.

But by and large I think that by the 2010 elections, the Democrats will have gerrymandered electoral districts to the point that it will be impossible for them to lose control of both houses of Congress. The incredible increase in the money supply is going to create Zimbabwe and Venezuela style inflation, and with it, controls on the currency and the amount of money that can be taken out of the country.

I love America , I cannot believe how the ignorance of the American public has created a situation where by they are going to lose their Republic and slip into an age of repression and tyranny.

I may be nuts, but so far I have been 100% in my predictions of what Obama was going to do, because I merely had to look at "Rules for Radicals" to see what was coming next.

I read Glenn Beck's book, "Common Sense" and in it re-read Thomas Paine's pamphlet with the same name. I recommend the book.
When the storm finally hits (and it will), those of you who supported the Obama administration will be affected as well. It won't just be us gun owners or Flat-Taxers, or Pro-Lifers that get hit. You'll be right there next to us.
You all thought the Conservatives were nut cases. You know, all of us who believe in God, small government, the Second Amendment, etc. You thought you could just go back to sleep after the election was over. In your world, America will continue as before. You'll still have the same rights, the same nice house, the same big screen television. After all, your high school football team won and the other team lost "go team"! Even if you have bothered to look up from the daily grind since Nov 4th, you dismissed everything that has occurred as "politics as usual"the same old stuff.
In the end, it'll all be OK won't it? Not this time.

There are a growing number of citizens in the US that are ready to fight to shut down the government's grab of personal freedom, it's blatant abuse of the constitution, and it's attempt to replace the American way of life with socialism. You have to listen carefully to hear them, but they are there. I won't start that fight, but when it goes down I will join it.

As for you, why, you'll be shocked because you didn't see it coming. And eventually you'll be saddened when you see that we have truly lost the way of life with which you grew up. You'll be saddened that your children and grandchildren live in a socialist, government-controlled gulag where their every movement from cradle to grave is tracked by the government. But most of all, you'll be saddened by the death of friends and relatives who are brave enough to fight and die for something they believe in.

You know, McCain wasn't much of a candidate. I'll give you that. He was the lesser of two evils for most of us. I don't blame you for not voting for him since, at the time, you didn't know what we all know now. But at least John McCain was an American. He was a supporter of the American way of life and he understood that you can't negotiate with terrorists. He understood and appreciated the sacrifice made by my father and other members of the Greatest Generation.

Mark my words friends. All across America groups are forming. They are forming out of anger and out of desperation at the thought of losing America . They're not militia groups, terrorists as the Department of Homeland security would have you believe; they are Americans, loyal to the constitution. They are mothers and fathers and grandparents. They belong to groups like the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps, the Peaceful Resistance, the Constitution Party, the Young Conservatives, the 9/12 Project, and Grassfire. Right now they are fragmented, each focused on their own cause. But sometime in the next two years, our government is going to do something really stupid and these groups will come together. Watch for it, wait for it's get ready. It will happen.

When that event happens, whatever "it" is, our great country is going to plunge into chaos for a while. I pray to God that we make it through that time and emerge a stronger, smarter country.

Naval Aviator, Commander Jerry Wilson, jerrywilson@centurytel.net ( http://us.mc813.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=jerrywilson@centurytel.net )
Live Free or Die Fighting

This is a time to be looking UP And to be praying

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Wake up America!!!

Here's an E-mail I received today. I fully agree with its content. The Author's word's are very close to my own conclusions

by Pam Geller

I am a student of history. Professionally, I have written 15 books in six languages, and have studied history all my life. I think there is something monumentally large afoot, and I do not believe it is just a banking crisis, or a mortgage crisis, or a credit crisis. Yes, these exist but they are merely single facets on a very large gemstone that is only now coming into a sharper focus.

Something of historic proportions is happening. I can sense it because I know how it feels, smells, what it looks like, and how people react to it.. Yes, a perfect storm may be brewing, but there is something happening within our country that has been evolving for about 10 - 15 years.  The pace has dramatically quickened in the past two.

We demand and then codified into law the requirement that our banks make massive loans to people whom we know could never pay back? Why? We learned recently that the Federal Reserve, which has little or no real oversight by anyone, has "loaned" two trillion dollars (that is $2,000,000,000,000) over the past few months, but will not tell us to whom or why or disclose the terms. That is our money. Yours and mine. And that is three times the $700B we all argued about so strenuously just this past September.

Who has this money? Why do they have it? Why are the terms unavailable to us? Who asked for it? Who authorized it? I thought this was a government of "We the People," who loaned our powers to our elected leaders. Apparently not.

