This Fourth of July, Americans should take the opportunity to reeducate themselves on the fundamental principles of our Constitution. //
Our government was formed by an alliance of some of the most brilliant political thinkers in history, who, for some providential reason, all happened to live in the same generation and the same nation. It’s our failure to remember and understand their wisdom — rather than some defect in the timeless truths they espoused — that explains much of the struggles of our contemporary age. Familiarizing ourselves with our Constitution and its most illustrious interpreters in The Federalist Papers will do much to restore our political sanity. This Independence Day, you have your homework.
anon-89ic
6 hours ago
He is right and he knows it and we all know it. The Democrats have a number of Nazi era planks to be debated at their convention in Chicago, and the fact that rounding up Jews is unlikely to be adopted is not exactly comforting. ]This is the first time a major party will take up Jewish expulsion in an American election since Lincoln and Grant tried to introduce such positions in to the Republican platforms in 1864 and 1868 and, of course, they did expel the Jews from the United States, so its not a great precedent.
anon-y65w anon-89ic
5 hours ago edited
Actually, General Order No. 11 was issued by Grant in 1862, effective only in the then Dept. of the Tennessee and was limited to TN, KY, MS. No one was expelled from the US, and when Pres. Lincoln found out about the order, he rescinded it immediately.
Hatred of Jews has been, sadly, a part of US history more often than not.
Laocoön of Troy anon-89ic
6 hours ago
Grant was trying to eliminate illegal cotton smuggling from the South to speculators in the North. When Lincoln got wind if it he ordered Grant to back off.
"... A paper purporting to be General Orders, No. 11, issued by you December 17, has been presented here. By its terms, it expells [sic] all Jews from your department. If such an order has been issued, it will be immediately revoked. ..."
You need to read whatever informed your ignorance more closely.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/grant-expels-the-jews-from-his-department
https://www.history.com/news/ulysses-grant-expulsion-jews-civil-war
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Order_No._11_(1862)
Grant formally rescinded the order, January 17, 1863, within three weeks after Lincoln revoked the order.
On the Importance of Process and the Republican Nature of the New Government
In Federalist 38 Madison discusses the process by which the new proposed constitution was written and how that process was superior to anything that had been attempted before in history. If you recall, Plato believed that an enlightened philosopher king should rule, and that only this kind of man would be capable of creating, and leading, the city state. His reasoning was that man was too fraught with faults to avoid pursuing his own self-interest.
Madison lists the examples of Minos in Crete, Zaleucus of the Locrians, Theseus in Athens, Lycurgus of Spart, Romulus of Rome, and others to illustrate how these city states all were established, and their laws created, by a single person even as they went on to have legislative bodies. And all these states went through periods where single emperors ruled regardless of the original intent of their founding. Even democracy loving Athenians, “a people who would not suffer an army to be commanded by fewer than ten generals, …should consider one illustrious citizen as a more eligible depositary of the fortunes of themselves and their posterity, than a select body of citizens”.[1]
Up until this point, this is how governments were formed. “(T)hese lessons teach us, … to admire the improvement made by America on the ancient mode of preparing and establishing regular plans of government”. The process by which the new constitution was written matters greatly. The representative way in which all states, and through their delegates the citizens thein, are represented is absolutely novel. It has never happened in the course of history to that time. This process alone helps ensure the liberty of the citizens of the new country.
Madison asks of those who object to the constitution, what they would propose as an alternative? //
In Federalist 39 Madison seeks to answer whether the new constitution creates a truly republican form of government and whether that government is federal or national in construction.
On the first question, Madison starts by declaring that only a representative republic, “would be reconcilable with the genius of the people of America; with the fundamental principles of the Revolution”. He points out that no such thing exists anywhere else in the world, and lists the various places that claim the title incorrectly. “It is ESSENTIAL to such a government that it be derived from the great body of the society, not from an inconsiderable proportion, or a favored class of it”. There is no nobility in the new country, in fact the constitution includes an, “absolute prohibition of titles of nobility”.
In each of the states’ constitutions, legislatures are chosen by the people for, “a definite period, and in many instances, both within the legislative and executive departments, to a period of years.” Here again we see the criticality of turnover within these branches of government for ensuring liberty. //
But to those who worry about too much power being in the hands of the federal government, Madison reiterates the point that Hamilton made earlier that, “the proposed government cannot be deemed a NATIONAL one; since its jurisdiction extends to certain enumerated objects only, and leaves to the several States a residuary and inviolable sovereignty over all other objects.”
