We have previously demonstrated that presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, if elected, will not be the first to introduce socialism into mainstream America. Previous presidents have done so already and it has been in our diet for most of a hundred years. Both he and opponent Hillary Clinton would make militant socialist Eugene V. Debbs, founder of the Socialist Party of America (1901) and five-time presidential candidate, look like todays conservative republican. With a vote for either Sanders or Clinton many Americans are almost running to socialism. Why?
The Athenian democracy idea profoundly changed the world that was ruled by monarchies; a king stayed in power and passed it on to posterity until removed. The “great idea” gave ever-larger portions of vote power to the masses but it had no brakes. When is society democratized enough? Should every man have an equal vote? Are they equally informed, equally intelligent, equally gifted? No, but as it expands the next level wants everything as well. Once tasted it enlarges until all have an equal participation despite their differences or ignorance.
Nearly 300 years after democracy was first introduced in Athens Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC), wrote of democracy’s inherent weakness, that being, when everyman is allowed to rise to the level his talent and industry permit him, some will become rich and others poor. The rich will always despise the poor, and the poor will always envy the rich. When the poor obtain the same vote power as the rich under a democracy, as they always will, given their greater numbers, they will use that power to take from the rich. It may take some time for this to happen because democracy does initially encourage the profit motive, which stimulates everyone’s desire to get rich. This is good for a society because to do so they invest in society, which creates additional business, that employ more people, that develop an ever-larger middle class. The middle class, Aristotle believed, should be the ruling class as it is closer to the poor and better understands their legitimate needs and, at the same time, it has enough of the world’s goods not to covet, thus destroy, the rich class. Still, in time the less productive will grow, especially when they can attach their vote to politicians who, to get elected, promise them ever more.
Again, history has demonstrated that democracy has no brakes and, once entered into, gradually transitions into socialism, which also has no brakes. At what moment is society democratized enough, or socialized enough? As things become freer for the non-productive part of society, and they believe themselves entitled thereto, more money must be confiscated from the productive middle and upper classes and it is the rich class and entrepreneurial middle class that risk their money to create the jobs. When has a poor man ever created a job for anyone? In time these classes cannot provide the money that is demanded of them to feed and otherwise subsidize the less productive class. They are disincentivized, and then destroyed, by ever-higher taxes. All too soon the definition of rich is ever lowered until it destroys the rich class and feeds on the middle class through excessive taxation—even until all are poor. Despite the promises, the only thing that socialism gives is slavery and shared poverty.
My point again, democracies have no brakes. They do not know how to stop, and failing to stop, always degenerate into socialism. They do not have a limit. Aristotle recognized this when he wrote, ““Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.” When that understanding is lost, the force to democratize more increases as voting becomes more universal which is what democracies encourage. Shouldn’t everyone have an equal vote? Those in Athens came to believe so. Said Aristotle, “Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal” (Ibid.).
As voting becomes more universal, vote power favors the poor as they, in time, become the majority. This process is accelerated, and corrupted, when politicians link government gift giving with their election. As the poor, as a class, always tend to favor government intervention and thus financial favors from government to their benefit, and since all government money comes from the middle and upper classes through ever increasing taxes, (presently 47% of the adult population pay no federal income tax and a good share of these make up the non-productive class) they eventually destroy the productive base of society as government takes over more of the economy by confiscation or regulation. The overriding principle is, the more socialism the higher the taxes and burden on the producing class.
As government controls ever more portions of the economy, democracy transcends to socialism. Again, at what point does democracy become socialism no one can say. Obamacare alone transferred one seventh of the economy to the federal government. Sometime in this transition democracy ceases to be democracy although the term continues to be used, socialism more accurately describes the real system, hence Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s warning in 2009 to Fidel Castro, one a socialist the other a communist, “We have to be careful lest we become right of Obama.” It needs noting that both Clinton and Sanders are left of Barack Obama.
So why is half of America running to socialism? They first desire what is from the sweat of others. Then once given come to believe it owed them. Getting something for nothing has always been a powerful motive.
