WE ARE ALL COMMUNISTS NOW?

February 21, 2012

In 2009, not long after President Obama’s inauguration and when he was getting federal government spending shifted into high gear, the Newsweek Magazine of Feb. 16 proclaimed on its cover (in the largest typeface that would fit):  “WE ARE ALL SOCIALISTS NOW“.  Beneath the screamingly large type was a small subtitle, “THE PERILS AND PROMISE OF THE NEW ERA OF BIG GOVERNMENT”.

President Obama has been in reelection mode for the past year, as have potential Republican challengers.  We would not expect the President to react to the Newsweek proclamation, but it does indeed appear that he is doubling down on his promises of more, bigger and stronger centralized government.  Surprisingly, though, the Republican primary candidates for President have said little about the country’s accelerating march toward European-style, big government liberalism.  Of course they have complained about Obama’s policies and the stretched-out recession; but none has presented much in the way of details on how to reverse course before the U.S. automatically qualifies for membership in the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) group.

President Obama has mentioned, in both of his memoirs, his attraction to Marxists.  He also told us that the Hawaii organizer for the Communist Party USA and another prominent Communist were frequent visitors to his grandfather’s home in Hawaii where Obama grew up.  The President’s 20-year membership in the Reverend Wright’s church, which emphasized Marxist “Black
Liberation Theology”, is another implication that Obama does not find Marxist government policies unusual, uncomfortable, or in any way out of the ordinary.

Obama Administration appointees, speaking on the various Democrat-friendly talk shows, have made remarks that indicate this administration believes 60% of the U.S. voters actually want more government assistance and support, foreshadowing another easy Obama election victory.

Karl Marx is frequently mentioned as “the father of Socialism and Communism”.  His actual contribution was an idea for systematizing the political exploitation of two common human weaknesses:  envy and indolence.  Alexis de Tocqueville’s observation¹ about the inherent weakness of a democracy might have been the catalyst for Marx’ thinking, but there is no evidence.  Marx detailed his brilliant idea in a short document published in 1848, “The Communist Manifesto”.  Later in life, Marx developed an interest in political economics, publishing in 1867, “Das Kapital” (and he revised it incessantly until his death in 1884).  Obviously, Marx did not live to see any of his intellectual efforts tried out in attempts to create and run an actual, real-life government.

An inadvertent co-conspirator with Marx in the attempts to turn wishful thinking into an operating government was John Maynard Keynes, a highly educated and respectable political economist.  Keynes’ ideas, like those of Marx, come in and out of favor across time; both have been criticized by a number of world-famous economists over the years.  For someone without much training in political or practical economics, a serious flaw that might be seen is that both Marx and Keynes seemed to believe wealth just existed—like matter (pre-Einstein), wealth cannot be created nor destroyed, just transformed (as in where and how used).  During Marx’ productive years no essential economic data were collected or available.  Keynes did not have that handicap; but he compensated by ignoring data that did not support his economic theories.

Today, neither Marx nor Keynes carries much weight—except with Socialist and Communist true believers and with clever, opportunistic politicians.  But, as we have seen time and again over the last 100 years or so in the United States, emotion frequently trumps logic and reason.  Therefore it is likely that the current owners of Newsweek magazine already have the cover designed for the 2013 issue that will appear after the presidential inauguration.  Utilizing the largest typeface that will fit, that cover will proclaim, “WE ARE ALL COMMUNISTS NOW“.  A good subtitle on that cover would be, “LEARNING TO LOVE BIG BROTHER AND COPE WITH THE POLITBURO”.

NOTE:

  ¹Alexis de Toqueville, a French scholar and philosopher, made an extensive visit and study of the United States in its early years and later observed, ”A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”  (In more recent history, a Margaret Thatcher quote would be an appropriate footnote to de Tocqueville’s quote, “The problem with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money”).

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President of the PIIGS?

December 10, 2011

The PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) countries of Europe continue their economic slide, well past the tipping point and closer to the abyss than ever.  In spite of European Union bail-out efforts, combined with attempts to convince the profligate Socialist governments that they must rein in their unaffordable entitlement programs, little or no progress has been made on solving the underlying, core problem.

Recently, a number of the EU member states have managed to get the International Monetary Fund and its chief contributor, the United States, to contribute (“loan”) more money to try to prop up Italy, along with whatever a few of the EU members can scrape up.  As big a deal as it is to U.S. taxpayers, it’s just another drop into the fire bucket to be poured onto the European Socialist conflagration.  That whole effort may really be just to shame Germany, France and the United Kingdom into deeper financial participation in this unprecedented firefighting exercise.