Since the beginning of the Rise of Trump, I've maintained that Trump is not a cause, but a symptom. His initial seeking of political office was a reaction to what many Americans see as the rise of a political elite in the United States; politicians serve as though they were the Roman Senate, appointed for life, and many of them grow monstrously rich while in office. There are those on the left now who are comparing Trump to Caesar, but that's a canard; Trump has no military background, and he has not sought to make himself a dictator no matter what pearl-clutching claims are made by his opponents. In his first term, Trump worked within the Constitution. There is no reason to think that he would not do the same in a second term.
Trump may well be our Gracchi. The Gracchi were among the first voices calling out the corruption of the wealthy and powerful in the late Roman Republic. They called for populist reforms, and they worked to put themselves in a position to implement those reforms and, if you will allow the term, Make Rome Great Again - and the establishment of the time, those same wealthy and powerful men, destroyed them for it. (Sound familiar?) But it was that reaction to the Gracchi that led to the Sulla/Marius conflict and then to the rise of Caesar.
Whether Trump wins a second term or not, the die has been cast. The wealthy and powerful have been called out. Trump may be leading the populist movement, but he is not the populist movement, and that movement is not going away. Trump himself has proven to be notoriously resistant to any attempts to brush him aside. Will history continue to rhyme? Will there, in another generation or two, be another American civil war? An American Caesar? There may well be - but that's a story for another column. //
RSB
10 hours ago
This is where you have to be a bit more nuanced. Yes Rome lost its Republic and a LOT of that went back to corruption and a degradation of society to where the first loyalty of the troops was to their generals not the state. And yes the moral rot of Rome itself was a causal factor in this because people turned to the strong generals to give them some actual peace and security.
In one respect Rome got lucky. Caesar was not some tyrannical monster and Octavian (in one of the big surprises of history) was possibly the greatest statesman in history. He built the Empire on the notion of lowered taxes, respect for individual rights and security for trade, commerce and everyday life within that framework. And the result was the Pax Romana. True the moral issues remained (albeit lessened due the laws against theft, murder et al being enforced), it fell to later rulers such as Vespasian who threw a lot of the decadent people out of the Senate and government and promoted Italians who were more closely tied to the common folk and had more rural morals - then Roman morals improved.
So. Is America on the road to having its "Caesar"? Probably. Will we get lucky like Rome did? No way to know.
If you follow family-run businesses over multiple generations, a common theme will emerge that is so statistically significant that even Dave Ramsey warns families about it.
When the first generation starts a business, it is often passed down to the second generation who directly witnessed the blood, sweat, and tears that both of their parents invested to make it sustainable. This second generation generally feels an obligation to the investments made by their parents and generally runs the business well. But the third generation has no historical appreciation for the business. They were not alive when the business was born and can’t comprehend a world without it. If the business was passed from the first to the second generation, of course, it will be passed to the third which causes a sense of entitlement. This entitlement and lack of perspective are at the core of why a disproportionate number of third-generation business owners fail.
The United States is now in its third generation of bureaucracy following World War 2. The first generation was directly a part of the pain and sacrifice made around the world to defeat an axis of evil. The second generation of bureaucracy grew up in the shadows of World War 2 and even got a taste of it during the Cold War. But the third generation of bureaucrats and technocrats embedded in unelected offices earning mid-six-figure salaries have none of this. Their version of a threat to democracy is the prospect of a democratic reelection of Donald Trump.
Just like a family business, this third-generation bureaucrat is running this country into the ground and is stirring a populist revolt that I don’t think they understand. Let me explain.
IN THE EARLY 1900S, PABST was a paragon of success. What started in 1844 as a tiny Milwaukee brewery had become the largest beer maker in the nation by 1874, producing more than a million barrels a year in 1893. That same year, the company started claiming that one of its lagers had won a blue-ribbon award at the Chicago World’s Fair. It was pure malarkey. But the blue silk ribbons they tied around bottle necks put some prestige behind the brand, and helped turn the Pabst family into millionaires.
Yet as America moved towards Prohibition, the folks at Pabst recognized that their beer empire was about to dry up. So, soon after the nationwide ban on alcohol went into effect in 1920, Pabst pivoted to making a “delicious cheese food.” They called it Pabst-ett and sold it in block and spreadable forms, as well as in cheddar, pimento, and Swiss flavors.
