Are We There Yet?
Norman Thomas, the six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America said “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 the U.S. focused on defeating the foreign threat of Communism, we were not watching the domestic threat. The government has been undermining our liberties for years, and the pace has picked up remarkably within the last few months. Instead of assigning blame, however, we should see just how far we have come. The best way to illustrate this is to look at Karl Marx’s Ten Planks of Communism, found in the Communist Manifesto. Written in 1848, the Ten Planks were the steps necessary to defeat a capitalist society, replacing it with a communist government.
(from the Jeremiah Project, italics mine)
- Abolition of private property and the application of all rents of land to public purposes.
CHECK!
The courts have interpreted the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution (1868) to give the government far more “eminent domain” power than was originally intended. Under the rubric of “eminent domain” and various zoning regulations, land use regulations by the Bureau of Land Management property taxes, and “environmental” excuses, private property rights have become very diluted. As a result, private property in lands, vehicles, and other forms are seized almost every day in this country under the “forfeiture” provisions of the RICO statutes and the so-called War on Drugs. Private owners of property are required to get permission from government relative to the use of their property. - A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
CHECK!
The 16th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, 1913 (which some scholars maintain was never properly ratified), the Social Security Act of 1936, Joint House Resolution 192 of 1933, and various State income taxes established this major Marxist coup in the United States many decades ago. These taxes continue to drain the lifeblood out of the American economy and greatly reduce the accumulation of desperately needed capital for future growth, business starts, job creation, and salary increases. - Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
CHECK!
Another Marxist attack on private property rights is in the form of Federal & State estate taxes and other inheritance taxes, which have abolished or at least greatly diluted the right of private property owners to determine the disposition and distribution of their estates upon their death. (more…)
In: Politics · Tagged with: capitalism, communism, socialism
Is Conservatism Dead?
This editorial is from the February 2008 Unto the Breach Newsletter
I am hearing that the era of conservatism is over. I hear that Ronald Reagan is a once in a lifetime figure, so we might as well give up. We had our chance and blew it.
The left is trying their best to redefine conservatism. Suddenly, we are led to believe that the “new” conservatism means raising taxes, pro-choice on abortion, withdrawing from Iraq, stifling free speech, open borders, isolationism, government run healthcare, smoking bans, and gun control. We have “compassionate” conservatism (as if to imply that conservatism isn’t compassionate) and neo-conservatism, but I find it interesting that no one seems to be redefining liberalism. There is no one calling for the end of socialism, despite its miserable performance. No one is saying that the era of FDR is over. I have never heard of a neo-liberal or of compassionate liberalism.
Well, what is conservatism? Simply put, conservatives’ governing philosophy is to preserve the institutions and traditions that our country was founded upon such as liberty, limited government, and free enterprise. We believe in the power of the individual, not in massive bureaucracies. We believe that economic freedom is the key to prosperity, not income redistribution. Because of these principles, the United States grew from a fledgling British colony to the world’s superpower in less than 200 years.
We conservatives wear our philosophy proudly on our sleeves. Liberals would rather go by friendlier sounding titles like “progressives.” In fact, politicians cringe when they are called liberal. Why is it an insult for someone to call you what you are?
Conservatives run on ideas. Liberals have to disguise their intentions. For example: what is Hillary Clinton’s direction for America? Or more simply, what is her position on drivers’ licenses for illegal immigrants? They don’t want you to know their positions, and for good reason – they don’t work! In fact, when liberals run for office, they must move to the right in order to get elected. Perfect example: the 2006 midterm elections. While Republicans may have lost, conservatism did not. Democrats swept into power by running more conservative candidates like James Webb, Heath Shuler, and Claire McCaskill. If the era of conservatism was over, then the worst strategy would be for the DNC to out-conservative the Republicans.
Liberals stand for more government – the inefficient and bloated bureaucracies that only fail. What do we stand for? Ronald Reagan summed it up best: “Man is not free unless government is limited.” Conservatives don’t look at the country and see victims and despair, we see success and opportunity. We don’t need a steady supply of Americans who are dependent on the government in order to win elections. We want Americans to rise out of poverty and participate in the most vibrant economy in the world.
