Tag Archives: Progressives

by | August 7, 2014 · 7:35 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 137

FREEDOM OF CHOICE

The real result of all far-left ideologies, be they communism, socialism, or Obama’s progressivism, is their impact on the choices left to other groups, organizations, and individuals. Far-left ideologies all have the goal of establishing a one-party system of government to manage the affairs of business, education, health, industry, justice, the military, and individuals. The progressive government is controlled by a small group of the progressive elite. The driving force is that the elite progressives “know what is better for everyone.” They are not evil. They just believe that the only way to establish their version of heaven on earth is to take control of all aspects of society. This is where they get their willingness to constantly use any means to accomplish the end: “a much better and fairer life for all.”

The very essence of progressivism is to control choice because they believe it is chaos when people are free to chose their life’s occupation, their education, reading material, TV programs, news, religion, ways of raising children, including the choice to have children or not, health care, and the people who govern them. The current struggle in America between conservatives and liberals (the far-left liberals are progressives who now control the Democratic Party) is not over some obscure political difference. It is over who makes life’s choices, you or a progressive elite.

Progressives and communists hate what capitalism and the free market stand for. They do not believe the forces of the free market are real and think greed is the only driving force of capitalism. Progressives will not believe the infinite number of choices made by a free people in a free competitive economy can result in anything but chaos. Instead, a small group of progressives can make better economic decisions that will produce a vastly more efficient economy and much fairer distribution of wealth.

The promise of freedom is the existence of choices. Without individual choices there is no freedom. Those of us who have lived seven or eight decades have seen, sometimes up close and personal,  societies where the basic choices Americans exercise every day were unheard of or only imagined. The Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China, Cuba, Vietnam, and some South American nations have tried various far-left ideologies. In every one of them personal or individual choices vanished.

The last remaining choice is to fight the system. Not many take that choice. All isms can be measured by the choices made by an elite and those made by the people.  North Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh, probably the best political organizer of the 20th century, had North Vietnamese people organized into to a cascading staircase of political, economic, and social organizations. Everyone belonged to a peer organization with each peer group sending a delegate to the next higher group. There was no real individual choice.

All of the socialist, communist, or progressive one party elites are more or less the same. The more mature the system becomes the more extensive its choice making. Let’s look at a few of those. Take education. The elites decide what schools and courses will be available, who will be selected to go to what school, and what each will study. The same elites will decide what doctor, what hospital, what treatment is authorized, where people can live, what size of apartment, what will be grown on the farms, what industries will be allowed, and what each will produce in both quality and quantity. Some even decide how many children a couple can have. Internal travel and trips to other countries is strictly controlled.

When you lose your individual freedom, you lose the right to make most of life’s choices. The elites will look after you. When you think about something conceptual like freedom, think instead about the right of making choices being taken from you and your family. Don’t be taken in by the words. They don’t mean anything. Remember, “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.” Without choice all hopes are narrowed.

Don’t be uniformed. READ “INSIGHTS : Transforming America — Is This What We Fought For?”  Now in paperback for $9.95 and kindle free at Amazon. Help spread the message.

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Filed under Barry Kelly, Capitalism, Conservative views, Eight Decades of Insights, Intelligence & Politics, Obama, Politics, Progressives

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by | July 28, 2014 · 8:20 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 133

VETS AND TRANSFORMING

There is something about duty and honor that all veterans understand. It starts with “who can I trust to have my back and who keeps their word?” Those who fail those two measurements don’t serve with duty and honor. They just do the time and collect the retirement pay.

veteransI have to be careful here, for it has been a long time since I saw a gun fired in anger and attitudes change. I can’t get inside the head of a young veteran who is  three or four decades younger than I am. But I can speculate on the issues they are facing. The big one concerns their ability to provide for themselves and their families. Thousands of well-trained, battle-savvy soldiers, sailors, Air Force personnel, and Marines will be summarily discharged by a commander-in-chief who dislikes and distrusts the American military. He has traveled the world apologizing for their actions over the last several decades.

The damage to the security of America caused by this unjustified downsizing is bad enough but the hardship this progressive ideology places on our best citizens, current and future, is a national tragedy. It is also dishonorable. The secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs should resign rather than preside over President Obama’s ideological motivation to make American more equal to the rest of the world. Active duty troops discharged against their wishes is despicable treatment for their service. Troops facing this surprise attack must resent the leaders who betrayed them.

