Conservative Voice Quotes Capital Cloak

Capital Cloak was recently quoted by a nationally syndicated conservative columnist. Armstrong Williams, described by the Washington Post as "one of the most recognized conservative voices in America," wrote a column published by Human Events Online on July 2nd about New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s experimental cash for good behavior program. I had written a post on that topic for Capital Cloak on June 20th, and Mr. Williams, in summarizing his opposition to the socialistic nature of Bloomberg’s program, chose to utilize a sentence from my original post to illustrate his point. After outlining his objections to the cash for behavior program, Mr. Williams wrote:

One detractor of the program said it like this: “We have now gone from ‘You can feed a man with fish, but it is better to teach him how to fish’ to ‘Let’s pay the man $100 per month for having a fishing pole.’

The “detractor” was me. Here is the paragraph from my original Capital Cloak post “Clinton Policy: Hard Work No Solution to Poverty” that Mr. Williams quoted, in its original context:

The idea of paying people, regardless of their income level, to make good common-sense decisions is the epitome of government run amok. It does not matter whether the funding of such a program comes from philanthropy or taxation; the theory behind the program is morally bankrupt and dangerous to the survival of American ideals such as individualism and personal responsibility. Paying someone in cash to make the same logical decisions everyone else makes with no expectation of government reward is socialism in its purest and most personally debilitating form. The Republican [He has since declared himself Independent] Bloomberg’s experiment with such a program demonstrates how far America has fallen from the nation that tamed a continent and outpaced the world in industry and science for generations. We have now gone from “You can feed a man with fish, but it is better to teach him how to fish” to “Let’s pay the man $100 per month for having a fishing pole.”

While I was flattered to read my words in Mr. Williams’ column, unfortunately he did not credit me or provide his readers with a link to the Capital Cloak post in which the quoted sentence appeared. Regardless, Mr. Williams and I shared common ground by opposing the socialistic cash reward program put forth by New York’s “Independent” mayor, and I anticipate that Capital Cloak will continue to influence prominent conservative voices.

Technorati Tags:
Armstrong Williams, Syndicated Columnists, Human Events Online, Conservative Columnists, Michael Bloomberg, Philanthropy, Socialism

Is Resistance to EU Totalitarianism Futile?

“Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.” The dreaded Borg warning from “Star Trek: The Next Generation” could also have been an appropriate motto for the Soviet Union’s plan for assimilating Europe, its lands, nationalities, and borders into an eventual global Soviet population. I will return to that analogy later. Throughout the history of the Soviet Union (1917-1991) the ideologies of communism and socialism were dispersed across Europe with near-proselytizing zeal, finding fertile ground among disenchanted laborers and within elite socio-political circles. Communist and socialist parties sprang up in virtually every European nation, mostly with small memberships but at times achieving sufficient clout to gain representation and influence in the parliaments of many European nations. One desired goal shared by the Soviet-European socialist/communist brotherhood was an eventual dissolution of separate nationalities and borders, with a resulting international communist union.

While the Soviet communists did not appear to succeed in establishing a borderless communist utopia throughout Europe before the demise of the Soviet Union, future generations of Europeans chose on their own to embrace the concept of a European super state, and the current European Union was born, blending nationalities and marginalizing borders. It should concern the free world, then, that former Soviet dissidents who escaped the USSR and live freely in Europe today are expressing their increasing concerns that the European Union contains the ingredients of and is taking steps toward becoming a behemoth totalitarian dictatorship in the mold of the former Soviet Union.

The conservative European blog The Brussels Journal this week published summaries of two recent speeches by former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, as well as the transcript of an interview of Bukovsky conducted by The Brussels Journal’s Paul Belien. For anyone who was initially wary of what the European Union would become once matured, Bukovsky’s warnings will confirm even the direst fears. The similarities between the EU and the USSR, in structure, enforcement, and suppression of dissent, are ominous. The following are key points from the Brussels Journal’s excellent coverage of this issue, but Capital Cloak recommends reading Bukovsky’s remarks in their entirety:

Vladimir Bukovksy, the 63-year old former Soviet dissident, fears that the European Union is on its way to becoming another Soviet Union. In a speech he delivered in Brussels last week Mr Bukovsky called the EU a “monster” that must be destroyed, the sooner the better, before it develops into a full-fledged totalitarian state.

