Category Archives: Socialism

Bill Lockwood: Student Loan Debt: How Socialism Distorts Sound Reasoning 4 (1)

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by Bill Lockwood

One of many reasons to oppose the philosophy of socialism, which has its tentacles wrapped around America, is that it distorts one’s thinking. Being engulfed in it for longer periods, as Americans have been for many decades, makes it doubly-hard to rehabilitate the reasoning process. Consider Student Loan Debt, which Democratic leaders have long pressed for, and Joe Biden is now contemplating.

Outstanding Student Loan Debt in America for 2020 is approximately $1.75 Trillion, which breaks down to about $40k average amount per borrower. Statistics also show that 43% of all college attendees have taken on debt, this includes money loaned through federal and private lenders. Biden’s socialistic plan is to “cancel” this student debt, which really means, shifting the burden of loan debt onto the backs of the American taxpayers.

Reasoning Processes Short-Circuited

To see how any type of socialism, including “forgiveness” of student loan debts, actually short-circuits the reasoning process, think on this. I recently reposted a picture on Facebook that mimicked the fact that the modern generation is “drowning in student loan debt” while at the same time spending their money on “Starbucks, Useless Majors, Cable TV, New I-Phones, Tattoos, Gucci and Cocaine.

That highlighted what are the undeniable facts of a large percentage of collegiate students today while opposing the Biden plan. One person replied that that post is “kind of making assumptions.” In answer, I simply went to the heart of the matter. “It is wrong and sinful to steal from some and give to others.”

Further, many of the degrees now obtained by Generation Z are worthless from the practical standpoint of making an honest living. Assuming the Democrat plan comes to fruition, hardworking blue-collar laborers such as welders, truck drivers, and machinists, who wisely skipped the “collegiate route” for their occupations, are now being forced to pay off those huge loans for the millennials who frittered away their loans with “Anthropology” or “Ethnic and Civilization Studies” degrees.

Now comes the interesting part. My Facebook respondent retorted: “Your posts are not speaking with God’s love! … Not everyone was born with a silver spoon in their mouths. If they can’t afford to pay that loan back, tell me what should they do?”

The answer is simple, I responded. “No doubt people have burdens that they cannot carry alone. However, your solution should be, ‘I (my name), will personally assist you.’ How can you say, ‘No, I am going to empower my government to forcibly take it from my neighbor, Bill Lockwood, and that’s how it will be paid back.” I could not help but add, “And for you to lecture any of us who object to Government theft and redistribution by saying, ‘you need more love of God’—comes with poor grace.”

Just to be clear here. If any of the socialist-liberals today wish to select a college student and voluntarily help them pay off student loans. Go for it. That is God’s love. But to support an unconstitutional move that utilizes dictatorial government power to shift the burden of financial responsibility onto the backs of other people without their consent—that is not Christian.

This is the stuff of which dictators are made. Socialistic force has nothing to do with the love of God.

Apparently, this particular respondent got the point regarding force. “You’re right. No one should be forced to do for others.” But blindness remains, for big government force is still the answer to these types of liberals.

It would be good to remember here the maxim reputed to have come from George Washington: Government is not reason, it is not eloquence,–it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant, and a fearful master.”

Bill Lockwood: Where Did America Go Wrong? 4 (2)

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by Bill Lockwood

Our borders are completely out of control; our welfare state has become overburdened with every form of “benevolence” that any politician might image; and the bureaucratic Biden Administration now looks more like a communistic regime ordering draconian COVID shots for private businesses than a guardianship of liberty.

Make no mistake. This is the hour of trial for America. It is the Constitution – the fundamental law of our nation — that is being trashed.

The official National Archives Website has added a trigger “WARNING” to all readers of THE US CONSTITUTION, THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, AND THE BILL OF RIGHTS. The cautionary label warns about the “harmful language” in these documents.

The “trigger warning” by our own government reads: As part of the National Archives’ “institutional commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility,” we are now flagging “potentially harmful content,” which we define as reflecting “racist, sexist, ableist, misogynistic/misogynoir, and xenophobic opinions and attitudes” as well as being “discriminatory towards or exclude diverse views on sexuality, gender, religion, and more.”

I don’t even know what some of these terms mean, but our own government portrays our founding as hateful and the laws that flow from it as harmful. Little wonder therefore, that schools and universities portray our Founding Fathers as purveyors of hate who installed “protectionist policies” to guard their wealth. The National Archives’ Task Force insisted earlier this summer that the historic portrayal of the founding fathers has previously been “too positive.”

With sad reflection we ask,

Where Did America Go Wrong?

One of the chief taproots of our derangement is the so-called “Welfare System.” This is where the strong arm of government steals from one segment of society to redistribute to others—whether in monies or social benefits.