The near panic associated with the possibility of Bernie Sanders, after winning the New Hampshire primary and doing so well in South Carolina and Nevada, overtaking Hillary Clinton and becoming the Democratic nominee for president, is treated by the establishment press as a gigantic move into socialism, but it shouldn’t. Seven years ago, Feb. 16, 2009, Newsweek’s cover story proclaimed “We Are All Socialists Now.”
Editors Jon Meacham and Evan Thomas wrote, “Whether we want to admit it or not, the America of 2009 is moving toward a modern European state,” toward socialism, they observed, “even before Barack Obama’s largest fiscal bill in our history.” The cover of the magazine featured a red hand (republican) shaking a blue hand (democrat) in favor of socialism. Both parties accepted the “growing role of government in the economy,” they observed. “The U.S. government has already—under a conservative Republican administration—effectively nationalized the banking and mortgage industries.” Moreover, “it was, again, under a conservative GOP administration that we enacted the largest expansion of the welfare state in 30 years: prescription drugs for the elderly.”
If the “growing role in government” was how Newsweek measured socialism, the Obama years thereafter were even more socialist than they could have expected. In this time period the federal government obtained a controlling interest in General Motors, absorbed 1/7th of the economy under Obamacare, and expanded the power of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to oversee most homes in America. This land expansion was in addition to their ownership of a third of all the landmass in the United States known as federal land. This does not count the controlling influence over all businesses by the eighty thousand new pages of bureaucratic rules and regulations descending upon businesses annually that effectively manage most everything else.
Clearly we were replacing our Constitutional Republic, which emphasizes limited government and individual freedom, with socialism long before Sanders became a household name. His appeal to tax the rich even more to pay for free college is but a deeper step into the socialism that already exists in the United States. Newsweek observed correctly then that this was just the beginning. In light of their honesty it might behoove us to understand where socialist might be taking us by noting where socialism has taken others.
In 1975 the book, “From Under the Ruble,” authored by a variety of Soviet dissidents, all but one of whom were still living in the USSR, was published in the West. The participants were fully aware that their commentary on the socialist system smuggled to the “Free World” would undoubtedly unleash the wrath of the Soviet Bear and result in imprisonment, torture, and possibly death for them. Nonetheless, they felt that the West could avoid the loss of freedom they experienced if only it were warned.
Igor Shafarevich, a corresponding member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and former Laureate of the Lenin Prize, attempted, in his chapter “Socialism in Our Past and Future,” to tell the West what socialism eventually worked out to be in practice. This is, of course, after any significant means of resistance had been removed by gun control. That is the first thing that goes in any tyrannical government. He found the economic definition of socialism, the meaningful governmental control of the means of production and distribution, shamefully incomplete.
Socialism resulted in complete control of private property. Property was defined as anything that existed including one’s own family and person. This included subordination of the individual to the power of the bureaucracy and state control of everyday life. Sexual promiscuity is first tolerated, even encourage, but ultimately procreation on a selective and supervised basis follows.
For the USSR socialism meant the destruction of the family as the basic institution of society and the rearing of children away from their parents in state schools or daycare centers. Marriage, as an acceptable practice, was also minimized.
One of the most defining characteristics of all profoundly socialist countries was the government’s extreme hatred of religion and their commitment to its ultimate destruction. It competes with the state as God.
The destruction of the hierarchy into which society has arranged itself was yet another characteristic under which Shafarevich lived. The idea of equality to a socialist had a special character. It meant the negation of the existence of any genuine differences between individuals: “equality” was turned into “equivalence.” Socialism aims to establish equality by the opposite means of destroying all the higher aspects of the personality.
Newsweek’s invitation to “think more clearly about how to use government in today’s world” should dissuade us from going there at all. Why would anyone want to embrace a system that ended all semblances of freedom and which, for them, self destructed in 1989? At least in the USSR, at that time, they would have been happy to trade their socialism for our freedom. Are we smart enough to listen to them and avoid all socialists in either party, of which there are several, this election?