Where will they find employment? Medical care for them and their dependents?  From a dysfunctional VA? This government-run service has been operating since the Civil War. It is an ironclad example that the no government can or should run a large medical system. Once Obamacare takes hold, we will ALL be in a VA-like system. At least we will be sharing that hardship with our veterans. The high odds of newly discharged veterans finding employment commensurate with their needs are not likely to improve under Obama’s anti-business administration. Training programs are of questionable use and unemployment compensation does end. Will our veterans discharged for a president’s ideological whim view their predicament as anything but the government’s breaking of a promise? I hope they will use their talents and skills to elect a government that will keep its promises.

The Republican Party needs to outline what it will do for these troops. The best plan would be to cancel Obama’s plans to severely cut military troop levels. Next in line would be to pass a G.I. education bill that will enable all who have kept their part of the bargain to get an education that will make them employable in the civilian economy. Unless the Senate and the White House are retaken by the Republican Party, I’m afraid we will find our young veterans turning to food stamps and other government subsidies. Having our veterans become dependent on the government is fine with the progressive ideology of the president and his closest advisers. Is it okay with you?

Read “INSIGHTS Transforming of America  Is this what we fought for?”

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by | July 23, 2014 · 7:35 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 132

YOUNG, HOPEFUL, AND WAITING

It’s been a long time since I was young, hopeful, and waiting for good things to come along. So please cut me some slack if and when I get too far off base. Republicans, Democrats, and whatever else weren’t even part of my fears, hopes, or wishes when I was young. By young, I mean those of you who are between 18 and 28. I doubt any of my blog readers are in that age group. I hope so, but doubt it. You don’t have the draft to simplify your life’s plans or those of the next six months. I think many of us used the draft and the armed forces as a place and time to grow up or, at least, wise up. We had no worries about getting a job right out of high school or college. Uncle Sam had plans for us and he paid for our time. Beyond that, for some of us he paid for our undergraduate education and in my case, a graduate degree as well. So people in their early- to mid-twenties graduated without debt and with several jobs to pick from. I don’t think anyone in my class of ’59 at PITT had less than four of five real employment interviews and two or three real jobs opportunities. No one had to go back home to live because they couldn’t find employment.

Contrast that with today’s young graduates five-plus years into the transforming of America. First the college seniors: you are probably deep in debt from getting a so-so education; few of you have employers coming on campus to beg you to consider working with them; you are not even sure where you will be living in the six months after graduation; most of the possible jobs are well below your hoped-for job level. The challenge of those jobs is to try and live on your salary. Getting married, raising a family, buying a new car, looking at real estate is part of a dream. It sure isn’t reality. Your medical insurance requires bigger monthly payments than the monthly mortgage payments your parents paid. Right after graduation some kind of transportation and auto insurance is as far as you can stretch. You don’t want to quit. That is no option for you. But the world is really unfair.

You just graduated from a place where most of your professors probably supported the progressive Obama administration. Is ‘progressive’ a bad word? It is the word a radical revolutionary, Saul Alinsky, adopted to replace the words “communism” and “socialism.” Those words just don’t sell well in America. Many of your professors were actively in favor of Obama’s plan of transforming America. They were in favor of hope and change. Great words but only if the hope becomes real and the change is acceptable. You see, the world has never been fair. Nobody owes you anything. Harsh, but true. The progressives want you to think the government is responsible for all your problems.

For those of you who could not afford or didn’t want to go to college, you have your own problems finding jobs that pay well. It is even harder. You’re expected to fill mostly service jobs. You know a college education is not for everyone. In America many people without degrees have created businesses, raised strong families, and held important management jobs in towns, cities, and states across America. The progressive ideology hurts you just as much as anyone. Nearly all the problems, both you and your college-educated peers face on a daily basis, are because of the policies of President Obama that do not provide an environment that encourages economic growth. President Obama’s economic recovery plan has not worked and will not work. In truth, the job market gets worse every year. Don’t believe the government’s employment figures. They are not real numbers. Just ask your friends who have been looking for good jobs and finding none. The affect of transforming America on you is that you do not now have a job commensurate with your education or current needs and probably won’t until the transforming process stops and the fixing process begins. Until then you are being made increasingly dependent on government support and that is the  intent of the progressives.

Like it or not.

Read “INSIGHTS Transforming America  Is this what we fought for?”  

By the author of the Brandon adventure/mystery novels.

 

 

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EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 129

IS THE PRESIDENT INEPT?

President Obama, photo by the New York Daily News.

President Obama, photo by the New York Daily News.

Many people, including many political scholars and sitting elected officials, often describe the president as inept, clueless, unengaged, and a poor leader. Yet President Obama has bested them in every conflict. He lurks in a cloud of disinterest and mind-numbing bumbling.

If that is your image of President Obama, you are wrong.