James Madison, the father of the Constitution, in 1794, when Congress appropriated $15,000 for relief for French refugees who fled from insurrection in Dan Domingo (now Haiti) to Baltimore and Philadelphia. Madison stated, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”

Pretty telling isn’t it? Especially as we now have tens of thousands of Haitians massing at our border in Del Rio, TX specifically for the welfare benefits of housing, medical care, food, education and whatever other form the “government” checks may take. And not only Haitians—but millions upon millions of non-citizens that the “powers that be” have continued to shower with tax-payer funded benefits.

Other presidents who followed Madison had similar respect for the Constitution. In 1854 President Franklin Pierce vetoed a bill to help the mentally ill, observing, “I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for public charity.” He added that to approve the proposed measure “would be contrary to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution and subversive to the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded.”

Numerous other illustrations could be given demonstrating the unconstitutionality of utilizing taxpayer money to give to those deemed to be in need.

We now live in a socialistic state that completely disdains the Constitution. It is true that not all of the details of socialism have been ironed out as of yet; for example, we do not have Universal Health Care run by the government—but we are close. But the most dangerous element that the Welfare State introduces is that it corrodes our ability to reason.

The problem is in our thinking. Or, lack thereof. The 19th century French economist Frederic Bastiat exposed the mistake in our thought processes, which the founding generation was able to see.

Socialism … confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all….It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.

The corruptions in our system seem overwhelming, whether in business, government, military, education, or whatever. Much of the poison that causes this can be primarily traced to the unconstitutional welfare system. It blinds us to the simple reality that “people assisting people” is not the same as “government” forcibly taking from some to redistribute to others.

 

Bill Lockwood: How Did We Become a Socialist Nation? 4 (1)

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by Bill Lockwood

It is shocking, but true. America is already a socialist nation—for the most part. All the earmarks of socialism are incorporated into our society. From the globalist socialist United Nations controlling our shameful foreign policy machine to Big Tech monitoring and censoring free speech to confiscatory taxation—America has fallen very low on the freedom scale.

Classic socialism started out being defined as “government ownership of the means of production.” This is why the government of the Soviet Union confiscated all the businesses, factories, farms and other means of production, murdering millions in the process.

However, the above definition is not an accurate definition of socialism today. Just as classic Marxism, built on atheism, has now morphed into Neo-Marxism and the Critical Race Theory, so the definition of socialism has evolved.

Frederich Hayek wrote that the definition of socialism has come to mean income redistribution in pursuit of “equality”, not through government ownership of the means of production, but through the institutions of the welfare state and the “progressive” income tax. As America is discovering, this is all so much poison for a society.

The shift began to occur particularly during the Woodrow Wilson administration, then was put on steroids during the Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) and Lyndon Johnson (LBJ) period. “It was under FDR that the Bill of Rights suffered a severe, and potentially lethal, mutilation that has progressively (double entendre intended) weakened it ever since. FDR attempted to redefine rights, asserting that every American has a ‘right to a useful and remunerative job,’ ‘a decent home,’ ‘adequate medical care,’ ‘a good education,’ and so on.”

A visitor to the FDR memorial in Washington, D.C. will be treated to this Orwellian redefinition of rights: “Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, Freedom from Fear.” Note the shift.

According to the Founders, rights were natural rights bestowed by God and merely protected by the government. Government did not grant any right. This is emphatically clear in our own founding documents. The Ninth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States formally states that the people retain all rights absent specific enumeration in the Bill of Rights.  In other words, God gave us rights and we only ceded a certain enumerated few to the government in order for more protection of them. But make no mistake, said the founders, if we have overlooked some of these rights in our enumeration, the people still owned those also!

Franklin Roosevelt deceptively changed all of that. Freedom of speech, for example, is far different than freedom from want. The only way one can be free from “want” (housing, food, medical treatment) is to forcibly redistribute what one segment of society produces and give it to another. But for government to forcibly redistribute actually means that it forcibly removes my personal production to meet the personal needs of others. This is not freedom. This is slavery, to one degree or another.

Now, decades later, we cannot seem to escape the clutch of this wicked socialism. The only debate seems to be how much or how little money we can unconstitutionally steal from one portion of society to give to another. Or, how much can we confiscate from our own citizens to give to foreign countries. This is to bribe them with liberal Marxist ideals such as “women’s studies” in Muslim countries or to put pressure on foreign nations to recognize homosexuality as a legitimate lifestyle. We are in the clutches of socialism.

Bill Lockwood: Socialism Has Corrupted the Pulpit 4 (1)

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by Bill Lockwood

The people of Isaiah’s day said to the seers, “’See no more visions! And to the prophets, ‘Give us no more visions of what is right. Tell us pleasant (smooth) things, prophesy illusions. Get you out of the way, turn aside out of the path, cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us.” – Isaiah 30:10-11

The Jews of Isaiah’s day (approximately 730 years Before Christ) were God’s chosen people, but they had grown rebellious. The prophets checked them in these pursuits, but they did not wish to hear of God’s commandments and especially His hatred of sin. Remind us not any more of these things!