The near panic associated with the possibility of Bernie Sanders, after winning the New Hampshire primary and doing so well in South Carolina and Nevada, overtaking Hillary Clinton and becoming the Democratic nominee for president, is treated by the establishment press as a gigantic move into socialism, but it shouldn’t. Seven years ago, Feb. 16, 2009, Newsweek’s cover story proclaimed “We Are All Socialists Now.”
Editors Jon Meacham and Evan Thomas wrote, “Whether we want to admit it or not, the America of 2009 is moving toward a modern European state,” toward socialism, they observed, “even before Barack Obama’s largest fiscal bill in our history.” The cover of the magazine featured a red hand (republican) shaking a blue hand (democrat) in favor of socialism. Both parties accepted the “growing role of government in the economy,” they observed. “The U.S. government has already—under a conservative Republican administration—effectively nationalized the banking and mortgage industries.” Moreover, “it was, again, under a conservative GOP administration that we enacted the largest expansion of the welfare state in 30 years: prescription drugs for the elderly.”
If the “growing role in government” was how Newsweek measured socialism, the Obama years thereafter were even more socialist than they could have expected. In this time period the federal government obtained a controlling interest in General Motors, absorbed 1/7th of the economy under Obamacare, and expanded the power of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to oversee most homes in America. This land expansion was in addition to their ownership of a third of all the landmass in the United States known as federal land. This does not count the controlling influence over all businesses by the eighty thousand new pages of bureaucratic rules and regulations descending upon businesses annually that effectively manage most everything else.
Clearly we were replacing our Constitutional Republic, which emphasizes limited government and individual freedom, with socialism long before Sanders became a household name. His appeal to tax the rich even more to pay for free college is but a deeper step into the socialism that already exists in the United States. Newsweek observed correctly then that this was just the beginning. In light of their honesty it might behoove us to understand where socialist might be taking us by noting where socialism has taken others.
In 1975 the book, “From Under the Ruble,” authored by a variety of Soviet dissidents, all but one of whom were still living in the USSR, was published in the West. The participants were fully aware that their commentary on the socialist system smuggled to the “Free World” would undoubtedly unleash the wrath of the Soviet Bear and result in imprisonment, torture, and possibly death for them. Nonetheless, they felt that the West could avoid the loss of freedom they experienced if only it were warned.
Igor Shafarevich, a corresponding member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and former Laureate of the Lenin Prize, attempted, in his chapter “Socialism in Our Past and Future,” to tell the West what socialism eventually worked out to be in practice. This is, of course, after any significant means of resistance had been removed by gun control. That is the first thing that goes in any tyrannical government. He found the economic definition of socialism, the meaningful governmental control of the means of production and distribution, shamefully incomplete.
Socialism resulted in complete control of private property. Property was defined as anything that existed including one’s own family and person. This included subordination of the individual to the power of the bureaucracy and state control of everyday life. Sexual promiscuity is first tolerated, even encourage, but ultimately procreation on a selective and supervised basis follows.
For the USSR socialism meant the destruction of the family as the basic institution of society and the rearing of children away from their parents in state schools or daycare centers. Marriage, as an acceptable practice, was also minimized.
One of the most defining characteristics of all profoundly socialist countries was the government’s extreme hatred of religion and their commitment to its ultimate destruction. It competes with the state as God.
The destruction of the hierarchy into which society has arranged itself was yet another characteristic under which Shafarevich lived. The idea of equality to a socialist had a special character. It meant the negation of the existence of any genuine differences between individuals: “equality” was turned into “equivalence.” Socialism aims to establish equality by the opposite means of destroying all the higher aspects of the personality.
Newsweek’s invitation to “think more clearly about how to use government in today’s world” should dissuade us from going there at all. Why would anyone want to embrace a system that ended all semblances of freedom and which, for them, self destructed in 1989? At least in the USSR, at that time, they would have been happy to trade their socialism for our freedom. Are we smart enough to listen to them and avoid all socialists in either party, of which there are several, this election?