…Mr Bukovsky was one of the heroes of the 20th century. As a young man he exposed the use of psychiatric imprisonment against political prisoners in the former USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 1917-1991) and spent a total of twelve years (1964-1976), from his 22nd to his 34th year, in Soviet jails, labour camps and psychiatric institutions. In 1976 the Soviets expelled him to the West. In 1992 he was invited by the Russian government to serve as an expert testifying at the trial conducted to determine whether the Soviet Communist Party had been a criminal institution. To prepare for his testimony Mr Bukovsky was granted access to a large number of documents from Soviet secret archives. He is one of the few people ever to have seen these documents because they are still classified. Using a small handheld scanner and a laptop computer, however, he managed to copy many documents (some with high security clearance), including KGB reports to the Soviet government.

…In 1992 I had unprecedented access to Politburo and Central Committee secret documents which have been classified, and still are even now, for 30 years. These documents show very clearly that the whole idea of turning the European common market into a federal state was agreed between the left-wing parties of Europe and Moscow as a joint project which [Soviet leader Mikhail] Gorbachev in 1988-89 called our “common European home.”

The idea was very simple. It first came up in 1985-86, when the Italian Communists visited Gorbachev, followed by the German Social-Democrats. They all complained that the changes in the world, particularly after [British Prime Minister Margaret] Thatcher introduced privatisation and economic liberalisation, were threatening to wipe out the achievement (as they called it) of generations of Socialists and Social-Democrats – threatening to reverse it completely. Therefore the only way to withstand this onslaught of wild capitalism (as they called it) was to try to introduce the same socialist goals in all countries at once. Prior to that, the left-wing parties and the Soviet Union had opposed European integration very much because they perceived it as a means to block their socialist goals. From 1985 onwards they completely changed their view. The Soviets came to a conclusion and to an agreement with the left-wing parties that if they worked together they could hijack the whole European project and turn it upside down. Instead of an open market they would turn it into a federal state.

…It is no accident that the European Parliament, for example, reminds me of the Supreme Soviet. It looks like the Supreme Soviet because it was designed like it. Similarly, when you look at the European Commission it looks like the Politburo. I mean it does so exactly, except for the fact that the Commission now has 25 members and the Politburo usually had 13 or 15 members. Apart from that they are exactly the same, unaccountable to anyone, not directly elected by anyone at all. When you look into all this bizarre activity of the European Union with its 80,000 pages of regulations it looks like Gosplan. We used to have an organisation which was planning everything in the economy, to the last nut and bolt, five years in advance. Exactly the same thing is happening in the EU. When you look at the type of EU corruption, it is exactly the Soviet type of corruption, going from top to bottom rather than going from bottom to top.

If you go through all the structures and features of this emerging European monster you will notice that it more and more resembles the Soviet Union. Of course, it is a milder version of the Soviet Union. Please, do not misunderstand me. I am not saying that it has a Gulag. It has no KGB – not yet – but I am very carefully watching such structures as Europol for example. That really worries me a lot because this organisation will probably have powers bigger than those of the KGB. They will have diplomatic immunity. Can you imagine a KGB with diplomatic immunity? They will have to police us on 32 kinds of crimes – two of which are particularly worrying, one is called racism, another is called xenophobia. No criminal court on earth defines anything like this as a crime [this is not entirely true, as Belgium already does so – pb]. So it is a new crime, and we have already been warned. Someone from the British government told us that those who object to uncontrolled immigration from the Third World will be regarded as racist and those who oppose further European integration will be regarded as xenophobes….

