America Has Moved Decisively Left
The long term goal of America’s far left intellectuals has finally been achieved. Their goal, to begin the establishment of a cradle to grave socialist state in America took only nine decades to accomplish. The most significant actions occurred in the 1960’s, although the ideas actually began with the Russian Revolution.
That event was looked upon as the fulfilment of Utopian do-gooders who in the past had tried to establish such communities only to see them fail. With the advent of communism however, it proved to these intellectual elites that the power of government could be harnessed to bring the people into obedience for their own good. Their goal became from that point on, to bring America and her vast resources into the world socialist community of nations and to use those resources to bring along the rest of the globe.
What made the sixties a pivotal point in this endeavor? The answer is quite ironically, the very success of the free markets and capitalism. The aftermath of WWII was a sea change in the welfare of the average person in the western world. The huge capitalist machine that defeated the Nazis and the Japanese now turned its energies into making washing machines, refrigerators, TVs and cars. Advances in medicine eliminated polio, a scourge that even afflicted America’s war time President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. American GI’s, returning home from war were poised to enjoy a lifestyle that their parents could never have imagined. These new families, having seen the suffering of the Great Depression as children, were determined to see to it that their kids, the now famous baby boomers, would not have to worry about such troubles.
The problem was however, that the lessons of the Depression imbued that “greatest generation” with a sense of respect, morality, and frugality. They did not see these new wonders as something that could be gotten for nothing, but as the result of hard work and self sacrifice. Alas, their spoiled children, the boomers, never learned those lessons. Having an assumption that these modern wonders were easy to obtain, and filled with that natural enthusiasm that comes with youth, these young people came of age in a time of material bounty, vibrant political activity, and a war that seemed to have no purpose. These ingredients left these youthful enthusiasts wide open to the intellectual left, and they acted quickly to turn this tide of energy to their viewpoint.
The political world represented by the two major parties of the early sixties was actually fairly conservative. The Democrat party holds President John F. Kennedy in the highest esteem, but by any measure, the policies of JFK today would be viewed upon as right of center. A strong defense, sound monetary policy, and a strong executive were very much a part of his administration, and were up until recently, basic principles of the GOP. We should not forget that the President’s brother, the revered Bobby Kennedy, had no problem wire tapping Dr. Martin Luther King. Nonetheless, the socialist intellectuals sought to drive the Democrats further to the left.
The Viet Nam War served as the focal point of the left’s efforts to take control of the government. Although this conflict was significantly expanded under Democrat Lyndon Johnson, the left successfully portrayed the mess as Nixon’s War. With Richard Nixon’s stupid actions in the Watergate fiasco and the issues of the civil rights struggle boiling over, the stage was set to enact legislation that would be seen as caring and compassionate, and the idea was that government would be able to take care of everything. Congress wrested power from the President and claimed itself the new guardian of the people. Ever since that time, the Democrat party has chosen as their Presidential nominees, far left liberals that would further the socialist model.
For a while the GOP tried to fight back, but even the revered Ronald Reagan fell short. He raised taxes, retreated from Lebanon, and granted amnesty to millions of illegals. His choice of George H. W. Bush as Vice-President was a monumental failure. Bush 41 was a long time moderate in the Rockefeller mode of country club Republicans, and the GOP candidates for various national spots soon began to take their cue from him. As the GOP sought to attain acknowledgment and respect from the intellectuals, they too began to think of government as a significant part of the answer. This weakening of the will eventually led to the so called “compassionate conservatisim” of the current President Bush, and the GOP began to move more leftward with each election. Today, the Republican party no longer represents the ideas of small government and fiscal responsibility, of faithful adherence to the Constitution and American sovereignty. Instead, the GOP has moved into the space formerly occupied by the Democrat party, and is often derided as the Dem-Lite party.
In the meantime, the Democrats have totally abandoned their traditional liberal ways in favor of their new progressive stance which is simply the emulation of the European Union’s Democratic Socialism. They talk of single payer government sponsored health care, of free college, of universal pre-k education, all of which are precursors to their socialist vision of a new world order, a one world government where taxes are high, speech is limited and controlled, education dumbed down, and military power disdained.