We have spent two or more decades intentionally De-industrializing our economy. Why?

We have intentionally dumbed down our schools, ignored our history, and no longer teach our founding documents, why we are exceptional, and why we are worth preserving. Students by and large cannot write, think critically, read, or articulate. Parents are not revolting, teachers are not picketing, school boards continue to back mediocrity. Why?

We have now established the precedent of protesting every close election (now violently in California over a proposition that is so controversial that it wants marriage to remain between one man and one woman. Did you ever think such a thing possible just a decade ago?). We have corrupted our sacred political process by allowing unelected judges to write laws that radically change our way of life, and then mainstream Marxist groups like ACORN and others to turn our voting system into a banana republic. To what purpose?

Now our mortgage industry is collapsing, housing prices are in free fall, major industries are failing, our banking system is on the verge of collapse, Social Security is nearly bankrupt, as is Medicare and our entire government. Our education system is worse than a joke (I teach college and know precisely what I am talking about.) The list is staggering in its length, breadth, and depth. It is potentially 1929 x 10. And we are at war with an enemy we cannot name for fear of offending people of the same religion who cannot wait to slit the throats of your children if they have the opportunity to do so.

And now we have elected a man no one knows anything about, who has never run so much as a Dairy Queen, let alone a town as big as Wasilla, Alaska. All of his associations and alliances are with real radicals in their chosen fields of employment, and everything we learn about him, drip by drip, is unsettling if not d own right scary (Surely you have heard him speak about his idea to create and fund a mandatory civilian defense force stronger than our military for use inside our borders? No? Oh, of course. The media would never play that for you over and over and then demand he answer it. Sarah Palin's pregnant daughter and $150,000 wardrobe is more important.)

Mr. Obama's winning platform can be boiled down to one word: Change.. Why?


I have never been so afraid for my country and for my children as I am now. This man campaigned on bringing people together, something he has never, ever done in his professional life. In my assessment, Obama will divide us along philosophical lines, push us apart, and then try to realign the pieces into a new and different power structure. Change is indeed coming. And when it comes, you will never see the same nation again.

And that is only the beginning.

I thought I would never be able to experience what the ordinary, moral German felt in the mid-1930s. In those times, the savior was a former smooth-talking rabble-rouser from the streets, about whom the average German knew next to nothing. What they did know was that he was associated with groups that shouted, shoved, and pushed around people with whom they disagreed; he edged his way onto the political stage through great oratory and promises. Economic times were tough, people were losing jobs, and he was a great speaker. And he smiled and waved a lot. And people, even newspapers, were afraid to speak out for fear that his "brown shirts" would bully them into submission.

And then he was duly elected to office, with a full-throttled economic crisis at hand [the Great Depression]. Slowly but surely he seized the controls of government power, department by department, person by person, bureaucracy by bureaucracy. The kids joined a Youth Movement in his name, where they were taught what to think. How did he get the people on his side? He did it promising jobs to the jobless, money to the moneyless, and goodies for the military-industrial complex. He did it by indoctrinating the children, advocating gun control, health care for all, better wages, better jobs, and promising to re-instill pride once again in the country, across Europe, and across the world.

He did it with a compliant media - Did you know that? And he did this all in the name of justice and change. And the people surely got what they voted for. (Look it up if you think I am exaggerating.) Read your history books. Many people objected in 1933 and were shouted down, called names, laughed at, and made fun of. When Winston Churchill pointed out the obvious in the late 1930s while seated in the House of Lords in England (he was not yet Prime Minister), he was booed into his seat and called a crazy troublemaker. He was right, though...

Don't forget that Germany was the most educated, cultured country in Europe. It was full of music, art, museums, hospitals, laboratories, and universities. And in less than six years - a shorter time span than just two terms of the U. S. presidency - it was rounding up its own citizens, killing others, abrogating its laws, turning children against parents, and neighbors against neighbors. All with the best of intentions, of course.  The road to Hell is paved with them.

As a practical thinker, one not overly prone to emotional decisions, I have a choice: I can either believe what the objective pieces of evidence tell me (even if they make me cringe with disgust); I can believe what history is shouting to me from across the chasm of seven decades; or I can hope I am wrong, close my eyes, have another latte and ignore what is transpiring around me.

Some people scoff at me; others laugh or think I am foolish, naive, or both. Perhaps I am. But I have never been afraid to look people in the eye and tell them exactly what I believe - and why I believe it. I pray I am wrong. But, I do not think I am.

