Communists in Russia came to power by getting the peasants to be angry with the rich. Hmmm. Lenin offered poor peasants land, people October 1917 he took over. He had peasants take land from the church and rich with the illusion it would be their land to keep. They were quickly mistaken when the government took the land from them after the revolution. Now that the best farmers were moved from their land then starvation followed.
Hitler said he would protect the common man during the depression. Hitler also used the youth movement.
Italian's when Mussolini came to power was considered a youth movement.
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that justifies it." by Frederic Bastiat
Socialism: The New Feudalism By Michael Aaron Jones May 25, 2010 The left should study history and the rhetoric of a distance political system called Feudalism. Many people have a misconception that the early socialist thinkers like Jean Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels were original thinkers, writing ideas about collectivism and equal sharing of property. But one only has to look back a few centuries to see they were simply recycling old failed ideas with some new jive attached.
The Feudal system was nothing more than creating a ruling class who owned all the land and wealth and provided security and safety to all the serfs; in turn the serfs provided work and servitude to their master. But many people do not realize the collective aspect of how serfs lived together.
After the ruling class reaped the finest of the crops and livestock for themselves, the serfs were to distribute all the yield of their labor amongst everyone equally. They had no rights to any crops or land for themselves, all belonged to the community, which was bestowed upon them by their feudal lords. They also shared in utilities. Most peasant societies had a communal oven that was also shared to save on resources. (1)
The ruling class, which consisted of the clergy and lords, did everything they could to spread feudalist propaganda in order to keep the serfs in line. John of Salisbury wrote a short piece in the twelfth century called ‘The Body Social.' In it he describes the proper role of each peasant and how they should all work together as a collective body for the better of the community.
The Great Crash by Doctor Zero February 4, 2010 Socialism fails because it’s a static solution imposed on a dynamic society. People respond to incentives, chasing carrots and avoiding sticks. The initial proposition of the New Deal was to provide for the needs of the desperate, by collecting taxes from the wealthy. Unsurprisingly, the system devolved into the vote-buying and corruption we live with today, becoming a heavy wagon hitched to a struggling middle class, which provides far more of the funding than those “fat cats” socialists love to use as whipping boys. Politicians respond to incentives too, and the machinery of the centralized state excels at sucking in tax dollars and spitting out votes. The ugly gears of that machinery are well-hidden behind an illusion of moral authority and seductive promises, alluring enough to compel the faithful support of nearly half the population, even as its unsustainable failures become painfully obvious.
The system was doomed to crash because its vast array of taxes, spending, and regulation destroy the very wealth that sustains it. It ran out of fat long ago, and began feeding on muscle… and now it has worked its way down to the bone. Wealth is a product of choice, and every action taken by a collectivist government destroys wealth by reducing the options available to its citizens. Liberal politicians assume the population will go on blindly producing the same extraordinary prosperity, no matter how much the government skims off the top. That’s why every outbreak of bad economic news is “unexpected” to them, as well as the media who share their assumptions. Has a nation ever grown poorer after reducing the cost and power of its central government? Why would anyone assume a nation could grow richer by reducing the size and power of its private sector?
The Answer to Socialism by Doctor Zero February 7, 2010 The appeal of socialism comes from more than just using money taken from the wealthy to buy the votes of the poor. It is also an expression of rage, from those who believe capitalism has treated them unfairly. Too many people seem quite willing to put up with a reduction in their modest standard of living, as long as they believe some faceless “fat cats” are getting soaked. Those who follow the bitter politics of envy should understand that every system of ordering human affairs produces both the rich and the poor. In our current situation, what cats are fatter than the political elite? As of 2008, two-thirds of our Senators were millionaires, and all of them enjoy lavish perks, incredible benefits, and gold-plated retirements, including plush lobbying and consulting jobs… when they’re unlucky enough to fall through the few holes in a 90% incumbent re-election safety net. Many of our representatives, like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, live like royalty by abusing their power. Every nickel of a politician’s fortune comes directly from your pocket, without your willing consent to purchase products or services.