The root of the problem is, of course, half one of human nature and half one of the known vulnerability that all democracies share.  The human frailty, which we all recognize even if we believe it is impolite to mention it, is our desire to get something for nothing.  Of course, all politicians―even the most dense and inarticulate―know that votes are purchased with promise capital.  Moreover, even that stupidest politician knows that the very best lure is something for nothing and that an ongoing vote-buying program is best of all.  Politicians also well understand that feasibility or deliverability of the promise is immaterial; we want to believe that we will get something free, with no strings attached.

That other part of the cause is a characteristic of democratic governments.  Alexis de Toqueville, a French scholar and philosopher, made an extensive visit and study of the United States.  It was de Toqueville who observed, ”A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years”.  No one has yet discovered a procedural method of avoiding this pitfall; but the United States has managed so far to last only a tiny bit longer than 200 years.

Barack Obama began campaigning for the office of President of the United States around 2002, and in 2008 he succeeded in being elected.  In large part, Obama’s appeal was his promise to be “a President of all the people”.  His “hope and change” slogan resonated even with some number of reasonable, educated and knowledgeable voters.  Over the years since he was elected, however, that promise seems increasingly in doubt.

President Obama seems to be stuck in a rut, ever since his 2012 reelection campaign season began in 2010.  His repetitive speeches are more strident and angry; his nice guy attitude is nowhere to be seen.  The only vestige of the old Obama is his prowess in raising campaign contributions.  He has been delivering Marxist class-envy speeches, filled with trite cold-war-era Soviet phrases, at every fund-raising stop on his current campaign trail.  It seems that Obama would feel comfortable only in a European Socialist government setting.

Obama’s legislative accomplishments also appear to be copies of the European Socialist initiatives that have led those progressive governments into imminent financial peril.  The President has refused to consider any but the most trivial reductions in government spending, and he is obsessed with increasing income taxes.  Taken together, the President’s speeches and his legislative agenda indicate that Obama is more of a President of the PIIGS than he is a President of the United States.  Perhaps it would be best if he abandoned the 2012 U.S. election and instead looked into organizing the PIIGS into their own union, with Barack Obama as its head.  PIIGS voters would undoubtedly be receptive to promises of more and more government largesse.

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Posted by thedrake01

Join the PIIGS Fan Club Now!

May 19, 2011

I am going to join the PIIGS fan club, and I encourage all of you to join with me!  I plan to purchase PIIGS bumper stickers, PIIGS banners, PIIGS lapel pins and all of the other icons of membership.  The reason I have not joined already is that I want to be fully prepared  to explain to my friends, acquaintances and relatives all of the the benefits of belonging to this fan club.  At this moment I can provide only the basic information.

PIIGS, for those who have better things to do than watch economics and business programs on TV, are those European countries who have pushed the progressive ideas of government to the outer limits of the fiscal envelope and beyond:  Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain.  Other European countries have also been experimenting with the ragged edge of progressive government finance; but they have not yet progressed so far as the PIIGS.

Most of us have caught glimpses in the news of the riots that have occurred recently, and continue periodically in the PIIGS countries.  Whether these begin as legitimate public demonstrations and then deteriorate into riots is not known.  However, it is well known that the labor leaders who sponsor and enable the “demonstrations” are not in the least averse to “cracking a few heads and breaking a few windows”.

Aside from labor unions’ incitement, the citizens work themselves up into riot-rage out of greed and fear:  looming government bankruptcies threaten fractional cuts to PIIGS workers’ extraordinarily generous benefits (wage rates, paid holidays, retirement income, work rules, etc.).  It appears that the collusion between PIIGS politicians and PIIGS labor leaders only works when wages and benefits are rising; any reductions during tough economic times are considered foul play.

Members of labor unions and some members of parliament believe their affluent lifestyle can be preserved by “taxing the rich more and more”.  In this context, “the rich” translates to other European countries (plus the International Monetary Fund and its U.S. financial contributions) whose financial straits are not yet quite so desperate as those of the PIIGS.  While the European Union and the IMF have managed to stave off a couple of bankruptcies (Greece and Ireland) for the present, the outlook for PIIGS is still dim.  Germany, France and Great Britain are leaders in an emerging hard-line opposition to bailing out those profligate progressive states.  Frequently we hear Margaret Thatcher’s famous dictum, “The problem with Socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people’s money”.

In the U.S. we are seeing the beginnings of union-led worker demonstrations in a few of those states where politicians are attempting to solve financial-excess problems that have left them almost as precarious as the PIIGS.  We saw teachers (and a few of their students) storming the state capitol in Wisconsin, blocking access to government representatives and state workers.  Usually accompanied by union leaders with bull horns, the teachers displayed professionally-prepared signs and banners, chanted negative slogans on cue from (union?) cheerleaders and, it appeared, made special efforts to discard as much trash inside the capitol as possible.  Of course, their “demonstrations” included the requisite number of broken windows, graffiti, and other minor but expensive acts of vandalism.