        About the author via Google...

        Pamela "Atlas" Geller began her publishing career at The New York
        Daily News and subsequently took over operation of The New York
        Observer as Associate Publisher. She left The Observer after the birth of her
        fourth child but remained involved in various projects including American
        Associates, Ben Gurion University and being Senior Vice-President
        Strategic Planning and Performance Evaluation at The Brandeis School.

        After 9/11, Atlas had the veil of oblivion violently lifted from her
        consciousness and immersed herself in the education and understanding
        of geopolitics, Islam, terror, foreign affairs and imminent threats the
        mainstream media and the government wouldn't cover or discuss.
        ***************************************************************

Since many of you enjoy senior citizen status or will sometime in the not too distant future, I thought you might be interested in this information.

        IN GOD WE TRUST

        Everybody that is on this mailing list is either a
        senior citizen, is getting close or knows somebody that is.

        Most of you know by now that the Senate version
        (at least) of the "stimulus" bill includes provisions for extensive
        rationing of health care for senior citizens. The author of this part
        of the bill, former senator and tax evader, Tom Daschle was credited today
        by Bloomberg with the following statement.

        Bloomberg: "Daschle says health-care reform will
        not be pain free. Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions 
        that come with age instead of treating them."

        If this does not sufficiently raise your ire, just
        remember that Senators and Congressmen have their own health care plan
        that is first dollar or very low co-pay which they are guaranteed the
        remainder of their lives and are not subject to this new law if it passes.

        Please use the power of the Internet to get this
        message out. Talk it up at the grassroots level. We have an election
        coming up in one year and nine months. We have the ability to address
        and reverse the dangerous direction the Obama administration and it allies
        have begun and in the interim, we can make our voices heard! Lets do it!

        If you disagree, don't do anything.

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Bailout Politics

by Thomas Sowell

Nothing could more painfully demonstrate what is wrong with Congress than the current financial crisis.

Among the Congressional "leaders" invited to the White House to devise a bailout "solution" are the very people who have for years created the risks that have now come home to roost.

Five years ago, Barney Frank vouched for the "soundness" of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and said "I do not see" any "possibility of serious financial losses to the treasury."

Moreover, he said that the federal government has "probably done too little rather than too much to push them to meet the goals of affordable housing."


Earlier this year, Senator Christopher Dodd praised Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for "riding to the rescue" when other financial institutions were cutting back on mortgage loans. He too said that they "need to do more" to help subprime borrowers get better loans.

In other words, Congressman Frank and Senator Dodd wanted the government to push financial institutions to lend to people they would not lend to otherwise, because of the risk of default.

The idea that politicians can assess risks better than people who have spent their whole careers assessing risks should have been so obviously absurd that no one would take it seriously.


But the magic words "affordable housing" and the ugly word "redlining" led to politicians directing where loans and investments should go, with such things as the Community Reinvestment Act and various other coercions and threats.

The roots of this problem go back many years, but since the crisis to which all this led happened on George W. Bush’s watch, that is enough for those who think in terms of talking points, without wanting to be confused by the facts.

In reality, President Bush tried unsuccessfully, years ago, to get Congress to create some regulatory agency to oversee Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
N. Gregory Mankiw, his Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, warned in February 2004 that expecting a government bailout if things go wrong "creates an incentive for a company to take on risk and enjoy the associated increase in return."


Since risky investments usually pay more than safer investments, the incentive is for a government-supported enterprise to take bigger risks, since they get more profit if the risks pay off and the taxpayers get stuck with the losses if not.

The government does not guarantee Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, but the widespread assumption has been that the government would step in with a bailout to prevent chaos in financial markets.

Alan Greenspan, then head of the Federal Reserve System, made the same point in testifying before Congress in February 2004. He said: "The Federal Reserve is concerned" that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were using this implicit reliance on a government bailout in a crisis to take more risks, in order to "multiply the profitability of subsidized debt."

Chairman Greenspan added his voice to those urging Congress to create a "regulator with authority on a par with that of banking regulators" to reduce the riskiness of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a riskiness ultimately borne by the taxpayers.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac do not deserve to be bailed out, but neither do workers, families and businesses deserve to be put through the economic wringer by a collapse of credit markets, such as occurred during the Great Depression of the 1930s.


Neither do the voters deserve to be deceived on the eve of an election by the notion that this is a failure of free markets that should be replaced by political micro-managing.

If Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were free market institutions they could not have gotten away with their risky financial practices because no one would have bought their securities without the implicit assumption that the politicians would bail them out.

