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| The End Game |
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| Commentary/Politics - Guest Commentaries | |||
| Written by Mark W. Hendrickson | |||
| Wednesday, 19 November 2008 02:12 | |||
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If you wanted to turn the United States of America into a socialist country, what strategy would you adopt? Joseph Stalin, the world's top communist from 1924 to 1953, is reputed to have advocated the following strategy to William Z. Foster, leader of the Communist Party USA: "Work for more government intervention and control of the business activities of the people. In this way the American people will accept Communism without knowing it." Stalin would be pleased with the trend in America since he dispensed that advice. He would be positively delighted with the recent partial nationalizations of the housing, mortgage, financial, and insurance industries during the crash of 2008. He would be even more thrilled by the future prospects for socialism in America. The Democrats seem to have found the perfect strategy to replace free markets with government control. Their game plan is now clear: to move incrementally but inexorably from capitalism (free markets) to socialism (government control of economic activity). The first stage in that transition, the proverbial nose of the camel under the tent, was accomplished by earlier generations of politicians, primarily Democratic. It was to condition Americans to view government as a player, rather than a referee, in all sorts of previously private markets. That is: Sell the voters on a government program for some worthy cause - nothing as radical as total government control, but simply as a supplementary aid in some important area of life, such as retirement, health care, housing, energy. Thus, Social Security was created to put a modest floor under Americans' retirement income; Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to help poorer Americans afford homes; Medicare and Medicaid to help seniors and the poor afford medical care; the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to insure bank deposits; the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation to insure pensions, etc., etc., etc. The second stage in creeping socialism is to keep expanding government programs. This is easy in a democracy. Understanding the political dynamic so pithily summarized by the great playwright (and socialist) George Bernard Shaw - "The government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul" - the politicians who want greater government control carry the day. The party of Bigger Government - the Democrats - has skillfully employed demagoguery against all who dare question the wisdom or long-term financial viability of such programs, shamelessly and unfairly denouncing them as heartless and uncaring. This Democratic and democratic pressure intimidates some Republicans to become "pragmatists" who acquiesce in fiscally unsustainable policies. The result has been that Congress has repeatedly increased the vote-buying benefits, while avoiding the prudent, but politically unpopular, steps of maintaining programs on a solid financial footing. That brings us to the present. Today's Democrats - some crypto-socialists, others not bashful about showing their socialist stripes - actually desire the fiscal mismanagement that bankrupts federal programs, because it precipitates stage three of their strategy: the crisis stage. During a crisis, the choice becomes whether to shut down the insolvent program, or to rescue the program since so many Americans have become dependent upon it. Few Republicans are willing to tell scared Americans that government can't help them during an emergency (e.g., President Bush during the current crisis), and that gives rise to stage four. The fourth stage of socialism on the installment plan has dawned in 2008. It is rescuing programs in the crisis stage by nationalizing them. You can choose to believe that Congress was taken by surprise by the looming bankruptcy of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but it wasn't. I wouldn't be surprised if Barney Frank and other leading Democrats, who successfully blocked earlier Republican attempts to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, uncorked champagne bottles when Uncle Sam became the largest mortgage holder and de facto landlord in the country by nationalizing the bankrupt mortgage giants. They will celebrate again when the federal Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation goes broke and Uncle Sam nationalizes private pensions. Ditto for when the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation someday runs out of funds and banks have to be nationalized. Still looming in the future are the Big Three of precariously under-funded future liabilities: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. The Democrats are playing a giant game of chicken as these three programs march inexorably toward insolvency - Medicare alone being under-funded by $36 trillion for the next 65 years. Democrats reject all attempts to reform these programs and put them on sounder financial footing. When George Bush suggested private accounts as part of a possible reform, the Democrats went berserk. Being socialistic, they are as terrified of private property as Dracula is of a cross. We were given a peek of the future of Social Security in October when Congressman George Miller (D-California) held hearings that included discussion of nationalizing Americans' IRAs. Like the frog who doesn't realize it is being boiled until it is too late to jump out of the pot, at some point during the ongoing government takeover of Americans' businesses and wealth, we could wake up in a new country. The USA could morph into the DSSA, the Democratic Socialist States of America, with the Democrats entrenched in power, overseeing it all. That is their end game. Will the Democratic strategy succeed? Having just been swept into power on a wave of expectations epitomized by the Sarasota woman who exulted, "I won't have to worry about putting gas in my car. I won't have to worry about paying my mortgage. If I help [Obama], he's gonna help me." - the Democrats are in the driver's seat. We who believe in free markets have our work cut out for us.