Hence, we have now been warned. Meanwhile they are introducing more and more ideology. The Soviet Union used to be a state run by ideology. Today’s ideology of the European Union is social-democratic, statist, and a big part of it is also political correctness. I watch very carefully how political correctness spreads and becomes an oppressive ideology, not to mention the fact that they forbid smoking almost everywhere now. Look at this persecution of people like the Swedish pastor who was persecuted for several months because he said that the Bible does not approve homosexuality. France passed the same law of hate speech concerning gays. Britain is passing hate speech laws concerning race relations and now religious speech, and so on and so forth. What you observe, taken into perspective, is a systematic introduction of ideology which could later be enforced with oppressive measures. Apparently that is the whole purpose of Europol. Otherwise why do we need it? To me Europol looks very suspicious. I watch very carefully who is persecuted for what and what is happening, because that is one field in which I am an expert. I know how Gulags spring up.

It looks like we are living in a period of rapid, systematic and very consistent dismantlement of democracy. Look at this Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill. It makes ministers into legislators who can introduce new laws without bothering to tell Parliament or anyone. My immediate reaction is why do we need it? Britain survived two world wars, the war with Napoleon, the Spanish Armada, not to mention the Cold War, when we were told at any moment we might have a nuclear world war, without any need for introducing this kind legislation, without the need for suspending our civil liberties and introducing emergency powers. Why do we need it right now? This can make a dictatorship out of your country in no time.

…My conclusion is not optimistic. So far, despite the fact that we do have some anti-EU forces in almost every country, it is not enough. We are losing and we are wasting time.

Bukovsky also recounted a chilling prophecy made by then French president d’Estaing in 1989 that within fifteen years Europe would become a federal state and east European nations would have to choose whether to join it or survive on their own. This prediction was made years before the 1992 treaty creating the EU had even been drafted. Was it a coincidence that fourteen years later former president d’Estaing authored the European constitution? Bukovsky thinks not.

The issue, of course, that concerns Bukovsky most is the suppression of rights, particularly freedom of speech. When government can declare opposition to its policies as “hate crimes” or fears of merging cultures and borders as “xenophobia” punishable by law, it will have effectively silenced its critics and can act without restraint.

Americans should read Bukovsky’s remarks carefully with an eye open for similar trends developing in the U.S. It should be particularly alarming for Americans to note that Bukovsky warned of a new classification of crime in the EU labeled as “racism,” and that those opposing uncontrolled immigration would be branded as “racists.” We have seen that already here in the U.S. during the current debate over illegal immigration. Because the vast majority of our illegal aliens come from Mexico, amnesty advocates have seized on the racist label and accuse amnesty opponents of racism and hating Mexicans. Former Bush administration darling Linda Chavez, in a column titled, “Latino Fear and Loathing,” managed to merge the xenophobe and racist accusations into one hateful piece of writing in which she asserted that all debates over “immigration reform” are dominated by xenophobia and racism. The distinctions between the former Soviet Union, the EU, and the U.S., in the area of political correctness and suppression of political opposition are becoming increasingly blurred. What Burkovsky, a London resident now, fears most appears to be multiplying and replenishing itself in America at a pace not far behind the already liberties-challenged EU. Perhaps if the EU is looking for a “Racism and Xenophobia Czar,” Chavez might consider moving across the pond to head the budding EU dictatorship’s thought police.

I return now to the opening analogy to the Borg assimilation efforts so effectively portrayed in the motion picture Star Trek - First Contact. In that film, the seemingly indestructible Borg (the USSR) was found to possess a fatal weakness (economic collapse), and in its moment of destruction the Borg’s collective conscience (communism/socialism), embodied by a leader and her closest followers (enthusiastic communist recruiters), jettisoned from their spacecraft and avoided the complete collapse of their existence and ideology by taking up residence elsewhere. The Borg were clever, though, and chose to lay low and regroup in a place their enemies did not think to look: on the starship Enterprise itself (Europe and the U.S.), the flagship most dedicated to destroying the Borg. The Borg quickly established their collective hive in their new environment and sought to take over the important systems of the ship, life support (environmentalism), propulsion (economy), navigation (social and diplomatic policies), communications (the media), and weapons (law enforcement or military). The quick-thinking captain of the ship locked out the controls of these vital systems, but the Borg employed all means to include violence, bribery, and torture, to gain the control and subsequent assimilation of people and technologies they craved (Soviet proselytizing throughout Europe and the eventual formation of the EU).

