Welcome to Communism

23 Jun 2005 in the late evening Matt Winckler

Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

Abolition of all rights of inheritance.

Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.

Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.

Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.

Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.

– The 10 Planks of Communism, from the Communist Manifesto

In the U.S., we’re well on our way to Communism–by my count, we’re more than halfway there. Today the Supreme Court graciously handed us the precedent for plank #1 on a silver platter by deciding that it’s all right for local governments to sieze your land in the interests of private commercial development. In other words, if somebody decides they’d like to build a strip mall, and your house is in the way, and they can convince city hall to go for it (”we’ll bring in more tax revenue…”), the city can come in and take your house from you whether you like it or not. In return, they will pay you a “tax assessed” value of your home, which may very well be significantly below market value.

A term has been coined for this sort of behavior. That term is “communism”. “Communism” means that the government can come in and redistribute your belongings to other people as it sees fit, and it may or may not recompense you for the trouble–at its discretion. In a truly communist society, there is no such thing as private property. We are rapidly heading toward a truly communist society.

Here is a historical tidbit for you: never in the history of the world has there ever existed a thriving communist society. They all crumble down eventually. There are a great many very good reasons for this, the most obvious of which is that in a society with no private property, no one has any motivation to excel at anything they do. After all, they won’t get to keep the rewards of their work, so there’s no real reason to do it.

I would like to take this opportunity to point out that seven of the nine members of this Supreme Court were appointed by Republicans–”the conservative party”–and this court is considered a “conservative” court. I would like to further point out that the day a political movement saves us from this slide to communism will be the day after hell freezes over and Satan himself hands me a piece of it. Politics, as I pointed out during last year’s election cycle, is a lost cause. It is the tool of the enemy, and it cannot save nor change how a people fundamentally thinks. Only a cultural change can alter a nation’s course, and only the church through the Holy Spirit can drive a cultural change.

We didn’t get here from nowhere, you know. It began with people like Charles Finney, perverting the church for his own personal gains and helping turn Christianity into an irrational, emotional, hocus-pocus circus show of charlatanism–a.k.a. “revivalism”, which naturally led to all sorts of weird and wrong ideas. Among these were the ideas leading to the War of Northern Aggression, which I will not go into here. The result of this unjust war was, among many other things, public education, whose explicit goal was to indoctrinate children so that we could avoid having people “think differently”. It was thinking differently, after all, that resulted in nasty things like the War for Southern Independence. The scourge of communism continued with things like Social Security. (What is Social Security but a government-mandated wealth redistribution program? I pay hundreds of dollars per month for the government to fork over to I-don’t-know-whom, because I’m richer and they’re poorer. Makes sense, doesn’t it?) Rulings like today’s are, unfortunately, very consistent with history. Where will it stop? Literally God only knows.

Incredible.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 23rd, 2005 at 22:29 and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

6 vociferations follow:

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9 hours, 24 minutes after the fact, Pat responded:
Good points Matt. I am so sickened by the Republican party. There doesn’t seem to be a “good side” in our two party system. They both have their pluses and minuses, but when it comes down to it, they’re all a bunch of politicians. And it’s all about power and wealth.

The thing is, you know if there was a vote held today by the public, they would not vote to allow the government to take away private property so that a private business could make more money. They’d be outraged. But the government doesn’t seem to really care what the people think, as long as they think they can still get elected.
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1 day, 4 hours after the fact, Gary Paulson responded:
But Pat, the public would vote to allow the government to take away private property. See that Colliseum in Kennewick? See Safeco Field in Seattle? Think we will get a Water Park here in Kennewick? Those are all items where the government has taken our private property (our money) and used it for a ‘public’ good. The recent vote by the Supreme Court is just an extention of what the government has been doing and with public approval.

Why build a public Water Park? Wouldn’t it be easier to just nationalize the local court clubs? :)
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1 day, 15 hours after the fact, Matt Winckler responded:
Exactly, Gary. The people whose homes were going to be seized would vote “no”, but the public at large only sees a new shiny waterpark and thinks, “I sure like to swim. Why not? It’d be cool! Let’s do it!” This is why democracy does not work, and it is also why in a republic there should be severe limitations on who is allowed to vote. I have not formalized my thoughts, but my opinion on voting requirements runs roughly like this. In order to vote, a person must:
1. Be a head of household. When you think about it, there is no sense in dividing families. Such division is unbiblical in the first place, and impractical in the second.
2. Be a landowner. These are the people paying for government to run; they ought to be the ones given a say in what government does. Joe Schmoe apartment-dweller a few blocks down the road should not be able to raise my property taxes in order to pay for a new school for his children. From a practical standpoint, owning land demonstrates a level of responsibility (fiscal and otherwise) above and beyond non-landowners. This doesn’t mean non-landowners are not responsible, but by and large they haven’t proven it in a significant way.
3. Not be collecting any form of government aid. This includes welfare, social security, student loans, and grants. The conflict of interest is obvious, and once again–I’m the one paying for all this; recipients should not be able to give themselves a raise.
4. Have served in the military. Though I have not served myself, I would readily do so in a society where such service was a requirement for voting. Again, it’s a matter of who is entitled to make the rules. Those who have served will think differently about where they send the active military. I would waive this requirement or replace it with something else for women who are heads of households (i.e. widows).
That’s a start. I’m sure somebody has put my vague thoughts and ideas into a coherent argument somewhere, but I can’t be bothered at the moment to find him. The general argument is that the people who pay for the government ought to be the ones telling it what to do. Career protesters, hippies, welfare-dwellers, and the like shouldn’t have a voice. Everybody is happy to support something that isn’t going to cost them anything significant.

(In the case of the Kennewick water park, it’s my firm opinion that they shouldn’t raise taxes at all. The people who want to use it should pay for it–and I don’t care if that means $70 admission or what-have-you. The fact that they need to publicly subsidize it should tell us something about its economic viability.)
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1 day, 20 hours after the fact, Gary responded:
I heard a proposal once that you got one vote for every $1000 in income tax you paid….
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2 days, 18 hours after the fact, Pat responded:
Ah, but the Bill Gates would run the country. ;-)
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2 days, 18 hours after the fact, Pat responded:
I heard a really interesting program on the radio talking about the recent supreme court ruling on this. The point they were trying to make is how this could be very dangerous for churches. Aparently one town in California was trying to get a church closed down so they could build a Costco in its place. If you think about it, according to the court’s ruling, this is the logical conclusion. Companies bring business to an area, where as a church does not. Therefore businesses can force churches out.

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Welcome to Communism

23 Jun 2005 in the late evening Matt Winckler

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