Mark W. Hendrickson is a faculty member, economist, and contributing scholar with the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College.
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  written by steven montross, November 19, 2008
The sheep WANT a shepherd. What's a poor constitutionalist to do when we are such a small minority. Nothing will be done until disaster scatters the herd.
written by steven montross, November 19, 2008
Holiday blockbuster. DISASTER! - Coming soon to economies near you.
 written by ML, November 20, 2008
Where to start with this piece?
First, a google search of your quotation of Stalin to Foster returns only one source for that quote: You, Dr. Hendrickson, in three places: The River Cities Reader and three rightwing Internet rags (some have your piece titled “A Brave New America†instead of “Endgame†for some reason). In any event, while the fact that the quote appears to be a figment, it doesn’t certify that you made it up or embellished an actual quote. Still, readers might presuppose that you check your sources because you have “Dr.†in front of your name and would assume that the quote is real. Is it?
written by ML, November 20, 2008
Second, littering your article with references to Stalin is patently ridiculous. Stalin was a dictator, and the Soviet economy and culture during his reign of terror bears little or no resemblance to the United States. My guess is that you are simply spreading manure given that any intelligent person will find your piece a joke, or, as the hate-filled comments on your piece on the aforementioned wingnut sites indicate, refreshing Kool-Aid for those ignorant or embittered enough to believe any cock-eyed fantasy of a pretend professor from one of the most arch-conservative nurseries of political “thought†in the US. Suffice it to say that hypothesizing what Stalin’s opinion of the US might be were he not long dead is a straw man at best, a rotting red herring more likely.
written by ML, November 20, 2008
Third, your contention that “Democrats seem to have found the perfect strategy to replace free markets with government control†is absurd on its face. Here’s a thought: Name one. Name one Democrat whose asserted aim is replacing free markets with government control. I grant that it’s a trick question. A free market is an idea; the functioning of our economy, like most, is an amalgam of different facets of various hypothetical (i.e., academic or ideated forms that exist in the vacuum of the mind) economic systems, and the fact that you have used yet another fallacy to make a wholly false claim further shows the value of your academic qualifications, which I posit fall somewhere between a city employee with a phony Masters from University of Phoenix so he/she can get a few extra grand a year and the kind of institutions like the one at which you are employed that put up quite a pretense of being legitimate when they are in fact Dust Bin University. Folks like yourself will always be around, either struggling to maintain the status quo for yourselves or carrying much water for your masters to remain top pet. Also, I detect a whistling past the graveyard in your camel remark. In other words, I see as more rightwing codespeak for…scary Arabs trying to take over! Boo! Let me guess, you’re an ardent fan of Homeland Security funds for Wichita, Kansas and Toledo, Ohio.
written by ML, November 20, 2008 Fourth, you want to discuss government as a referee rather than a player? How about we RE-nationalize the defense industry? You’re no doubt a small government guy, yet your party is growing the private military industry by leaps and bounds. More billions for Blackwater, Dr. Hendrickson? The owner of that mercenary army is a good Christian warrior in your eyes, no doubt. People of your ilk play the same ridiculous game all the time: You speak of government as if it is staffed by some alien race, rather than Americans not so different from any other. One of my greatest hopes is that one day soon everyone realizes this and fearmongers like yourself are finally laughed out of print, as you should be.