It is in such a precarious and perilous moment that Europe currently finds itself. The USSR as an organized political entity of control over subjected peoples crumbled in 1991, but its ideology and goals for European control merely jettisoned themselves, like the Borg escaping their exploding vessel, and established a solid foothold in a new environment: Europe itself, and to a lesser but growing degree, the U.S. The regrouping and formation of identical governmental structures and policies has been underway under the guise of the EU since at least 1989, as Bukovsky explained.

Bukovsky’s urgings for Europe to dismantle the “monster” EU before it becomes the totalitarian state it was intended to be, are understandably and rightly urgent and should be heeded before resistance to the uber-powerful EU becomes permanently futile.

Technorati:
Vladimir Bukovsky European Union EU USSR Dissidents Totalitarian Political Correctness xenophobia Europol Borg Star Trek Resistance is Futile

Clinton Policy: Hard Work No Solution to Poverty

Would you like to earn $25 for attending your child’s parent teacher conference? Could you use $25 per month for each of your children who achieve 95% school attendance? For your trouble, would $400 for each child who graduates from high school come in handy? How about $100 for each child who visits a dentist every six months as recommended? Would you be interested in $150 per month just for holding a full time job? If you live in New York City under Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s care, you could earn cash rewards for each of these behaviors and many others if you are poor enough to qualify. Experimental cash reward programs are the new cause celebre of wealthy philanthropists like Bloomberg, and giving more money and benefits to the poor regardless of behavior has long been the desired panacea for societal ills advocated by socialist leaning liberals such as Hillary Clinton. Where do the groups diverge? They differ over the issue of hard work. Bloomberg's plan rewards work and better behavioral decisions, while the Clinton socialist vision considers hard work anathema to maintaining a poverty-stricken class of voters perpetually in need of government to "solve" their poverty problems. The difference between how the two groups would "solve" poverty is striking: Bloomberg raised $43 million in private donations to fund the experimental programs in order to avoid using government funds; Hillary and her fellow socialists intend to place the burden for all efforts to offer more benefits and free health care on American taxpayers through government funding.

Fox News reported Bloomberg’s participation in the cash reward program, and the contrast between the philanthropic approach (private donations) and Clintonesque socialist government spending is striking:

The theory behind cash rewards is that poor people are trapped in a cycle of repeated setbacks that keep them from climbing out of poverty. A person who doesn't keep up with his vaccinations and doctor's visits, for example, may get sick more often and struggle to stay employed.

Bloomberg, a billionaire Republican, said he believes paying people in such circumstances to make good decisions could help break those patterns. The program "gives New Yorkers in poverty a financial incentive to look ahead and make decisions that will improve their prospects for the future," he said in a statement.

The idea of paying people, regardless of their income level, to make good common-sense decisions is the epitome of government run amok. It does not matter whether the funding of such a program comes from philanthropy or taxation; the theory behind the program is morally bankrupt and dangerous to the survival of American ideals such as individualism and personal responsibility. Paying someone in cash to make the same logical decisions everyone else makes with no expectation of government reward is socialism in its purest and most personally debilitating form. The Republican Bloomberg’s experiment with such a program demonstrates how far America has fallen from the nation that tamed a continent and outpaced the world in industry and science for generations. We have now gone from “You can feed a man with fish, but it is better to teach him how to fish” to “Let’s pay the man $100 per month for having a fishing pole.”

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the cash rewards for good behavior programs was not that former Clinton administration officials oppose the program in New York, but the reason why they oppose it. While I dislike the cash reward idea on moral and out of control government reasons, Clintonesque socialists are outraged because the programs teach people that hard work is rewarding. Here is how one former Clinton administration official evaluated the cash program:

But some critics have raised questions about cash reward programs, saying they promote the misguided idea that poor people could be successful if they just made better choices.