If anything, the era of liberalism should be over. Look at the collapse of the Soviet Union. The USSR had total state control – the left’s dream come true. Yet the Soviet Union was defeated – not by weapons, but by capitalism. North Korea cannot afford to feed its people or even light the country at night. The more freedom a society has, the more prosperous it is. If this weren’t the case, then socialist countries like the Soviet Union, North Korea, and Cuba would be the platinum standard.
The supposedly dead conservative movement does not need activist judges to circumvent the will of the people in order to advance their agenda. If liberalism is what the country wants, then let the people vote, as the Constitution says. If we are truly a dead philosophy, then the left would not have to work so hard to convince us.
Far left billionaire George Soros tells us that the era of capitalism is over. He has been beating that drum for decades, oddly enough, during the biggest economic boom in world history. Fellow billionaires Bill Gates and Warren Buffet want to transform capitalism. The irony is that they are assaulting the very institution in which they made their fortunes. Here’s my question to Soros: who is the Soviet counterpart to John D. Rockefeller? How about a North Korean version of Andrew Carnegie? Cuba’s Bill Gates? What contribution has socialism or liberalism made to the world, besides tyranny and genocide? Fact is, without the free market economy that conservatives stand for, there is no motivation for people to take risks and revolutionalize the world on the scale of America’s entrepreneurs.
I want to know what has led to the end of conservatism. If anything, we are seeing the failure of liberalism. Conservative talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh have millions of devoted listeners while the liberal Air America fails. The War on Poverty, bringing peace to Vietnam and Cambodia, the luxury tax, the AMT – all great ideas, right? Socialized healthcare programs are in retreat in several countries, returning to the private sector. Socialist nations like China are experiencing booms by instituting free market capitalism. Tell me, if our time is up, what has replaced it?
Just because the Republican Party has largely forgotten its principles is no reason to abandon the core philosophy. You can kill the party, but you can’t kill the movement. The Republican Party may have forgotten its base, but once they come to their senses, we will be here right here waiting. It is high time Republicans abandoned the “pale pastels” of consensus, compromise, and appealing to moderates and liberals. It is time to return to the “bold colors” of conservatism.
The conservative movement is not dead, it is just waiting for leadership.
©COPYRIGHT 2008 UNTO THE BREACH MEDIA
In: Politics · Tagged with: capitalism, conservatism, Ronald Reagan
Economics and Bodily Functions
A Different Look at Economic Systems
Your body functions are almost totally on autopilot. When you eat breakfast, you do not have to spend hours consciously telling your body to digest the food and then tell it what nutrients to send where. If you exercise, you do not have to monitor the amount of oxygen in your bloodstream, or decide at what rate your heart should beat. There is no need to remember to breathe. If there was, how could you sleep?
You simply eat pop-tarts, watch Bullwinkle, or whatever it is that you do while these remarkably complex functions carry on automatically. Your digestive system knows not only when you are hungry, but maintains proper nutrition levels for the trillions of cells that make up your body. How would you know when your heart needed more potassium, or your shoulder muscles needed some extra protein? Can you imagine a species that would have to devote thought to these basic survival instincts? That creature would not last long enough to make a fossil.
Now to the point: an economic system is just like a human body. Either you can let it run itself, or you can try to control it. Consider two examples:
Ours is an economy driven by prices. While you may not like prices, they are actually an incredible thing. When a car manufacturer makes a new model, they determine a price based on the money invested in the production of that vehicle (parts and labor). Consumers may like the features of the vehicle and feel that it is worth the price. If it is too expensive, or they do not like the features, they will not buy the vehicle. A strong demand shows the manufacturer they are in line with what consumers want. A lack of demand indicates that either the price is too high, or the model is unpopular. To stay in business, the company would have to modify future models.
Prices are a way of communicating what the consumers want. Prices also encourage consumers and producers to be efficient – you probably use a lot less gasoline when it is three dollars per gallon than when it was one dollar. The system works wonders if it is free from interference by the government. The free market, therefore, is like the cells in your body – millions of consumers functioning autonomously.