Instead, they wanted flatteries—things agreeable to their own wishes. Their desire was to be entertained, not instructed and certainly not corrected. Illusions and deceits is what they wished for. As Matthew Henry comments, “But as they despised the word of God, their sins undermined their safety. Their state would be dashed in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”

Sounds like today’s pulpits, doesn’t it? No spirited edge, only milquetoast and honeyed words. What occurred? Socialism.

Socialism

Max Eastman (1883-1969) was a prominent editor, political activist and “prominent radical” who, like many in Woodrow Wilson’s “progressive” America, became infatuated with Marxism. Eastman traveled to the Soviet Union to learn firsthand how to be a good socialist and became friends with Leon Trotsky. Years later, when Eastman became convinced that socialism is void of validity, he reflected upon his time as a Marxist. “I sadly regret the precious twenty years I spent muddling and messing around with this idea, which with enough mental clarity and moral force I might have seen through when I went to Russia in 1922” (Reflections on the Failure of Socialism).

Eastman commented on socialism this way.

Marxists profess to reject religion in favor of science, but they cherish a belief that the external universe is evolving with reliable, if not divine, necessity in exactly the direction in which they want it to go. They do not conceive themselves as struggling to build the communist society in a world which is of its own nature indifferent to them. They conceive themselves as traveling toward that society in a world which is like a moving-stairway, but walking in the wrong direction. This is not a scientific, but in the most technical sense, a religious conception of the world. (Max Eastman, Marxism—Is It Science?)

Eastman knew whereof he spoke.

Socialism is not normally classified as a religion, but when its doctrines are examined, it more closely resembles a religious concept than anything else. The only difference between socialism and Christianity is that the latter is grounded upon historical fact while socialistic faith is founded upon unproven assumptions. Communism particularly is a philosophy of faith in the dialectic—the zig-zagging of history onward and upward to a more perfect society.

Because socialism is in reality an implicit religion, Spargo & Arner, who virtually wrote the textbook on Socialism, called Elements of Socialism (1912), tell us that not only is a “future life” such as heaven an “invention of man” but that God Himself is a “construct of the human mind.” They present socialism as an “alternative to Christianity” which infuses a passion for perfection “without God” and “without heaven.” Further, it is based upon the general theory of evolution  (p. 63, 75, 111, 206, 222), which itself is a theory designed to replace belief in God.

The Pulpit

This brings us back to the churches of today. Far too many Bible classes, pulpits and church groups have bought into the lie that one needs to keep separated “politics” and “religion.” To frame the issue this way is to make like some preachers are running for political office themselves in sermon material. The real issue is: Do social ideas have any input from the Bible? Should the church and Christians have any interest in social ideas for the community and the family? Do biblical principles have any say on the social issues of the day?

In truth, the social issues plaguing our society today are born of the alternative religion: socialism. Welfare, government housing, government schools, government manipulation of the free market, government intrusion into farming, businesses, health care, family planning, and the list goes on.

Should Christians be interested at all in maintaining a free society by which they may, without reprisal, worship God? Or, shall we capitulate to the social justice warriors such as the Barack Obama’s and Joe Biden’s who wish to force their godless worldview on a free people? When Marxist BLM declares its intention to rid society of the “nuclear family,” should biblical Christians have something to say?

Is it in the interest of Christians to be able to defend private property and enjoy the fruits of our own toil as biblical principles teach? Does “thou shalt not steal” not imply the concept of private property? Or, shall we endorse government plunder in order to provide medical care, housing, education, food, services and you-name-it for those who do not have these things? Should I not show the difference between freedom to be charitable and government confiscation and squandering? Or, should we ignore these crucial distinctions?

Frederic Bastiat, the 19th-century French economist, made this crucial point: “Socialism … confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to it being done at all….It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.”

Shall pulpits insist upon the freedom to teach our children the way of the Lord in homeschooling (Deut. 6:4-9); or must we capitulate to government schools with its full display of hedonistic life-styles in the halls and Marxist propaganda in the classrooms? Is it not within the scope of this topic to remind congregants that there are political operatives that wish to remove this God-given liberty?

Am I, as a preacher, out-of-line to remind churches in sermonic material that some political candidates support the strong arm of government confiscating your own monies to pay for ungodly abortions? For redistributing your earnings to those who refuse to work? For giving your money to those who deal in drugs and wander the streets lawlessly looking for more stores and innocents to loot?

In preaching against homosexuality am I not within my God-given boundaries to remind people that some politicians not only support this wickedness, but use the strong arm of the law to coerce it within your houses of worship and private businesses? Shall preachers not “mark” those in apostate pulpits who endorse this lifestyle? (Rom. 16:17). And does not consistency demand we also “mark and avoid” the devil’s legions in the political ranks who are doing the same?

