Tag Archives: Biblical

Economics, Education, Politics 2018

Socialist is as Socialist Does

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The “flash” of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’ success over Joe Crowley in the 14th District in Bronx and Queens, New York, seems to have ignited latent socialist dreams in dozens of Democrat Party “leaders.” All of a sudden there is a “new” idea on the political landscape: more than half the people are downtrodden victims of capitalism and the “lucky” ones who work are the oppressors and should be forced, by law, to support those less fortunate. Hallelujah! We are saved.

Aside from the fact that there is absolutely nothing new about these views, there is also nothing new about their perpetual, predictable failures. Their primary justification is envy and, more frequently today, hatred. Those are sad and fetid foundations for a plan intended to “lift” people out of poverty and hopelessness. Ocasio-Cortez has done a service to America, however, by revealing the vacuum of historical understanding of human nature and of the American people in particular. Perhaps it is a reasonable reaction to the mess we have made of enlightened economics in the United States; it is not a reasonable reaction to the lessons of history.

If only Republicans and other mildly conservative people were awake to the rot eating away at the true American promise and premise, instead of being so deeply beholden to the salamanders of money.

Loosely described, the American economy (and political dysfunction) is a result of creeping socialism that has been gnawing at our strengths since the Civil War – more noticeably since the 1900’s.

Socialism and other forms of mis-identified Social Justice, can win votes, sometimes for very ignorant or, dare we say, stupid candidates for office. They get elected by promising to A) Punish the oppressors, and, B) Hand out free stuff. Sometimes they are neither ignorant or stupid, but evil; sometimes they’re all three. Unenlightened conservatives, at the other end of the pendulum’s arc, promise to punish the freeloaders and to enrich the productive, hard-working class. Deportation and prevention of illegal entrants is a perverse gift to their politicking, just as outrageous concentrations of wealth and power in the hands of some of history’s most accomplished thieves is to Socialists.

Ocasio-Cortez is a graduate of Boston University where she learned something about economics. Her statements about economics and “public” financing, however, would lead one to recognize that what one believes is far more motivating in both words and deeds than any expensive education. Maybe she believes what she says about Socialist distribution of wealth… if only there were a Socialist distribution of productivity that partnered with it.

One can forgive her misunderstandings of the current federal budget, tax rates and overall distribution of taxation, [see “http://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2017/11/04/a-few-words-on-capitalism-part-1/”] but it is a bit harder to overlook her total misrepresentation of her “Bronx” background and the supposed house-cleaning by her mother. She displays no better ethics than many disreputable politicians before, beside and in front of her. Conservatives, or Republicans, at least, seize on her ignorance and inconsistency, “progressive” socialists overlook it – belief trumps evidence.

It is harder to overlook the deliberate ignorance of both soft Republicans and hard Democrats who hold office, now. Well, perhaps ignorance is too generous; maybe most are stupid, or evil. Prudence indicates that holding office in the U.S., these days, is altogether too lucrative, too irresponsible and too secure against challengers. “Conservatism, Socialism… what’s the difference if I can snag the sweetest pension in the free world?”

It makes a lot of difference to the function and future of the United States. One needs, as does Ocasio-Cortez, to appreciate the origins and history of the U. S. The Europeans, Spanish, French, English, Dutch, Germans, Scandinavians and others, who came to the “New World” were very strong people. They were courageous enough to risk everything simply for opportunity. If they survived the first winter, there existed a chance they could make a successful life, one they’d have to carve out of wilderness. If they didn’t hunt game successfully or failed to prepare a field for planting, they could starve. Each had, or very quickly learned multiple skills since there were no hardware stores or clothing stores… or even cloth stores.

Virtually all were religious, Christian, mostly, or Jewish. Establishing churches was one of their first community projects; thanking God a daily ritual. Many died young from disease, injury, bad food, and from Indian defenses of their own lands and livelihoods. For women, childbirth was a major risk. Still, they came and slowly triumphed, knit by religion into common weal and defense, even when fighting other Europeans. The borders and nations we know in North and South America are the result, including hard-fought wars of independence from the European homelands. No matter how easy it is to smugly judge their actions it is admiration that we owe them, not condemnation.

