Category Archives: centralization

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EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 122

The Myth

When I think about the number of our citizens who voted twice for the Progressive agenda of Barack Obama and who probably would give him a third or lifetime term, it is simply frightening. His supporters are not all from the have-nots of our economy, but he couldn’t win without their vote. Those who have bought into the welfare state from need, guilt, or a belief in the paradise that progressives promise they will build in America, will vote for the progressive slate every time they go to the voting poll. Why? What are the factors that allow the progressive myth to live on?

It is a popular version of the Robin Hood myth. From comic books, to classic literature, religious writings from before capitalism, to the barrage of film industry escapism, nearly all villains are wealthy and do terrible things to get richer. This story line is so deep that the celluloid actors and actresses who make millions from acting in these make-believe stories, with a few exceptions, provide funds and personal support to the progressive agenda. They believe in the myth that progressives can build a better society here on earth. Their zeal is matched by that of the people we entrust with the education of our youth. Great American universities have become the spawning grounds of millions of young people who have been fed the progressive myth, semester after semester.

Beyond conservative talk radio, a few television channels and an occasional best-selling book there is no counter-balancing message to the progressive religion. What is the essence, the core belief of this secular religion? There are a number of myths, but the pillar of the progressive church is the myth that human nature can be changed under a rigid leadership of a progressive elite. The elite can pass laws and regulations that will be enforced relentlessly until there is no longer a need for enforcement. People will now live in a society where the principle of distribution of wealth is not dependent on birth or ability or hard work.

There will be no exceptional citizens. Only the ruling elite is exempt from the rules and regulations. There will be no winners or losers. We will all be equal. Individual freedom is sacrificed for the good of all people. This is not theory. It is history for the few who bother to read about the paradise Lenin, Marx, and Stalin brought to Russia, or Mao tse Tung brought to China, or Castro to Cuba. There are many other examples. Several such communities were tried in America. All socialist, progressive, communist societies have failed or are failing. Whatever they call themselves, they all worship the same myth.

The essence of the myth is not complicated. Progressives believe that people cannot be trusted to make life decisions, develop and manage small businesses or large corporations without constant regulation and taxation to distribute wealth to all. To them, all entrepreneurs are evil, self-seeking people who want to exploit their fellow citizens by giving them jobs that further enrich the people who started the businesses. These business leaders then amass political influence and use their power to influence elections.

The major difference between conservatives and progressives is that conservatives believe that the larger government becomes the more dangerous it is to individual freedom. People who run corporations or manage large government agencies or departments are imbued with the same basic human instincts, love, greed, guilt, faults, and the rest of our human limitations. In the progressive myth, private businesses and market functions need extensive regulations. But government by a progressive elite, though also managed by people with the same human instincts, does not need any check or balance. The inherent good sense and wisdom of the progressive elite managers of government will give us paradise on earth.

An over-reaching corporation can be rather easily controlled and, at its worst, will not destroy individual freedom. In government by a perpetual progressive elite there is no individual freedom. Change often requires a revolt by the people. The progressive myth always has an ugly end game. The Obama regime is already acting like a managing one-party-elite. Have you noticed the IRS, Justice, HHS, the EPA, and other federal departments over stepping their traditional limits of authority and, most ominously, the unprecedented use of Executive authority ignoring the Constitutional role of the Congress? Do not believe the myth. It will enslave all of us. If you are a believer in big government, your conservative credentials are severely tarnished.

For more on the progressive agenda, check out my first non-fiction book: “Insights: Transforming America — is this what we fought for?” available at Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

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by Barry Kelly | June 29, 2014 · 10:44 am

by Barry Kelly | January 6, 2014 · 7:30 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS-93 THE ADIVSOR

PREDICTIONS FOR 2014

For the first time in all of his years of sitting in his underground office suite, The Advisor, more out of boredom than anything else, decided to put his predictions for the new year in his Journal. He opened the Journal to a clean new page and began to write.

I am just beginning my sixth year of advising a President who only listens to his own drum. He doesn’t like my straight talk. I believe that is my job to tell him important things that no one else will. As a result he seldom comes to see me. He has had a bad year and knows if he had followed my advice ,both he and the nation would be better off.

It has taken me a while to realize that he does not share my view of the nation or the world. He is like the utopians of our past who believed human behavior could be changed to fit a society based on Karl Marx’s axiom that ‘From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.’ The early utopians in their agrarian progressive compounds all failed, as have all the nation states that have tried the communist or progressive approach to governing people.

