Obama's view of the future of America - Socialism which is the next step to Communism!!
Under socialism a ruling class of intellectuals, bureaucrats and social planners decide what people want or what is good for society and then use the coercive power of the State to regulate, tax, and redistribute the wealth of those who work for a living. In other words, socialism is a form of legalized theft.
The morality of socialism can be summed-up in two words: envy and self-sacrifice. Envy is the desire to not only possess another's wealth but also the desire to see another's wealth lowered to the level of one's own. Socialism's teaching on self-sacrifice was nicely summarized by two of its greatest defenders, Hermann Goering and Bennito Mussolini. The highest principle of Nazism (National Socialism), said Goering, is: "Common good comes before private good." Fascism, said
Mussolini, is "a life in which the individual, through the sacrifice of his own private interests??realizes that completely spiritual existence in which his value as a man lies."
Socialism is the social system which institutionalizes envy and self-sacrifice: It is the social system which uses compulsion and the organized violence of the State to expropriate wealth from the producer class for its redistribution to the parasitical class.
Despite the intellectuals' psychotic hatred of capitalism, it is the only moral and just social system.
Capitalism is the only moral system because it requires human beings to deal with one another as traders--that is, as free moral agents trading and selling goods and services on the basis of mutual consent.
Capitalism is the only just system because the sole criterion that determines the value of thing exchanged is the free, voluntary, universal judgement of the consumer. Coercion and fraud are anathema to the free-market system.
It is both moral and just because the degree to which man rises or falls in society is determined by the degree to which he uses his mind. Capitalism is the only social system that rewards merit, ability and achievement, regardless of one's birth or station in life.
Yes, there are winners and losers in capitalism. The winners are those who are honest, industrious, thoughtful, prudent, frugal, responsible, disciplined, and efficient. The losers are those who are shiftless, lazy, imprudent, extravagant, negligent, impractical, and inefficient. [What about the role of luckbeing in the right place at the right time or the wrong place at the wrong time? R. R. Pope}
Capitalism is the only social system that rewards virtue and punishes vice. This applies to both the business executive and the carpenter, the lawyer and the factory worker.
- 1
- 2
McCain and the Zigzag Express
Email To A Friend
Please fill in the following information and we'll email this link.
My own experience with McCain on these regulatory issues dates back to 1995 when he emerged from the dishonor of the "Keating Five" savings-and-loan scandal with a new fervor for regulating money in politics but no apparent interest in regulating the abuses of a financial-services industry that had brought him such shame.
I remember attending that year's GOP Florida straw poll, where the scrambling for the 1996 presidential campaign was well underway. When I walked in the door, McCain was handing out Phil Gramm for President literature. I asked, Why aren't you for Bob Dole? Fellow war hero, treasured Senate colleague. McCain said that Gramm was an old friend and he liked his views on the economy. But he's prickly, unappealing and obnoxious, I said, reflecting the conventional wisdom in Washington. You can't possibly think he's the best person in the whole country to be president! (One of the great things about McCain was that until this year you could actually say stuff like that to him.) McCain laughed but loyally stuck with Gramm, who spent millions going nowhere in the primaries. Four years later, Gramm, in character, returned McCain's loyalty by endorsing George W. Bush.
More important, Gramm slipped language into 1999 legislation that essentially deregulated all the fancy new Wall Street products that got us into this mess. His wife, Wendy Gramm, used her position as chair of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission to legitimize the questionable trading practices that led to the Enron scandal. Instead of recognizing that Gramm's radical free-market views were out of step with the realities of the post-Enron world, McCain hired him as his top economic adviser in the 2008 campaign. Had Gramm not said that the United States is "a nation of whiners" in a "mental recession" but facing no serious economic difficulty, he would have likely been McCain's secretary of the Treasury. The gaffes meant Gramm had to resign his formal position with the campaign, but he has continued to informally advise McCain on the economy (they appeared together at the Aspen Institute this summer) and would likely be rehabilitated in a McCain presidency.
Or maybe not. With McCain, the United States would get the one thing investors most loath: uncertainty. On Tuesday, President McCain would say one thing, on Wednesday another and on Thursday and Friday he'd be back to what he said on Monday. At best, Uncle Ziggy would drive us all over the road; at worst, we'd be back in the ditch.
© 2008
- 1
- 2
My Take
Each Newsweek reader is different—and now your Newsweek can be, too. Use this page to create a experience that's personalized for you and your interests. My Take: it makes Newsweek whatever you want it to be.
Discuss