R.C. Foster, a Christian Church preacher of yesteryear, commented on the anemia that had already begun affecting the pulpits of his day. He commented that things will change in America only “when Christian martyrs, instead of craven cowards or selfish worldlings, stand in the pulpit.” The pulpit remains powerful when the gospel is preached and the church refuses to “substitute theatrical performances, pie suppers, and pool-tables for the preaching of the gospel.” But when “the husks of philosophical and scientific speculation, modernism, and infidelity are substituted for the gospel, God’s people are starved and the kingdom suffers defeat.”

Preaching the gospel includes more than merely speaking the “smooth things” (2 Tim. 4:2-4). Corruption in the pulpits is caused, in part, by the siren-song of socialism which has infatuated the unsuspecting and unlearned and caused multitudes of preachers to preach merely the illusions of the day.

Bill Lockwood: Restorative Justice 4 (1)

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by Bill Lockwood

“Restorative Justice” is the modern American socialist methodology whereby we refuse to deal with criminal or misbehavior in society. While “social justice” is the government disallowing us to enjoy the fruits of our own labor because of forcible confiscation and redistribution, “restorative justice” is a quasi-legal philosophy that allows perpetrators of criminal behavior to avoid the consequences of that behavior. Social justice spreads the earned benefits of society to the undeserving; restorative justice spreads the resulting misery to law-abiding citizens.

See how it works in Philadelphia for a case-study.

Philadelphia

During the “George Floyd riots” in May and June of 2021, over 900 businesses were damaged or burglarized in the city of brotherly love. Business owners and big corporate chains sustained millions of dollars of damage during the mayhem. Some of the lawless violence included blowing up ATM’s, burglarizing stores with U-Hauls, carrying entire bags of merchandise from stores such as Rite Aid or passing merchandise out of a Walgreens in a “human assembly line.”

According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, seven Foot Lockers were absolutely cleared out, the loss estimated at over $800,000. Clothing retailers such as Live in Color, and numerous other stores never re-opened because the loss was so tremendous.

But these criminal looters and rioters who were arrested, numbering more than 500, will not face the consequences of their misdeeds. The new innovative plan is called “Restorative Justice,” which is designed to keep the “poor” blacks out of the justice system, regardless of their criminal activity.

The city’s district attorney’s charging supervisor, Lyandra Retacco, said that the city is offering a new program called “Civil Unrest Restorative Response.” It is designed as a “restorative model” that allows the perpetrators to avoid prosecution. District Attorney Larry Krasner said it was a “creative” response because of the “unique motivation of the crimes”—after all, the damages occurred during “a historic moment of protest against the police killing of George Floyd.”

Instead, these ruthless hordes who ransacked the city of Philadelphia, will be offered “counseling sessions,” referrals to job opportunities and/or education. Troy Wilson, a defense attorney with Up Against the Law, said he was “tired and angry” after years of “watching poor marginalized people get dragged ever deeper into the legal system.”

“Let’s come up with a system that’s never been done before. We can take the cases back in some respect to the community so the community can itself resolve some of these cases through education, mediation, confrontation, reconciliation, and most of all healing.” This socialist philosophy is called Restorative Justice.

Wilson is assisted by the “Rev. Donna Jones of the Metropolitan Christian Council of Philadelphia” who runs a “restorative-justice network in Philadelphia called the Restorative Cities Initiative.” She will run the “restorative-education session for all participants. Those who opt in will in will join restorative circles, where defendants, businesspeople, and community members will be able to voice the harm they experienced and what is needed to repair it.”

Jones went on to say that her “restorative-circles” have already been quietly rerouting incidents away from the legal system.”

What About Restorative Justice?

First, restorative justice is not justice at all. This is all about not holding grown people accountable for their criminal activity. And when there is no accountability, crime will grow. This is precisely why crime is exploding across America. Our legal system is fraught with naïve do-gooding socialists who wish to keep lawbreakers out of legal trouble and shift the burden of punishment onto the innocent.

As the article in the Inquirer states: “Philadelphia prosecutors … challenge the basic ideas about how justice is served.”

In other words, we have become so “educated” that we are re-tooling the concept of “justice” to allow criminal activity to flourish without punishment. Meanwhile, the store owners who suffered damage can simply lump it. Some business owners interviewed refused to give their names for fear of retaliation from the same rioters that destroyed their businesses to begin with. The city, however, is more concerned with protecting the offenders.

When the poor black neighborhoods witness the fleeing of businesses the intrusive government will have the solution. Pay potential business owners to open stores there; after all, the American taxpayer can bear the brunt of the those costs as well.

Second, the consequences of lawless activity is forcibly shifted by the city to the business-owners. Just as social justice disallows one to enjoy the fruits of his labor because the long arm of government confiscates and redistributes those fruits, so restorative justice forces the rest of the population to endure the consequences of misbehavior by the few.

Assistant defender for the city, Jonathan Strange said, “a lot of people are really relieved that there is a pathway for them to exit out of the criminal justice system and avoid a conviction.” Loot with impunity. Let other people pay for their crimes.

Those business-owners who were run out of business after losing their entire life-savings and work will just have to understand the “historic nature of George Floyd protests.” They will certainly appreciate that, at least.

