Leftism

We’ve Become a Nation of Takers, Not Makers

America in Trouble Liberty Cryingby Stephen Moore –
If you want to understand better why so many states—from New York to Wisconsin to California—are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, consider this depressing statistic: Today in America there are nearly twice as many people working for the government (22.5 million) than in all of manufacturing (11.5 million). This is an almost exact reversal of the situation in 1960, when there were 15 million workers in manufacturing and 8.7 million collecting a paycheck from the government.

It gets worse. More Americans work for the government than work in construction, farming, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, mining and utilities combined. We have moved decisively from a nation of makers to a nation of takers. Nearly half of the $2.2 trillion cost of state and local governments is the $1 trillion-a-year tab for pay and benefits of state and local employees. Is it any wonder that so many states and cities cannot pay their bills?[Read more…]

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A Liberal by Any Other Name

by Christian D. Malesic –
Those on the left side of the political spectrum have always wrestled with labels, wearing them proudly until they become dirty words and then throwing them quickly to the curb. Nonetheless, in order to communicate with one another, our language needs a term that describes the political views of those who oppose the conservatives of the Right.

Historically speaking, the left were ‘progressives’ then ‘liberals’; now they want to be ‘progressives’ again. Around the start of the 20th century (circa 1900), the term progressive came into popularity and common use. It was used proudly by many on the left to describe their political ideology until sometime in the 1940s when it began to fade away. Essentially, the progressives themselves showed the American public what it was that a progressive believed through President Woodrow Wilson’s anti-Capitalism and pro-Socialism stances, onto which President Franklin D. Roosevelt placed an exclamation point with his New Deal. [Read more…]

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Vigorous Defense, Getting Serious About DOMA

Chuck Colson
Chuck Colson
by Chuck Colson –

As I have told you, the President and the attorney general will no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act in the courts. It’s outrageous, it’s disingenuous, but it’s not the end of the story. As a co-equal branch of government, Congress has a stake in seeing that the laws it enacted are enforced and defended in the courts. The question is “Are they serious about doing so?”

Federal law requires the attorney general to notify the House if he decides not to defend the constitutionality of a federal statute. Federal law also authorizes the Senate and the House of Representatives to intervene in litigation over the constitutionality of a federal statute. What’s more, the House can hire outside counsel to represent its interests in the litigation if that’s the best way to defend the law. [Read more…]

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The Totalitarian Minority

Totalitarian Leftby Lance Fairchok –

“On top are the Haves with power, money, food, security, and luxury. They suffocate in their surpluses while the Have-Nots starve. Numerically the Haves have always been the fewest. The Haves want to keep things as they are and are opposed to change.” Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

It is ironic that the people described as Haves in Saul Alinsky’s community organizing primer Rules for Radicals mirror public sector unions so closely. Alinsky had a cluttered view of the world, full of contradictions and conspiracies and moral convolutions to justify his tactics. His wretched little book will probably vex us for a dozen more generations, as it is easy to read and requires little effort to memorize the self-justifying rules. His confused disciples in Wisconsin envisioned themselves as the freedom fighters of old, using words like “justice” and “freedom” and “democracy” as they contradict each of those concepts to protect their right to steal from the taxpayer. [Read more…]

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Social Leveling: Socialism and Secularism

Acton Instituteby Hunter Baker –

Social leveling is something that we typically associate with the destruction of material differences between human beings. It is the socialist dream of a classless society in which distinctions, usually the result of economic variation, are made irrelevant. The state, empowered by the political action of the masses (or at least a group claiming to speak for the masses), works to gain control of the wealth and property of a society and then to redistribute it in such a way as to make people equal. It should be obvious that this type of action vastly increases the power of the state because it becomes the effective owner of all property.

Although socialism aims to wipe out material inequality, it may merely present a new opportunity for sin. James Madison noted that taking control of the property in a state will not make people equal for more than a very short time. They have different talents, abilities, and levels of energy. A new elite will assert itself, just as it has in every nation with a communist revolution.[Read more…]

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Leave Jesus Out of the Budget Battle

Gary Bauer
Gary Bauer
by Gary Bauer –

We have an obligation to help the poor. But nowhere does the Bible state that the power of government should be used to take one man’s money by force of law and give it to another man. Jesus’ admonition was a personal command to share, not a command for Caesar to “spread the wealth around.” …

Jim Wallis, a self-identified “Christian leader for social change,” has embarked on a crusade against Republican budget cuts he believes are “unbiblical.” But Wallis and others on the evangelical Left are on dangerous ground when they claim to know exactly which budget items God would approve and which he would cut.

Wallis has launched the “What Would Jesus Cut?” campaign to fight against Republican cuts in the 2011 and 2012 budgets—cuts to welfare programs, college grants, and international aid—and against Republicans’ proposed 2% increase in defense spending.

The campaign’s premise, as the group declared in a recent Politico ad, is that “cutting programs that help those who need them most is morally wrong.” [Read more…]

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The Put-Off, Postpone and Procrastinate Generation

Victor Davis Hanson
Victor Davis Hanson
by Victor Davis Hanson –

The Obama administration figures that it has read the national mood well. This therapeutic generation of Americans loves to talk and worry about problems and then assumes that either someone else will solve them or they will go away on their own. And why not, since we have had periodic “energy crises” since 1974, have run budget deficits in most years since World War II, and have been warned about a looming Social Security meltdown for the last decade — and yet remain wealthy and affluent.

But now gasoline costs more than $4 a gallon in many places in California, and averages more than $3.50 nationwide. In response, the Obama administration is reportedly considering tapping into the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve to increase supplies and drive down high prices brought on by a recovering world economy and unrest in the oil-rich Middle East.

Yet the reserve depot was not designed to alleviate periodic gas-price spikes, but to ensure our very survival during a global catastrophe that might result in a cutoff of most petroleum imports from overseas. [Read more…]

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Confiscate Americans’ Wealth to Pay Government Workers?

Michael Moore Communist Marxist by Steve McCann –
Michael Moore and his fellow-travelers in the American version of the Socialist/Marxist cabal have picked up the mantle of defending public unionism in their demonstrations in Madison, Wisconsin and other state capitals. They are vocally calling for more confiscation of the wealth of the rich to pay for the bloated incomes of government workers and openly stating that all wealth belongs to the state while their true motives are deliberately obfuscated.

The age old premise and threadbare exhortation of class warfare has long found fertile ground among the lower classes but now they are being mouthed in support of one of the most advantaged groups in America today: public sector workers and their unions.

Even the most jaded of true-believers on the Left knows that confiscating the wealth and taxing what they consider to be unjust income would be self-defeating. What could be done one time can never be repeated and there would be no one to create jobs or a higher standard of living for the overall citizenry, particularly those on the left side of the ruling class. A cursory study of the experiences in the Soviet Union, Mao’s Red China and Cuba among others reveals that government control of the means of production and wealth creation is a massive failure. [Read more…]

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In Defense of American Exceptionalism

God Bless America

by Herman Cain –
There is no denying it: America is the greatest country in the world. We are blessed with unparalleled freedoms and boundless prosperity that for generations have inspired an innovative and industrious people. America is exceptional.

American Exceptionalism is the standard that our laws reflect the understanding that we are afforded certain God-given rights that can never be taken away. We know that God, not government, bestows upon us these inalienable rights, and because of that, they must not be compromised by the whims of man. This makes us a unique nation, a nation that remains, as President Ronald Reagan once said, “a model and hope to the world.”

Unfortunately, some politicians have either forgotten or chosen to ignore the glory of our founding. [Read more…]

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