"It just reinforces the impression that if everybody would just work hard enough and change their personal behavior we could solve poverty in this country, and that's not reflected in the facts," said Margy Waller, co-founder of Inclusion, a research and policy group in Washington.

Waller, who served as a domestic policy adviser in the Clinton administration, said it would be more effective to focus on labor issues, such as making sure wage laws are enforced and improving benefits for working people.

If you were looking for a single, crystallized statement of how Clinton socialists view poverty and the government's role in solving it, you need look no further than Waller’s remarks. According to the Clinton worldview, personal responsibility, hard work, and changes in behavioral choices are irrelevant to solving poverty in America. What is the solution under Clinton’s “compassionate” watchful eye? Not surprisingly, the answer, as it always is when Democrats promise services they cannot deliver, more benefits, whether they be forcibly extracted from employers or from the government through increased taxes on the “wealthy.”

What happens to a society when one of only two major political parties believes that better personal choices, responsibility, and hard work cannot solve problems? Hasn’t that always been the recipe for success in America, the land of opportunity? Opportunities are taken and capitalized upon through good and wise decisions, such as staying in school, earning a degree, gaining specialized training, developing a marketable skill in a field that can support a family, investing a modest amount in world markets, starting one’s own entrepreneurial enterprise, avoiding a criminal record, staying away from drugs, being a better parent, studying harder rather than playing more video games or watching TV. Opportunities begin at a young age, and the only sure way to break out of a cycle of poor decisions is to stop making poor decisions and correct the course one’s life is taking.

All Americans, but particularly those who are in poverty, should examine closely the question of why liberal socialists want to keep them in poverty by teaching them that their choices don’t matter and they are poor because they are victims of societal greed or uncontrollable misfortune. It is fascinating that on one hand there is an intense debate raging over illegal aliens flooding America allegedly because of the opportunity to find employment and share that income with their families in other nations, while on the other hand Clintonesque socialists insist that hard work and responsible common-sense behavioral choices are no solution to poverty. Many illegal aliens, through their long hard work find employment in respectable industries such as construction and manage, albeit illegally, to eke out a modest lifestyle for themselves and their families. Socialists like Wallen, however, refuse to encourage America’s poor to do likewise rather than subsist entirely on government welfare or charitable donations such as Bloomberg’s well meaning but completely misguided cash rewards for behavior program.

America is indeed in grave danger of losing its competitive place among the world’s elite nations if its populace is continually taught that personal behavior and hard work do not overcome problems, setbacks, or obstacles. America’s poor should be taught that there is no magic path to success that avoids hard work and decisions based on life priorities. Both Bloomberg and liberal welfare socialists do a disservice to those in poverty; Bloomberg by paying them to make good decisions they should make simply because they want to get out of poverty; and liberals welfare socialists by brainwashing the poor to believe that nothing they do for themselves will make a difference, thus sapping their natural human spirit of self-respect.

Technorati:
Michael Bloomberg Cash Rewards for Good Behavior Poverty New York Philanthropy,Margy Waller Hillary Clinton Socialism Personal Responsibility

Hillary Bets On Socialism's Appeal in 2008

Hillary Clinton is often touted as the “most intelligent woman in America.” I have an aunt who is practically salivating (or is that foaming at the mouth?) over the prospect of a Hillary presidency, as Hillary will surely solve all of America’s inequalities with a woman’s touch. Political pundits like Dick Morris insist that the “Clinton Machine” is unstoppable and will make no significant errors while piloting her over any rocky reef en route to the White House in 2008. If one accepts any of these paradigms, Hillary’s speech to the Manchester (NH) School of Technology this week was quite a conundrum; it was either a major and suicidal campaign sinker or it signaled that the Democratic Party believes America is ready to abandon its 231 year experiment with self-determination and capitalism.

