How to recognize socialism

LARRY ANDERSON
Larry Anderson

Our country was founded on the individual freedom essential for happiness and success.

This idea was backed by a Bill of Rights and an accompanying Constitution which has allowed the nation to flourish in a world sorely lacking in these securities.

The United States of America is a representative democracy. The struggle to keep it so has been constant and continues now in numerous ways.

Despite arguments that say otherwise, we are one nation united by high principles established by thoughtful patriots and paid for by sacrifice, not a multi-cultural landscape separate in intent.

That is a liberal promo.

In America, the people are the boss. Individual rights and liberty are at the core of our existence.

This country has been moving away from the values of our founding and toward socialism, even as the world has witnessed time and again the failure of socialist governments:

• The defunct Soviet Union in its most extreme form, communism;

• Cuba with its pathetic economy;

• Vietnam with its policing of its people;

• France with its legendary laziness;

• Greece with its financial dependency on other now-weary nations.

In socialist states, the government is the boss and controls all. Freedom is based on how much the government elite determines one can have and how long others can pay.

The Obama/Clinton/Sanders goal is to redesign America as a social democracy — that is, lives will be run by the government and its powerful bureaucracies, but elections will be held as if they still mattered.

American Leftists want unlimited power, but they also want to be loved by the people. Gratitude for “social justice,” and economic equality, they think, is good cover for the degradation of personal freedom. Hence, the endless blather about racism, gender inequality, and the horrors of some people having a bit more than others.

The American Left, also represented by a cadre of dedicated senators, congressmen and bureaucrats, know certain things must be done to achieve their goals.

These include the following:

1) Control of health care. Obviously, ObamaCare is a huge step in that direction because everyone needs health care at some point. Already, ObamaCare has put in place guidelines, codes, restrictions, and higher costs.

2) Expand the welfare state. This increases dependency and complacency, two socialist ideals. Obama killed the move to work concept that had lowered welfare ranks for years. He loves the notion of government provision no matter the damage to the souls of those receiving.

3) Increase debt. Our escalating debt ($18.3 trillion) could force an increase in the federal income tax which plays into the Left’s redistribution scheme.

4) Gun control. If the population can’t defend itself against tyranny, then tyranny is possible. An armed and angry population is the one thing totalitarian governments fear most. Hence, the Second Amendment. Hence, the Left’s determination to overwhelm this right.

5) Government involvement. Enhance the power of government by insinuating it into every aspect of life, including food, housing, and income. Key to this success is the environment because so many things can be placed under it, including land and water use. Today, no government bureaucracy is more powerful than the Environmental Protection Agency.

6) Education. Exert control on what people read and listen to, but especially what young people learn in school. This is called indoctrination. This has been going on for decades in colleges and universities, but is becoming more evident in elementary and secondary schools. Political correctness and the Left’s dominance of big media play into this too.

7) Religion. Remove references to God from the government and schools. Enhance atheism. Ridicule people of faith. Break down traditional religious protections.

8) Encourage class warfare. Create an enemy of wealthy, successful people while describing folks with less as victims. This justifies the welfare state, higher, crippling taxes, and a need for omnipresent government.

A country moving toward socialism is also identified by uncertainty, endless controversies over minor social matters, activist generated demonstrations, a general degradation of history, an ignoring of tradition and precedence, a “hands off” approach to favored politicians, corruption, lies, selective law enforcement, indifference toward individual rights, political correctness, and a general scrambling toward ignorance.

Larry W. Anderson’s novel, I, Eugenius, is available at Maryville Daily Forum.