This wasn’t the only side hustle the Pabst Brewing Company pursued in 13 years of prohibition, nor the most profitable of them. But it exemplifies the mindsets and tactics American brewers adopted to ride out the decade and resurge after 1933—something only a few dozen of the nearly 1,300 brewing companies active in the U.S. in 1916 managed to do.
Mrs. Alito, in my opinion, is quickly approaching legend/thug life status in my book for how she's responded to the nontroversies, unapologetic while poking a gigantic needle in all the leftist stereotype balloons about supposedly meek and subservient conservative wives.
But beyond that, her remarks have indeed undercut the central argument behind the New York Times' flag hit pieces and the corresponding blowback from left-wing critics and other various and assorted hacktivists. She indeed is the one who flew the flags, not her husband, who she also confirmed is not a flag aficionado at all.
The trend of China-based companies in Indiana has developed through centralized planning with the help of a CCP-linked nonprofit. //
The Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC), an unelected upgrade to the traditional commerce department, helps select and develop businesses in Indiana. The IEDC has set up many China-owned companies in the state, including 25 currently operational, according to the IEDC general counsel.
The trend of China-based companies in Indiana has not developed organically but through centralized planning with the help of a Chinese Communist Party-linked nonprofit. A contract on the IEDC’s website shows that it has been paying the America China Society of Indiana (ACSI) to facilitate deals with China-owned businesses. The contract outlines IEDC’s interest in “identifying and creating a pipeline of [foreign direct investment] prospects in China” and preparing trip itineraries, among other tasks.
Did the massive scale of death in the Americas following colonial contact in the 1500s affect atmospheric CO2 levels? That’s a question scientists have debated over the last 30 years, ever since they noticed a sharp drop in CO2 around the year 1610 in air preserved in Antarctic ice.
That drop in atmospheric CO2 levels is the only significant decline in recent millennia, and scientists suggested that it was caused by reforestation in the Americas, which resulted from their depopulation via pandemics unleashed by early European contact. It is so distinct that it was proposed as a candidate for the marker of the beginning of a new geological epoch—the “Anthropocene.”
But the record from that ice core, taken at Law Dome in East Antarctica, shows that CO2 starts declining a bit late to match European contact, and it plummets over just 90 years, which is too drastic for feasible rates of vegetation regrowth. A different ice core, drilled in the West Antarctic, showed a more gradual decline starting earlier, but lacked the fine detail of the Law Dome ice.
Which one was right? Beyond the historical interest, it matters because it is a real-world, continent-scale test of reforestation’s effectiveness at removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
In a recent study, Amy King of the British Antarctic Survey and colleagues set out to test if the Law Dome data is a true reflection of atmospheric CO2 decline, using a new ice core drilled on the “Skytrain Ice Rise” in West Antarctica. //
Scientists estimate that about 60 million people inhabited the Americas before European contact. There’s archaeological evidence for numerous cities and settlements, such as miles of now-overgrown urban sprawl that was recently mapped in Amazonian Ecuador, or the city of Cahokia in Illinois, which is estimated to have been larger than London was at that time, or Llanos de Mojos in Bolivia. The Spanish conquistador Francisco de Orellana also described seeing cities in the Amazon in 1542.
Even today in overgrown parts of the Amazon, vegetation carries the imprint of past occupation in an overabundance of cultivated species such as Brazil Nut trees.
A century after the first European contact, some 56 million people had died according to one widely cited estimate. “What we're looking at here is first contact, and [then] 100 years when 90 percent of the population, basically, dies,” said Professor Mark Maslin of University College London, who was not involved in King’s study. They succumbed to wave after wave of pandemics, as smallpox, measles, influenza, bubonic plague, malaria, diphtheria, typhus, and cholera spread through populations with no natural immunity. People who survived one disease outbreak died in the next. With too few people to work them, cities and farms were abandoned and overgrown. //
Wheels Of Confusion Ars Legatus Legionis
15y
65,758
Subscriptor
Magog14 said:
A strong argument for limiting the human population to under one billion.
We're talking a drop of ~10ppm CO2.
If it happened today it would get us roughly back to where we were in the year 2010.
swiftdraw said:
I have a modest proposal in regards to the population…
Then we must act Swiftly! //
Ushio Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
13y
6,642
Felix K said:
I can’t believe how much death and destruction my ancestors unleashed on the natives of the Americas. It must be the greatest genocide in history.