In our current election cycle, the two Democrats still battling for their party’s nomination are by every measure, socialists who want a cradle to grave nanny state and are willing to do whatever it takes to attain it. On the other side, the GOP presumptive nominee, John McCain, is a respected Viet Nam War veteran who cannot gain the support of the conservatives he needs to get elected because he is viewed as a Democrat in disguise, a liberal at heart. Yet McCain, for his part, believes he is a conservative.
It is quite evident that the American political system has made a decisive move to the left. Those who are of a more traditional conservative bent have been shut out of the two major parties completely. In fact, the powerful voices of right wing talk radio and cable TV speak out openly against Senator McCain, some even advocating a vote for the socialist Democrat candidate, whoever that may be.
Where does this leave those who still believe in smaller government, lower taxes, more self reliance, strict observance of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and other traditionally conservative points of view? Their new home has not yet been clearly defined, but the growing network of independent candidates who are offering a choice other than the same old elitist DEM/GOP parties may be the place for them.
As an independent candidate, I have recently been in contact with other independents and together we are working on a plan to bring an alternative message to the American people. If there are enough people willing to make the necessary leap of faith required to save this great nation from falling into the bottomless pit of the new world socialist order, the reclaiming of our birthright from the elites who have outright stolen it from us is very possible. If you care to learn more about my candidacy and this new movement, please visit my website,
March 1st, 2008 at 12:03 am
The problems have proceed too far.
Your can only organize and be ready to pick up the pieces.
There several articles on Financial Sense you need to read Joe that came out today.
In the upper left corner are a list of authors.
Read Jim Willies all the way through. Some of it deals with the market but it is what is driving the market that he covers you need to read.
The other articles are also a mixed bag but some have more about what the Fed is up to and it isn’t
to save America.”
http://www.financialsense.com/
Basically, the problems in the financial world are deeper and even if we appear to get by for now, there is still more to come in a year or two.
March 1st, 2008 at 12:59 am
You guys really are lost in the past. Communism is dead. All governement programs are not socialism. (I don’t think you even really know the definition of socialism.)
Try to get into at least the 90’s.
March 1st, 2008 at 1:21 am
[…] Has Moved Decisively Left Posted in February 29th, 2008 by in free medical consent forms Joe Oliva put up a good read today.Here’s a quick excerpt:Advances in medicine eliminated polio, a […]
March 1st, 2008 at 1:24 am
[…] The Conservative Revolution wrote an interesting post today on America Has Moved Decisively LeftHere’s a quick excerptHe raised taxes, retreated from Lebanon, and granted amnesty to millions of illegals. His choice of George H. W. Bush as Vice-President was a… […]
March 1st, 2008 at 1:52 am
[…] Joe Oliva has something worth reading today (America Has Moved Decisively Left)Here’s a brief bit, but follow the link for the rest.Advances in medicine eliminated polio, a scourge that even afflicted America’s war time President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. American GI’s, returning home from war were poised to enjoy a lifestyle that their parents could never have … […]
March 1st, 2008 at 11:15 am
Lefthook you really need to read the goals of communism and while it is dead, socialism is alive and well. Centralization of power and redistribution of wealth to pay for social programs. Having social programs is not socialism but, how you fund them and where they are administrated from and how they are designed can be socialism.
Rep. Herlong’s Goals of Communism read to Congress in 1963 detail most of the goals of socialists as well.
quote:
11) Promote the UN as the only hope for mankind.
15) Capture one or both of the political parties in the US
16) Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions, by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17) Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for Socialism, and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers associations. Put the party line in text books.
18) Gain control of all student newspapers
19) Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20) Infiltrate the press. Get control of book review assignments, editorial writing, policy-making positions.
21) Gain control of key positions in radio, TV & motion pictures.
22) Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all form of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings”, substitute shapeless, awkward, and meaningless forms.
23) Control art critics and directors of art museums. ” Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art”.
24) Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
25) Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography, and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio and TV.
26) Present Homosexuality, degeneracy, and promiscuity as “normal, natural, and healthy”.
27) Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity, which does not need a “religious crutch”
28) Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the grounds that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state”
29) Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30) Discredit the American founding fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man”.
31) Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of “the big picture:” Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32) Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture - - education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33) Eliminate all laws or procedures, which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34) Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35) Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI
36) Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37) Infiltrate and gain control of big business
38) Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand or treat.
39) Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40) Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41) Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
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They have done a pretty good job of expanding socialism in America. That is why it is in almost as much trouble as socialist and communist nations we used to laugh at because of their lower standards of living. Now we face that same fate thanks to an inability to fund our infrastructure, have wages keep up with government spending and have $1.4 trillion in the budget this year just for social programs in Health and Human services and social security welfare.
And the more we try to use wealth redistribution and centralization of power to force all the people into those programs, the worse it will get. People can’t afford to pay for them and it reduces the incentives for them to be as productive as they could be.
March 1st, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Well Lefty,
To begin with, Communism is not exactly dead, but more to the point, I never stated that the elites who promote the Democratic Socialism of the EU are promoting communism.
The official definition of socialism maybe the control of manufacturing and proiduction by the state, but that meaning has evolved into a something new. The socialistic future that the elites intend to create has more to do with controlling behavior than controlling production.
They have become smart enough to see that letting some private enterprise flourish and do the hard work is easier than doing it themselves. It is much easier to regulate and tax industry rather than compete.
Therefor, I am right up to date in my interpretation of events. The new world order vision of the elites seeks not to control production, but to regulate and tax it. Their ultimate goal is to control the people and usher in a utopian paradise where everyone is perfectly equal. That does not mean equal before the law as in our Constitution, but equal in outcome, in how life affects us all.
It is too bad you missed the main point because my basic argument is true. America has moved left and there is now a political void on the right for the defense of freedom, true freedom unencumbered by the rules of the elites!
March 1st, 2008 at 2:27 pm
In my opinion, much of this political/economic ideology debate will soon be a moot point.
If you believe there is any merit in the Olduvai theory, then the rules of the game will change significantly over next two decades.
Localization will be the name of the game.
March 1st, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Conservatism of the brand you guys identify with basically exists as a counterpoint to communism. But, now that communism’s dead, you guys are like a tug-of-war team when the other side lets go. You’re jerking back into extreme capitalism, which is what you now call the global elites (meaning capital interests are free to do what is in their nature, which is creating monopolies and taking over government for their own ends, such as abolishing labor and environmental standards to increase profits).
The cry for strong social programs is a PRODUCT of your brand of extreme capitalsim.
The answer to the abuses of the elites is not LESS regulation, for crying out loud. By calling for less regulation, you are doing their work!
The counter balance is a return to post-Great Depression era regulations that created the middle class prosperity we all look back at fondly (and the presence of which lessen’s the need for strong social programs).
Markets, production, and the economomy don’t EXIST without regulation, and you’re screwing it all up by fighting against regulation everywhere you find it.
Fight in favor of restoring balance, not eliminating all regulation, then you will start solving problems instead of creating them.
March 1st, 2008 at 2:39 pm
I agree with you lefty. More regulation is in order (at a global level).
This idea that capitalist industry will self-regulate is laughable.
This is especially true when the industry owners are completely dislocated from the resulting externalities (pollution, poverty, unemployment, etc.)
What do we care if Southeast Asian forests are decimated to meet demand for exotic wood products? We (U.S. consumers) only care if this activity results in an unacceptable loss of U.S. jobs.
March 1st, 2008 at 2:40 pm
That is interesting but, I think China is going to take steps to minimize it.
They are building 40 nuclear power plants so they aren’t dependent on coal, gas or oil for electrical production as well as, some very large hydro electric projects.. They are using solar hot water heaters and currently have 850,000 people employed across China installing them so electric supply lines aren’t needed for homes to have hot water. They are leading in research now, I believe, but if not leading, close to it, in hybrid vehicles.
In other words they are rapidly finding ways to reduce the dependence on energy sources that aren’t renewable. If they are successful, they may be able to extend their industrial life or, if they like most industrial societies increase wealth, export the technology to where industry moves to.
That was the belief here. We told our workers not to worry about manufacturing leaving because we were “educated” and would always be a leader in high tech, financial services and R&D. Now, all of that is leaving as well because we didn’t reform our government business policies, debt, spending and foreign policy practices.
March 1st, 2008 at 2:46 pm
I was thinking…
What’s more patently socialist:
A “public assistance program” or a “war on drugs”?