What about deterrence from future rioting?  Will not the poor black communities be emboldened to once again to take to the streets to create chaos? Maybe a law-school educated whiz kid will be able to “justify” other “historic moments” of rioting. Foolish Americans.

We thought a DA’s job was to administer the law. No, it is to dream-up possible motivations for crime and sympathize with the criminals. America has left the realm of common sense which teaches that punishment and consequences is what dissuades people from committing illegal activities.

Can “lack of education” the root cause of rioting? Taxpayers have been footing the bill for free education in the inner cities for decades. The social justice warriors just refuse to see that a basic lack of morality will not be resolved with more education.

Instead of looking at the socialistic welfare system that has created these inner city jungles where most black children grow up without a father in the home, our bright lights that manage the cities are conjuring up deeper socialistic schemes called “restorative justice” which neither “restores” property or communities and is no justice at all.

Bill Lockwood: Pickled Minds in Seattle 4 (1)

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by Bill Lockwood

Pickling is the process by which foods are soaked in various solutions to increase the acidity of the food so that microorganisms that cause illness and food spoilage cannot grow. Socialism, and liberalism in general, takes on the form of a similar “fermenting process” by which logic, reasoning, and simple common sense cannot any longer grow in one’s mind. A case study—a Seattle City Councilwoman named Lisa Herbold.

It is not enough that our unconstitutional socialistic systems such as found in Seattle champion taking money from the “rich” to give to the poor in a multiplicity of government programs including: unemployment benefits, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, government grants, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicaid, Federal Student Financial Aid (FAFSA), Free School Meals for Children, Disaster relief programs, WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) subsidies, Senior Citizens’ Aid programs, government assistance with home energy, prescription drug aid, assistance in telephone services, Social Security, disability money, public housing vouchers, and the list goes on.

This is not to mention the fact that there is plenty of voluntary assistance to the poor by a multitude of churches and charitable organizations.

Enough is never enough with the lawless such as Councilwoman Lisa Herbold. She has proposed legislation whereby misdemeanor suspects can escape charges if they can show “symptoms of mental illness or addiction or if they can prove the crime provided for a need to survive.” This is the infamous “poverty defense.”

Herbold says that these defendants need to have an “opportunity to tell their stories” and allow the judges and juries “to hear their stories and make a decision based on the values of our city.” Sounds like spoiled children who cannot handle a teachers’ authority and have to “tell their side of things” when told simple commands in the schoolhouse, such as “sit down.”

The explanation for the “poverty defense” is explained by another on a Seattle television station. “In a situation where you took that sandwich because you were hungry and you were trying to meet your basic need of satisfying your hunger; we as the community will know that we should not punish that. That conduct is excused.”

Yet Lisa Herbold, being a government official, does not wish to live by the “values of her city.” When a man threw a rock through her house window, the councilwoman … yes … called the police. My Northwest reported that Herbold “was on the west side of the living room near the kitchen when she heard a loud noise that sounded like a gunshot and dove into the kitchen for cover.”

Not only is Lisa Herbold unable to see that no one wishes to live by Seattle’s valueless values—for a value does not respect persons rich or poor—but she herself refuses to abide by her own proposals. As a matter of fact, the entire city is seeing a huge spike in crime since the city of Seattle has approved an 18% cut to the Seattle Police Department. Consequently, murders have sky-rocketed. So much for Seattle’s take on values.

This is what occurs when you empty values of any meaningful content by excusing crime because of “poverty,” or organize to cut law enforcement.

Perhaps when Lisa Herbold phoned the police, she should have been told that the police that would have been sent was a part of the 18% cut and that she was on her own. And why call the police to begin with, Ms. Herbold? As Scott Lindsay, former mayoral Public Safety Advisor stated,” If you are engaged in 100 misdemeanors that are in our criminal justice system code, you are not going to be held liable. You are not going to be held accountable.”  So why call against a man committing a misdemeanor?

What do you wish the police to do, Lisa? Arrest the man so that you can gather your friends on the streets and harangue in front of the cameras about “police brutality” and moan about law enforcement harassing people over misdemeanors?

Pickled minds in Seattle.

Bill Lockwood: Socialism is the Gradual Loss of Freedom 4 (1)

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by Bill Lockwood

Private property is an essential element of man’s freedom. Biblical injunctions not to steal (Exodus 20:15) imply the right to private property as an extension of my labor. And, people have a right to enjoy the fruit of their labor. Frederic Bastiat, the French economist and statesman (1801-1850) summarized God-given rights as “Life, Liberty and Property” and noted that these do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, life, liberty and property existed before hand which caused men to make laws in the first place.

Cultural turmoil begins when “the Law” or its enforcer—the “government”–turns into an instrument of plunder to redistribute my earnings to others. This is precisely what has occurred in America. Amity Shlaes, in her new book, Great Society: A New History, recounts that during Lyndon Johnson’s implementation of his socialist welfare-state “Great Society,” one of the modernist thinkers involved with his administration was Charles Reich, a young law professor at Yale and former clerk to the liberal Supreme Court justice Hugo Black.

