Posted on 12/26/2009 1:12:51 PM PST by ImperialistDaddy
Whether it was Norman Thomas who said it in a 1944 speech or it was Upton Sinclair who wrote it in a 1951 letter to Norman Thomas is unclear, but it is definitely true that the origin of the statement emerged somehow between the two Socialist Party members of the past. The statement is usually quoted as coming from Norman Thomas, who is believed to have said, "The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of ‘liberalism,’ they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened. I no longer need to run as a Presidential candidate for the Socialist Party. The Democratic Party has adopted our platform."
The letter that was written to Norman Thomas by Upton Sinclair in 1951 states, "The American People will take Socialism, but they won't take the label. I certainly proved it in the case of EPIC. Running on the Socialist ticket I got 60,000 votes, and running on the slogan to 'End Poverty in California' I got 879,000. I think we simply have to recognize the fact that our enemies have succeeded in spreading the Big Lie. There is no use attacking it by a front attack, it is much better to outflank them."
EPIC, which was used as an acronym for "Plan to End Poverty in California," was first drafted in 1933 by Upton Sinclair, who campaigned as a Democratic Party candidate for Governor of California after failing twice to get elected to Congress as a Socialist Party candidate. He predicted he would take power in January of 1935, but like most proud Democrats he did not stand for anything. His entire platform was based on his animosity towards, and political opposition against, conservatives.
In a brochure titled "Immediate EPIC," Sinclair blasted conservative Governor Merriam of California with blatant attacks on Merriam’s conservatism, writing, "Let me, for my part, tell the people of California, ‘positively, sincerely and conclusively,’ what they will get if they elect Frank Merriam as their next Governor; they will get ruthless deflation, followed by civil war, and then Fascism, which I have defined as ‘capitalism plus murder.’"
In that same brochure he also points out that Congress had given President Roosevelt the power to print three billion dollars, and stated that Roosevelt would probably soon be forced to use that power. He also states that will solve California’s problems, writing, "President Roosevelt has been empowered by Congress to print three billion dollars worth of greenbacks. He has not yet used this power, but it appears that he will be forced to use it soon. If he does, California may ask for its share of this money, which would solve all our problems. Even rumors of inflation would make money easier to get, and so lessen the burden resting upon our EPIC administration."
There are several points to be made about these statements by prominent Socialist Party members of the past. First of all, it’s obvious that Democratic Party candidates and Socialist Party candidates were hard to differentiate even in the times Thomas and Sinclair lived. Second of all, even during their time, they could get away with calling a conservative a fascist only on the basis of their personal opposition rather than on some sort of moral, factual, or historical foundation. We can also see by reading between the lines that Upton Sinclair equated the prospect of civil war (which he seemed to believe was prospective simply because he thought so and said so) with murder, not just ordinary murder but Fascism. We can also clearly see that Sinclair had a different definition of fascism, which was capitalism plus murder. We can also see the limited knowledge of economies in the socialist mind when Sinclair claims that the Federal government printing money will solve all of California’s problems, and ease the burden on his future administration. There was enough ego in Sinclair’s head to convince him that his most simple and casual thoughts would be accepted as natural facts, and if you ever read the brochure by Sinclair you can see that it is full of accusations.
Liberalism is no longer what it used to be, because it has become a vehicle for socialism. Yet, the reality is, if you were to take all liberal agendas that have emerged in America and enact them all into law through legislation, we would indeed be living in a totalitarian society rather than a socialist one.
Imagine someday you wake up in a cold house with little or no money to spend and drinking powder milk with your egg beaters and bacon made of fungus, soy, and wheat gluten. It’s not impossible.
The California Energy Commission wants to install Programmable Communicating Thermostats (PTCs), purportedly to not allow the thermostats to be changed during emergencies, such as extreme heat or severe cold. Their justification for this measure is supposedly to prevent blackouts, but no one will be able to change the PCT without first sending out an emergency signal that will allow them to adjust the temperature a few degrees or less.