Here are a few highlights from the AP/Yahoo story:

Presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton outlined a broad economic vision Tuesday, saying it's time to replace an "on your own" society with one based on shared responsibility and prosperity.

The Democratic senator said what the Bush administration touts as an ownership society really is an "on your own" society that has widened the gap between rich and poor.

"I prefer a 'we're all in it together' society," she said. "I believe our government can once again work for all Americans. It can promote the great American tradition of opportunity for all and special privileges for none."

…"There is no greater force for economic growth than free markets. But markets work best with rules that promote our values, protect our workers and give all people a chance to succeed," she said. "Fairness doesn't just happen. It requires the right government policies."

Karl Marx? Lenin? Stalin? No, these are the views of Hillary Rodham Clinton, socialist extraordinaire. The only chance “workers” have for success is when the government steps in to “help.” It isn’t fair that some get rich while others remain poor. “Fairness doesn’t just happen,” the government must make life fair by punishing achievers for having too much success. These are the tenets of socialism, with “fairness” serving as the emotionally charged catchphrase slogan to disguise the intended vehicle for Hillary’s version of “fairness.” Had this Manchester speech been a slip-up or something taken out of context, it would still stand out as particularly socialist. However, Hillary has gone down this road before. This is what she said in June 2004:

"We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."

Now that’s an inspiring campaign slogan for a potential American president!

I recently wrote that America’s leaders are becoming more French while France’s leaders are becoming more American. Newly elected French President Nicolas Sarkozy was elected on a platform consisting of the following: Fight the War on Terror as America’s ally; reform France’s immigration system, particularly as it applies to the influx of Muslim immigrants; shrink the government’s role in providing social services (including socialized medicine) to its citizens; eliminate the 35 hour work week and promote more work, greater achievement, and less dependence on government subsidies for the unemployed and business owners.

Contrast that winning French platform with what Hillary is proposing for America in 2008: retreat from Iraq and giving al Qaeda victory in the War on Terror; “reform” America’s immigration policy through amnesty and citizenship for 12-20 million illegal aliens; increase the role of government by providing massive new services such as “universal health care” (socialized medicine) and replacing economic self-determination with “shared prosperity” through government intervention (socialism).

When considered from this perspective, electing Hillary would place America on a sure path to becoming socialist France, while the French electing Sarkozy placed them on a course to emulate capitalist America. Hillary’s GOP opponents should wield these contrasts like a political bludgeon, hitting her hard every time she utters a phrase that espouses socialist tendencies and bluntly referring to her as a socialist. This is why her speech was a conundrum. The “Clinton machine” so ominously reverenced by Dick Morris must surely know that the majority of Americans will reflexively vote against someone who can effectively be branded as a socialist, yet they do nothing to curb her references to “shared prosperity” or government provided fairness. Why is Hillary speaking so openly of her socialist ideas during a primary campaign cycle when it can so easily be used later in the general election cycle by the GOP nominee to paint her (accurately) as a socialist?

Two reasons come to mind. First, Hillary must earn the nomination of her party, which embraces Euro-socialist ideals, and she will not be the nominee without establishing, at least verbally, her socialist credentials. Instead of “street cred”, the DNC demands “Soc cred,” the promise that all people will be given everything they need or want through government services. Second, Hillary’s advisers truly believe America is ripe for a socialist harvest in 2008. Despite record stock market growth and peaks, despite record low unemployment (4%), and despite the highest percentage of Americans owning their own homes in the nation’s history, Hillary’s camp is preaching the gospel of class envy and apparently is betting that they can convince voters by 2008 that the economy is failing, everyone is out of work, no one can afford health insurance, and the rich are grinding the faces of the poor every chance they get.