“To help the poor, Reich turned old property rights arguments on its head…Payments [of welfare] were a right, not a privilege. Reich called what the poor or old received ‘new property.’” In other words, government assumed the right to decree that other people have a right to my private property—the fruit of my labor. This is the essence of the Welfare State.

Bastiat reflected on this perversion—for perversion it is. “It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunders.” This insight reaches right into the current political climate of the American welfare state proudly trumpeted by both parties, Democrat and Republican.

If one doubts that outright plunder is occurring in America fostered by the government itself, just try Bastiat’s test. “See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other person to whom it does not belong. See of the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime …”

Our institutions of welfare, HUD housing, Medicaid, Medicare, green energy, public education, suggested reparations, even quota systems in hiring, firing, and punishment–and a host of other programs of which time would fail to list– are all results of plunder by the federal government—and all completely unconstitutional.

Consequences

What are the consequences when this occurs?

“In the first place, it erases from everyone’s conscience the distinction between justice and injustice. No society can exist unless the laws are respected to a certain degree. The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.”

Exactly. Talk today about “social justice” is nothing but just that—talk. It is not “justice” neither is it sociable.

Second, and most importantly here, this creeping socialism equates to a gradual loss of freedom. When decisions of the individual are supplanted by decisions from the government, this is a loss of freedom. “Powerful government, by its very nature, always has and always will tend to make itself more powerful and more dictatorial” (The Ethics of Capitalism: A Study in Economic Principles and Human Well-Being, Chamber of Commerce of the United States: Washington, D.C., 1960). “When government gains control over the livelihood of individuals, national planning can only be carried out by subjecting the lives of individuals to control or regimentation.”

What inevitably occurs in this type of a climate is the decline of enterprise which entails the loss of inventiveness and improvements. “It means less variety in life, and variety is a large, although often unrecognized, element in a high standard of living.” Like a huge snake coiled around the breast of a person that gradually squeezes out the life, so socialism does to a nation.

In his blockbuster book, The Problem with Socialism, professor Thomas J. DiLorenzo, exposes how this slow fade in the economy worked in Sweden when socialists implemented their plans. “Socialism nearly wrecked Sweden, and free market reforms are finally bringing its economy back from the brink of disaster.”

Starting in the 1930’s, Swedish politicians became “infatuated with fascist-style, socialist ‘planning.’ … Government spending as a percentage of GDP rose from what would today seem a relatively modest 20% in 1950 to more than 50% by 1975. Taxes, public debt, and the number of government employees expanded relentlessly. Swedes were, in essence, living off of the hard work, investments, and entrepreneurship of previous generations.”

America has unfortunately, copied the Swedish model. But what happened in Sweden? The Scandinavians could not avoid economic reality. “It is impossible to maintain a thriving economy with a regime of high taxes, a wasteful welfare state that pays people not to work, and massive government spending and borrowing.”

By the 1980’s, Sweden’s collapse of economic growth and a government attempt to jump-start the economy with a massive expansion of credit resulted in “economic chaos” complete with stock market bubbles that burst, and interest rates “that the Swedish central bank pushed up to 500 percent.” By 1990 Sweden had fallen from fourth to twentieth place in international income comparisons.”

It is a slow road back for Sweden. And the same will be for America. But the point remains that socialism resembles a slow bleeding of prosperity, liberty, and right to property.

Bill Lockwood: Losing Property Rights 0 (0)

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by Bill Lockwood

Fox & Friends reported Monday that an Ohio business owner “is receiving threats for cooperating with law enforcement officials investigating the looting of her cupcake store last month.” “Kelly Kandah, the owner of Colossal Cupcakes in Cleveland, which was destroyed by looters, said some of those threats include people telling her that when her store is rebuilt, ‘it’s going to happen again.’”

Ms. Kandah said that some of the “complaints” of rioters were due to the fact that her cooperation with the FBI is “upsetting people” because she would involve the police over something such as property.”

The family-owned business, which is Ms. Kandah’s investment of her own private capital, is afraid to re-open after repairs because her plea to law enforcement for protection is seen by the looters as “racist” for “not supporting ‘black lives.’”

Kelly Kandah’s story is only one example of literally hundreds and thousands of private business owners who have lost, and are in the process of losing their own private property to the forces of evil. Violence is sweeping the country in the aftermath of the George Floyd death leaving cities such as Minneapolis looking like the streets of Baghdad.

Socialism Cancels Property Rights

Much of the current hedonistic lawlessness, inclusive of the disrespect of private property, is due to the infusion of socialistic “values” in our people. The doctrine of socialism disdains the very concept of “private property.” Private property is itself considered to be evil, according to Spargo & Arner (Elements of Socialism).