Not really sure what to do with the feelings it brings up except that none of this land is ours. It is all stolen.
Was it a genocide when it was accidental? The first people from Europe to land in the America's didn't set out to genocide anyone. Yes conquering and killing but when it was done in Asia and Africa there wasn't genocide.
Genocide's seem to be more a 19th century onwards thing with Native Americans and Aboriginals getting the worst of it long after the USA, Australia and New Zealand had been fully formed. //
A_Very_Tired_Geek Ars Scholae Palatinae
5y
1,290
freitzkreisler said:
Egad <Racist Rant Lacking evidence or merit and doesn't bear repeating>
Could you be any more trollish or racist?
Native Americans were humans, and none of them were these 'heathen savages' that Eurocentric arrogance saw them as. They engaged in warfare just like the rest of the world. But what you're going off on is demonstrably untrue while the rest is bigoted unsupportable opinion. Spiritually inferior? Seriously this is BS I'd hear spouted in some throwback fundamentalist Christian church (and why I became an atheist because I unfortunately grew up in such).
The fact of the matter is that Native Americans taught the European immigrants how to grow native crops in this land because many of their European techniques, plants, and livestock wouldn't work or grow here without changes. It's to the world's detriment that Europeans weren't more receptive to what they had to teach because slash and burn along with hunting species to extinction is mainly a European thing. Most of the modern agricultural advances used today are NOT from the colonial era. They are innovations that came out of America's Dust Bowl during the Great Depression (arguably caused by colonial era practices) while some are revivals of tenants of Native American or Aboriginal practices - don't screw with the natural order. (Who knew predators improves the general ecology of an area? Native Americans. Who knew beavers improved the soil and water quality on farm lands? Native Americans. And on and on...) //
A_Very_Tired_Geek Ars Scholae Palatinae
5y
1,290
Mad Klingon said:
Besides reforestation, having 10s of millions of people die and stop using firewood and coal for cooking and heating probably had something to do with the CO2 drop.Also, several of the groups practiced planned burns as part of their crop and living space management. When they died off, no more planed burns.
The planned burns were more to keep nature from doing it for them when the underbrush collected to the point where it could begin with any random dry lightning strike. Native peoples weren't stupid. People died from uncontrolled wildfires then as now. Planned burns minimizes the loss of life in the short and long term. That way they could plan to move their village if needed. Wildfires could come up unannounced. That could cause panic and panicky people die in fires.
Edit to add: I don't think the planned burns were a major factor in CO2. They would have occurred naturally regardless and in greater range and intensity. Rather it's probably somewhat (although how much I wouldn't guess) CO2 from cooking, midden, and perhaps to a lesser extent religious rites fires.
That said, what bothers me is that the researchers seem to be assuming the CO2 content in the atmosphere is uniform, and it's not. It would have varied even in Antarctica in different areas simply due to atmospheric movements and what those areas are downwind from even if it's 10,000 mi downwind. (Example Dust from the Sahara regularly blows all the way to North America. Or the Deccan traps would have spewed megatons of sulfur into the air millions of years ago, but particularly any areas directly downwind on the jet streams would have had high sulfur oxides, carbon oxides, etc in any sediment layers.) It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that CO2 levels varies in ice cores. What matters is having enough point data to form valid statistical analysis rather than relying on the data from a handful of point sources as if they are broad indicators. //
This little sequence had gone on for generations of bears and ant colonies, all led by a large black rock being tumbled slowly down the mountain, year after year, one platter-sized indentation after another. And the ants followed.
Even after all the Springs since that mountainside hike, it's hard to grasp the scale of synchronized evolutionary order that controls the natural world surrounding us. If I still lived in an urban area, I could have the impression that humans are running this show.
That personal awakening to an immense surrounding universe on this earth and so very far beyond actually began a long time ago. I believe that was when I walked out to the school bus and first noticed those tiny tracks in the snow, made so silently while I slept blissfully unaware in an old, warm house just a few yards away.
The lingering memory of that lone black rock on a Montana mountainside provides yet another in a lifelong series of inklings that have sketched a vague sense of and appreciation for the grand immutable design that is only partially accessible to our understanding when we stop and think about it a moment in the endless rush of modern life.
It makes me feel very small and humble.
Which, I've decided, is not a bad thing.