Does the President have no understanding of history? It is clear. In modern times, Russia, China, Cuba, Eastern Europe, Germany, and even the United Kingdom all have tried varying degrees of wealth distribution. All the economies failed and individual freedom disappeared when power ended up in the hands of a Progressive elite that used an increasing amount of raw power to coerce people into doing what the elite decided was best for them. There is no other way that increasing centralization combined with one person or a party elite exercising all the power can end up.

So my first prediction is: (1) President Obama will continue to push for a one-party government; (2) the Democratic party will lose badly the mid-term elections and the Republicans will take over the Senate. (That will be okay for the President for he believes two years of a do-nothing Republican Congress will set the stage for a decisive victory in the 2016 National Elections and he may be right.) (3) Iran will have a nuclear weapon before the next national election. (Anyone who believes Iran’s nuclear program is for peaceful uses or that weaklings can deter them by talk are very wrong.) (4) The Affordable Care Act will fail but not before it has done serious harm to the best medical system in the world. Once reconstructed the whole things will look more like Obamacare than a free market system. (5) China and Russia will increase their influence in the world. (6) Before President Obama leaves office, America will begin to feel the impact of unemployment, over-regulation, and inflation. (6) Lastly, radical Islam will show the beginnings of the organization of an Islamic Empire and the isolation of the Israeli Nation.

The Advisor put his pen away and placed the Presidential Journal back in its place. Maybe one of his successors would read it and find it helps them understand the years he was responsible for keeping the real record of every President.

This is a fictional account of an Advisor that doesn’t exist by the author of the Brandon novels. The author (pictured far right) has 27 years of Government service, including two years serving President Ronald Reagan (middle left) in the 1980s as an advisor. Meeting with President Reagan, Vice President Bush, Deputy National Security Adviser Frank Carlucci and General Colin Powell in the Oval Office.

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Filed under centralization, Conservative views, Eight Decades of Insights, foreign policy, Intelligence & Politics, Israel, Obama, Obamacare, political solutions

Tagged as government, new year, Obama, one-party system, Progressive

by Barry Kelly | December 24, 2013 · 8:01 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS-92 THE ADVISOR

TRUST OR NOT?

The Advisor was pacing in his small underground suite of rooms, lamenting that the President seldom came to see him anymore. It wasn’t that he was bored. He had plenty to do. But his main responsibility was to advise the President.

He wasn’t the first Advisor to have limited visits from the sitting President. Most Presidents were a bit thin skinned when it came to listening to criticism they knew was the honest opinion of the Advisor. President Obama ranked close to the top of all the Presidents, going back to President Washington, who established the Advisor institution, when it came to sensitivity to criticism. Presidential visits or not, the Advisor had to keep his journal current. The Advisor changed with Presidential changes and his successors needed an accurate record of the each President’s term. The Advisor before him had left a record of George W. Bush’s term that emphasized his war time decisions and his role in creating a much larger government than he inherited and a bigger national debt.

The Advisor sighed and opened his Journal to the next blank page and began to write.

Big Government is a danger in itself because when the capability of workers exceeds doing what is necessary and essential, honest and diligent workers don’t lobby to have the work force reduced, they invent more tasks that inevitably provide more regulations for the people they were hired to serve. When the natural drive for centralization and growth are accompanied by an Administration that uses the civil work force for their own political objectives, the freedom of all citizens is threatened. How can Americans be expected to trust their government when they have been lied to and seen the IRS be used to target conservative groups to prevent their growth and funding? Now the citizens are expected to believe the information collected by NSA is both necessary and not a threat to liberty.

The real issue is not what NSA collects, it is the use of the information collected. Most citizens will tolerate the NSA collecting what they write or say if it is stored in some secure area where only national security analysts can see the data. The danger to our liberty is that we have a current President that will use any information to benefit his power position. I don’t see how anyone can doubt that conclusion after the IRS was used to target conservative groups, the EPA to kill the coal industry, the Defense and Intelligence Agencies to cover up Ben Ghazi, the security leaks after Bin Laden and the Iranian centrifuges, the Democratic Senate blocking all legislation that doesn’t support his policies, packing the courts to protect the expansion of his executive power, concealing data from HHS that shows the true state of Obamacare … and the list could go on.

Other Presidents from either Party may do the same. If we cannot trust our civil servants to protect the data in their domain, how can we authorize the collectors? Maybe there is a way that a sincere bipartisan effort could find. The defense of liberty and freedom requires eternal vigilance. Without a willingness on the part of government to allow maximum transparency there can be no real vigilance. That is the problem.

