Showing posts with label New Deal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New Deal. Show all posts

Sunday, February 27, 2011

What soft socialism has wrought ~ By Robert Ringer

With springtime on the horizon, methinks it's time for the tea-party folks to take it to the next level and let Republicans know – much louder and more aggressively this time around – that they weren't kidding when they said wanted out-of-control government spending to come to an end.

If the deficit is $1.7 trillion, wouldn't a good starting point be to cut government spending by $1.7 trillion? Or is the idea of balancing the budget still just too extreme?

Robert Ringer brings up the concept of how you boil a frog by gradually turning up the heat. The term "Gradualism" is something that I hope you have heard of before, and Robert explains how gradualism has been implemented ever since Franklin D. Roosevelt using the new-baseline strategy. The problem is that it never ends well, because it isn't sustainable forever. That unless we stop it NOW, guess where this country is headed? The Republicans need to do a lot better than cutting $61 billion from a $1.7 trillion budget. There may not be too much time left for our freedom, otherwise.

What soft socialism has wrought
ROBERT RINGER

By Robert Ringer

February 25, 2011 ~ 1:00 am Eastern

© 2011


With the angry uprising of pampered teachers in Wisconsin, the long-awaited Marxist revolution in the U.S. may finally be under way. It's been clear for decades that a forced ending to America's experiment with soft socialism would almost certainly trigger such a revolution.

Soft socialism was destined to fail from the outset, because it is the nature of life that a little bit of something bad tends to expand into a lot of something bad. That reality, however, has for decades been masked by the progressive's best friend – gradualism.

The average American had no idea that he was slowly being boiled alive, because soft socialism made it possible for him to buy a house he couldn't afford, go on vacations he couldn't afford and fill his life with high-tech toys he couldn't afford. This comfy lifestyle made him oblivious to the realities of life.

While there was no official beginning to the era of soft socialism in the U.S., there's no question that FDR's ascent to the presidency and the implementation of his New Deal was a major step in that direction. The centerpiece of FDR's New Deal was the 1935 Social Security Act, which defied the Constitution by implying it was the government's duty to fulfill the needs and desires of individual citizens.

It was billed as a modest program that would help a relatively small number of elderly people who were truly in need. Through the magic of gradualism, however, once the initial funding for Social Security was established as a baseline, a new baseline emerged each year to grow it into the monster redistribution-of-wealth program it has become.

Then, in the '60s, along came Lyndon Johnson with his vote-buying Great Society that destroyed the black community and, with it, the black family. Once baselines were established for hundreds of Great Society programs, Democrats and Republicans rarely spoke about cutting the budget, and anyone who suggested such a far-out idea was viewed as an extremist.

Instead, the debate has always been about restraining the growth of the budget beyond each year's new baseline. This clever "new-baseline" strategy is the key to progressivism: Get a bill passed (e.g., health care), establish a baseline, then, in the future, debate is restricted to what the percentage of increase should be each year for that particular bill. And an integral part of the new-baseline strategy is to vilify opponents of increased spending as cruel and calloused, a psychological ploy progressives have been using since our experiment in soft socialism began.

Long term, however, soft socialism doesn't work. That's because socialism, as both Marx and Lenin made clear, is merely a transitional stage on the way to communism. A little bit of socialism, because it appeals to the avaricious instincts in people, only whets their appetites for more. It is the nature of wealth redistribution to slowly bring down capitalism, which is why soft socialism eventually evolves into hard socialism – and, from there, communism.

Socialism destroys capital resources. And when the money runs out, a nation ends up with angry, spoiled adults – such as those protesting in Wisconsin – who have been happy recipients of years of artificial prosperity. Panicked and enraged, they boldly demand that their neighbors continue to support them in the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed. They have no interest whatsoever in hearing about economic reality.

READ FULL STORY at WorldNetDaily.com

Be sure to check out
johnny2k's Tea Party Gear!

Saturday, January 08, 2011

Will GOP be able to stand the heat? ~ By Patrick J. Buchanan

Patrick Buchanan is not trying to be a "grumpy old man" when he writes this, but with "the confident enthusiasm of the new Republican class for the assignment history has given it, the balance of power in this city weighs heavily against its success."
This is not to counsel despair. It is to suggest that the true conservatives and tea-party true believers who gave the GOP its victory in November have won a single major engagement in a long war whose outcome remains very much in doubt.
So, is there any hope that things can change? Was the Tea Party effort pointless? Pat offers this:
As Boehner put it, we can't kick the can up the road anymore, because we've come to the end of the road. Like Greece and Portugal, Ireland and Illinois, New York and New Jersey, we have arrived at Hotel California.


Will GOP be able to stand the heat?
PATRICK J. BUCHANAN

By Patrick J. Buchanan

January 07, 2011 ~ 1:00 am Eastern

© 2011



"The success of a party means little except when the nation is using that party for a large and definite purpose," said Woodrow Wilson in his first inaugural. "No one can mistake the purpose for which the nation now seeks to use the Democratic Party."

As with Wilson's Democrats in 1913, so it is with the Republican Party today. It has been called to power for the "large and definite purpose" of halting the growth of government and putting the nation's fiscal house in order. Whether it can succeed is another matter.

While a visitor to Capitol Hill the day the gavel was passed from Nancy Pelosi to John Boehner could not miss the confident enthusiasm of the new Republican class for the assignment history has given it, the balance of power in this city weighs heavily against its success.

Consider. To bring the budget even close to balance in half a decade means cutting projected spending for Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security. But any changes here have to be agreed to by Harry Reid's Senate, and then by Barack Obama, who has a veto that the House Republicans have not a prayer of overriding.

And as Obama showed at year's end when he agreed to a two-year extension of George W. Bush's tax cuts in return for payroll tax cuts of his own and new unemployment benefits, the White House will exact a high price for Obama's signature.

READ FULL STORY at WorldNetDaily.com

Be sure to check out
johnny2k's Tea Party Gear!