FederalRepublic.net

H/T to Hotair.com

To all you political junkies out there, have a great last hurrah before socialism takes over!

In earlier postings, I explored the reasons why I think America has turned into a soft despotism, allowing government to regulate every facet of our lives. To really point out where I think the United States is going in the long term, I thought I’d share Karl Marx’s Ten Pillars of Communism and compare them to today’s political practices:

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

While it may be said that Kelo v. New London was a horrible SCOTUS decision regarding the use of eminent domain, I believe that the police power of individual states is to blame for an abolition of private property rights in America. According to the Supreme Court, police power is the power of states to regulate the welfare, morals, and health of the people (see Allgeyer v. Louisiana). By justifying heavy regulation of land use (licensing, zoning, etc.), states have basically destroyed the rights of the people to use their land as they see fit. Why should I need to apply for a license to build a deck on the back of my house? Why should I have to seek approval to build a shed? These are legitimate issues that affect private property rights all over America; states have taken the freedom of using private property away by regulating it to death.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

Today’s Democratic Party seems to think that the more money one makes, the more one owes to society. I couldn’t disagree more. By penalizing those who work hard and are successful, the government takes away the incentive to be successful; that is, make as much money as one can. Let me state this clearly: I have never seen a poor person create a job! Without the “rich” to create jobs, the poor have no chance at getting a job in the first place. The “rich” provide the goods and services that people buy in the market and when “rich” see profit, it’s spent expanding the business, hiring more workers, or is invested elsewhere, thereby lifting up the whole economy.

3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.

An abolition of inheritance is what you have when you slap an inheritance tax on already taxed income. By taking a portion of inheritance, the government is taking away the rights of a family or loved one to inherit what one has already worked for in the years before they died.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

Going back to number one, it seems many states have confiscated the right to private property and to use private property was one deems fit through the police power. How exactly does regulation of land use affect the health, welfare, or morals of the people? In my opinion, not at all. There are already laws pertaining to the destruction of private property by another, thereby including pollution, physical damage, or other issues pertaining to the protection of private property.

5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.

Since the early 1900s, the centralization of credit and overall monetary policy has rested in the Federal Reserve. It has an exclusive monopoly over the money supply and consistently manipulates interest rates as a means to control it. While many may think the Federal Reserve may help stabilize an otherwise messy credit climate today, I think it illustrates the expansive power and very real danger of having one central authority attempt to manage and control the economy as a whole.

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.

While Congress as the power to regulate interstate commerce per the Constitution, the definition of commerce has changed since the founding of the republic. Today’s power to regulate commerce is more than a power to regulate buying and selling over state lines, but includes a power to regulate direct and indirect effects of manufacturing, which has nothing to do with commerce at all. In my opinion, the power to regulate interstate commerce has been used by the Congress to justify anything having to do with expenditures, thereby putting everything under the purview of the Congress. This includes transport, communication, or anything else Congress would like to get its hands into.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

In my opinion, number seven goes back to the regulation of land use. Through the Department of Labor, the government has implemented rules on businesses that are costly and unneeded. These include burdensome labor, safety, and tax rules that eat into the business’ bottom line, forcing the business to spend more in order to keep their factories or locations “in compliance.” The market should determine one’s business rules - if the business is unsafe, the worker does not have to work there. If the business is paying below market value for its labor, the worker can quit.

8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.

We’ve all seen the wonders of free public education, especially in urban, inner-city schools. Drop-out rates in the inner-city continue to disturb us all, while many have accused public schools of dumbing down standards to the lowest denominator, thereby graduating those who needn’t graduate in the first place. What the education system needs is competition, vouchers, and privatized instruction, not a teacher’s union or government-subsidized failure.

Yes, Barack…John McCain is fighting for plumbers out there, and no doubt many others that your crowd would laugh at. You’re not fit to be my president.

This clip illustrates how Joe Wurzelbacher represents me and so many more working people fed up with the socialist tendencies of Barack Obama and the Democratic Party:

H/T to HotAir

We’ve all heard pundits on both the left and right call this election the most negative in history. Well apparently, they haven’t actually read their history (or have any idea about what history actually is). Take for example, the election of 1800 pitting John Adams against Thomas Jefferson.