Glenn Beck @glennbeck
·
.@RichardDreyfuss tells me he gave up acting "ONLY for something I loved as much, which was saving my country...It infuriates me that people don't understand what this place means."
1:24 / 1:24
11:00 PM · Jan 16, 2023
https://twitter.com/glennbeck/status/1615121851784593410
All The Right Movies @ATRightMovies
·
Years after Robert Shaw's passing, his JAWS co-star Richard Dreyfuss met his granddaughter and got very emotional.
1:43 / 1:43
12:00 PM · May 1, 2024
https://twitter.com/ATRightMovies/status/1785640322061811725
The same people mocking ‘An Appeal to Heaven’ flag will never be satisfied so long as you view God and country as our Founding Fathers did.
Don’t get me wrong: I was happy working hard with my two feet planted firmly on the land. In a better world I and people like Scott Chang-Fleeman would have kept getting our hands dirty, making an honest, if modest, living providing good and wholesome food in synch with the rhythms of the planet.
But to borrow a word from the world of ecology, being a young farmer in today’s economy is “unsustainable.” The numbers don’t work economically and, eventually, any mind trying to square this un-squarable circle is going to break. The economic, physical and mental challenges are all interconnected.
It’s hard to find an American, Republican or Democrat, red or blue state resident that doesn’t want more young hands on the land. We all rightly see agriculture as a pathway to personal fulfillment and a way to make our food supply healthier and more secure. But words and intentions can only do so much. We must answer these very real problems with very real subsidy.
The fellow in the photo above looks like a distinguished figure -- a bank president, perhaps, or a judge, a governor, maybe a college professor. He is a figure of great dignity and gravitas, indeed.
Well, he was a college professor and a governor (of Maine), in fact, but that’s the least of his story. The old fellow here is Brevet Major General Lawrence Joshua Chamberlain, hero of Gettysburg, one of America’s premier military heroes, a man who may have single-handedly saved the Union on a fateful day in 1863.
Reports from Israeli media indicate that U.S. State Department officials have confirmed that it is preparing to sanction the Israeli Defense Forces' Netzah Yehuda battalion, marking the first time the U.S. government has targeted an IDF unit directly and sparking immediate opposition from Israeli political leaders, including Netanyahu.
The Netzah Yehuda battalion, part of the Kfir brigade, was established in 1999 to accommodate recruits from ultra-Orthodox and national religious communities, including those from reportedly "extremist settlements." It has historically been primarily deployed in the West Bank. //
DonttreaDonme
4 hours ago
send 10s of billions of dollars to the worlds leading sponsor of terrorism, a nation that specifically targets civilian men, women and children, kidnaps, rapes, tortures and murders it's victims at will, then sanctions the nation they perpetrate these humans rights violation upon, the country they're threatening to wipe off the map. Understood.
As you may have noticed, I’m a fan of history. So, I’ll close with a piece of historical trivia:
Only one man has ever been both president (1909-1913) and then on the Supreme Court, weighing 320 pounds at 5-foot-11. That was Ohioan William Howard Taft, who liked steaks so much he would at times have one at every daily meal.
Taft was a friendly man, the first president to own a car, and the last to keep a cow at the White House for fresh milk. He also began the presidential tradition of throwing out the first baseball of a new season.
Taft lost reelection in 1912 to Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt. In 1921, President Warren Harding named him Chief Justice.
Taft took retirement in February 1930. It was brief. He died one month later.
Take a trip down memory lane with our video, "20 Things From The 1960s, Kids Today Will Never Understand!" Explore the charming and amusing aspects of 1960s America that are sure to bring a smile to your face. From classic toys to iconic TV shows, join us as we reminisce about a simpler time that kids today may find puzzling yet endearing.
In Federalist 83, Alexander Hamilton wrote that the plan of the Constitution is that the powers granted to Congress
“shall extend to certain enumerated cases. This specification of particulars evidently excludes all pretension to a general legislative authority, because an affirmative grant of special powers would be absurd as well as useless if a general authority was intended.”This sounds so good. But it appears that he lied to us.