March 1st, 2008 at 2:57 pm
The cry for strong social programs is a PRODUCT of your brand of extreme capitalsim.
If you recall, that was the point I made earlier about the Miranda rights. Abuse of people that were arrested led to the ruling.
However, we are looking at regulation at the national level when it should be, for the most part, at the state level with attorney generals like the one in New York and others that used the legal system to send people to prison for violations.
Each state is a “nation” in the sense it has a different culture, needs, resources, demographics, etc. The nations that are coming out of communism are moving to decentralization and deregulation at the national level but they aren’t ending common sense about the potential for abuse.
However, you have to remember that even before the time period you mentioned, we had national restrictions on monopolies. Right now, however, we don’t have the policies that allow competition with or without monopoly laws.
We have a nation that is so uncompetitive that only the largest, already established, international businesses can survive. Saying you don’t want a monopoly and then having such bad system of tax and compliance that nobody can start up and compete doesn’t make sense.
That is what happens in socialist nations. They end up with the state controlling industry to such an extent that only the biggest can survive. Then the “elite” that run those companies, because the government depends on them, end up subsidizing them, propping them up with government contracts, exempting them from taxes or regulations to keep from losing them and the jobs they provide, etc. to where they end up worse of the people of the nation than what they were trying to avoid.
If you have 10 companies that do the same thing and compete and each employ 1,000 and one of them breaks the rules and need to be closed, you only lose 1,000 jobs and they will probably cause the other 9 to expand and take them in as their employees.
But, if you have only one company able to afford the regulations and tax compliance doing the same with 10,000 employees, you don’t want to close it. So you bribe and threaten and subsidize and exempt to keep the business from going overseas. Yet, that is exactly what we create when we try to tax and regulate from the national level more than from the state level.
In a Republic, states competing with states create a much better economy for the nation as a whole than a national system does. Yes, there are problems but there are more problems with centralizing power than with the inequities of competing states.
The European Union has passed us in GDP. They have “states” with separate economies, governments, trade policies, taxes, regulations, etc. But, that competition is starting to improve all of them as they have to fight to keep business competitive and in their country employing their citizens. At the same time they are becoming more competitive with each other, they are becoming more competitive with Asia. The tax reforms going on in virtually every nation of Europe is making it much better at competing with all nations, including us. They used to have higher taxes than us on business now we are tied for top place with Japan and they are in the tank too.
Yes, Europe is still an economic basket case and they may be dragged down with us if we fall but, they at least were headed in the right direction if that does happen and I think some will do much better than we do in the coming crisis.
March 1st, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Lefty,
Your point is well made and if you had ever taken the time to visit my website, you would see that I agree with you. I believe in common sense solutions, not ideologically opposing positions of liberal vs. conservative.
In fact, I am not opposed to regulation. That is exactly what our government needs to do in many cases because as individuals, we cannot. What our politicians should not do is engage in activities best left to the private sector.
My position on healthcare best illustrates this concept. I propose regulations that will give consumers truly educated options (you can read the whole thing on the site), but it is not the job of government to provide single payer (government) health care.
Similarly with education. All options including vouchers and home schooling ought to be available instead of the NEA dominated one size school fits all. The teachers however, seek to promote their profession and their salaries. The socialist minded elites in politics of course, go along.
I think you greatly misunderstand my positions on many issues. Not only do I believe that the two parties have created their virtual lock on power by promoting the idea that they are the only choice and we must vote the lesser of two evils, but I also expose their false ideological division of the American people into conservatives vs. liberals. It is what allows them to stay in power. If we actually consider our own personal lives, we would see how often the decisions we make for ourselves and our families are not just liberal or consrvative, but (hopefully) choices based upon common sense.
My campaign is not some conservative backlash at the GOP. I am opposed to both parties for their lies and the manner in which they pursue power at all costs. A competent federal govt. would be as you describe, i.e., keeping a sharp eye on the corporations because it is their job to do so, it is one of the things we need them for. They however seek power first, and from that follows partisanship, and so on.
It might surprise you if you actually went to the website to find out that we probably have a lot more in common than you think.
March 3rd, 2008 at 12:00 am
joe olivia,
I would love to visit your website but I don’t see a link.
March 3rd, 2008 at 2:40 pm
I screwed it up. joeolivaforpresident.org