Socialism in Stages By Dan
Oliver Jr. December 15, 2009 Even
soft, incremental expansions of government produce poverty.
...
.When
a collection of free individuals — the market — is willing to pay a price for a
product that creates “excess” profits, it signals producers to provide more of
that product. If the market does not support a given price, producers are forced
to redeploy their assets for more pressing social needs. Similarly, if a factor
of production, such as labor or capital, changes in price, producers instantly
react, sending signals — through the prices of intermediate goods — down to the
consumer. Prices effortlessly allocate society’s assets to reflect consumer
preference and adjust to accommodate the ever-changing availability of scarce
resources.
Mises argued that governmental
interference in prices, through taxation, subsidies, and regulation, complicates
this process — affecting not only the consumption of final goods, but also the
economic calculations that are necessary to provide intermediate goods and
services. Higher-order division of labor fails. Poverty results. For example,
while Chinese and Russian central planners were busy setting quotas for steel
mills, there was no method for consumers to signal that they preferred food —
and millions starved to death.
If the hard socialism of Communism produces economic and societal collapse
quickly, Mises theorized, the soft, incremental socialism of the West —
popularized again recently as the “Third Way” by Tony Blair and Bill Clinton —
would produce poverty in stages. Every bureaucratic intervention in the market
reduces long-term wealth creation, even if it provides a temporary boost to the
economy. In time, this reduction of wealth is blamed on the inefficiencies of
the remaining “unfettered” market, which provokes calls for greater
intervention, ad infinitum.
Health care is a perfect example of the incremental socialization process.
Government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid began by providing limited
assistance to the old and the indigent. As health-care costs rose, these
programs were expanded and new ones, such as S-CHIP, were added. The government
now pays 32 percent of all non-military health-care bills, up from 6 percent in
1960. The remaining private expenditures are heavily regulated, resulting in the
anticipated economic chaos. Under Obamacare, the situation can only grow worse.
As P. J. O’Rourke quipped: “If you think health care is expensive now, wait
until it’s free.”
Housing provides another example. Today, 71 years after Fannie Mae was founded,
the central government provides a stunning 90 percent of the liquidity in the
mortgage market, enabled by the Federal Reserve’s repurchase of 85 percent of
new mortgages with freshly printed money. Banking is next.
Obama Sets Sights on Trillion Dollar Cash Cow! by JB Williams August 5, 2008 As George Bernard Shaw once wrote, “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.”
We see this all the time in modern American politics. Paul believes in his right to personal liberty, especially economic equality. But in order to pay for his personal economic equality, he also believes in his right to rob Peter of his privately earned belongings, and any politician willing to rob Peter on Paul’s behalf, will have Paul’s support. Link
The Socialist Party candidate for President of the US, Norman Thomas, said this in a 1944 speech:
"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." He went on to say: "I no longer need to run as a Presidential Candidate for the Socialist Party. The Democrat Party has adopted our platform."
National Service - Soviet Style (Part II in a series that you can’t possibly make up) by Hogan March 25, 2009 Surely volunteering at a crisis pregnancy center or pro-life group would not fall under this act, even though those organizations help countless troubled women. This, too, is a Communist tactic - to make legitimate those activities that further your cause and to put red-tape around those activities (religion, family life, conservative arts and literature, etc) that contradict the Soviet master plan.
The Soviet government didn’t shut down all churches immediately. It was a somewhat gradual process. In July of 1917 the Soviets passed a law that placed all schools - including those that were run by churches - under the control of a Ministry of Education. Once the schools were under the Soviet government’s control, the State was then able to withdraw funding for the church-sponsored schools. These things don’t happen - in Obama’s America or Lenin’s Russia - overnight. And that’s the scary part of the Serve America Act.
When the Soviets took over the schools, they said it was to increase literacy (a truly laudable goal). In fact, the objective was to eliminate religious education for any child in the Soviet Union. It’s the same idea here: the government promotes a Serve America Act, which seems like such an innocent concept – encouraging more Americans to volunteer. Americans, as Tocqueville observed, are very generous with their time and money.