They arrived with what they could carry. There was no welfare. Some were charitable, some more than others. There were no chits for free food and no subsidization for housing or health-care. Still, they came: strong, risk-taking, resolute, religious. Some of the strongest people in the world, and the government they formed, a constitutional republic, is based on the finest secular distillation of Biblical lessons ever devised: As ye sow, so shall (must) ye reap. It’s based on personal responsibility, if you don’t grasp the meaning in the King James version: personal responsibility for actions and inactions, successes and failures, honesty and dishonesty. Each is personally responsible for his or her actions throughout life. For many, there is a personal responsibility to God for everything good or bad. In lieu of that faith, personal responsibility is still the best approach to life, growth, personal improvement and the strength of society. Washing the concept out with the soft soap of Socialism is a choice made at great peril, threatening the strengths of society, families and individuals.

Today we are throwing out every vestige of the Bible we can identify. Ten thousand years of strengthening morals have been flushed away in a hundred years. America is losing its way at the very point that the original lie, Socialism, is rising up in the hearts and minds of poorly educated young people, led by the crassest of politicians.

One can recognize the original lie, easily. Under socialism individuals are absolved of individual responsibility, first by their identification with a group or class of people. Indeed, when it comes to politics, each identified group – and group member – is expected to vote the socialist ticket. If one can also be placed in a group that has been victimized by “the establishment,” which is defined variously as fits the socialist need, then that group is supposed to vote even more reliably socialist.
If a person runs afoul of the law, Socialism likes to diffuse the causes of that criminal activity, often by ascribing a history of victimhood and abuse, poverty, discrimination, lookism, sexism or, the trump card, homophobia. Therefore a long-term incarceration is unfair and we should extend the hand of additional welfare to help in the unjustly-charged individual’s rehabilitation. Just an example; no one can seriously imagine such an argument carrying any weight in a courtroom.

Socialism does not respect nationalism. For many of our young people, today, defining and defending of our borders is viewed as some sort of international crime, an affront to everyone who wants to live here instead of his or her own homeland. How twisted. How wasteful… that these people could have consumed $200,000 to $300,000 worth of public education and been granted DIPLOMAS ostensibly indicating successful completion of 12 or 13 years of learning. Yet they are so ignorant they don’t even know what they don’t know. They seem to “hang” with others who celebrate the same ignorance and who applaud statements and beliefs of abject stupidity… at least in terms of history and human experience.

It is incumbent upon Christians and Jews, and upon Constitutionalists, generally, to explain again and again why the morals and economics that help people perfect themselves, and that built the ideas and ideals of America, are better for this nation and the world, than ANY Socialist plan.

Culture, Education

GRADUATED CHANGE

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Prudence attended graduation at a well-known college in Boston’s Fenway section recently.  This particular school graduates no chemists, engineers, lawyers or business majors; no biologists, entomologists or astronomers; no materials scientists or agronomists or hydrologists, and no oceanographers.

Their purview is social work, and a healthy dose of “education.”  That is, education B.S. degree-recipients who, I think, they hope will teach the next generation along the lines of ultra-liberals who have been taking over education aggressively for the past 75 years. Fortunately, they sometimes fail and a graduate escapes with her (mostly hers and wannabes, there) internal philosophy intact, her understanding of reality clear, and her intense desire to educate young kids, rather than indoctrinate them, ready to run.  One such is Prudence’s only reason for attending.

Prudence’s eyes were opened, however, to the existence of this and other nests of socialist vipers, who churn out radical “change agents,” as were frequently referenced in the interminable speeches and last-second directives that made not a single reference to God, although the very last instructress managed to say, “… let the Divine …” which was amorphous enough to get through.  That tiny reference was among the last dozen words of last-second directions to the posse of Bachelors and Masters ready to change America.