Insults and slander were often flung at both candidates in the newspapers of the day. For instance, the Gazette of the United States is quoted as exclaiming:

THE GRAND QUESTION STATED
As the present solemn and momentous epoch, the
only question to be asked by every American, laying his
hand on his heart, is “shall I continue in allegiance to
GOD-AND A RELIGIOUS
PRESIDENT;
Or impiously declare for
JEFFERSON-AND NO GOD!!!

There were many other instances of such venom. Should Jefferson be elected President, said the New England Palladium, “the seal of death is that moment set on our holy religion, our church will be prostrated, and some infamous prostitute, under the title of the Goddess of Reason, will preside in the in the Sanctuaries now devoted to the Most High.” In fact, many Federalist-backed newspapers described Jefferson as an atheist who would burn the people’s bibles and destroy Christianity. Others actually hoped to help Adams be reelected to a second term by pronouncing Jefferson had died. While this was later refuted, Federalists pounced on Jefferson with vitriol.

These were not one-sided smears however; Jeffersonian Republicans did fight back. Of John Adams, Thomas Paine declared “It has been the political career of this man to begin with hypocrisy, proceed with arrogance, and finish with contempt.” Others accused Adams of being a closet monarchist, a man who wished to become a king of America. One newspaper accused Adams of wishing to start an American aristocracy by marrying one of his sons to a daughter of George III. And making fun of his baldness and weight, some in the Republican press dubbed Adams “His Rotundancy.”

While some in today’s media have described the current presidential campaign as “fiercely negative,” it seems the election of 1800 was quite worse. Journalists, writers, and historians have forgotten the early days of the American press and how insults and untrue rumors were commonplace. You think McCain v. Obama is a negative campaign? Think again, and learn your history!

*For more on early American journalism, check out Eric Burns’ “Infamous Scribblers.” It’s a great book.

‘Nuff said.

H/T to HotAir

A little humor to lighten up your Friday night:

It has been said that Scottish historian and philosopher Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee, contributed this quote as he watched the creation of the new American Republic from across the sea:

A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.

The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage.

While controversy surrounds the issue of whether or not Tytler actually uttered these words, it is no less troubling the advancement of societies the quote has illustrated. It illustrates the truth about American democracy - that liberty has led to abundance, and abundance to complacency. We have become used to material wealth and abundance; we’ve become used to prosperity. And now as the economy tanks, we forget that our abundance was built upon a principle many no longer cherish - personal responsibility and sacrifice. Instead of looking to ourselves to be more careful with our money, to consider the risks we take in buying a house with an income that can’t afford it, to realize credit is not preferable to saving for the things we want, we have turned to the government to solve our problems. We have turned to the government, and turned to dependence on government, to solve economic troubles.

Another commentator on the American Republic was Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville. Writing “Democracy in America” in the 1840s, Tocqueville foresaw the coming of a “soft despotism” ; that is, an America in which the people would turn to government for their happiness and welfare:

For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?…After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd…It is indeed difficult to conceive how men who have entirely given up the habit of self-government should succeed in making a proper choice of those by whom they are to be governed; and no one will ever believe that a liberal, wise, and energetic government can spring from the suffrages of a subservient people.

If Tocqueville has not illustrated what has become the United States of America, I’m not sure we can really describe what our Republic has become. We are a country obsessed with freedom and opportunity, yet freedom and opportunity have been destroyed by the “arm” of government. We have become a nation based not on freedom or the rights of man, but regulation of our lives. Government touches every aspect of our lives, from the clothes we wear, to the food we eat, to the land which we live, to the money we make. Almost everything we own has been influenced by government directly or indirectly, via sales taxes or regulations on production.

The point I am trying to make is this: If we Americans do not force our control upon the government, the government will force its control upon us. It is my ultimate fear that 50 years from now, the United States of America will no longer resemble the freedom-based Republic I grew up in. Now is the time for a true political revolution. Now is the time to act. Now is the time to declare we want our freedom back.