Similar union-led demonstrations have taken place in other states.  So far, however, we have not seen PIIGS-like full scale riots.  But we have seen progressive politicians from at least two states fleeing their state capitols to take refuge in neighboring states.  It is clear that these politicians are unable to defend the excessive wages and benefits for government workers, which they supported and/or tolerated, that are a major factor in their states’ financial troubles.  Many of us wonder if these politicians secretly encourage the workers’ near-riot actions and resulting damage.

The PIIGS fan club, like actors’ and musicians’ fan clubs, exists to encourage the principals and to cheer them on to more and better performances in the future.  The principals appreciated by PIIGS fan club members include the workers, their union leaders, and the complicit politicians who wholeheartedly support the status quo.  How can we (future) PIIGS fan club members not support PIIGS workers’ basic rights to four or more weeks’ paid vacation per year; free retirement programs that allow retirement as early as age 50; free health insurance and generous paid sick-days allowances; free or subsidized housing; and all those other God-given workers Rights that we don’t have?

As PIIGS fan club members we can encourage the timid and the corrupt politicians to drag their feet on proposed financial reforms and continue calling for more taxes on “the rich”.  We can look aside when labor leaders plan and stage more and bigger worker riots.  We can publicly support more financial aid for the PIIGS from the European Union (but not the IMF and its U.S.-contributed funds).  In general, we can support an acceleration of the PIIGS’ progress toward their logical final state:  financial collapse; anarchy; and dictatorial despotism.

PIIGS fan club members simply want to help the PIIGS achieve their politician-created and voter-acquiesced  goals.

Now, what are those benefits of PIIGS fan club membership?  The self-interest benefit to U.S. members of the PIIGS fan club is the hope that government workers (at federal, state and local levels) could receive and understand the lesson that the PIIGS are providing:  The problem with Socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other peoples’ money.

I’m looking forward to PIIGS Fan Club membership and meetings, and I look forward to meeting you at the social hour there.

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The Rehabilitation of Socialism

November 11, 2010

My parents were young adults when World War I occurred, and they lived on into the Cold War years following World War II.   My father was college age by the time the War to End All Wars broke out, and my mother was a few years younger.  They experienced the Great Depression years as a family with children, and they got to watch the U. S. inevitably slide into the second world war.  But the Iron Curtain and the Cold War spawned by the U.S.S.R. was beyond their ability to explain.

Both of my parents were a little young to have noticed Benito Mussolini’s burgeoning success with Socialism in Italy.  But the “noble experiment” in Russia following the Armistice of 1918 caught their attention, and it piqued their sense of fairness and justice for the poor and the lower classes.  From what I read, many years later, it appears that they were not totally out of step with their young adult peers.

Socialism in the 1920s and 1930s did not have the bad reputation in the U. S. that it acquired in later years.  The liberal or progressive agenda of the Roosevelt administration, in many respects copying policies of the maturing Socialist governments in Europe, was apparently well tolerated even as it elongated the Great Depression.  In my family, Socialism started becoming a little tarnished as the excesses of the German Socialist Workers Party began to leak out.  Stalin’s distancing his government from those of Germany and Italy (directing his propaganda ministry to refer to those countries only, and frequently, as “Fascist”) slowed the oxidation of “Socialism” somewhat.  After Hitler ordered his armies to invade Russia, there was never again any mention of Germany as a “Socialist” country.

Socialism regained a little of its luster during the brief period while the U.S.S.R. and the West were united in the effort to defeat the Axis powers.  Post-war, though, the Iron Curtain and an apparent “cold” war was another speed bump in the rehabilitation of Socialism.  Senator Joseph McCarthy’s investigations into U. S. Government officials who were, or thought to be, Communists was the next reputation killer for Socialism.  Anti-colonial resistance movements the world over, some with rather long histories, began to come out and display the Communist banners everywhere.  My mother commented, “This isn’t what we thought of as Socialism”.

Marxism has had, and continues to have, a number of different fashions and flavors.  From the late 1800s there have been Pragmatism, Progressivism, Socialism, Fascism, Communism, and multiple nuances of “Liberalism”.  But to the average person on the street, there hasn’t been fifty cents worth of difference between the varieties of Marxism.  This Chameleonism has probably been Marxism’s best self-preservation trait, and it seems to have worked well in the U.S.  The consistent attributes across all forms of Marxism, however, have been and continue today to be control and coercion—all important decisions are made by the government, with little left to the vagaries of the ballot box or the citizenry.  The U.S. mid-term elections seem to indicate that there is, at least at present, a difference of opinion on this governmental philosophy between the Obama administration and a substantial percentage of U.S. voters.