1. Declaration of Independence: Your Right of Revolution
The Declaration of Independence: Your right of Revolution is a 23-minute video of the historical events leading to the necessity of revolution from Great Britain. It identifies “self-evident” truths that justify revolution. Five references to God, or a Supreme Being, as the author of these truths is made in the document. One defines the right of revolution as any time or place when such are not met. It began the philosophical revolution that climaxed thirteen years later with the Bill of Rights which added to the “self-evident” truths noted before. The Constitution cannot be fully understood separate from The Declaration of Independence. It is the first of 17 presentations collectively called “I Want to Be Free.”
Formally we have identified what is the “real” establishment. It has nothing to do with longevity in elected office, as portrayed by the establishment media, and everything to do with Wall Street connections. It is rooted in the international banking fraternity, powerful multinational corporations and media elites. Those who have been bold enough to identify it publically fear to be more specific preferring to use generic names, the eastern establishment, money trust, and Washington cartel. Their most visible and largest organization is the 97-year old Council on Foreign Relations. These people have power.
President Woodrow Wilson in his book, The New Freedom (1913), wrote of his experience with this hidden force. He wrote: “Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.”
A subject of great student interest in my classes has been Special Interest Politics. Over the years the voices identifying this hidden power have been many. Perhaps the most prominent of these emanated from presidential candidates Barry Goldwater and Ron Paul.
Probably the most descriptive voice came from Hillary Clinton while Secretary of State. Speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations, then dedicating a branch CFR sub-center in Washington D. C., she said. “I am delighted to be at these new headquarters. I have been often to the mother ship in New York City but it is good to have an outpost of the Council right here down the street from the State Department. We get a lot of advice from the Council so this will mean that I won’t have as far to go to be told what we should be doing and how we should think about the future.” More recently she has addressed the CFR in New York City on January 19, 2015, and November 19, 2015.
Hillary is the only Democrat presidential candidate presently supported by the establishment. She has membership with other establishment organizations, in particular, the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderbergers. Indeed, there exists no person more establishment than she, yet when asked recently if she was a part of the establishment she answered; “I don’t know what the establishment means.” There exists no evidence that her Democratic opponent, Bernie Sanders, is a part of the establishment.
Like Hillary, Jeb Bush was the crowned Republican candidate years before. We were to get the same two establishment approved presidential candidates as offered in every election for most of 100 years. Both political parties belong to the establishment. We were to elect one of their guys as before and believe that this was our choice. All other choices were to gradually be eliminated. The establishment press covers no other political party, of which there always exist at least 20 in every presidential election. It was as simple as that except that the Democrats do not want Hillary Clinton and the Republicans do not want another Bush. Over $100 million dollars was used up to entice us to him, to no avail. Jeb appeared to the CFR again January 19, 2016 but could not get additional traction.
The establishment left Bush in early November favoring a new candidate Marco Rubio now pouring millions into his coffers. Rubio had spoken at CFR headquarters May 13, 2015. This explains why two previous friends turned on each other so viciously in December. Bush did not like being replaced as “heir apparent” and Marco had to attempt to destroy his former friend to take his place. Still, Marco Rubio was not rising fast enough to stop the two candidates most hated by the establishment, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Governors Chris Christy and John Kasich also know that the first election in this country is always the establishments. They each made their bid to, “the mother ship” as Hillary called it, Christy November 24, 2015 and Kasich December 9, 2015. I might add that no one speaks at CFR meetings unless favored and invited. When asked if he were a part of the establishment, John Kasich answered, “I can get along with the establishment but I am not part of it.”
For the Republican presidential candidates still in the race only Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, and Donald Trump are establishment clean. Ben Carson they can ease out by giving minimal coverage. Ted Cruz is by far the most hated. He recently called the CFR “a pit of vipers” and a “pernicious nest of snakes.” Long time CFR member Rudy Giuliani probably best expressed how the establishment feels about both. Ted Cruz is “Too ridged, too right wing, not tarred by the long connection with the Republican Party.” His favorites in order were Christy, Bush and Rubio. But “Donald’s been a friend for 25 years.”