This is a fictional account of an Advisor that doesn’t exist by the author of the Brandon novels. The author (pictured far right) has 27

Meeting with President Reagan, Vice President Bush, Deputy National Security Adviser Frank Carlucci and General Colin Powell in the Oval Office.

years of Government service, including two years serving President Ronald Reagan (middle left) in the 1980s as an advisor. Considering today’s volatile political situation, you are encouraged to share this blog and to click the “like” button below. Comments and dialogue are welcome.

Gallup Poll Shows 72% Believe Big Government Greatest Threat To USA (fggam.org)
White House Group Calls For Limits On NSA Surveillance (swampland.time.com)
White House Panel to NSA: Chill (swampland.time.com)

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Tagged as government, nsa, Obama, privacy, trust

by Barry Kelly | October 9, 2013 · 7:30 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS-79 THE ADVISOR

THE ISSUE IS THE ISSUE

It was time for the sun to come up. The Advisor had to turn on his big-screen TV to see it. Every day the world is renewed with this life-giving force. If only everyone could see the sunrise as another chance to do good things. Maybe spending so much time underground has made me more sensitive to the eternal promise of the light pushing away the dark. I’m worried about my mission to advise the President. He seems to have a hard core of anger and missionary zeal to mold America into a nation of equality, fairness, and centralized control. I don’t think he recognizes that universal fairness and equality are good, if unattainable goals, that are possible only with the excesses of centralized control.

The conflicts he has with his political opposition are rooted in the centralized control issue that cannot tolerate individual freedom or the compromises required to govern this nation. He doesn’t see it like that. To him individual freedom where each person strives to do the best they can destroys the building of socialism by an elite group. His dream is to bring about the birth of unqualified equality, not only to America but to the entire world. He believes individual freedom and nationalism must be sacrificed in the journey to a better world.

The President’s devotion to socialism and the teaching of Saul Alinsky that the issue is never the issue prevent him from devoting his talent to the solving of important national and international issues. President Obama can only see issues as opportunities to be used to destroy opposition. The destruction of the opposition clears the way for the building of an equal opportunity society where wealth is distributed by a centralized government. Just like Mr. Alinsky taught in his “Rules for Radicals.” Mr. Alinsky is a brilliant revolutionary but he was never president. His teaching may have guided Mr. Obama to the presidency but it surely does not help him to govern where issues are real. If you don’t solve them, you are held accountable. Cute messaging and flip flopping on nearly every issue, such as the raising of the debt, are hurting the president’s ability to govern. Recall his vote against raising the debt as being unpatriotic during President Bush’s tenure. Inconsistency and the loss of respect for your word damages any leader. This president just doesn’t seem to understand that lesson of history.

I believe he really doesn’t care about how the Affordable Care Act affects the people as long as it puts seven percent of the economy under government control. Nor does he worry about the number of people out of work, or the insecure national borders, foreign affairs, or the increasing cost of welfare. All these issues bring more people under the care of the central government. To maintain the momentum of people coming under government care he must keep spending beyond the nation’s income. An economic crisis will enable him to nationalize more of the economy and destroy the flow of money to the opposition for a competing political agenda.

His plan won’t work in the long run and it will cause great damage to the nation and the American safe harbor for individual freedom which is the bedrock of a free people. I’m the Advisor and I don’t know what to do. I’ll give him the best advice I can but I must also protect the nation. Maybe he will see a better path.

By the author of the Brandon novels. The author has 27 years of Government service, including two years serving President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s as an advisor. Considering today’s volatile political situation, you are encouraged to share this on Facebook and to click the “like” button below. Comments and dialogue are welcome.

Saul Alinsky’s: Rules For Republicans (gopthedailydose.com)
Eight Decades of Insights-78 the Advisor (factsandfictions.com)
Ten Ways Republicans Are Giving President Obama A Taste Of His Own Alinsky (forbes.com)
Saul Alinsky-Affiliated Nonprofit Lands $56M Fed Loan (theblaze.com)

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Filed under Alinsky, centralization, class warfare, Conservative views, Eight Decades of Insights, Intelligence & Politics, Obama, political solutions, Progressives, Utopian

Tagged as Alinsky, Barack Obama, government, Obama, Radicals, Rules for Radicals, Saul Alinsky, United States

by Barry Kelly | September 12, 2013 · 10:53 pm

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 75-THE ADVISOR

FOREIGN POLICY?

The President had just entered the Advisor’s underground office. It was a surprise visit. The Advisor was alerted that the President was on his way down to the tunnel between the White House and the Treasury Department. The Advisor’s office was off an unused and restricted branch off the main tunnel. Access to the Advisor and the secret location was now controlled by the Secret Service. The existence of the Advisor and his location was the best-kept secret in the nation.