It is ironic that the same liberals who insist that Darwin was right about evolution and natural selection refuse to accept capitalism as economic Darwinism, with the survival of the fittest as the linchpin of a free market system. Are animals that cannot adapt through evolution allowed to survive out of “fairness?” Should businesses that produce a product no longer wanted in the market be protected from their competitors who are meeting market demands for new and better goods? Should workers who are incompetent or unproductive be protected from termination out of “fairness?” For that matter, what should be done with candidates who lose elections? After all, it isn’t “fair” that one should prosper while another languishes in defeat. Who decides what is “fair,” the government? No thanks.

The government has never been the solution to poverty, unemployment, racism, or any of the other social ills that can infect society. Poverty has proven much more virulent war opponent than terrorism. FDR could not eliminate it, Johnson waged a “war on poverty” but poverty, like the impervious cockroach, seems to survive all threats to its existence. Could it be that poverty survives because economic “fairness” is a socialist utopian dream that runs counter to nature? There have always been, and will always be rich and poor people in every society, but do the poor need rescuing? It is the arrogance of the wealthy (and most liberal socialists are rich, like Clinton) to assume that success in life must be measured by the accumulation of wealth. There can be dignity in poverty, usually far more dignity and humility than is found among the affluent. If success is measured, as it should be, by living an honorable life, then one does not need income redistribution or “fairness” in economic opportunity to be successful in life.

Socialism has failed in every respect in every society that has ever attempted to live by it, yet the DNC, and Hillary in particular, continue to aggressively foist it upon America as the magic medicinal tonic that will cure all of society’s ills. Rather than taking Hillary’s or Obama’s or any other American liberal’s endorsement of socialism at face value, we should consider some dissenting opinions:

"To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, 'the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry, and the fruits acquired by it.'" - Thomas Jefferson

“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” - Winston Churchill

“Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.” – Winston Churchill

“Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.” – Alexis de Tocqueville

“The assumption that spending more of the taxpayer's money will make things better has survived all kinds of evidence that it has made things worse. The black family- which survived slavery, discrimination, poverty, wars and depressions- began to come apart as the federal government moved in with its well-financed programs to ‘help.’” – Thomas Sowell

“You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man’s age-old dream -- the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order – or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. Plutarch warned, ‘The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.’” — Ronald Reagan

The “Clinton machine” would have us believe that a vote for Hillary is a vote for “fairness,” but as Reagan stated, there is only an up or down. Voting for Hillary is voting for Marx, rather than Jefferson. The Founding Fathers defined fairness as the opportunity to succeed or fail based on the inherent capacities of the individual (see Jefferson above). Hillary wants to assure that no one can fail, thus clearly she has abandoned the intent and content of our founding documents. Socialism does not just happen. We do not wake up one morning, fire up the Internet and read on Capital Cloak that America became a socialist nation overnight. However, if we continue to embrace government programs as the solution to poverty or social problems, the addiction to socialism will become unbreakable while we were sleeping.

Technorati: Hillary Clinton Socialism Shared Prosperity Presidential Campaign

Robin Hood Was No Socialist!

Social Security; Medicare; Medicaid; low income housing subsidies; food stamps; government welfare; all of these could be discontinued and the needs of former recipients of government largess will still be met, if research conducted at a California university is put into practice. Of course, that is not the conclusion that the academicians involved in the study reached, but the researchers may have inadvertently provided support to conservatives who favor lower taxes and more involvement by private and religious charitable organizations in caring for America’s poor.

CNN (Reuters) reported last night that a computer lab research project involving 120 students at UC-Davis demonstrated a “Robin Hood” impulse shared by the majority of participants that produced interesting results. According to the CNN piece:

The experiment was carried out last year using 120 paid student volunteers at a computer lab on the campus of the University of California at Davis.

The volunteers sat at computer terminals, and a computer would assign them into groups of four. Once placed into a group, each person was assigned an amount of money and was told how much money the other three members were given.

The players then had the chance to spend some of their own money in order to increase or decrease the amount the others possessed, but their actions provided no financial gain for themselves.

They played the game five times, but never with anyone from a previous group. This was to eliminate the possibility of players trying to establish a reputation for themselves or taking revenge on others who might have taken money from them.

