First written in 2010, after Obamacare was passed, but never published until now, look for an update now that the 2012 election has shown that the Get-evens have won out over the Hot-tubs. It will be interesting to watch if the Hot-Tubs continue their alliance with the Get-evens and proceed as cock-sure as they once did, since, if the Get-evens lose, there’s a rope waiting at the end of the journey instead of retirement.
Make no doubt about it, after the health care bill became law, and until it is struck down, (by whatever means) we are no longer a free nation. And what has replaced it is a form of socialism, no matter what they say. Everything I write or say until it is struck down will reflect that one cold reality.
The day after the election in 2008, my partners and I began a series of articles on TownHall under our site, “Least Men Standing” called “How Life Will Change Under Socialism.” They dealt with culture, education, business, even sports. But the fulcrum to socialism in any form is how it commands an economy. So at its heart is how we are allowed and induced to do business.
At the time we could only guess as to what kind of socialism would actually emerge, as many in Congress seemed to have an idealized version of Swedish “hot-tub” socialism, which involved an idyllic alliance between the state and big business, or what I call “get-even” socialism, which carries with it a harder edge and mentality.
Hot tub socialism envisions a life of black tie dinners, the opera, a grand social existence for the state and management class, people who essentially replace the old aristocracies of wealth and rank, secure and walled off from the drone-masses, who dutifully work making their own lives bearable, hoping some day that they or their children will be tapped out to join the state class as managers. Hot tub socialists are driven by greed and a lust for power, along with a sense of entitlement, but are marked for their genteel manners, reserve and fine tastes. They admire themselves in the mirror.
On the other hand, Get-even socialism, for a variety of reasons, is compelled to do more than just alternately pluck the public goose, then pump it back up, keeping it fat and pluckable. They have scores to settle. They are driven by things other than power or philosophy. They have a keen sense of (in)justice and getting even that is every bit as strong as my own, for I know, if she were to be indicted, I would postpone all other forms of recreation, hobo trains if necessary, to get to San Franscisco, just to watch Nancy Pelosi frog-marched across the street from the jail to the courthouse. For just 45 seconds!
Get even socialists have that same feeling, except they feel this for as many as a third of America’s adult population, most of whom are self-made men and women, C-students who went into the public sector and succeeded far beyond what any of those A-plus students ever could from teaching at Harvard.
(Hold that thought, for it explains almost everything.)
That fight continues in Washington, and our bets are still on the Get-Even crowd. Expect it to be settled soon.
If you haven’t guessed, both types of socialism are fascist in nature, for fascism is defined by the cozy relationship formed between the State and Big Business. It is not defined by the thuggishness required to get to that point. Most Euros would strongly argue in their defense that they are not fascist, on that point alone, that they use armed thugs. (Has anyone been auditing DHS ammo buys lately?) In the right circumstances, which will eventually come to Europe, they all will resort to thuggery. Euros simply hate being portrayed as sitting in the same boat as the Germans under Hitler, Italians under Mussolini and the Spanish under Franco. They see those guys as barbarians, while they are urbane, genteel and soft-spoken. (If you haven’t guessed, Euro politicians define themselves by style, not substance.) And being by and large homogenous peoples they could possibly carry out this façade for a generation or so, since the 1950s. For instance, a Swedish government simply wouldn’t bring down a heavy fist on its own people, who are all ethnic Swedes. The same for Danes. But two things have changed. 1)The importation of guest workers; mostly from the Middle East, since the 1960s, mainly because, (you guessed it) there were thousands of jobs no self-respecting Swede, Dutchman, Anglander, Frenchman, etc, would do any longer. Try to find a 21-year old suburban kid driving a cab in New York or picking beans in the San Joaquin Valley and you’ll get a sense of what I mean. Those Middle Easterners now comprise large minorities in all the west European nations, and breed like rabbits. In a word, Europe is no longer homogenous, its families with not enough money left over “after taxes” to both have fun and raise a family. They opted for having fun.
Europe as a “European” continent will disappear inside 50 years. 2) The creation of the EU super-government. Having surrendered their nationality over to a super-national body, as their individual economies plummet (as they always do under socialists), it will be that body, and not the Swedish, Dutch, or Austrian governments who will be the ones putting a hurting on their people as they rebel when crunch time comes, calling in troops to quell riots,etc. This is all coming. Lesson learned: without any moral compass (God-based morality) even the nicest, most genteel and soft-spoken of people will send almost anyone to the street, or the salt mines (or gas chambers) only so long as they don’t have to take personal responsibility for it. (Hold this thought as well.)
Now, with this in mind, let’s come back to the good old USA.
If you haven’t watched Schindler’s List in awhile, one of the most important scenes came in the very beginning, when the Jews of Krakow were first rounded up and moved into the ghetto. In it, several young Jewish men, in synagogue, were sitting and whispering as to how they could do what they were born to do, and that was to get the best of each other by cutting the best deal with the Germans. They never saw the game change or the end game. Substituting their lives and an impending gas chamber for the US Constitution and it’s impending destruction, you can see how easily big business, corporatists, can be drawn into the socialist/fascist web, simply by trying to do what it does best…and that is beat the other guy.
And yes, they (the Enemy) know this to be in their nature. In fact, they rely on it. As Nikita Kruschchev once said, “You will sell us the rope that we will use to hang you.”
Since the inauguration we have been advising small business as well as watching trends in the cities we work in. There is a shaking out taking place in both Big and Small Business, which appears to be moving according to the old fixed laws of free markets, but which are in fact being manipulated. The Germans were masters at it in the 1930s.
Remember, socialism needs big business but only the people need small businessmen, for they are of the same (middle) class. Socialists hate small business, as mentioned above, too many unregulated successful rich C-students. When Karl Marx sat down to write Das Kapital there was no real private sector middle class, only petty bourgeoisie; tinkers, tailors, bakers and candle stick makers, and those, mostly Jewish. America, who no one in Europe was really paying attention to in the time of Marx and his rising socialist theory, after the Civil War, moved from a farm society to an urban society that was built unlike anything European scholars ever imagined, on the backs of a small business class that totally redefined how money and wealth were created; a small business class that put the brakes on Big Business in ways that Marx assumed only could be accomplished through revolution. Top to bottom American small business disproved everything …everything…Marx believed and put forth as economic theory.
Now you know why they don’t like us. Now you know why small business is the target of this Get-even socialism, and why it will be returned to just what it was in 1848, a bunch of neighborhood butchers, bakers, tinkers, tailors, and candlestick makers who provide a very limited number of services for people with an equally limited amount of disposable income. It takes about thirty years, but having been able to watch the development of our own permanent underclass in America since the 1960s, we have a pretty good idea what it will look like…2 tv’s, food stamps, free bus or tram tickets, very limited but free medical care, maybe a car, a comfortable enough apartment, in a very deep hole with absolutely no ladder out…unless someone in power notices us or our children and taps us out. This will be the fate of as much as 40%-60% of our people.
The rest will consist of an alliance between Big Business, Big Government, in layer after layer of bureaucracy that will eventually swallow it, and a thin layer of licensed small businesses, who, as we speak, are already competing with one another for the right to be a survivor in this new paradise…but just like those young Jewish boys in Krakow, never knowing the game has changed and a new puppetmaster is now pulling the strings.
Hold freedom in one hand and survival in the other, and force a person to choose. Nine out of ten will choose survival. The other will only have the right to choose how he will go out. But raise that to three out of ten and you will have something.
This is what we have to do.