The President took his customary seat at the small conference table and said, “I need to clear my thinking about Syria and foreign policy in general. I don’t really like your advice but it does help me think through through problems.”

“Mr. President, my mission is to help you. If my advice helps your thinking about problems, that’s good. What specifically do you want to cover tonight?”

“A few weeks ago you asked me what I meant by the phrase, ‘Transform America.’ Telling you my thoughts re transformation clarified my thinking. Today I want to talk about my vision of America in the world.”

“I’m the smallest audience a President ever had for such a topic. I am honored. Please, your audience is ready.”

“People say I came to the White House with very little experience. To some extent that is true. My actual experience with managing huge organizations or in leadership roles is nonexistent. But I bring other skills no other President had. I was a practicing Muslim when I was very young. It is a very different religion from Christianity or any other world religion. More is expected from the believer. Free thinking is discouraged. There was no reformation in Islam. The individual, the family, and the Nation are all one. Islamic law is the law. Religion and country are not separate. I am no longer a Muslim but I know what they feel and think. I doubt if any previous President could make that statement.

“My father was not an American. He was a true Kenyan nationalist, as was his family. They did not sit around and hope things would change. They worked and struggled for change. To me change is part of the result of hope and struggle. I understand the process. I was also exposed to collectivist theology when I was very young.

“To me the sacrifice of individualism or the freedom of the individual must give way to the greater good of collectivism. You may think that this is a strange way to explain my foreign policy objectives. But it isn’t. In place of the individual put a single nation state. Now what is different? The freedom of a single nation must give way to the collectivist’s better world. America has dominated the world since World War II. The only change is that America became more powerful and wealthy while the rest of the world fell far behind. When I came to power the United States was the only super power.

“I believe that is wrong. It is wrong for an individual or a group of individuals to control wealth and power in a single country just as it is wrong for one nation to control more than its fair share of the world’s resources and power.

“My foreign policy plan is to gradually spread America’s wealth to other nations and to slowly weaken the power of the United States military to dominate the world. I do not want America to become energy self-sufficient.

“There will be no pipeline bringing oil from Canada to our refineries. Canada does need more wealth. The Muslim world does. If they cannot sell their oil, they will be lost. Buying oil from OPEC, borrowing money from China, climate control and Cap and Trade, pushing our manufacturing to other countries, keeping taxes high – all these policies are spreading America’s wealth. Domestically my goal is to destroy the ability of families to accumulate great wealth. Very high death taxes are the way to do that. But back to foreign policy.

“When we become a more humanitarian, less wealthy nation and reduce our stockpile of conventional and nuclear weapons, other nations will be more willing to join with us to better the entire population of the world. In theory the same process and theory used to spread the wealth among the American population, can be used to spread America’s wealth throughout the world. One world, one people, one God is not an idle dream. I know I can’t achieve all this in three more years but a series of Progressive Presidents, and Congresses can. I have always known I was a citizen of the world. What do you think?”

“Mr. President, if that is your dream, it doesn’t matter what I think.”

“No. I need to hear your comments.”

“You must know that what you have described is not new. It is an Utopian plan that has been tried in both small- scale models within the United States and in countries such as, Russia, China, Germany, Cuba, Eastern Europe, a few nations in Africa, and England. When people see the Utopia they sacrificed for, they haven’t liked what they saw. The problem is Collectivism requires management by an elite, chosen by whatever process. The management challenge presented by collectivization is too great for any elite structure.

All elites in history who have had total control over the economy, the people, the courts, police, and military have succumbed to corruption. The term power elite describes the problem. Mr. President, look at your own Administration. It is an elitist structure. Where is the transparency you promised? You are an elitist yourself. You know what is good for the people better than they do. ‘They will not be able to understand Ben Ghazi. So why tell them?’ All the unprecedented incursions of individual freedoms by Executive decree, the disdain you have shown for the Constitution and the courts. Your unwillingness to work with the Congress.

“I see I’ve struck a nerve. I am not trying to insult you, but I am trying to cause you to rethink collectivism as a goal, domestically and internationally. You may have some immediate successes but I fear failure will be your final result with great damage to the America you were elected to guide.”

“I thought you, as an old black man, would understand what I’m trying to do.”

“Someday, I’ll tell you my story. Thank you, Mr. President for being so honest with me. I do have your best interests as my mission.”

The President finished his coffee, stabbed out his cigarette and let himself out.

The author has 27 years of Government service, including two years serving President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s as an

advisor. Considering today’s volatile political situation, you are encouraged to share this on Facebook and to click the “like” button below. Comments and dialogue are welcome.

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