They used to hide in the shadows. Unfortunately, today’s detractors of capitalism and the American free market system have come out of the closet, operating openly in places such as American universities, AARP, labor unions, SEIU, Hollywood, Congress, and even the White House itself. Their once-subtle methodologies are now about as blatant as Michael Moore’s hit piece on America, Capitalism: A Love Story. It seems that a growing number of Americans yearn for some form of communism or socialism — they just don’t want to call it that.
We have only ourselves to blame for this tolerant journey leftward. Russia’s Pravda said it best recently, “[T]he American descent into Marxism is happening with breath-taking speed, against the backdrop of a passive, hapless people.” Like sheep, many of us are being led toward the collectivist notion that the group is superior to the individual and thus individual rights and freedom may be destroyed with impunity for the perceived “common good.”
It may seem like it is happening all at once, but the march to collectivism — playing on the vulnerability and weaknesses of human nature — has been gradual. First, Americans were dumbed down through political correctness and an education system obsessed with xenocentrism, multiculturalism, and a politically correct brand of social consciousness rather than American history and the classics. Then our faith was attacked and our churches liberalized, as our government banned and struck down public references to the very God Almighty who inspired and motivated our founding fathers.
Next, we were inundated with the specious argument behind giving people something for nothing — the feel-good utopian notion that we can eradicate poverty, pain, sickness, and hunger with unearned government handouts. To fund these giveaway programs, the assets of gentle citizens were quietly confiscated in the name of the collective good. Still, far too many of us failed to recognize or believe what was happening.
Our president’s policies track something called the “Cloward-Piven Strategy,” first proposed in 1966 by Columbia University sociologists Richard Cloward and Frances Piven. It seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading government with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse. With each government solution in search of a problem there is the perceived need for yet another nanny law protecting us and controlling the details of our lives. Cloward and Piven promoted using welfare to weaken the poor and create reliance on government. Our current administration knows all too well that when government becomes our parent, we become its children.
Instead of allowing troubled corporations and banks to run their course, government took them over. Instead of promoting free market solutions to hold down the cost of the best health care in the world, the statists push government-run health care against the will of the majority. It was Leon Trotsky who said, “The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.” Isn’t it ironic that the same excuse which makes the individual the tool of the collective — that necessities justify the forbidden — is closely adhered to by another enemy of America – radical Islam?
In The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx laid out gradual steps toward Communism. Sadly, the White House, whose agenda tracks these steps, is now teeming with unvetted, unapologetic socialists without paper trails. Obama’s hand-picked former global warming czar, Van Jones, founded the socialist group Commission for a Sustainable World Society and published a communist-oriented manifesto. Manufacturing czar Ron Bloom — who called the American free market system “nonsense” — and White House Communications Director Anita Dunn are only the latest in a long line of White House officials who openly admire Mao Tse Tung, the Communist Chinese dictator who killed 70 million people during peacetime. And let’s not forget Patrick Gaspard (ACORN czar), a former consultant at the Democratic Socialists of America; Carol Browner (energy and environment czar), a former member of the Commission for a Sustainable World Society; and Hugo Chavez admirer Mark Lloyd (diversity czar).
Shameless Leninists used to lurk quietly in dark places, but they’re not hiding anymore. If America doesn’t act, it will wake up one day soon at best resembling the Weimar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe. In July, Vladimir Putin, Russia’s prime minister, directly warned our president not to follow the path to Marxism because it only leads to despair. His words fell on deaf, indoctrinated ears.
I remember the shock and surprise of many Democrats some years ago when they learned that the Communist Party was supporting Democrat candidates instead of running their own. Last month Joe Sims, co-editor of the Communist Party USA online magazine Peoples World, stated among other things “the possibility that the communists may be able to ‘capture‘ the Democratic Party entirely.” Sims admitted something that most conservatives already knew: U.S. Communists are using the Democrat Party to accomplish their goals.
The idea of a Marxist society can be alluring. The idea of “economic and social justice” and the illusion of everyone being made “equal” through redistribution appears sympathetic, caring, and even Christian in nature. However, the deficit in Marxism is obvious. Putting aside the tyranny it inevitably leads to, it doesn’t work because it is dependent on a type of human nature that is extremely rare. To succeed, there must be very little greed and jealousy and people must be willing to work hard for the good of others — even those who do no work at all.
On the other hand, capitalism, while not perfect, rewards work ethic and the moral maturity to cooperate and develop productive skills, at the same time punishing the self-interested seeking merely to benefit from the hard work of others. The free market system some say isn’t fair is precisely and uniquely fair.
We have no more right to expect our government to provide health care — another form of welfare — than we do food, housing, or education. These are not rights, they are rations of slavery; hay and a barn for human cattle. And with each comes an incremental loss of freedom. As Thomas Sowell put it, “If we become a people who are willing to give up our money and our freedom in exchange for rhetoric and promises, then nothing can save us.” Where are today’s leaders unafraid to point out that from little ACORNs, mighty Marxists grow?
In 1967, Ronald Reagan warned, “Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom, and then lost it, have never known it again.” Too many Americans have forgotten the truth behind these words and are no longer vigilant. Perhaps we have enjoyed this miracle called “America” too long to be properly appreciative of what we have.
Like lambs to the slaughter, too many appear willing to march into slavery without a fight. If only they knew the fate that awaits them. Not this American. I intend to go down swinging. It’s time to take back our country — one Marxist spider hole at a time.
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