As for breakfast as I described, admittedly that may sound a little sarcastic to most, but with organizations like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) it is not hard to at least imagine. PETA has actually said that it would be good to call fish "sea kittens" instead of "fish," because evil hungry people would be more likely to see them as they see their own pets instead of as a menu item. Not coincidentally, it is also important to mention that PETA is outspokenly pro-choice on the abortion issue. So, it is safer to be an animal than an unborn baby if your mother is a PETA member or supporter, and at the same time cracking open an egg is more horrific than aborting a human. For Christmas of 2009 they posted suggestions for a vegan Christmas on their web site, of course that is along with Bethenny Frankel stripped down nude to say, "Fur? I’d Rather Go Naked."
There is irony in using sexy females to promote the agenda of a pro-choice organization like PETA, because it is a contradiction to associate what is sexy with the mass murder of over fifty million unborn infants since the passage of Roe versus Wade. The sort of ad that shows Bethenny Frankel posing naked for PETA is a classic example of how propaganda speaks to the uninformed or otherwise ignorant voter, who does not derive his vote from careful thought and complex research. If propaganda does not work, derogatory rhetoric serves the same purpose and does not require the voter to think for himself or generate his own ideas.
Some do not realize how disgustingly wrong the dominantly liberal media has become, but it is a grim reality for conservatives that are treated as if they are something they are not just because of a difference in political ideologies. When a Democrat calls someone a racist it is almost always because a Republican does not support their extreme leftist agenda, such as the passage of a Democratic Party health care bill.
I would like to share with you an example of media bias from Time magazine’s web site written by Jack White and published December 14th, 2002. The article is entitled "Lott, Reagan and Republican Racism," and reads:
Here's some advice for Republicans eager to attract more African-American supporters: don't stop with Trent Lott. Blacks won't take their commitment to expanding the Party seriously until they admit that the GOP's wrongheadedness about race goes way beyond Lott and infects their entire Party. The sad truth is that many Republican leaders remain in a massive state of denial about the Party's four-decade-long addiction to race-baiting. They won't make any headway with blacks by bashing Lott if they persist in giving Ronald Reagan a pass for his racial policies.
The same could be said, of course, about such Republican heroes as Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon or George Bush the elder, all of whom used coded racial messages to lure disaffected blue collar and Southern white voters away from the Democrats. Yet it's with Reagan, who set a standard for exploiting white anger and resentment rarely seen since George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door, that the Republican's selective memory about its race-baiting habit really stands out.
Space doesn't permit a complete list of the Gipper's signals to angry white folks that Republicans prefer to ignore, so two incidents in which Lott was deeply involved will have to suffice. As a young congressman, Lott was among those who urged Reagan to deliver his first major campaign speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers were murdered in one of the 1960s' ugliest cases of racist violence. It was a ringing declaration of his support for "states rights"—a code word for resistance to black advances clearly understood by white Southern voters.
Then there was Reagan's attempt, once he reached the White House in 1981, to reverse a long-standing policy of denying tax-exempt status to private schools that practice racial discrimination and grant an exemption to Bob Jones University. Lott's conservative critics, quite rightly, made a big fuss about his filing of a brief arguing that BJU should get the exemption despite its racist ban on interracial dating. But true to their pattern of white-washing Reagan's record on race, not one of Lott's conservative critics said a mumblin' word about the Gipper's deep personal involvement. They don't care to recall that when Lott suggested that Reagan's regime take BJU's side in a lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, Reagan responded, "We ought to do it." Two years later the U.S. Supreme Court in a resounding 8-to-1 decision ruled that Reagan was dead wrong and reinstated the IRS's power to deny BJU's exemption.
Republican leaders and their apologists tend to go into a frenzy of denial when members of the liberal media cabal bring up these inconvenient facts. It's that lack of candor, of course, that presents the biggest obstacle to George W. Bush's commendable and long overdue campaign to persuade more African-Americans to defect from the Democrats to the Republicans. It's doomed to fail until the GOP fesses up its past addiction to race-baiting, and makes a sincere attempt to kick the habit.
