Posted on 07/10/2019 5:44:39 AM PDT by NOBO2012
Not withstanding my recent rant against the Wall Street Journal, I do still read it (hint, you can get it online through your local library link). It does still contain have some worthwhile material, like this op-ed: What Socialism Meant for My Great-Grandfather. It is written by Helen Raleigh, an immigrant from China, is the owner of an investment advisory firm.
A few excerpts:
After the Communist Party took over in 1949, it pushed for “land reform” to win the support of the country’s 300 million landless peasants. The Party claimed landowners were class enemies and exploiters of the poor, and that unequal land ownership was the main cause of social injustice.
“Land reform” might also be called “leveling the playing field” in the parlance of America’s neo-communists.
Though many villagers shared similar economic conditions, a government worker came to my great-grandfather’s village and divided everyone into five classes: landlords, rich peasants, middle peasants, poor peasants and laborers. Then a work team organized “speak bitterness” struggle sessions so the poor could vent their frustration against the “rich.”
Well that sounds familiar. America’s leftists have been doing that, like, forever.
Hey dudes, don’t be sleeping through the class war, you could end up as collateral damage
At first, villagers hesitated to speak ill of one another, especially their kin, in public. But the work team was good at stirring up envy and greed and inflaming hatred toward any villager who owned property.
“You didn’t do that on your own, somebody else did that for you.” So you don’t get to keep it.
Very good indeed, “stirring up envy and greed and inflaming hatred” is the stock and trade of communist community organizers.
My great-grandfather often had to stand in front of the village with his head bent, listening to his neighbors and relatives accuse him of wrongdoings that were grossly exaggerated or plain false.
That’s why we love President Trump: he simply refuses to play their game.
Throughout China, landlords and rich farmers were rounded up and executed or sent to labor camps. Local governments confiscated their property and redistributed it to landless and impoverished farmers.
“Oh, it will never be like that here” the neo-communists tell us. The ones who actually believe that are too stupid to vote let alone rule.
Cubans didn’t think it could happen there either, neither did Venezuelans
That’s why those of us who don’t believe it are staunch supporters of the Second Amendment.
In 1953 the Chinese government started a movement to collectivize agriculture. The land that had been handed to poor farmers was gradually returned to the state. By 1958 there was no private land ownership. Private farming was prohibited. Farmers were required to sell their produce to the government at fixed prices; no private sales were allowed. Farmers couldn’t choose which crops to grow. They had to follow the orders of local Communist leaders, many of whom didn’t know much about farming. Crops perished and millions of people starved.
And this is the model the Democrat elitists want to use for our medical system.
I sometimes feel as if I’m back where I came from. I want to scream every time I hear the American left’s eerily familiar slogans: “Make the rich pay their fair share,” “Level the playing field,” “You didn’t build that.” This is the same sort of rhetoric the Chinese Communist Party used against landowners like my great-grandfather. The policies advanced by that rhetoric ruined China’s economy along with millions of lives.
To be specific, Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” caused at least 50-60 million deaths before all was said and done.
The American left offers nothing new. Socialism always begins with a great promise and ends in disaster. It has failed every time and everywhere it was tried.
After an initial blush that looks like success socialism always fails. At that point it’s enforced by the barrel of a gun. Then it's called Communism.
Let’s not throw away American prosperity so that a few leftists can give it another go.
…said no Democrat presidential candidate ever, in this new brave world. They’ve got a hell of a platform, literally. Good luck with that.
Don’t worry, we’ve got this!
Posted from: MOTUS A.D.
Amen (see my tagline)
Oh, not this time! This time it’ll work for sure! You see, in a society like the one we have at present, there’s much more to plunder.
Yet Republican globalist policies on trade, manufacturing and immigration feed right into the socialists plans.....
See MY tag line.
L
Its amusing to ponder how Stalin would have dealt with Bernie Sanders, AOC, De Blasio, Anderson Cooper, Maddow, Warren and the rest.
Something that is true of every other con game and swindle.
Heh. Stalin killed most of the early 1910-1928 Leninist and Trotskyist. Uncle Joe couldn’t stand better Marxists and useful idiots. If commies did take USA over, all of the above would be liquidated.
Those who want Socialism in this country should be required to live in a Socialist country for a year.
Overpromise and underdeliver - every time.
What looks like an easy and “fair” solution to inequities in this world, proves to be anything but. Human nature is pretty much based on sheer avarice, which serves well in times of scarce resources, but leads to bloated overgrowth in times of plenty, when inequities abound. This is when the cries of “Unfair!” and “Greedy pig!” come up, for the few who have accrued wealth beyond any rational measure. The great masses, though they may be relatively comfortable in their access to the goods and services of the world, grow restless with jealousy and envy, and grumble “why does THAT person get all the breaks?”, never once considering that many blessings have already fallen to himself, only that he may be “just like” the guy on the top of the heap.
When the jealousy and envy have smoldered long enough, they burst into white-hot fury and anger, determined to pull down the guy on the top of the heap, regardless of the damage to one’s own cause. And in doing so, only destruction, chaos and grief come in the wake of this personal tantrum, multiplied by many thousands or millions of others who joined the mob and murdered the goose that was laying all the golden eggs.
Some 95% of all personal woe is self-induced.
Great, concise explanation!
The house or apartment you once owned has turned into a cardboard box under the overpass and your car has devolved into a rusty shopping cart with three wheels.
Pretty much matches what socialism does to a nation.
https://acton.org/research/lord-acton-quote-archive
Liberty has not only enemies which it conquers, but perfidious friends, who rob the fruits of its victories: Absolute democracy, socialism.
And my favorite
The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.
Jacques Barzun’s book “500 Years of Western Civilization” - first 100 pages - must read.
It’s a cycle: revolution, followed by ‘uh oh, now what’, followed by self-interest driven collapse, followed by revolution.
It was ever thus.
Great for those conducting the orchestra though
You can vote your way into socialism, but you’ll have to shoot your way out it.
You can Vote your way into Socialism, but you have to Shoot your way out of it.
Two minutes late... Darn.
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