a. Capitalism = Democracy
b. Communism (or its little brother, Socialism) = Totalitarian Gov’t
Anyone who has been conscious for any extended period during the most recent 50 years will recall that every left wing government followed the same game plan.
Step 1. Change the name of your country to contain a collection of words including some or all of the following; People’s, Democratic, Socialist or Republic. It didn’t take long for you clever readers to realize that any nation calling itself the People’s Democratic Socialist Republic was, in fact, none of the above, but rather a poorly disguised totalitarian (strong central) government.
Step 2. Take control of the electoral process. This could be done by killing off the opposition, control the voting process or simply by lowering control of the voting process and/or stationing loyal thugs at the polling places to make it clear that disloyalty to the Great Leader was frowned upon and potentially painful.
Why control the voting process? Simple. Rational people can not be counted on to vote against their interests forever. And, most rational people understand that, while Socialism works beautifully in ant hills and bee hives, its record among the rational has been spotty.
As Oliver W. Holmes liked to say, “A page of history is worth a volume of logic.” In this case, a paragraph of history will suffice.
Fortunately for us, our socialist friends made a big miscalculation after WWII. They took control of Eastern Europe and gave us the Iron Curtain. All socialists on one side and all capitalists on the other side. Why was that a miscalculation? Well, have you or anyone you know, ever purchased a car made in Eastern Europe? Many of us look forward to the day we can afford a Jaguar or a Mercedes. I don’t remember ever seeing a Yugo. There is a similar wall between the two Koreas. Have you ever purchased or seen an electronic appliance made in North Korea? The idea of competition between socialists and capitalists is laughable. The socialist prove to us every day that the only way they can win in any market place is control.
That brings us back to our current central government. It was recently reported that our feds were producing REGULATIONS at the rate of 375 pages per day. Why do you suppose they do this? The first reason that presents itself is this:
When a government produces 375 pages of regulations every day, you may safely assume that they are not in the business of governing; they are in the business of regulating.
Governing carries with it responsibility. Regulating carries power. Capitalists want to manage businesses. Socialists want to control people, hence regulations. And, if I can produce regulations faster than you can figure out what they mean, I win. The theory is, the regs do not need to make sense. The only thing that you need to know about their regs is that they are the regulators and you are the regulatees. Get it?
And, what do the regulators regulate? Everything and anything that you allow them to regulate. One recent President described government regulations as harmful to our economy and insulting to our intelligence. He had a passion for eliminating regulations. Today, we appear to have a different mindset in the Executive branch.
You may have noticed that a pesky little word has necessarily crept into our discussion. The word is ‘allow’. At some point, you must allow them to apply their regulatory tether. And, you must open your wallet, figuratively and literally. Please understand, opening your wallet in front of a socialist regulator is like opening a vein in front of a vampire. Contraindicated.
As bridge to the operative portion of this blog, allow me to introduce a new character. In literature, this character might be called the contagonist. Simply here to advance the plot for good or ill, our contagonist is better known as the media. In the past, the news media would merely serve as the conduit delivering news of the government to the governed. They would satisfy their desire to be heard on the issues of the day merely by their choice of adjectives assigned to the various actors. The Modern Media found this neutral role to be boring so they have padded their role and we now find them in the middle of the action, passing judgment or pushing their favorite back into the ring. A recent example of the contagonist was the media reporting on the discussions of certain candidates trying to limit or end Earmarks. One media contagonist noted dismissively that, “Even if you banned ALL earmarks, you would only save $10,000,000,000.00.” Surely some readers silently wondered when ten billion dollars became eligible for the adjective, ‘only’. Also, we are encouraged to note that, ‘Earmark spending is not criminal when a Congressman does it’. Why does that sound familiar?
The purpose of this rambling narration is not to ramble for rambling’s sake, but rather to make several points in an objective manner. Some believe that this is the appropriate way to present a platform. One should avoid being a shill for one candidate or another when presenting an idea. If you want to find out what this blog is promoting, you may have to read it.
NEXT: AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM
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