written by ML, November 20, 2008
Fifth, your claim that the Democrats are the party of big government is—ah choo!—very dusty. Please return it to 1982, please. The greatest expansion of government in most Americans’ lifetimes has just occurred, and it was undertaken while a party other than the Democrats controlled all three branches of government. How can you take yourself seriously? You must spend a lot of time on rightwing blogs, which brings me to my next point…
Sixth, what on Earth is the River Cities Reader publishing this nonsense for? Rich Miller is both a staple and an example of the quality journalism I think of when I think of the Reader. So whose bright idea was it to put this piece of weak, transparent propaganda in this issue? Seventh, suffice it to say that your ramblings by the fifth paragraph of this piece begin to truly unravel. It is unclear what you are even trying to put forth in relation to reality. I pity your students for many reasons, but perhaps foremost for having to decipher what the heck you are even saying, of if it isn’t just a gaggle of nouns and verbs intended to sound academic.
written by ML, November 20, 2008
Eighth, you reference “rescuing programs…by nationalizing them.†To what does this refer? Thus far, the bailout appears to be a personal party favor for interim Treasury Secretary to dole out to his Wall Street pals. I for one am shocked—shocked!—that a Bush administration member would abuse government power to enrich his cronies. I’ll wait for the snickers to die down on that one. So, yet again we have Republicans (“Government can’t do anything right!â€) utterly failing to run the government in anything resembling a competent manner. The crusade of the right to run government into the ground to then privatize it in the name of “doing it better†even as research has shown that corruption skyrockets once a public service is privatized (“Gee, how come there are 2,000,000 predominantly poor, unrepresentatively non-white people incarcerated, far beyond the rate of imprisonment of any other of our peers?â€) and it becomes a vested interest to use the ill-gotten gains on K Street to ensure more business.
written by ML, November 20, 2008
Ninth, no one is terrified of private property, least of all those for who you are carrying water. On the contrary, they love private property, because they have most of it and are constantly trying to turn ever more public property into their own private property. Thieves live in mansions too, sir. It’s as has been said: The wealthiest one percent only want one thing, and that’s EVERYTHING. With people like yourself helping, Dr., and the Reader for some reason printing your tripe, they are making progress all the time.
written by ML, November 20, 2008
Tenth, “The USA could morph into the DSSA, the Democratic Socialist States of America, with the Democrats entrenched in power, overseeing it all. That is their end game†is a real laugh, Dr. Hendrickson. The juvenile debate move of flinging your own fault back at your opposition is both common and impotent. Those who have paid attention for the last eight years know of the “permanent Republican majority†and the fascistic “unitary executive†so your notion that “it’s really the Democrats who want unending power!†is a sad, sad joke. In reading your piece, one might be astounded that you A. Have a PhD; and B. Are a college professor. That is, until they find out what kind of institution you are a part of (i.e., rightwing fundamentalist religious hyper conservative private school incubating bigoted, ignorant culture warriors and founded by an oily robber baron…hmmm, no vested interests there! Pshaw.). Keep it up, Dr.! A few more articles published on web pages no one visits and you can become a peer of knuckleheads like Savage or Beck or Horowitz or even a contributor to Faux Noise. No credibility required! Keep believing in “free markets†if you must, but one would think that a “doctor†of anything would be aware of the huge sums of US tax dollars that prop up so many huge corporate entities, let alone the arm-twisting and/or coziness that amounts to many industries having bought and paid for various members of Congress. Where is your vitriol for wealthfare, sir? Where is your consideration of the injustices suffered by the working poor in the richest nation on Earth, let alone the shameful abuses and obscene displays of extravagance by the self-described Christian Haves at a time when there are Christian Havenots struggling to merely survive? Where is your zeal for the American way in the face of the trampling of human rights? As is so often the case, your sights seem to be trained on fictions at the expense of the realities that make your posturing smack of hypocrisy.
written by ML, November 20, 2008
In sum, your paranoid fantasy does not nearly clear the bar as journalism/opinion worthy of consideration. For the life of me can’t figure why the Reader published such hogwash by a blood red partisan like yourself from a Mickey mouse fundy farm, but my hope is that they don’t continue to do so. I like reading it, but why waste the time if this is the kind of garbage they’re going to put in it? Mainstream, indeed…
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