Socialism and Reality

10/25/2010 – Steve McCann –
The images on the television screen emanating from Europe are a sobering reminder that socialism has failed wherever it has been tried and will always do so despite the best efforts of the die-hard true believers. The riots in the streets of France and Greece, the announced layoffs of nearly 500,000 government employees in the United Kingdom, and the potential national bankruptcy of Ireland, Spain, Italy, and Portugal are the current face of this failure.

Yet within the halls of power in Washington, D.C. there is a socialist/progressive cabal, and its titular leader Barack Obama, oblivious to this reality. These ideologues continue to cling to the belief that they have a unique ability to succeed where so many others have failed. The egocentric American Left know no bounds, and their determination to impose their will upon the United States has not and will not abate despite the results of any election. [Read more…]

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Two Steps Forward

Democrats communists10/10/2010 – Jeffrey Folks –
Lenin famously described his strategy for communist domination as “one step forward, two steps back.” Of course, by that he did not mean to suggest steps of equal length. The step forward was a lot more like two large steps, and the two steps back were more or less symbolic, designed to diffuse opposition.

Clearly, in the past two years the United States has moved two giant steps in the direction of socialism. We have seen the redistribution of hundreds of billions of dollars, the seizure of major industries by the state, the re-emergence of a hard-core welfare state, the virtual nationalization of healthcare, takeover by regulation of the energy and financial sectors, and much more. This resurgence of state control has been accompanied by the new power of labor unions, environmental lobbyists, tort lawyers, and state bureaucracies. But now, having reached the limit of what the public will stomach, the Leninists who run the Democratic Party see that it is time for two baby-steps back. [Read more…]

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Progressives and Communists: Out of the Closet — Together

10/4/2010 – Paul Kengor –
A close look at the Saturday “One Nation” rally in Washington reveals something quite telling. It was a major gathering of the “progressive” left, highly billed, vigorously promoted. And it happened to include — in fact, it warmly accepted — the endorsement of Communist Party USA.

Expectedly, a bunch of the rally’s endorsers carried the word “progress” or “progressive” in their title, from People’s Organization for Progress to Progressive Democrats of America. More still unhesitatingly describe themselves as progressive, from racial eugenicist Margaret Sanger’s Planned Parenthood to Norman Lear’s heirs at People for the American Way, plus the usual suspects from the “social justice” Religious Left. [Read more…]

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The Ideology of Totalitarian Humanism

9/23/2010 – Keith Preston –
Many on the alternative Right are inclined to refer to PC as “cultural Marxism.” In some ways, this is an apt metaphor, as the PC ideology bears a resemblance to the reductionist concept of class antagonism that orthodox Marxism advances. If the dualistic class dichotomy of “proletarians and bourgeoisie” is replaced with a newer dichotomy pitting feminist women, minorities, gays, immigrants, the transgendered and others having been or believed to be oppressed against the “hegemony” of “straight, white, Christian, males,” then similarities between PC and Marxism do indeed emerge.

However, PC could in some ways be compared with totalitarianism from the other end of the political spectrum. If the duality of “Aryans” believed to be oppressed by and in mortal struggle with “the Jews” is replaced with the aforementioned dichotomy advanced by PC, a reductionism of comparable crudity likewise becomes apparent. Yet it would seem to me that such metaphors as “cultural Marxism” or “liberal Nazism” are not really the best characterizations of PC. [Read more…]

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Reality and the American Left

8/1/2010 – Steve McCann –

Europe, the birthplace of socialist/Marxist theory, is rapidly retreating from this failed ideology — and has been for some time. There is now an open discussion among the most die-hard of Leftist ideologues conceding the fact that a political or economic system which guarantees prosperity to that country’s citizens, and operates a massive central government model, cannot work in the modern age of global economy and communication.

In the United States, however, the Left, including those in the White House, are determined to go where others have failed. [Read more…]

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ObamaCare Mythology: One Man’s Life Is Another Man’s Loss

ObamaCare A nightmare for America7/20/2010 – John Griffing –

If President Obama is to be believed, health care is a dwindling, finite resource that must be rationed. According to Obama, quality health care for some deprives the less fortunate of quality care. The only good health care in Obama’s worldview is that which is “redistributional.”

So says Dr. Donald Berwick, Obama’s new health care czar, appointed to oversee the distribution of $800 billion worth of benefits payments. This mostly means denying life-extending treatment to seniors, in practice. Of course, Obama lacks the constitutional authority to appoint an individual with this kind of authority without Senate confirmation, but using the “recess appointment” ruse, shocking even Democrat senators, Berwick now holds vast power over who gets what medical treatment.

But no matter. Obama has decided. Illegality has not stopped other contentious Obama appointments. Obama does what he wants, when he wants, regardless of his sworn oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution. [Read more…]

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America’s Road to Serfdom

Terry Paulson
Terry Paulson

6/21/2010 – Terry Paulson –

Thanks to the attention from Glenn Beck, a recent top seller on Amazon.com is Austria’s Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. The book was written in 1944 to fight the drift from individual freedom and free-market competition to a growing dependence on economies controlled by central planning authorities. To Hayek, Stalin’s Soviet Russia was no better than the Nazi “National Socialists.” In all its forms, the increasing spread of socialism has and would always be a threat to individual freedom and economic progress.

Hayek’s book remains a wakeup call to apathetic citizens who take for granted that the improvements achieved through democracy, individual freedom and capitalism have been “acquired once and for all.” Hayek knew what history confirms; freedom must be earned and reearned in every generation. [Read more…]

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Documents Show Kagan is Far-Left

6/7/2010 – Connie Hair –
Documents released Friday from the Clinton library, along with memos from her time as clerk for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, reveal Elena Kagan as someone far to the left of the mainstream of political thought in America.

Over 46,000 pages of the nominee’s paperwork produced during her service in the Clinton White House were released from the William J. Clinton Presidential Library.

“From issues such as guns to abortion to crime control, Kagan’s memos unambiguously express a leftist philosophy and an approach to the law that seems more concerned with achieving a desired social result than fairly following the Constitution,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions, top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Ms. Kagan’s record is exceptionally thin. She has never been a judge and only practiced law for a brief period — spending much of her career as a liberal advocate.” [Read more…]

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‘Leader with a Plan’ Invites a Health Care Nightmare

6/6/2010 – Chuck Rogér –
The American people are too simple to choose from “an array of products” in “a system as massive and complex as health care. That is for leaders to do.”

Behold the words of Donald Berwick — doctor, Harvard professor, and Obama’s nominee to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), arguably the most powerful position in U.S. medicine, directing the flow of almost one trillion dollars a year.

Speaking to a British National Health Service (NHS) audience in 2008, Berwick said that people must not believe in “market forces.” Instead, “leaders with plans” should design the people’s health care system. [Read more…]

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America’s Death by Professor

5/20/2010 – Stuart Schwartz –
Where professors rule, life is cruel.

That is the bottom line for the average American in this, the transformative age of the president the New York Times and Washington Post has called “Professor” Obama, who “schools” the ignorant at home and abroad. Never before have so many with so little humility gathered together in our government, each believing he “is the smartest guy in the room.”

This is an administration stuffed with academics. And not just any academic: These are educators from elite universities, the kind of experts prized by a political and media elite seeking confirmation of a worldview that expects, notes the Washington Examiner, “the rest of us … to shut up and do as we are told.” [Read more…]

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