The big envelope arrived the other day, from the National Republican Congressional Committee, which is not a committee that tries to solve problems for the Prudent and concerned citizenry, but a campaign committee that tries to solve problems for politicians. And, while it certainly has that right, Prudence dictates that recipients are just as permitted to scoff at it and withhold requested funding… or send in the funding to the degree that the needs of politicians may, momentarily, coincide with one’s own.
The questions were off-putting. Did the carefully chosen recipient think that the Democrats would work with President Trump to improve things for the American people? The options were Yes, No, and Not Sure. At the very end of the over-sized questionnaire the committee provided a space for “Comments.” Except, they didn’t really want very many of those. Prudence tried to compose two sentences that could impart the folly of the questions and the implied policies they hinted at, to no avail. It could fill a whole blog post.
Unfortunately, in this recipient’s view, even President Trump, ostensible leader of the organization that spawned the aforementioned Committee, is barely trying – or able – to shift the course of Socialism that has infected our Constitutional system of individual liberty. None of the questions even hinted at the underlying, fundamental corrosion of our potential and promise, so it didn’t seem Prudent to answer any of them. Most Americans are inured to the essential Socialism we live with, even as it washes out our national foundations, nor do we recognize the socialist nature of hundreds of federal and state programs. The Left has dragged the debate firmly onto its spongy, swampy, turf, yet we still appear befuddled in the few debates there actually are. Where is all this socialism?
The federal and state budgets are replete with it. “How can that be?” you ask. “We don’t like socialism in this country!” That’s what WE think.
Since 1946 the federal government has provided subsidized free and reduced-cost lunches to school-age children… millions of them. Most recent statistics indicate that some 30 Million children receive breakfast AND lunch in public schools. Here and there late-afternoon meals are also served. Where are the parents? Obviously so tied up with important tasks that they are unable to feed their own children.
Obviously, no one can bear the thought of hungry children trying to learn on empty stomachs; we must feed them. At the risk of sounding cruel, one is prompted to ask what the SNAP program is accomplishing if it fails to make sure that children receive nutrition from its benefits? Are there no sanctions on parents who fail the test of the most basic parental responsibilities? Feeding your own child? Apparently not, and not needed. The federal government has provided much of that function so that parents need not be bothered. Everyone is happy. Socialism: identity linked to a certain group spurs unique attentions from a central governing body, frequently economic attentions – positive or negative.
What about the most basic socialist program: Social Security? Begun as a simple, partial support for those too old to work, Social Security has become an ostensible retirement program as well as a source of “off-budget” revenues for our erstwhile budget-masters in the Congress. Indeed, there they were: some dollars they couldn’t obtain cheaply enough on the open bond markets, and they didn’t actually steal them. They placed bona fide I. O. U.’s in the form of United States bonds in the imaginary “lock box” of which existence taxpayers were repeatedly assured. In a way, the moneys collected on behalf of future retirees WERE stolen, another of the inevitable actions of socialists for whom ANY source of revenue may be justified for the good of all.
Social Security, long in surplus, was too sweet a piggy-bank when the “need” to provide for the mentally “disabled,” especially children, and for a host of others deemed disabled under the ADA, including alcoholics and other addicts. Now, in answer to another prayer to who knows who, for more revenue for the common weal, we have THC emporiums springing up from coast to coast, often enriching former socialist office-holders, and which can allay the disabling anxiety of the developmentally coddled. There will be less crime, now, and happier sheeple, ahhmmn… voters. Gambling wasn’t expanding its contributions to the common good quite rapidly enough. Prostitution is always waiting in the sheets, as it were, with added revenues needed for “education” and “infrastructure.”
Another clue to our socialist underpinnings is the $23 Trillion-dollar debt hanging over us, all. The centuries-old result of socialism is running out of other people’s money. Socialism is based on collectivist action, governing by group identity rather than having power derived from individual rights and actions… and responsibilities, the source of business-generated productive surplus and innovation. Socialism is a system of diffusing responsibility, and once in that mindset it is a small step to borrow today’s comforts, ahh… crucial needs, from future taxpayers. Politicians are especially comforted by the prospect of buying votes with the greatest “other people’s money” ever conceived: “borrowing” from 3 generations in the future. Talk about diffusing responsibility.
Into this dishonest mess has dropped Covid-19, facilitating the wet dreams of socialists everywhere: “universal” health… ahh, well, not care, exactly, but universal RULES that are backed not by law but by police – best of all. And these aren’t rules for hygiene; these rules are destroying the economy, individual businesses of every size, jobs, household economies, availability of goods, including food, paper goods and all the cleaning and disinfecting products that are needed to render every body antiseptically pristine. All it costs are hundreds of billions of lost business and tax revenue, plus a few inalienable rights, like the entire Bill of Rights. In one swell foop our governments have rendered virtually EVERYONE dependent on government, and otherwise rational and independent men and women are willing to argue angrily for following every new restriction on rights and commerce, out of fear.
Meanwhile, the largest bailout/stimulus/stock-buyback program in the world is being polished up by the 535 people on Capitol Hill who can benefit the most from it. Don’t you sometimes wonder how Representatives and Senators become multi-millionaires while sacrificing for us in “public service?” Insider trading is a good way. Let’s hope that what they finally shove down Pennsylvania Avenue is actually the right prescription for our suddenly sick economy. Could happen.
The third person in line of succession to the presidency, Nancy Pelosi, doing her level best to help Americans in this time of shared stress and fear, tried to slip a loophole into the emergency “stimulus” legislation that would have enabled federal funds to pay for abortions, which is currently illegal. She has her priorities; most of the rest of the people in the United States have theirs. One could look back to 1973 when a shadowy “law” was discovered in the fog and abortion became “constitutionally” protected, and wonder if the termination of 61,000,000 Americans was simply not enough to have prevented COVID-19. Maybe speeding up and expanding the death of our future will have a net positive effect.
Fortunately, every college graduate over the past 40 years has NOT been a communications, marketing or art major, and the latest iteration of “coronavirus” will be solved and resolved by very smart and accomplished people. The problems of the hog-tied economy will not be so readily set aright. It was shaky prior to the flood of unprecedented federal and state dictates, becoming, both because of and in spite of the booming financial markets, more and more unbalanced. The ultra-rich were becoming ultra RICHER; a smaller middle-class of small and medium businesses were doing better; the vast majority of small businesses were struggling against the globalization of contracts and ownerships that remove thousands of previously independent enterprises from the competitive, free-enterprise marketplace. A large fraction of the population were simply watching the growth of the rest of the economy, while experiencing little of the new wealth. This model is common as socialism matures in the societies that have suffered under it. A small group becomes very much more comfortable – and powerful – than everyone else, the middle class is reduced to homogeneity, the helpless low-producers are eventually eliminated or relegated.
Right now we are required, under stronger and stronger sanctions, to place our trust in a pyramid of government strata, populated by smiling politicians who have made careers out of deceiving Americans. Let’s hope this crisis has shocked them into utter veracity, now. That could happen, too; we’ll ignore the deceptive insider trading. It’s nothing new.