It would be better if no such government-supported enterprises had been created in the first place and mortgages were in fact left to the free market. This bailout creates the expectation of future bailouts.

Phasing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would make much more sense than letting politicians play politics with them again, with the risk and expense being again loaded onto the taxpayers.


Copyright © 2008 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved

Thursday, September 25, 2008

DON'T WORRY

BE HAPPY

By: Philip J. Rappa

There is no need to be a forensic pathologist to understand the cause of death of America's financial institutions and our credibility abroad. The only thing required is a familiarity with our history.

Over the past twenty-nine years beginning with the 96th Congress and concluding with the 106th, there has been a systematic concerted effort by our elected officials to unravel the remaining vestiges of our institutions that represented our sovereignty as a nation. If we just round up these usual suspects, based on reasonable suspicion we can begin to delineate more then just probable cause, but most importantly the direct cause of our misfortune.

Following the stock market crash of 1929, laws were enacted to prevent another debacle: The Glass-Steagall Act and the creation of the FDIC. Both officially named the Banking Act of 1935. These laws set in motion the apparatus separating commercial banks from investment banks; this arrangement worked for sixty-four years.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) included banking reforms some of which were designed to control speculation. Some provisions such as Regulation Q allowed The Federal Reserve to regulate interest rates in savings accounts. In 1980, congress in all its wisdom repealed the FDIC reforms by enacting the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act.

Then on November 12th, 1999, President Bill Clinton signed into law the Gramm-Leach-Biley Act, which repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. One of the effects of the repeal was to allow commercial and investment banks to consolidate. From that moment in time it only took Wall Street and K-Street nine years to destroy our financial institutions and our credibility abroad.

The only noteworthy fact that is prologue to this disaster is that each generation preceding us has had their own financial calamity ushered in by unencumbered and unbridled capitalism. Each time profit trumped public interest. The agents of our despair have treated their oath of office as if it were an antiquated notion giving their allegiance as well as aid and comfort to the free market, while the working man became little more then an expendable asset.

Each generation had its own brand of corporate and government corruption and cronyism and an understanding of the collusion between the government, industry, military and the bankers. Even to a casual observer a pattern seems to emerge. Humanity has struggled for centuries to unshackle themselves from the subjugation of kings, popes, empires and raw capitalism.

In one generation we have idly watched as these same elected officials dismantled our nation's industries sending them, our jobs and our technology to foreign shores to be made on the cheap. America's labor force has been disemboweled placed on a pyre fueled by vapors of a gossamer web that once epitomized America's "Promise": that of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

The "Promise", once the tapestry of this nation's domestic social contract, which was won by the blood, sweat and tears of those who came before us has been shredded by an unregulated corporate free-market fanaticism. We on Main Street shall be left to pay the piper due to the treasonous actions of our elected officials and our own individual participation in this Ponzi scheme.

" Published originally at EtherZone.com: republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact."

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

IS TIME RUNNING OUT

Or have you giving up?

More terminated Mixed Blood Ute's are sounding off about the Ute Partition Act than ever before. But, have things reached the point where the sounding off is more of a jarring cacophony than a stirring rallying cry? -Or- are we all destined to lose in the long run? Politicians and lawyers, aided by behind-the-scenes handlers of all kinds, quite nimbly played one faction against another and have been for more then fifty years. They seized the opportunity to appeal to a group that they knew wouldn't take the time to read the fine print and notice scripts change just enough to lock in a different agenda, while claiming to represent the best choice for everyone's future.

Politicians, Lawyers and the Ute Indian Tribe, worked itself into a frenzy of viewing the Ute Partition Act (Termination) as a do-or-die marathon, never noticing or caring what the effects this act would have on individuals. It was and is a game where greed and bigotry replaced common sense and effort--from qualifying to a winner take-all finale. Now, when the stakes were at the highest, individuals were coerced into ‘stakeholder” status, the rules rapidly change; but too few people paid any attention to the details.

This process (termination) can be compared to an Old Western movie, where the gullible Rancher loses his wallet, jewelry, horse, ranch, and even his very life-- because the Rancher mistakenly assumes the game was honest. The Ute Partition Act was not an Old Western movie. It was and is real life. By the time they noticed the game was rigged and what was lost it was too late.

What's left? Do we have any workable solutions? Who can orchestrate a sustained and needed solution? Do we have time left to find out and get any orchestrated efforts all working together? The tune is more important than the people directing the chorus! There is still time!