The otherwise clear, May, day began with breakfast – free food, so to speak, catered in to the College’s Brookline facility.  Being observant was revelationary.  The professors are constantly professing, we noticed.  Tattoos, for example, profess attachment to the odd fascinations running rampant through society where women, sometimes grossly obese versions, have acres of “body art.”  It’s a statement of inclusion… or a test.  After all, if our campus is one of welcoming and inclusion and non-discrimination for students, then it must be for their instructors, too.  See how it works?

There seemed to be a single statement being uttered by a large fraction of both staff and graduates: There is no weirdness on OUR campus – all are welcome.  Prudence has no argument with the “welcom(ing)” part.  In other words, if you are as different and as unusual as you can make yourself, come, attend our college – we’re just as unusual as you!

Every speech underscored the same concepts of challenging the status quo; the difficulty is, today, that the status quo, having grown fairly weird itself, requires ever more strangeness from those who wish to challenge it.  This might explain, in part, the number of strange appearances of students, but it is unnerving to apply the same measure to staff and professors… at least it was to Prudence.

Sexuality is key to both protest and education, it seems.  Prudence needn’t describe sexual appearances and apparent expressions as most are indescribable and likely wide of the target.  But, unusual male-female iterations are more commonplace on college campuses than elsewhere in the world.  Perhaps it’s simply because these are the age groups where “youthful” experimentation is most likely.  Shouldn’t some adults guide these wandering – and wondering – children toward the most appropriate paths of action and belief?

Aren’t we intending to create new adults of our culture and social fabric?  Or is it our purpose to indulge every strange, interruptive feeling and treat it as if it were as valid as reality?  Reality is so restrictive: two genders… huh.  Are we kidding?  I mean, honestly!

Are there any lines a culture shouldn’t cross?  It’s not a trick question.  We used to decry drug use and numerous other forms of debasement.  Why?  Because it makes for a stronger, more nurturing society.

We used to require people to make their own way, no welfare and all the rest.  It inadvertently made for stronger people and children.  Problem free?  Of course not.  Too many fell through the “cracks,” as it were.  Some level of social support was required for simple fairness TO CHILDREN, and civil kindness to the helpless.

We used to require universal education that reinforced moral lessons, some Biblical, without damaging ANYONE, reinforcing shame for bad actions and strengthening the consciences of individuals… and their basic honesty.  These were good, strengthening-of-society kinds of structures.  Phenomenally, we have succumbed not to foreign powers but to our own cleverness, talking ourselves out of our heritage, our very culture, and of shame, itself.

We are so smart.

Murder, for example, now has shades of evil, some not so bad as to require equivalent sanction.  Indeed, abortion-at-will, deemed “murder” by half of the nation, has amorphous codified status and taxation support!  Suicide by drug overdose is a form of murder by drug-pusher, but we, the wealthiest, most sophisticated culture on earth, with more police forces per hectare than any other, has failed steadily for 60 years to clamp down firmly on drug commerce.

Now we are in a race to legalize ever purer and stronger pot despite its risks (there aren’t any, according to pot users) and to arm first responders with Narcan.  We’re smarter than we even realized.

The largest “industry” in the United States is welfare of a thousand titles.  Statists have found that the philosophies of the most rock-ribbed, self-made American stalwarts can be purchased with enough dependency, as recent “conservative” outcries against threats to Medicare makes clear.

The higher education “industry” is nothing if not opportunistic.  With TRILLIONS of dollars flowing from the Federal and state levels, colleges have justified turning out an army of social workers to soak them up.  Here and there people in need are truly helped, but the lion’s share of those dollars goes to the army of concerned, compassionate care-workers and, especially, to the army of administrators who make sure they are not wasting any money.

Somewhere, and here and there, are schools, churches and other institutions that respect and promote the concepts of self-reliance, absolute personal responsibility, honor and sublime integrity.  They must struggle against an onslaught of socialist control of budgets and information.  Is the ultimate success of the ultimate anti-God philosophy certain to overwhelm what made the U. S. great?

That future depends upon the ignorance of a majority of Americans.  How smart did you say we are?