A liberal journalist like Jack White has no business telling any Party operating on a conservative platform how to do anything. What he is really saying is, "You are not a liberal. Therefore, you are ignorant." That is how he begins his article, by attacking the Republican Party with his so-called advice. At the end of the article he reveals where his empty head is really at by telling the GOP to admit it has a problem with racism and fall into the liberal stereotype of conservatives. It’s not enough to stomp out racism, but what Jack White really wants to do is promote a liberal agenda within the GOP. Consequently, many Republican Party politicians and candidates begin to feel guilty and cowardly bend to place the Judas kiss on the Democratic Party’s collective ass.
What the article fails to mention is that in 2000 after a visit by George W. Bush the heir to BJU Bob Jones III lifted the ban on interracial dating, and what Jack White could not foresee at the time he wrote his article was that in 2008 BJU would issue a formal apology that led to the inception of students from all fifty states of a diversity of ethnicities. Sure, there was a clear problem with racism at BJU that cannot be denied, but journalists like Jack White have no more right to attribute that problem to a Republican Party representing conservatives than he has any right to point the finger at the entire South. The GOP is much bigger than one politician or candidate, now composed of a growing number of conservatives that are sick of being told what to think, say, and do by a government run by fools and conspirators.
With liberals everyone must fall into his or her own class of people, so that they can be represented "equally" and politicians can appeal to more groups they have segregated by stirring up controversy. If people do not fall into segregated classes, we could unite and discover we do not need the government to define who we are, tell us what we should or should not say, or order us what to do. Though I doubt your average liberal realizes it, putting people into as many categories as can be done only divides the people and creates more problems than it solves.
That is why I don’t consider Obama a Marxist as many other conservatives do, because Marxism promotes a classless society and according to Obama it seems more like we are all separate peoples that fit into one class or another. You cannot try to organize people like they are files in a file cabinet. We are a mix, a melting pot. We are not a bunch of sheep that are led by different shepherds. The fact that so many people look for a unifier in a President should be enough to demonstrate that, but the social side effect and key symptom that we look too much to one individual more than every other candidate is that most people do not seek to educate themselves about candidates for less prominent political offices. How else could you get a Congress that is dominated by one Party and a Presidency that is given to another, as has happened with prominent Republicans of recent history?
Let me give Jack White some advice. If you want to play the blame game and say the GOP has an addiction to race-baiting, it would be a good idea of cleaning the Democratic Party of it first. What is "affirmative action" but an incentive to hire someone just because they are a minority or female and try to bully businesses into ignoring the white guy even if he is more qualified? What is it that makes a Republican a racist just because they dislike, or even hate, Obama? Why is it that the Democratic Party is always playing the race card? When, Jack White, will you get it right and realize that it is never about a black race or a race of any other skin color versus whitey and whitey’s status quo? What it is about is the human race, not as defined by journalists and politicians but as defined by individuality and who people choose to become and the actions they take for betterment, not detriment.
Take for instance your average feminist. Your average feminist is a liberal, pro-choice, up on taxation, and down on conservatism. The reason being, conservative women do not need government to aspire to succeed. Conservative women do not need feminism because they are not making absurd demands, they make realistic ones.
While feminism has either knowingly or unknowingly driven a wedge between many a man and woman, conservative women are out starting businesses and climbing the corporate ladder. While feminism passionately embraces the lesbian, conservative women passionately embrace the man. While feminism promotes freedom of choice with abortion, conservative women take on the responsibilities of parenthood and make a living for themselves and their family either as housewives or working professionals. Feminists do not seem to realize that being a housewife is a just and noble cause. They see that role as one that stifles their productivity, and so they shut out reality and live as angry introverts with only one view of success—political gain.
It is strange that we put those two words together, "political" and "gain," because it is an unlikely combination. And, that is as true for any person of any race as it is for any person of any sex. The Democratic Party tags each and every person like they are tracking an animal. Although they may know how to get elected, they have no idea what life is like in the wilderness, and the wilderness is where they fail.
Thanks,
Imperialist Daddy
Here’s all one needs to know about Keynesian economics and the many flavors of Socialism: Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, Stalinism, Progressivism, Anarcho-syndicalism, Environmentalism and Junk Science...;
Steal first then have someone else pay later!
I agree completely. Obama will pass on all the debt he creates to the next President, and it sure isn’t going to be him again.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.