Posted on 12/18/2009 10:25:35 PM PST by Xottamoppa
Creeping Socialism: The Political Kudzu of Our Time SWD
Another autumn closes and each tree with the distinctive leaf, shape, tone and tint of its individual species adds an inimitable beauty all its own to the forest of which it is a specialized part. The oak is not the elm; the elm is not the ash; nor the ash the maple. A singular splendor unique to each variety sets apart and distinguishes it from every other. Yet in concert, the solitary glory of each enriches the full symphony that is the forest.
As any traveler in the South knows, however, the harmonic combination and contrast of North America’s rich native woodland diversity is threatened by a prodigiously aggressive vine known as kudzu.
The large-leaved climber was imported from Japan for Philadelphia’s 1876 Centennial Exposition, extolling American independence. Later, Franklin Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps employed an army of hundreds in planting kudzu to prevent soil erosion while taxpayers paid farmers up to eight dollars an acre to sow it by the field. Washington persisted in promoting kudzu until 1953. Environmental insurance, don’t you know.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture declared its kudzu a weed in 1972 but, as with all beltway wisdom, it was too little too late. The parasite had virulently spread all across the South and most herbicides actually fed the pestilent monster. A single plant can take a decade to kill. Over seven million acres of our native deciduous forests have now been swallowed whole by an insatiable malignant vine that obscures the shapes, colors and diversity of individual tree species into one shapeless monochromatic universal melt.
Like kudzu, Socialism invariably lumps, melts, levels down and pools. Marxism is all about the collective herd; the Village, not the Citizen. All must conform---the State permits no exceptions. Just as kudzu leeches its nourishment from the trees it overtakes while denying them the sun’s rays, the expansive parasite of the State in its one-size-fits-all coercive schemes blankets, covers, smothers the individuality of the sovereign citizen.
Founded on the right of each man to have his own mind, till his own field, raise his own family and live his own way on his own acre, this Republic is rapidly degenerating into a fascist monocracy with only ein volk, ein reich, ein führer. There is but one "right" point of view about socialized medicine---the Administration’s. All opposed shall be fined or arrested.
No, seriously! Under the Senate version of the pending bill, those who choose not to purchase the consumer good of insurance may be fined $25,000 and imprisoned for one year. (Five years, per another version.) Section 5000A. of the Senate version even lists children's rates---minors fined half price! All comrades must carry insurance papers. Bow to Washingrad’s Health Czar or be shipped to the Gulag. Independence is a crime. Where the State is god, dissent is heresy, a capital sin against Glorious Leader. Nein! Das ist verboten!
I am uninsured by choice. Though once I had insurance, I reached a personal conclusion that it is a form of gambling my conscience forbids. Readers need not understand nor agree. In America, a man has a right to look at the facts (or not), to draw his own conclusions, and is free to act in accordance with his principles, with or without a reason others deem "good".
Insurance is but one application. Insert here what is not negotiable to you. The overarching principle at stake is our God-given natural right to be right---or to be wrong; to be eccentric, or ignorant or stupid and to suffer the consequences of our own stupidity. It is no one else’s business.
As Thomas Jefferson said, "To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical." Against God’s law ("sinful") and against natural law ("tyrannical").
By what authority must Christians be taxed to fund abortions they consider sin? Why must Jehovah’s Witnesses who abhor blood transfusions be taxed to pay for yours? Nearly 200,000 Amish Americans believe that having insurance is founding one’s life on fear, not on faith in God. Shall we herd all the Mennonites into cattle cars and ship them off to concentration camps? Simply being Jewish became a capital crime overnight under the Nazi incarnation of this thinking.
The Constitution does not and can not empower Congress to compel individual Americans to purchase canned soup, skateboards, insurance or fine art as the charter is a limitation on Congress by the People. The Tenth Amendment bars Congress from any such oily legal innovations, confining it to only those powers expressly delegated by the States or the People. Neither I nor my State delegated any such power.
Where is the Senate’s reply? Is there no representation in Congress for those of us who exercise our "right to choose"? And if not represented, why comply with taxation?
Americans hold an inherent right to live our lives by the light of our own choosing. Our Bill of Rights was expressly adopted to safeguard the individual’s private interests against society. That is the antithesis of the political kudzu of Collectivism which invariably seeks to dissolve the individual under an ever-expanding parasitic canopy of universal standardization. Hereby hangs a timely cautionary tale as Americans weigh the inadvisability of surrendering to Washingrad anything as vital as the health of our loved ones or as dear as our liberty to make personal choices.
There are no forests without trees, but what tree needs a forest?
See also: http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2409410/posts#comment
Excellent! Hear hear!
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