The Grecian Mirror

There are myths, from Homer’s epics and Beowulf to Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, about mirrors, reflecting pools and other artifacts that show images of the past or future. We are fortunate to have actual reflections of the past and our potential future, know that they show facts, and still have time to avoid some disasters.

Our vision of the past lets us see that Socialism has failed in every country that has tried it. This is plain fact. There are several kinds, from “soft” European style to “hard”, Communism. But these are varietal, like the difference between Pippins and Granny Smiths - - we are talking about apples-to-apples. The differences are more in style and magnitude, than in philosophy. All varieties of this fruit, however, are poisonous and they all seek vast government control at the expense of personal freedom. In our case, the American Communist Party became unpopular with strong, free Americans, so they called themselves Progressives, then Liberals, and now Progressives again. They have taken over the Democratic Party and infected the Republicans.

Progressives will deny it, but It is fairly well known that the most murderous and destructive regimes in modern history were Socialist: Communist China (70 million murdered under Mao Zedong alone, plus the Tiananmen massacre just a few years ago) and Communist USSR (35 million under Stalin alone). But, say the leftists, what about the far-right NAZIs? Well, the NationalSozialisten (National Socialists) under Hitler murdered 11 million Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and other “undesireables”. None of these figures, by the way, include wars fought or insurrections they instigated in foreign countries.

The NAZIs and Germany’s own Kommunistische Partei shared rosters and resources until they got close to seizing power. Then it became a question of which group’s bosses would be the big bosses (kind of like mafia or union wars), and the Brown Shirts outlawed the Communists. You see, the NAZI plan was to leave most industry in “private” cronies’ hands under absolute government control, rather than pretend that “the people” owned everything, but that is just style. “Far right” would actually be anarchy - - a complete free-for-all, which Socialists find convenient for sneaking into power.

There are or were dozens of small-time copies of these hard cases of Socialism, each of which has collapsed or is stagnant and decaying. Putting a massive government (which produces nothing) between every service or product and the consumer is just too much inefficiency to support for long. The mighty USSR was only 70 years old, and Chinese Communism, squeezing the last strength from her starving peasants, is 65.
There is also the “soft” Euro-style Socialism, which gained power after WWII. It’s chief claim is to have slowly dragged European economies to a near-standstill. They generally appear friendly, but have no guaranteed rights bestowed by their creator, just whatever “rights” the political leaders choose to allow. Their capitalism has been thrust down, their creativity is diminished and their entitlements (promised government benefits) have mushroomed. So, with less production and costs out of control, we now see the European Union in trouble. It has not been widely reported, but while our recession has been rough (and will likely get worse before ending, due to big-government intervention), it has been worse over there.

Greece was once a cradle of freedom, with a history of beauty and fighting oppression. Now, faced with bankruptcy, soft-Socialist Greece must cut union pay and benefits. Their wall-to-wall leftist unions, used to getting their way, are rioting. People have died, including several intentionally trapped in a bank torched by rioters. But they don’t care, as long as they keep their 3 day work week, bad-but-free health care, and pay without productivity. This is the Socialist vision of America’s future.

Every act of Obama and the Progressive Democrats - - seizing industries, controlling pay, interfering in banking, lying to the people, pandering to unions, weakening the economy and quadrupling debt - - fit the model. They threaten to make a second-rate, Euro-Socialist state out of history’s greatest and freest super-power, built by capitalism. Under that kind of government, a million loyal troops would have never been sacrificed in civil war just to emancipate valuable slaves.

Better check the mirror; you never know what’s sneaking up behind you.