Perhaps Hamilton meant what he wrote at that time. But, once he became Secretary of the Treasury under President Washington, he did everything in his power to violate his own maxim. His scheme for the Bank of the United States is just one example. Where, o’ where does the Constitution provide Congress with the power to create a bank, or for that matter, any business corporation? Naturally, my question is rhetorical. //
And yet Hamilton, once he tasted power, quickly turned to “loose constructionism.” Indeed, his story is that of nearly every person in history who has exercised significant power. Man turns towards evil, and evil men (and women) love power. Many of us are familiar with Lord Acton’s “Absolute power corrupts absolutely” dictum. However, I think Erick von Kuehnelt-Leddin said it best: “A good man will not be corrupted by power, and a bad man will be corrupted with no power at all.” (Leftism Revisited, 317)
Hamilton’s problem is ours today in spades. Nearly all of us having fallen for the trap of loose constructionism, especially those who exercise power over us. We daily practice it- in the way we read our laws and the way we read things like the Bible. In fact, the proliferation of laws and regulations demands that we become loose constructionists, for if we tried to abide by the 4,000 plus new regulations our federal government promulgates each year, we couldn’t even live life. In this manner, the entire culture has been corrupted.
There are many today who support such things as a Convention of the States to redress the train wreck we are about to witness.
But unless we have a revival of strict constructionism, especially regarding higher law in our Constitutions and Scripture, we will merely change cars on the same doomed train.
By Frank Hawkins
Young Bill Ayers
America has undergone enormous change during the nearly eight decades of my life. Today, America is a bitterly divided, poorly educated and morally fragile society with so-called mainstream politicians pushing cynical identity politics, socialism and open borders. The president of the United States is threatened with impeachment because the other side doesn’t like him. The once reasonably unbiased American media has evolved into a hysterical left wing mob. How could the stable and reasonably cohesive America of the 1950s have reached this point in just one lifetime? Who are the main culprits? Here’s my list of the 10 most destructive Americans of the last 80 years.
Bill Whittle’s newest season of ‘What We Saw’ on Daily Wire Plus dips its toe in the oceans of blood Russia’s Communist revolution released.
The true crime genre is not big enough for what Communists and socialists did in Russia in the 20th century. It demands a new genre — perhaps call it true horror.
Bill Whittle’s newest season of “What We Saw” on Daily Wire Plus dips its toe in the oceans of blood Russia’s Communist revolution released. It’s grisly and difficult to take in. Whittle attempts to quantify the myriad forms of mass killings by comparing their death tolls to the erasure of several U.S. cities, yet still the numbers are numbing.
What’s not numbing is the question he includes in the season’s trailer comparing the Nazi Holocaust with the Soviet mass murder of an estimated 20 million: “Why are we encouraged to never forget one, and then intentionally taught to forget the other?” //
While it’s difficult to probe such manifestations of supernatural evil, doing so should be required of every human being. That’s because we need to look at evils like these and attempt to understand how they happen and what they say about human nature and history. Such knowledge is a fortification against it happening again — creating, for example, common knowledge that evil and corrupt governments often baselessly accuse their opponents of terrorism.
Here are four other things one can learn from studying Soviet history, as horrifying as that exercise can be.
1. Misery Is Normal in Human History
It’s hard to believe that when you’re an American and all you’ve ever known is clean and hot water coming out of the tap at a turn. But it’s also important to keep in mind. For one thing, it produces appropriate gratitude. For another, it should discipline hasty desires to “tear it all down,” and cultivate contempt for people who use the same lying words and policies as Communists.
2. People Are Not Innately Good
A heck of a lot of people somehow believe that humans are innately good. //
Soviet Russia is a tire iron to the back of that idea’s head. There can be no excuses for what the Communists did. No amount of bad potty training or poverty can excuse the mass murder of 20 million people and the enslavement of countless tens of millions more in gulag concentration camps. //
3. Socialists, Nazis, and Communists All Make the Same Hell on Earth
The truth is, socialists, Nazis, and Communists engage in furious infighting, but they’re all ultimately on the same side. They fight with each other, not because they disagree about collectivism, but because they all want to be on top of the dogpile of bodies their sister collectivist ideologies cause. Communists are Nazis are socialists are communists.
Socialist true believers will seek their collectivist ends “by any means necessary,” including government-sponsored terror, killing fields, and concentration camps. Anyone who proclaims himself a socialist in the face of historical facts about the hell on Earth socialism has always produced is a fool and fellow traveler, if not a covert supporter of mass terror.
4. We’d Better Keep America From Full Socialism
Let’s be honest: The United States is already partly socialist. We’re a pension plan with an army, as Andy Biggs noted, and every few years some other collectivist program that ratchets up the socialism is increased or enhanced, like Obamacare.