Now take the communist economy – it is like the species that has to think about every function in its body. In the Soviet Union, the government literally controlled everything. With no prices to govern the economy, manufacturers made too much of some products and not enough of others. People would stand in line for hours or perhaps days for boots while tomatoes wasted away in warehouses. There was no mechanism to monitor the demand or the quality of products; the consumers were simply stuck with what they had. The decisions for hundreds of millions of consumers were made by a handful of bureaucrats in Moscow.
The quality of life was drastically lower in the Soviet Union than in the United States. Because of prices, Americans had better products and were far more efficient than their communist counterparts.
The government knows how many tomatoes you need about as well as you know how much vitamin C to give one particular cell in your body. The free market works wonders, if left to function on its own. Our system is not perfect – we need major reform in certain areas. But we can be certain that government interference (like subsidies or universal health care) will throw a wrench into the greatest economy in history.
Chris Carter is the host of “Unto the Breach with Crushing Chris Carter.”
http://www.crushingchris.com
COPYRIGHT 2007 CHRIS CARTER
In: Economics · Tagged with: capitalism, communism
Who Really Benefits when Government Cuts CEO Pay?
Do you remember when you had the pile of uneaten Brussels sprouts in front of you, and in an attempt to shame you into eating the loathsome vegetables, your mother would use the cheap line of “finish your vegetables, there are starving children in China?” If you choked down all of your Brussels sprouts, would those starving children somehow feel better that some kid in the U.S. cleaned his plate?
Sorry moms, but we cannot solve world hunger by little Jimmy finishing his vegetables. But politicians in Washington are using this same trick to get you to think that cutting CEO pay will somehow help you out.
First a little background. According to the Economic Policy Institute, in 2005, the average CEO earned $10,982,000. Compare that to the average worker salary of $41,861. The CEO earns 262 times that of the average worker, which means they make more in one day than their workers earn in a year. On top of that, CEO’s can cash in on severance packages that can run in the hundreds of millions, regardless of their performance. Add in the bonuses, the retirement packages, and perhaps the personal use of a corporate jet. Are you jealous? Well, that envy is what these politicians are preying on.
But before you hop on the “stick-it-to-the-man” bandwagon, consider this: In 1981, General Electric hired Jack Welch as CEO. Welch inherited a corporation worth $14 billion. He built up the company and today GE is worth around $500 billion. In 2001, Jim Kilts took over as CEO of Gillette. The corporation had been in a nosedive, losing nearly half of its value in the two previous years. Kilts turned the company around, increasing its market value around $17 billion by its acquisition in 2005 by Procter & Gamble.
CEO’s make the decisions that can either make or break a company. While the salary and benefit package a company pays may sound unfair, consider that a squared-away boss like Welch or Kilts may mean the difference between bankruptcy and multi-billion dollar growth. That means a lot to shareholders. The Welches and Kiltses that are out there are very valuable to shareholders, so to bring them (and the profits they create) to their companies, they must pay big. Otherwise, they go to the competition.
So while Washington has you watching one hand, what is the other hand doing? It may seem as if they are watching out for the little guy. If they truly wanted you to keep more of your money, they would cut your taxes. But since a politician’s two priorities are 1) to get reelected and 2) to spend your money, that is next to impossible. Therefore, we can rule that out.
The truth is they want more money. The solution for everything today seems to be “tax the rich – they don’t need the money.” The top 5% of Americans pay over 54% of our taxes, and the top 1% pay over 34%. Sounds like a lot, but that is not enough to satisfy the left’s hunger for more money. They also seek more control. Politicians are trying to take money from Americans who worked hard and rose to the top, and give it to those who did not in the form of entitlements. This enlarges the already massive throng of Americans that are becoming increasingly dependent on the government, and means more votes for the Democrat party.
It is very easy to get caught up in class envy. But when politicians like Hillary Clinton are calling for control over CEO pay and seeking shared prosperity, we better not get caught up in the hype.
In: Economics, Politics · Tagged with: capitalism, Hillary Clinton, income redistribution, taxes