Therein lies the situation. If no establishment candidate can get traction they could hold their nose and settle on Trump because he is not “too ridged,” meaning constitutional, “he has been a friend,” and he could be expected to negotiate with them. But there is no way that they are going to let Cruz near “THEIR” White House. Yet this is the best chance in my lifetime, perhaps ever, to remove the “pit of vipers” and return truly free elections to this country.
As Presidents Day and presidential primaries are upon us one might ponder whom would President George Washington support in the 2016 presidential election? The answer is found in his famous Farewell Address given Sept. 19, 1796, just prior to his leaving the presidency. In his usual stately manner as the father of this great nation he warned posterity of possible pitfalls that could undermine or destroy this great experiment in liberty. His warnings may well be timelier 218 years later as we near his birthday February 22.
In strong terms he asked that we avoid debt. He said: “As a very important source of strength and security cherish public credit… use it as sparingly as possible, avoiding occasion of expense… [Use the] time of peace, to discharge the debts which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear.”
Today our national debt exceeds $19 trillion—the highest in our history–$9 trillion of which from the Obama Administration alone in seven years. Debt resolvement is the most serious issue of our country today, akin to national survival. Obviously neither party has taken Washington’s advice. Presently the debt per taxpayer is $158,902. We are spending our way into oblivion (See USDebtClock.org). This issue has not been vented in any of the presidential debates thus far. Rand Paul (now withdrawn from the race) sponsored a bill to audit the Federal Reserve, a necessary step in curbing runaway debt. Ted Cruz cosponsored it. Basically Democrats do not consider this a problem and most Republican candidates give but lip service to it.
Washington plead with the nation to keep religion and morality strong. He said: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports…. Let it simply be asked, where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” The Founding Fathers never supported the notion of separation of religion and government—only the separation of an organization of religion from government. Basically both parties work for removal of religion from government but Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee (now withdrawn from the race) and Marco Rubio did work for the evangelical vote in Iowa.
Our first president also had advice with respect to how we should deal with foreign nations. He advised that our commercial policy “should hold an equal and impartial hand; neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences…diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce but forcing nothing.” This is a far cry from the bullying tactics we’ve too often employed the last 118 years. Today we have troops in over 32 nations deployed in over 900 bases.
But the warning about foreign aid was especially good. Washington basically told us that gift giving in foreign affairs is a good way to be universally hated. He said it placed us “in the condition of having given equivalents for nominal favors, and yet of being reproached with ingratitude for not giving more.” Today there is hardly a nation in the world that does not have its hand out and when, after once giving, the amount is reduce or terminated we are hated all the more for it. Paul would fade it.
Washington warned against the origin of “combinations and associations” whose intent was to suppress the desires of the majority in favor of the minority. He called them artificial power factions. We call them special interest groups. What would he say upon learning that a third of the cabinet of every president since Herbert Hoover belonged to the semi-secret Council on Foreign Relations as does either the President or Vice President of every administration including Barack Obama’s? No candidate dares speak out against this organization by name, Ted Cruz gets closest, “the Washington Cartel.”
Such factions, he said, “May answer popular ends and become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government….” The antidote for this, Washington explained, was “to resist with care the spirit of innovation” upon basic constitutional principles or premises no matter how flowery, appealing or “specious the pretext.” President Barack Obama is the best example that we have had of “specious the pretext” and Donald Trump the second.
Washington worried about posterity not holding their elected officials strictly to the limits imposed by the Constitution. He knew many would seek to undermine that document by twisting it to give power they could not acquire without the distortion. Sound familiar? He said: “But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.” Today much of what the federal government does is not even mentioned in the Constitution. Ted Cruz is the “Washington Cartel’s” most hated presidential candidate because he is constitutionally based.
But freedom fighters are not likely to be popular, Washington continues: “Real patriots, who may resist the intrigues of the favorite, are liable to become suspected and odious; while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.” One need not look far for the tools and dupes, they seem to characterize most of the presidential candidates from both parties. Are you voting for one of them or for a real constitutionalist.