So what is the problem with having government encourage more of this activity? The problem, of course, arises when government red tape limits churches’ ability to recruit volunteers for its activities, or when the government compels high school students to volunteer only for “approved” organizations; the government is thus able to significantly increase its influence over America’s youth and to dictate which organizations are worthy of community service.
A lesser known objective of the Soviet Union’s Young Pioneers is that it was supposed to consume children’s time. One of the Soviet goals was to remove children from their homes with their parents because the government did not want the children to be learning religion at home from their parents. Trotsky and the Soviet Minister of Education were very concerned that the private life of children was undermining their Communist education from the schools. It was better for the children to do “civic activity” where they could learn the Communist values. How is that any different from Obama’s objective to keep America’s young people busy being indoctrinated about…global warming, birth control, or…? The more time young people spend doing “compulsory volunteer” work (whatever that means) is less time for them to volunteer with their churches, join the Boy Scouts, etc.
Obama Sets Sights on Trillion Dollar Cash Cow! by JB Williams August 5, 2008 Karl Marx wrote that “Democracy is the road to socialism.” That’s because Marx understood something that Thomas Jefferson also understood - something too many Americans (Paul’s) fail to comprehend today.
“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.” Thomas Jefferson
Jefferson also proclaimed for future generations, “A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government." ... Jefferson said, “All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.” Link
Argentina's Property Grab Argentine President Cristina Kirchner announced this week that her government intends to nationalize the country's private pension system. ...
When the Argentine government ran out of money in 2001, it blamed the market and increased its own role in the economy. Since then it has imposed price controls, defaulted on its debt, seized dollar bank accounts, devalued the currency, nationalized businesses and tried to set confiscatory tax rates with the aim of making society more "fair." Mrs. Kirchner and her predecessor (and husband) Nestór Kirchner have also preserved the Peronist tradition of big spending.
All of this has been deemed acceptable because of the "crisis." But it has come at a cost: Among emerging market investors Argentina is now considered one of the worst places on the planet to put your money.
There will be no one left to protect you by Alan Caruba November 2, 2008 Rev. Martin Niemoeller, a German Lutheran pastor who was arrested by the Gestapo in 1938 wrote, “In Germany, the Nazis first came for the communists and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me and by that time there was no one left to speak for me.” Link
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through this sequence; from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependency back again into bondage." Link
Words from Joseph Goebbels:
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
Leftists worship at altar of death cult, says book at WorldNetDaily March 1, 2009 "We'll ask the man, where do you stand on the question of the revolution?" explained Lenin. "Are you for it or against it? If he's against it, we'll stand him up against a wall."
Lenin was serious about extermination of political enemies and others who were inconvenient to the cause of the communist revolution in the Soviet Union. But that didn't bother western leftists who traveled there and covered up his crimes and those of his successors.
Leftists worship at altar of death cult, says book at WorldNetDaily March 1, 2009 Likewise, Glazov illustrates how many American leftists turned a blind eye to the potential for mass murder in Vietnam in the event of a communist victory. Few had second thoughts or expressed regrets or denunciation of the atrocities when they took place.
"Once again," writes Glazov, "the believers did not care about the victims of their idols. In the eyes of the Left, those victims had merely gotten what they deserved – because their existence was an obstacle in the path to earthly utopia."
The left's demonization of capitalism is succeeding by This Rasmussen survey on support for capitalism in America will open your eyes this morning:
Only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 20% disagree and say socialism is better. Twenty-seven percent (27%) are not sure which is better.
Revisiting Hayek by Andrew Foy and Brenton Stransky May 25, 2009 Friedrich Hayek was an Austrian economist, philosopher and intellectual considered to be one of the most important economists and political philosophers of the twentieth century. He shared the 1974 Nobel Prize in Economics for his pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations.2 Hayek's work has influenced world leaders for decades. However, at this present time in our history, it is more important than ever to remind the public about the lessons and logic he had to offer. Revisiting Hayek's work informs us of how the dramatic actions being taken by the current administration will lead us down a road that ultimately ends in the destruction of this democracy along with the freedoms and liberties we take for granted.