Equalizing income
About 70 percent of participants at some point reduced or added to another person's money, most often by taking from the richest players or by donating to the poorest players, the study found.

These actions had the collective effect of equalizing income among the players -- with participants spending their own money to achieve the goal.
The researchers said even players whose own loot had been pilfered in previous rounds were willing to take steps to redistribute the money in an egalitarian manner.

The term “Robin Hood impulse”, used by Professor James Fowler to describe his findings, is only partially correct. When the players took money from the wealthiest players and gave it to the poorest players, they were exhibiting “Robin Hood” tendencies. However, when players spent their own money to equalize resources among the other players, they were acting charitably. The difference between the two motives is significant and should not be excluded from the reported findings.

The key aspect of these findings is that the players voluntarily spent their own money to help strangers who were struggling financially, out of a sense of egalitarianism. The game, designed to test egalitarianism and its role in human interaction, demonstrated that players consistently sought to share resources even when they did not stand to benefit from that action. There is another term for that, charity, but given the religious implications of that word, academia apparently shied away from applying it to the behavior exhibited by these students.

It is interesting to note that President Bush’s Faith Based Initiatives, which allow the government to “outsource” charitable services to religious organizations already engaged in providing aid to their communities, are roundly criticized on the left for relying too heavily on human charity to care for the poor. These critics are averse to any diversion of taxpayer money away from established bureaucracies. The argument from these critics is that people are selfish and will not redistribute their resources voluntarily to help the poor in their communities, thus the government must take that money by force and give it to the needy or they will not survive. Private or religious charities are never given a fair chance to demonstrate that citizens, out of the same sense of egalitarianism displayed in the UC-Davis study, will rise to the occasion and ensure that the needy among them are cared for.

Instead, government demonstrates in impulse that is much more “Prince John” than “Robin Hood”, in that it forcibly takes an ever-increasing percentage of income from the “rich” and instead of immediately redistributing it to the poor, often hoards it, earns interest dividends from it, and eventually reassigns it to other pressing budgetary concerns. Americans generally are imbued with a sense of fair play, and in that regard possess a “Robin Hood” impulse: we want to voluntarily give our money to charities rather than to greedy government officials who hoard it like the Sheriff of Nottingham.

It should be remembered that Robin Hood was not a socialist. He was not stealing from the rich to give to the poor in a classic redistribution of wealth (at least in the wildly entertaining Disney version). He was actually recovering the people’s money from the government, which had overtaxed them so severely that they could no longer care for the needy among them through their own charitable acts. In essence he was putting taxpayer money back in taxpayer pockets, perhaps a medieval "compassionate conservative." Who among us has not looked at the amount of taxes withheld from a paycheck and felt as pained as Disney’s Robin Hood character whose leg cast was thumped and searched for hidden money by the Sheriff of Nottingham? In that sense, Robin Hood was an egalitarian motivated by charity, who clearly felt that the poor were better cared for by their neighbors and communities than by a distant government unfamiliar with local circumstances.

The fact that 70% of the college students in this study, who have not yet entered the real world of supporting a middle class family on a tight budget and have not yet learned to appreciate how wrong it is to forcibly take money from some to give to others, robbed from the rich to give to the poor, is not particularly surprising. Yet even these students dipped into their own pockets (figuratively) to help level the economic playing field. Private and religious charitable organizations should be given more opportunities to demonstrate that through citizen generosity the needy in local communities can be provided for with less government involvement and state controlled redistribution of income. Likewise, America’s workers should be allowed to keep more of their income, which, as this study illustrated, would result in more donations to local charities.

The “Robin Hood” impulse appears to manifest itself, if unimpeded by the government, in actions that look, to the discomfort of secular academia, like charity. Government assistance programs are the antithesis of charity, for the giver is forced and the recipient is deprived of recognizing the loving sacrifice behind a voluntary donation. Robin Hood risked his life to help the poor, and charitable Americans would willingly do likewise if government loosened its stranglehold on public assistance programs. After all, there is a little of Robin Hood and a divine spark in each of us.