It’s still too early to tell if the arrogance, elitism and overreaching  of President Obama, Senator Reid, and Speaker of the House Pelosi have resulted in another decline in the reputation of Socialism.  Also it is not yet known what effect the financial calamities and resultant rioting in the Socialist countries of Europe will have on long-term opinion of Socialism as a viable form of government.

In our last conversation that included political topics, my mother said she was coming to the conclusion that Socialism ran contrary to human nature, and she wasn’t sure it could ever be made to work.  But my father never lost the faith, and he went out of this world comfortable in his belief that Unionism and Socialism would become the perfect government for the U.S. some day.

The Obama administration and its allies are now in full damage control mode, albeit with differing styles among the players.  Nancy Pelosi paraphrases Nikita Khrushchev’s dictum, “We will bury you”.  Harry Reid, however, prefers Star Trek’s Borg, “Resistance is futile; you will be assimilated”.  President Obama unwaveringly continues promoting class envy, reminding us that equality of opportunity may sound nice, but that any government which fails to effect and rigidly enforce universal equality of identical results is a loser government.

All of us will likely have to wait for the next national election to see how much the national opinion of  Socialism improves.  In the meantime we can continue to observe how  the reputation of Socialism fares in the European Socialist countries.

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Posted by thedrake01

Obama Is Not a Socialist!

July 25, 2009

As the “cap and trade” and “health care reform” bills gradually become less stealthy and more visible, a lot of normally reasonable people are now calling President Obama a Socialist. I don’t believe this is productive, and besides, it’s not really accurate. A better approach, in my opinion, is to confine our ideological labels for Obama to those he has admitted to or told us about.

In the short period that Obama has been in control of the media, he has repeatedly said, “I am a Pragmatist”. Now, that is something we can work with. As I recall, Pragmatism was a political movement in the U. S. in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It had a fairly short run under that name. It then segued into Progressivism (the Progressives had minor differences with the Pragmatists), with essentially the same people involved.  But that’s not the end of the story.

Around 1908 – 1910 the Progressives abandoned ship for a slightly different political movement, Fascism. The flag bearer of Fascism was, of course, Benito Mussolini, who became famous for making the trains run on time and for picking real losers as friends.

Just as Mussolini was effectively gaining and consolidating power in Italy, the Russian civil war devolved into a “noble experiment” called Socialism. There probably wasn’t a tenth of a centimo difference between Pragmatism, Progressivism, Fascism and Socialism; but political junkies fear being out of fashion more than anything else in life.

Because Mussolini was still rising, and making a name for himself, not all Fascists immediately started calling themselves Socialists. But there was even more consternation ahead for the political fad followers.

In Germany, Adolf Hitler was becoming the Austro-German darling, and he called his organization the National Socialist German Workers (NAZI) Party. But most of the time he referred to his government as Fascist—go figure!

Meanwhile back in Russia, Vladimir Lenin had decided to call Russia’s version of Socialism “Communism”.  Talk about confusion:  Pragmatism, Progressivism, Fascism, Socialism, Communism—differing like one banana split with Chocolate on the left, Vanilla in the middle, Strawberry on the right differs from another with Strawberry on the left, Chocolate in the middle, Vanilla on the right differs from . . .

Back to Obama the Pragmatist.  Aside from his Pragmatist self-anointment in numerous speeches and other public performances, Obama has provided us with a couple of clues.  Between his two autobiographies, he told us that when he was living with his grandparents in Hawaii two well-known Communists were frequent family visitors (one being the Hawaii organizer for the Communist Party USA), and that when he was in college he was “attracted to Marxists and Marxist groups”.

But please don’t jump to conclusions and start calling Obama a Communist.  The term “Communist” has as many definitions and connotations as the aforementioned banana split.  Surely we can be more precise.

Obama’s repeated calls for “wealth redistribution”, “social justice”, and  “elimination of corporate greed” certainly indicate a Marxist outlook.  Obama’s legislative initiatives—banking takeover, executive compensation caps, auto-manufacturing control—are precisely the types of things Karl Marx advocated in “Das Kapital”.

So we would be fair and accurate to label Barak Obama a Marxist (although a political scientist friend insists that the precise term should be “Marxist Leninist”).

At this point we Americans should pray that President Obama actually read the U. S. Constitution; truly understand that document; and develop a belief  that the United States is worth preserving.

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Posted by thedrake01

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