Thursday, June 26, 2008

A SOCIALIST BY ANY OTHER NAME...

SWEEPING THE WEST
By: Selwyn Duke

One of the consequences of being right in an age of lies is that it brands you as a radical. Remember that being an extremist doesn't mean you're wrong, but simply that your views deviate greatly from those of the mainstream. If you say that 2+2=4 in a land where everyone else insists it's 5, you'll be labeled a radical. The same is true if you assert that a certain society of men is full of wolves when everyone else believes they're sheep.

Now, for years I've been telling people that most of our Democrats are essentially socialists; sure, either they won't admit it publicly or aren't fully aware of it themselves (quite common; self knowledge is often sorely lacking, especially among leftists). It was a message as hard to relate as it is for many to accept, as it renders you something less than the kind of "credible" commentator who gets invitations to appear on Fox News (bigot Opio Sokoni was on O'Reilly last week). But that message now goes down a little easier with the recent Democrat proposal to nationalize oil refineries.

There is a great article on this very subject by a writer named Lance Fairchok; it is titled "Why Do We Call Them 'Democrats'? After quoting a couple of Democrats who waxed enthusiastic about nationalizing the oil refineries, he presents this Freudian slip by Congressman Maxine Waters:
"This liberal will be all about socializing, uh, uh . . . would be about . . . basically taking over and the government running all of your companies."

Well, well, I don't suppose that's the kind of rhetoric she used on the campaign trail (although I suspect most of her constituents either wouldn't know what she was talking about or wouldn't care). Don't rejoice too much at the shedding of the mask, however, as it's not so much attributable to a sudden spirit of honesty as it is to a changing climate. The truth is that no small number of American citizens are now socialists, only, they usually aren't aware of it. These are people – and we've all met them – who never heard a proposal for government involvement they didn't like. They only ask that one of two criteria be met: The proposal must sound convenient for them or inconvenient for someone who they envy. Oh, and, yes, I have always known that greed and jealousy -- as opposed to some noble desire to help the downtrodden -- are what drive leftists. Winston Churchill observed this decades ago when he said:
"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy; its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery."

If you doubt both that old curmudgeon and me, a younger one, consider research related by columnist Peter Schweizer in this article. He writes,
Scholars at Oxford and Warwick Universities found the same sort of behaviour (a desire to take from those who have more) when they conducted an experiment.

Setting up a computer game that allowed people to accumulate money, they gave participants the option to spend some of their own money in order to take away more from someone else.

The result? Those who considered themselves 'egalitarians' (i.e. Left of centre) were much more willing to give up some of their own money if it meant taking more money from someone else.

Much of the desire to distribute wealth and higher taxation is motivated by envy – the desire to take more from someone else – and bitterness.
Unfortunately, while we can give ourselves pep talks about how we value liberty and the wonders of our "free market" (if only it were freer), the truth is that socialism has swept the West. British Chancellor of the Exchequer quipped about this over a century ago when, after introducing death duties in the budget of 1894, he said, "We are all socialists now."

As I said before, though, let's not lose sight of the fact that the politicians merely reflect the people. Too many Americans have been instilled with unrealistic expectations for lifestyle and a spirit of entitlement, and they will glom onto any slick demagogue (even if he has a strange foreign name) who promises a larger piece of the pie. As to this, in Fairchok's article he presents a chilling prediction made by U.S. Socialist Party presidential candidate Norman Thomas more than half a century ago. To wit:
"The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of 'liberalism,' they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened."

While I can't say much for the man's politics, he was, at least insofar as this went, quite prescient. Most Americans have been inured to socialism under a different name, although virtually all would protest loudly if so accused.
People fall victim to the idea that socialism can work for a few reasons. For one thing, new generations are born and, with history taught so poorly, the mistakes of the past must be learned anew. Then, many labor under the illusion that socialism breeds prosperity in places such as Sweden, when in reality such countries are dying a lingering death.

Yet, if socialism – in any guise – is what Americans want, it's what they will get. But not only won’t they know how it happened, as Thomas said, they won’t like the consequences and won't know what to blame them on. Thus, they probably will fancy that the solution is even more government involvement.

Another thing that gets you branded a radical is when you point out that socialism is just a less virulent strain of communism. Yet the pseudo-intellectuals who would thus stigmatize you are blithely unaware of an important fact.

Karl Marx himself said that socialism was just a transitional phase on the road to communism.

We just have to wait for the second mask to come off.

" Published originally at EtherZone.com: republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact."