How to Change a Society from a Largely Free Democratic Republic to a Fascist Socialist Totalitarian State

1.  Divide individuals by gender, by ethnicity, by wealth and income, by education, by age, and by sexuality; 

2.  Pit one group against another using the force of government to provide unearned rewards to some at the expense of others by putting limits on the rights of individuals to earn a living, limiting their freedom of association, and their freedom to cooperate with one another; 

3.  Thereby, creating distrust and hatred as the factions fight to control the government that insists on hurting many, making it a threat to all, thereby making it a matter of life and death for each group to control the government;

4.  Watch a country that once honored merit in the market place, but became an unlimited democracy, succumb to greed for the unearned with the development of ever more special interest groups dependent upon government largess;

5.  The government-run and funded education system becomes a tool promoting more and more government powers, seeks to suppress all private education alternatives, seeks to suppress individual rights especially freedom of speech and the freedom of the press or media, promotes the collective rights of some groups at the expense of the rights of the individuals in other groups, and promotes versions of the country's prior history that diverge ever more from the truth such that more and more power and money flow to the government and the education system;

6. In which a majority coalition of those who have less wealth and want government forced transfers of wealth to themselves and those who most lust for power turn the country into a socialist, fascist country (very poor, primitive countries usually turn communist instead);

7. Which in turn comes to be ruled by the most brutal elements of the power lusters with a total loss of individual rights.

I read William L. Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich the summer after the 9th grade and came to understand most of this.  I think I understood some of these lessons better than Shirer did.  There have been many further examples of this process since WWII.

Here is a very interesting analysis video of what we are presently facing based on a young woman's experience during the disintegration of Yugoslavia.

Did You Know That a 4K Temperature Rise Would Melt All the Ice in Antarctica and Justify the End of Capitalism?

The state government of Arizona pays the advocate of these ideas to teach our children this pathetic propaganda.

The New York Times published an Opinion article by Benjamin Y. Fong, a faculty fellow at Barrett, the Honors College at Arizona State University, entitled The Climate Crisis? It's Capitalism, Stupid.  He calls for the end of Capitalism because Capitalism will inevitably bring about a mass extinction of life on Earth.  He says the mass extinction of life will be caused by a continuation of our current political systems.  By 2100, even with the USA in the Paris Accord, we were well on the way to a 7.2⁰F temperature increase by 2100 according to Fong.  He claims that a 7.2⁰F increase in the temperature of the Earth has previously melted all of the ice at either pole and may do so again.  Consequently, socialism, even communism, has no need to justify itself, because they cannot be as bad as the death warrant stupid Capitalism guarantees us.

Let us examine stupid.  A 7.2⁰F temperature increase is a 4⁰C temperature increase.  Ice melts at 0⁰C.  The highest temperature ever recorded at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station was -12.3⁰C.  The warmest month at the South Pole is January and the average highest daily temperature in that month is -26.0⁰C.  It will be a most interesting trick when a 4⁰C temperature increase melts all of the ice in Antarctica.  This would increase the warmest temperature ever recorded there to only -8.3⁰C and the warmest monthly average temperature to -22⁰C.  Yes, an average temperature increase of 4⁰C would probably be the result of a greater temperature increase at the poles than in the equatorial region, but there is plenty of margin at the South Pole to allow for that.

Before you kill Capitalism because you claim it will bring on a mass extinction of life, please show me that a continuation of our current political institutions will actually cause:

• an average temperature increase of 4⁰C
• a temperature increase at the South Pole of at least 12.3⁰C, or more realistically, an increase of 26⁰C
• that the melting of all the ice at the poles will bring on a mass extinction of life
• that an average temperature increase of 4⁰C, which must be much less in the equatorial regions in order to be 12.3⁰C or more at the South Pole and also more at the North Pole, will bring on the extinction of all life
• that my chance of surviving Communist or other authoritarian socialist societies, with their history of killing over 160 million people, is greater than my chance of surviving a mass extinction
• that a life under Communism is a life worth living

The burden of reasonable proof that Capitalism will inevitably doom us all does not go away simply because someone asserts that Capitalism will have dire consequences for the survival of living creatures on Earth.  So far, most living creatures are not doing badly under Capitalism, while specifically human beings are doing better than they ever have before because of Capitalism.  Capitalism has a history of improving the human condition, while Communism has a history of killing tens of millions of human beings and depriving those who manage to survive of their individual rights and making their survival much more marginal.

It is amazing what people with a political or religious agenda will claim for a 1.4% (4K/288K) increase in the average Earth temperature.  Or, consider the mass extinction that occurs in Denver every September when the temperature rises an average of 30⁰F (16.7⁰C) from the daily average low temperature to the daily average high temperature.  The stupid hat does not go on the Capitalist.  It belongs as anyone committed to reason knows on the head of those who embrace Communism and on those who embrace Catastrophic Man-Made Global Warming.  These people seem to never learn the errors of their thinking, which must be the definition of stupid.  Intelligent people have some ability to identify their mistakes and to learn from them.  Intelligence does not guarantee that onw will not make mistakes in a complex world and universe, but it does require a constant concern that one's beliefs are consistent with reality.

It is apparent that intelligence is not a requirement for a faculty position in the Honors College at Arizona State University.  Unfortunately, it is no more required in many other universities either.  Conformity of belief to the Progressive Elitist beliefs in socialism and the essentially evil nature of man is much more important at most universities than is intelligence.

Justin Trudeau, while a controversial figure, loved socialism with all his heart.

Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, as part of his official statement on the overdue death of Cuban Communist and Military Dictator Fidel Castro, said:

"it is with deep sorrow that I learned today of the death of Cuba’s longest serving President.”

“While a controversial figure, both Mr. Castro’s supporters and detractors recognized his tremendous dedication and love for the Cuban people who had a deep and lasting affection for ‘el Comandante."

Except of course those Cubans who fled Cuba, died in his prisons or in rebellion, or were afraid to complain about the total lack of freedom and the sad deprivation of all material needs that Castro blessed his beloved people with.

The Canadian people should be terrified that their Prime Minister could affirm the dark and life-threatening actions of the Monster of Cuba.  Under Stephen Harper, Prime Minister from 2006 to 2015, Canada climbed in the freedom rankings of nations.  As too often happens, the emptiness of the promises of the Socialists are soon forgotten and the people yearn for something for nothing once again.  They turned to the socialist Justin Trudeau in Canada as a pleasant mask to hide this dark and evil yearning.  Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau just flashed a sight of how destructive and corrosive his core belief in socialism is.

Obama's Change: Growing Government into Bankruptcy

When Obama promised CHANGE he intended to:

• Rid Americans of their individual rights, while laughing at the Constitution as just quaint
• Rid Americans of their health care choices and responsibilities
• Rid private employers of employees
• Make bankrupt Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac agencies of the federal government
• Rid private lenders of all future student loan business
• Rid hard working and productive Americans of much more of their earnings
• Rid the owners of GM and Chrysler of their investments
• Force banks and financial companies to take federal loans whether they need them or not
• End any concept of federal government fiscal responsibility
• Saddle the states with huge increases in already unpayable Medicaid bills
• Enlarge all governments and load them up with even more union employees with high salaries and sky-high benefits
• Bring Social Security to spending more in 2010 than its tax revenue
• Drag innovation in medicine to a painful crawl
• Induce doctors to retire early
• Increase medical costs with new taxes
• Increase taxes on investors so they will have less to invest in America's future
• Increase the size of the IRS
• Saddle employers with more tax and health insurance collection and paperwork duties
• Increased fuel costs due to drilling restrictions and increased ethanol use requirements
• Increased fuel costs due to declaring CO2 a pollutant
• Load tons of federal debt upon our children and grandchildren
• Print and spend money so recklessly that some are advocating a VAT lead weight on business

And these are just some of the changes which he has brought about with about 2.7 years left in office.  He is a very accomplished man in bringing about so many changes in such a short time.  He is a whirlwind of change and these changes are as useful as the change brought on to a small town when a tornado passes through it.  As I warned over and over during the presidential campaign, change is more often destructive than it is good, unless that change is planned and carried through by rational, knowledgeable, and wise people.  When a society is working as well as the American society did, change is best undertaken with much deliberation and consensus.  Change by madmen who scoff at the Constitution and do not read the 1,000 to 2,700 page legislative bills they vote for, will never be good.  Indeed, the tornado-like mass destruction is extremely evident.

Douglas Elmendorf, head of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), yesterday said:

U.S. fiscal policy is unsustainable, and unsustainable to an extent that it can't be solved through minor changes.  It's a matter of arithmetic.

Numbers from the Treasury Department on the fiscal year 2010 federal budget deficit are staggering (from an e-mail from Grassfire Nation):

• A record $220.9 billion deficit in February alone
• For every dollar in taxes and other revenues the federal government took in, the government SPENT $3.05.
• Five-month deficit total: $651.6 billion, more than 10 percent higher than last year's record.
• The five-month total is larger than any YEAR in American history prior to 2009.
• The FY2010 budget deficit is now projected to be $1.56 trillion AFTER stealing from the Social Security Trust fund.
• The CBO projects that interest payments on the debt will total $916 BILLION annually by the end of the decade.

If the U.S. is paying out $916 billion in interest on the debt each year by 2020, who will be crazy enough to loan the federal government any money?  When Douglas Elmendorf says the U.S. fiscal policy is unsustainable, that is a nice way of saying the U.S. government will be bankrupt.  Do you suppose the Chinese government will put the U.S. government into a conservatorship, as the U.S. government recently did to Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac?  The federal government put them under a new agency in Washington, D.C. I suspect the Chinese government agency the American federal government will be put under will be in Peking.  Since Obama likes communism and Marxism so much, do you suppose this was his planned end point for the transformation of America and its People?  Clearly they would not accept communism given the choice outright, but as the means to be rescued from bankruptcy, Obama figures we will have to accept communist rule.  Since he thinks there is no such thing as American Exceptionalism, why not make us all peasants under the rule of the Chinese Communist Party?

Edward Hudgins: Uncharitable Attack on Charity

Edward Hudgins of the Atlas Society wrote an interesting article on a group called the National Committee for Responsible Philanthropy (NCRP) which is the kind of organization Ellsworth Toohey would have encouraged. While in general Ayn Rand's novels are dramatizations of the conflicts between an individualistic, rational, life-centered morality and philosophy and collectivist, irrational, and anti-life moralities, the real world really does have evil-doers who are perfectly capable of replicating a stark dramatization of evil and irrationality from an Ayn Rand novel.

This charitable watchdog group is headed up by a former ACORN organizer. This group issued a report saying

Philanthropy at its Best must serve the public good by contributing to strong, participatory democracy that engages all communities.

It adds that a well-managed charity must:

Provide at least 50 percent of its grant dollars to benefit low-income communities, communities of color and other marginal groups…
Provide at least 25 percent of its dollars for advocacy, organizing and civic engagement to promote equality, opportunity and justice in our society.

Ed Hudgins points out that this is nonsense, which it most certainly is. Charity at its best serves the purposes of the voluntary contributor and does so in a manner which does not use force to impede others in living their lives. Period. There is nothing wrong with giving to a charity that supports the Classical Music station of WBJC in Baltimore even though few people living in the often rich poverty of today in America choose to listen to it. In fact, doing so may help to preserve a rich heritage in intelligent music and be a very decent thing to do. Or, one might choose to give money to The Atlas Society, which directs its programs and education efforts at everyone about equally. There is no reason why they should target their message to groups defined by race or income. And, of course, as Ed points out, a charity dedicated to finding a cure for epilepsy should probably give as much of its money as possible to medical researchers without regard to the 50% and 25% rules produced by NCRP.

Ed also quotes Xavier Becerra (CA Democrat) as saying

“Taxpayers have rewarded [foundations] for being there for America.” But, he added: “At the same time, those of us at Congress have an obligation as the representatives of the people to make sure that their money—taxpayer money—is being well invested.”

Ah....so Congress has the right to redirect the money that individuals give to charities to see to it that Congress believes the money is being well-used. In fact, he twists the individual into being a taxpayer, uses that to say the money given to charity is taxpayer money, and then claims the usual power to spend taxpayer money that he would have for government revenue from taxes. One would think anyone would see through this extremely faulty argument, but surprisingly many do not.

Ed also noted that there was a move afoot in the Obama despotism to tax the charity gifts of the so-called wealthy, before many howls forced them to back down. Clearly they wanted to remove capable and wealthy people from the boards of charitable organizations and keep them from having a role in directing the purpose of those organizations. This would also make charities more dependent upon government grants, which would let the government re-direct their purposes.

It is clear that the so-called Progressives want total government control over charity in America and want it used for their agenda only. Of course, if you recognize that the Progressives have an agenda of mixed fascist and communist goals, control of all charity is readily recognized as being essential for the purposes of their total control of the American people. Individual choices even in charitable giving will not be allowed. This is the Totalitarian Dream, that Obama oulined in his acceptance speech before the Democrat Convention in Denver, CO.

Russian Chaos

Russia continues to fall into hard times as oil prices have plummeted. Even more serious for its future is the fact that its government is now a fascist kleptocracy with deep roots in communism. Its stock market has crashed worse than almost any other nation's stock market. The business climate is very harsh, with the government finding reasons to take over almost any business which has become big under private management. It has become clear that not only is Russia a risky place to invest money, but that success guarantees that one will become a target of a very corrupt government. Success means that one's enterprise will become a carcass in very short order.

Russia is a sort of Illinois-style government given time to become fully evolved! Obama is spreading this Illinois disease to the federal government, by furthering fascism, communism, and Rezko-style political favoritism. If Americans do not rebel against this trend, we will soon have our own Putin.

Excessive Federal Land Ownership

The map above shows the fraction of each state owned by the federal government. It is clear that federal land ownership, especially in the West, is excessive. The federal government owns 84.5% of Nevada. For all intents and purposes, Nevada is really a little state. In fact, so much of the state is owned by the federal government, that people in Reno have difficulty finding land on which to build a home. As a result, home prices are unreasonably high there. Meanwhile, the federal government is under-utilizing the land.

Since the federal government has just taken on more than a trillion dollars of additional debt with the failing bailout, this would be a great opportunity for it to sell most of its land holdings to reduce its debt and as a strong stimulant for the economy. Putting most of the federal lands into private hands would ensure their more productive use. Property owners would also have much greater reason to improve and safeguard their property than the federal government does. A great deal of oil and natural gas field development could then take place. Private individuals would find ways to put land to use better for ranching, farming, housing, retail, and lumbering as it best makes sense. Private investment has always been superior to communist ownership of property in common.

The states listed in the order of the most federal ownership are:

Nevada 84.5%
Alaska 69.1
Utah 57.4
Oregon 53.1
Idaho 50.2
Arizona 48.1
California 45.3
Wyoming 42.3
New Mexico 41.8
Colorado 36.6
Washington 30.3
Montana 29.9
Hawaii 19.4
New Hampshire 13.4
North Carolina 11.8
Michigan 10.0
Virginia 9.9
Florida 8.2
Vermont 7.5
West Virginia 7.4
Mississippi 7.3
Arkansas 7.2
South Dakota 6.2
Wisconsin 5.6
Minnesota 5.6
Kentucky 5.4
Louisiana 5.1

Five states are mostly under communist ownership. Sixteen states are 10% or more owned under the communist system of common land ownership, in which no one really owns anything. Another 11 states are deprived of more than 5% of their land, making a total of 27 states in which the federal government owns 5.1% or more of the land.

The states with the lowest federal land ownership are:

Rhode Island 0.4%
Connecticut 0.4
New York 0.5
Iowa 0.5

Thanks to Paul Cohen for sending this map to me.

Russian Expansionist Efforts

For centuries, Russia has sought to control most of Asia and Eastern Europe. Russia has also sought control of the Black Sea and access to the Indian Ocean. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 resulted in many parts of the USSR becoming independent countries. These newly independent states are Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Russia has been trying to regain control of many of these states.

One of the mechanisms for claiming a cause for taking many of them over again was one used by Adolf Hitler prior to and at the start of World War II. Germans had long been spread all over Eastern Europe. Many professionals and many successful businessmen in the cities and major towns of Eastern Europe were of the German nationality. Hitler would claim that the government of one country or another in Eastern Europe was abusing these Germans and then use that as an excuse to threaten to invade the country if he was not given what he wanted. He used this to put pressure on Czechoslovakia to give up the Sudetenland, a large portion of the western part of Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia had to give it up when its allies, Great Britain and France, made a deal with Hitler in an infamous conference in Munich. Hitler used the fact that many Germans were in the city of Danzig in Poland to put pressure on Poland. When Poland would not give up Danzig, Hitler, working with Stalin, invaded Poland and WWII started as France and Britain finally declared war on Germany.

When the USSR controlled the former Soviet states which are now independent, it moved many of their people to remote areas such as Siberia and installed many Russians in high positions in desirable areas in those formerly independent countries. Now, there are Russians still in many of the former Soviet states, though they were not native to those areas. One of the Russian tactics to put pressure on these countries now is to claim abuse of the Russians in those countries. This has occurred in each of the Baltic States and to Ukraine, for instance. Russia and Belarus are now in a loose cooperative association, which Putin heads.

The independent state of Georgia, has become an ally of the United States and has contributed troops to the fighting in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The country has a population of 4.6 million and is separated from Russia by the Caucasus Mountains. There are many small ethnic groups in the Caucasian Mountains and some are dissatisfied with the government of Georgia and some are dissatisfied with the Russians. The Russians have given those within the border of Georgia who are dissatisfied Russian passports. There are two regions with many dissatisfied and rebelling people, one with a population of about 50,000 and another with a population of about 200,000. South Ossetia is the smaller region and the Russians have been supporting their efforts to breakaway from Georgia. Here is an article on the issues there and here is one describing the Russian invasion of Georgia.

The Russians have sent in 150 tanks in this invasion of an ally of the United States which has been seeking entry into NATO. The Russians are very opposed to Georgia being an ally of the United States and a member of NATO. As always, the socialist leadership of Russia is eager to learn whatever they can from such fascist socialists as Hitler, who was also eager to learn from Lenin and Stalin. The communists and the fascists have always demonstrated that they have much in common, even when their rivalries for socialist power led them into conflict.

It is wise to remember that American socialists have a long tradition which evolved from an admiration of such socialist leaders as Marx, Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and many others. As many of these men were very paternalistic and ruthless leaders, so are many of our American socialists, though they put a smiley face on their socialist agenda most of the time. Nonetheless, they all believe that power grows out of the mouth of a gun and are eager to use those guns to force others to their will. This is the nature of socialism, whether the version holds power over property while leaving nominal ownership in private hands most of the time as in fascism or whether property is owned by the state as in communism. Note that Russia today is a mixture of communism and fascism. The United States is still primarily capitalist, but with a very large measure of fascism, and a smaller measure of communism. The widespread use of income redistribution and heavy hand of regulation is fascism at work, while the U.S. postal system, the U.S. park system, and the public school systems are all instances of communism.