Not only is private property considered to be evil, but is the very cause and root of all societal problems. “Dishonesty” is supposedly caused by “private property” (p. 23); property is that which “divides mankind into classes” (p. 206), and therefore, all property must be leveled.

A malicious view of these socialists is found in their comment regarding “Negroes” and private property. “The ‘thieving propensities’ of the Southern negro do not come from a criminal nature, but from the failure of a simple barbarous people fully to appreciate the conception of private property” (p. 71).

Since private property is seen as a development of evolutionary changes through centuries, and people are as well, Spargo & Arno are suggesting that blacks have not evolved to the point where they have appreciated the developments of civilization.

It is ironic that the current slew of Marxists and socialists in our universities have maligned Christianity with a backward view of blacks and private property—when in point of fact, it is SOCIALISM itself which teaches it.

Like Spargo & Arno of yesteryear, the current Mayor of NYC, Bill de Blasio, himself a Marxist, has decried the very concept of private property in a 2017 interview, as reported by USA Today (9-13-17). Private property is a roadblock to economic progress, per de Blasio.

The mobs, looters, and violence mongers stalking our city streets agree with him. Private property is for destruction. A godless worldview.

The Founders

The founders of America correctly recognized that all of private property is an extension of one’s life, energy, and ingenuity (see W. Cleon Skousen, The Five-Thousand Year Leap, 171). Therefore, “to destroy or confiscate such property is, in reality, an attack on the essence of life itself.”

“The person who has worked to cultivate a farm, obtained food by hunting, carved a beautiful statue, or secured a wage by his labor, has projected his very being—the very essence of his life—into that labor.”

Property rights—or more correctly, the right to property, is in reality an extension of personal liberty. Justice George Sutherland of the U.S. Supreme Court once stated, “… the individual—the man—has three great rights, equally sacred from arbitrary interference: the right to his LIFE, the right to his LIBERTY, the right to his PROPERTY.”

He went on to note that “the three rights are so bound together as to be essentially one right. To give a man his life but deny him his liberty, is to take from him all that makes his life worthy living. To give him his liberty but take from him the property which is the fruit and badge of his liberty, is to still leave him a slave.”

Property rights is an essential ingredient to liberty and freedom. John Adams saw it clearly. “The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. Property must be secure or liberty cannot exist.”

Thomas Jefferson wrote, “A right to property is founded in our natural wants, in the means with which we are endowed to satisfy these wants, and the right to what we acquire by those means without violating the similar rights of other sensible beings.”

For the reasons cited above, “Life, liberty, and property” is the phrase enshrined two times in our Constitution.

What Occurs When Property Rights Are Not Respected?

W. Cleon Skousen, in The Five-Thousand Year Leap, observed that FOUR things will occur, and have occurred, where the right to property is not preserved.

One, the incentive of an industrious person to develop and improve property is destroyed. This is exactly, to the tee, what is occurring in America right now as Marxist lawless gangs loot and destroy. Kelly Kandah is “AFRAID” to re-open her business, just as she was afraid to DEFEND her business as thugs destroyed it while she hid in the back rooms while the ransacking occurred. “My family built it up, [I] listened to it get absolutely destroyed,” she said on June 2. “That whole time we were locked in there [back bathroom]… I just listened to everything getting shattered and crushed.”

Two, the industrious individual would also be deprived of the fruits of his (or her) labor. Witness again Kelly Kandah, as well as a host of other law-abiding citizens who have lost their life fortune’s while their businesses went up in smoke in recent George Floyd riots.

Three, marauding bands would be tempted to go about the country confiscating by force and violence the good things that others had frugally and painstakingly provided. Who has not seen the video clips of huge Black Lives Matter crowds plus Antifa and useful idiots robbing and pillaging businesses, homes, and grocery stores?

Four, mankind would be impelled to remain on a bare-subsistence level of hand-to-mouth survival because the accumulation of anything would invite attack. Kelly Kandah, who has laboriously accumulated something of value through the years in her Colossal Cupcakes, invites lawless attacks simply due to that fact alone. It matters not that she declares she is “absolutely for the cause” (Black Lives Matter). That cuts no figure to Marxists and violence-mongers. She has accumulated something of value.

Be sure of this. In the wake of destruction of private property also comes destruction of innocent lives. Indeed, some of this has already been occurring. And all of this from a “WOKE” crowd.

Bill Lockwood: Socialism as a Religion 0 (0)

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by Bill Lockwood

Marxists profess to reject religion in favor of science, but they cherish a belief that the external universe is evolving with reliable, if not divine, necessity in exactly the direction in which they want it to go. They do not conceive themselves as struggling to build the communist society in a world which is of its own nature indifferent to them. They conceive themselves as traveling toward that society in a world which is like a moving-stairway, but walking in the wrong direction. This is not a scientific, but in the most technical sense, a religious conception of the world. (Max Eastman, Marxism—Is It Science?)