Here is a man from a modest economic background. He grew up without family connections that would assure his future. Barack Hussain Obama was raised  mostly by a single mother. He was surrounded by people who leaned far to the left. Somehow this young black man with a white mother got into and graduated from prestigious American universities. His grades are not public but we have to assume he was educated well. It is hard to attend Columbia and Harvard universities without embracing a far left political ideology.

At some point in this educational journey, he found his way to the teaching of Saul Alinsky, a brilliant American revolutionary intellectual. (Read his book Rules for Radicals if you think otherwise.)  Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton found their respective ways to Saul Alinsky’s revolutionary ideology by different paths, but both today are practicing progressives. (That term is one Alinsky thought was more acceptable in America than Socialism or Communism). Let’s agree that a stupid or inept man could not have gotten into and graduated from Columbia and Harvard with a law degree. Nor could a clueless, incompetent man make his way to the Illinois Senate, the U.S. Senate and finally become a two-term president.

The reason Republican intellectuals and elected politicians think he is inept is that they don’t understand the rules he plays by. They focus on problems and issues that need to be solved for the good of the nation or, more narrowly, their political party. President Obama does not focus on the same problems or issues. He is above that. Problems will always be with us. The proper use of problems according to Obama and Saul Alinsky is to use the issues that are associated with or come from the national problems to destroy your political opponents. Once you have destroyed the opposition and seized power, then you can fix America’s problems by establishing a one-party socialist government run by a progressive elite. The process is called Transforming America. Heard that before? Maybe from President-Elect Obama’s ordination speech in Chicago.

I believe the president must be astonished that his opposition has not yet figured out his game plan. I believe the progressive plan is so simple yet unique in American politics that lifetime politicians cannot grasp that Obama does not now care a whit about immigration, jobs, health care, education, foreign policy, terrorism, energy, military force size, debt, nor any other issue important to present and past political leaders. He or his successor will focus on those issues once they established a strong socialist state.

InsightsI have written the only book I know of that explains President Obama and the progressive game plan point by point or issue by issue. President Obama is not just a worse Jimmy Carter. He is a political type we have never before seen in America. He has no love or even an identification with the greatness of America and will destroy everything Americans have fought for since we arrived on these shores.

Read: INSIGHTS: Transforming America — Is this what we fought for?

By the author of the Brandon adventure/thriller novels.

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by | July 16, 2014 · 7:30 am
by | July 13, 2014 · 7:34 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 127

OBAMA’S BORDER

Governor Perry of Texas,  whom I respect, said President Obama is either inept or has an ulterior goal. He may be inept but it is hard to tell when you are dealing with a president who does not govern by solving problems. There is no measuring stick. This president is very far outside the American mold for leaders.

It is not that he doesn’t recognize issues. He can smell an issue before it even becomes an issue. In fact he is very capable of creating issues that he can manipulate to achieve his ulterior goals. What is so hard about a border? Every nation has them. Leaving the Great Wall of China aside, most nations have exercised border control to keep people from leaving rather than to keep people from getting in.

America is rather unique. Our problem is securing our borders so we can decide who should come in from the millions of people who want to. And because we are who we are — a nation that believes in individual freedoms and the rule of law — we cannot use lethal force to protect our borders from people who want to be citizens. The solution, in theory at least, sounds doable: Establish a border that stops everyone and allows at the same time for approved applicants to enter either for seasonal work periods or to begin the process for citizenship, a process requiring learning English, a knowledge of our history, and a respect for our law.

Immigration is a good thing. We need the workers at all levels. Our nation’s birthrate is not high enough to sustain a vigorously growing economy after the taxers, wealth distributors, regulators, and hate-America administration is long gone. Enforcing borders is a solvable problem and even the Obama team is maybe up to the challenge.

Here’s the catch: The border issue is too useful to progressives for Obama to solve. The border issue can destroy the Republican Party (which is what Obama’s main goal is). Send the Republican House a request for several billion dollars so Homeland Security and the Justice Department can cope with the humanitarian  part of the border problem. The Republican House leadership may figure out this is not the way to solve the current border problem and refuse to allocate the funds. Which is exactly what the progressives running the country want. Then the border human tragedy becomes the fault of the Republican House who, judging by past actions, probably will not recognize the trap.

To avoid the trap, the House should send up their own allocation of funds that is addressed to solve the border issue. Obama may not be able to veto the border funding bill.

Yes, the president always has an ulterior agenda, but it can be defeated with some common sense and toughness. The progressives don’t have to win on the border issue their leader caused and they won’t if the Republican leadership and border governors work together to solve the border problem. I have a lot more faith in the border governors than I do in the Republican congressional leadership.

 

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