The modern Prussian police state was built by Bismarck and others in the 19th century on a Spartan model, giving the central government vastly greater control over the individual than had ever been considered possible before.<\/p>\n
From government control of the schools to health care, the whole idea was to create an obedient populace that would man the factories and produce large and obedient broods for the armies without every questioning the orders of the central authority.<\/p>\n
Bismarck\u2019s program centered squarely on insurance programs designed to increase support for the ever larger and more powerful government. The program included health insurance, Workman\u2019s Compensation, disability insurance, and old-age retirement pensions, all innovations at the time.<\/p>\n
Starting with the model of Prussian compulsion schooling, American \u201ceducators\u201d starting with John Dewey and Edward Thorndike eagerly imported this Prussian model to America.<\/p>\n
Trained to accept such state control (and now the new \u201cGreen\u201d religion) in the schools for most of the last century, then made dependent on government insurance programs (Social Security, Medicare) as surely as the pimp makes sure his young ladies are dependent on the needle and the fix only he can provide, slavery to the state soon appears inescapable, even ordained by God and nature.<\/p>\n
Why, it\u2019s a good thing! In exchange for the possibility of ever becoming truly exceptional, of growing rich based on our own efforts, it rewards us with … \u201csecurity.\u201d<\/p>\n
And so we come to love our chains.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is possible that all our politics will come to nothing when I am dead, but state socialism will push itself through (\u201cDer Staatssozialismus paukt sich durch,\u201d) Bismarck said in 1881.<\/p>\n
\u201cState socialism,\u201d he called it.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re told that for some reason we\u2019re not allowed to call the Obama-Reid-Pelosi agenda \u201csocialism,\u201d \u201ccommunism,\u201d \u201cMarxism,\u201d \u201cstate socialism\u201d \u201cfascism,\u201d or anything else that might sound unpleasant.<\/p>\n
Much as I hate to cite the tyrant Lincoln, if we call a dog\u2019s tail a leg, does it have five legs? Telling us we\u2019re not \u201callowed\u201d to use an accurate label for something doesn\u2019t change what it is.<\/p>\n
Instead of allowing General Motors and Chrysler to go through normal bankruptcies, through which new and more efficient private operators could have purchased their worthwhile assets while shedding their crippling union contracts, the two giant auto makers have now been effectively nationalized. GM particularly is now run by a coalition of Barack Obama\u2019s henchmen and the United Auto Workers. Meantime, an unelected federal \u201cpay czar\u201d decides on the compensation of executives, even at supposedly private banks that have paid back all their \u201cbailout\u201d loans. Does that sound like the normal function of the American free market, as understood in 1910, 1960, or even 1990?<\/p>\n
\u201cCash for clunkers\u201d destroyed used cars to create a larger market for government-made crap. You don\u2019t suppose the biggest number of cars your tax dollars destroyed were Japanese imports, do you?<\/p>\n
Thanks to thoroughly unconstitutional \u201cbailouts\u201d the federal government now de facto manages our major banks and\/or credit card companies, along with our airlines and airports.<\/p>\n
The health care bill was \u201csweetened\u201d with a federal takeover of college loans. Why? You don\u2019t imagine the federal government will ever try to manipulate the behavior of college graduates, offering to \u201cforgive their college loans\u201d if they agree to behave in ways favored by the fedgov, do you? Kind of like the kind of inescapable \u201ccredit\u201d once extended to miners by \u201cthe company store\u201d?<\/p>\n
\u201cFederalizing\u201d all these programs shifts money and employment from the private to the government-bureaucrat sector. Unionized government bureaucrats tend to belong to outfits like the SEIU, which actively back Democrat\/socialists, while dispatching purple-shirted thugs to beat up black freedom-fighters handing out \u201cDon\u2019t tread on me\u201d Gadsden flags outside rigged Democratic \u201ctown hall\u201d meetings. They vote Democratic and retire in luxury at age 59 or 62, while you go broke.<\/p>\n
The so called \u201chealth reform\u201d bill authorizes $10 billion to field 16,500 more IRS agents to collect and enforce mandatory \u201cpremiums,\u201d which we\u2019re assured are not a \u201ctax.\u201d Providing you\u2019re a \u201cnormal\u201d citizen with a job and house, of course. (Illegal aliens Get Out of Jail Free, as usual.)<\/p>\n
Yet this is mainly about \u201cproviding health care to the 35,000 people who now die annually for lack of health insurance\u201d? Please name 10 of those people, who die outside the locked doors of our hospital emergency rooms. While you\u2019re at it, the local Clark County health district is currently running radio ads stating 55,000 people per year die of \u201csecond hand smoke.\u201d Please name 10 Nevadans whose death certificates read \u201ccause of death: second-hand smoke.\u201d<\/p>\n
These are projections based on rigged \u201cscientific\u201d studies that were re-done till they got the results the federals wanted. Once \u201cscience\u201d has so whored itself, \u201cscientists\u201d should not be surprised when their entire undertaking is eventually thrown on history\u2019s dung heap by a fed-up populace.<\/p>\n
Last week the Review-Journal mentioned in passing, in an editorial about socialist congresscritter Dina Titus\u2019 move to facilitate the takeover of Nevada Occupational Safety and Health enforcement by the federal government, that the Constitution grants the federals no authority to regulate workplace safety within the states. One letter writer couldn\u2019t wait to write in that the newspaper was wrong: turns out the preamble to the federal OSHA law as adopted specifies that it\u2019s all constitutional, since the federal government is empowered to regulate interstate commerce, and \u201cworkplace health and safety can impact interstate commerce.\u201d<\/p>\n
It would be more justifiable to hold that an IRS man can climb the fence into my back yard and smash the watermelons I\u2019m growing there, since by growing my own watermelons I reduce the demand for supermarket watermelons grown in another state, and this \u201cimpacts interstate commerce.\u201d<\/p>\n
So we\u2019re right back to \u201cIf you call a dog\u2019s tail a leg, does it have five legs?\u201d If Washington can do anything it likes because everything somehow \u201cimpacts interstate commerce,\u201d why do we have a Constitution with that two-page list of specifically delegated powers? Why not just one sentence: \u201cCongress shall have power to do anything it figures might promote the general welfare and\/or impact interstate commerce\u201d?<\/p>\n
On the radio this week I heard Congresscritter Titus asked whether she\u2019s concerned about state lawsuits challenging the new federal mandate that everyone will have to buy \u201csuitable\u201d health insurance. \u201cOh, no,\u201d she said, \u201cThe Constitution has been interpreted all kinds of ways, so I\u2019m not concerned about that.\u201d<\/p>\n
This from a woman — a supposedly well-educated college professor — who swore a solemn oath to \u201cprotect and defend the Constitution\u201d just 14 months ago.<\/p>\n
In good conscience, if she believed that oath meant nothing, didn\u2019t she have some moral obligation to say, \u201cWell now, wait a minute. I can\u2019t very well swear to \u2018protect and defend\u2019 a document if I believe it can mean anything we want it to mean, can I? That might seem misleading\u201d?<\/p>\n
I know a few rich Americans. Their process of moving their assets offshore was already well underway before this all-too-predictable outcome was set in gear a year ago. They\u2019re not waiting for the big new carbon tax, the big amnesty for the socialist-voting illegal aliens, the big new national Value Added Tax, etc. Those with big bucks find they\u2019re welcome in Switzerland, Ecuador, any number of places.<\/p>\n
You\u2019re still waiting for the American economy to \u201ccome back\u201d? You may wait a long while. Once the investment capital is scared offshore, and the foreigners stop buying our bonds, who\u2019s going to pay for even the \u201centitlement\u201d programs already in place, let alone this Obama-Reid-Pelosi \u201cState-socialism on steroids\u201d? How much money will that leave to fund new businesses? And in such a climate of uncertainty and sneering hostility, who\u2019d be stupid enough to borrow it?<\/p>\n
The biggest buyer of U.S. government bonds will soon be the Federal Reserve. Where does the Federal Reserve get its dollars? It orders the Bureau of Engraving to print them — or just taps them into existence on its computer screens. As ever more dollars bid for a fixed pile of goods, the value of each dollar — including the paltry few you still have saved in the bank — shrinks.<\/p>\n
This is like saying, \u201cI won\u2019t starve; I can always eat my own foot.\u201d By the time you\u2019ve eaten both legs up to the knees, it may start to dawn on you that this is a recourse with a limited future.<\/p>\n
Next week: But we\u2019ll be saved by the Tea Party folks! By the big Republican victory in November!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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