Max Eastman (1883-1969) was a prominent editor, political activist and “prominent radical” who, like many in Woodrow Wilson’s “progressive” America, became infatuated with Marxism. Eastman traveled to the Soviet Union to learn firsthand how to be a good socialist and became friends with Leon Trotsky. Years later, when Eastman became convinced that socialism is void of validity, he reflected upon his time as a Marxist. “I sadly regret the precious twenty years I spent muddling and messing around with this idea, which with enough mental clarity and moral force I might have seen through when I went to Russia in 1922” (Reflections on the Failure of Socialism).

Eastman knew whereof he spoke.

Socialism is not normally classified as a religion, but when its doctrines are examined, it more closely resembles a religious concept than anything else. The only difference between socialism and Christianity is that the latter is grounded upon historical fact while socialistic faith is founded upon unproven assumptions. Communism particularly is a philosophy of faith in the dialectic—the zig-zagging of history onward and upward to a more perfect society.

Nikita Khrushchev was appealing to this “dialectic” when he said that history was on their side and they (Soviet Union) would bury us (J.D. Bales, Communism, Its Faith and Fallacies, p. 102). “Communists represent the antithesis which the dialectic has decreed with destroy us, the thesis. It is this faith which helps keep the rank and file members at their tasks when the going is difficult.” This is also, we might add, why myriads of collegiate students, trained by their Marxist professors, continue to march fanatically to the drumbeat of socialism.

Norman Thomas

Because of the religious nature of socialism, it was a simple matter for Norman Thomas (1884-1968), to trade his ministerial garbs and Presbyterian beliefs for a heaven-on-earth utopia strategy of socialism. He became known as “Mr. Socialist” in America.

Thomas, in turn, was heavily influenced by the 19th-century Social Gospel “theology” developed by Walter Rauschenbusch. Rauschenbusch was himself a Baptist preacher of the 19th century who mixed a version of modernistic “Christianity” together with Marxism to craft what became known as the “social gospel.”

The key to Rauschenbusch’s theology was his concept of the Kingdom of God. To him, this Kingdom was not located in another place called heaven or in a future millennium, but could best be described in modern terms as a level of consciousness in which one recognized the immanence of God in human life and the interconnected, interacting, interdependent nature of the entire human species.

So writes Dr. Elizabeth Balanoff, professor of history at Roosevelt University in Chicago in her paper, “Norman Thomas: Socialism and the Social Gospel.” “Walter Rauschenbusch was convinced that this was the original Christian vision which had been distorted and lost with time, and that it was possible to regain it.”

Because of the religious nature of socialism, H.G. Wells stated: “Socialism is to me a very great thing indeed, the form and substance of my ideal life and all the religion I possess.” Mr. Edmund Optiz, writing in Foundation for Economic Education (1969) observed that “As a religion, Socialism promised a terrestrial paradise, a heaven on earth.” This is why Optiz called Socialism “A Fanatic Faith.”

Max Eastman, in his 1962 book, Reflections on the Failure of Socialism, related that Norman Thomas, “in his rather pathetic Democratic Socialism, A New Appraisal (1953), throws overboard everything that gave distinct meaning to the word socialism, but continues to drive along in the old bandwagon with the name printed on it in large letters.”

For example, Eastman points out, Thomas’ words were “Socialism will do this, …” “Socialism will do that …” But Eastman asks, “how does that differ from what he preached as a Christian minister before his conversion to socialism?” In other words, socialism and Marxism are nothing less than a “religious-type” of conviction that has jettisoned biblical promises of heaven for a “garden of Eden” on earth. As stated succinctly by Mr. Socialism himself, his socialistic philosophy was an “implicit religion.”

Spargo & Arner

Because socialism is in reality an implicit religion, Spargo & Arner, who virtually wrote the textbook on Socialism, called Elements of Socialism (1912), tell us that not only is a “future life” such as heaven an “invention of man” but that God Himself is a “construct of the human mind.” They present socialism as an “alternative to Christianity” which infuses a passion for perfection “without God” and “without heaven.” Further, it is based upon the general theory of evolution (p. 63, 75, 111, 206, 222), which itself is a theory designed to replace belief in God.

As does everything that seeks to replace biblical Christianity, socialism presents a misdiagnosis of what ails mankind. Dishonesty is not “in property ownership” (Spargo & Arner, 23); poverty itself is not an evil (p. 39); world peace is not the ultimate goal (p. 202); and “social injustice” is not the devil incarnate (p. 46). This is why Mr. Edmund Optiz describes socialism as a modern, “this-worldly” religion.

The real problem with man lies within his/her heart—it is called sin. “Above all else, guard your heart, fro everything you do flows from it” (Proverbs 4:23). Sin is a violation or transgression of God’s Almighty Law (1 John 3:4). All men have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory (Romans 6:23). There will be no improvement of society until humanity faces the stark reality of sin imbedded in the heart. Only when the corruption in the world is given its proper diagnosis can people turn to the only real healing—forgiveness in Jesus Christ (Romans 3:21-23).

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