First Posted 06-Jul-2015
Greece voted to reject the European Union’s offer of a third bailout. Instead, their socialist prime minister said he could get a better deal from the EU having turned down this deal. I can’t help feeling that Greece is behaving like a recalcitrant teenager who has had his iPhone taken from him/her (shim/sher?). There are countries, cultures that are in an angry, self-indulgent mood, Greece being one. What they want from us is more. More what? More whatever, more money, more legal intoxicants, more docile women, more bread, more circuses. It’s still early Friday night and for them, the rave is still ramping up.
In this country we’ve had a president who has said we have a civil right to more of whatever we want. Want to smoke marijuana legallly? Sure. Insist that medical care should be free? Sure. Let LBGT monitor lizards marry? Absolutely. Don’t forget the pythons, they have rights too. We have an effective dictatorship by a minority that lives in the northern midwest and northeast. There is some of this voting majority in California, Washington & Oregon as well. This self-indulgent elite keeps telling us that they are for the peeepul, for us, and claiming that the problems we face are centered around the rich having too much, the poor having too little, and our failing to be permissive with the seven deadly sins. We should and do, celebrate LBGT marriages and relationships as the new norm, celebrate drug addiction as progress, and force the cops into impotent submission.
This is the new orthodoxy, the new religion. All hail Emperor, Living God and HRH Obummer. There should be 20 hour work weeks, 2 hour paid lunches, 8 weeks of paid time off, strict work rules defining every aspect of our time at our jobs, full employment for those that want to work regardless of our performance, free education, free medical care, and free passes to the theme park of our choice. We should open our borders and allow as many Mexicans as possible in, give them free housing and all the rest of the offered perks of life in the Free Democratic Republic of Berkeley. It’ll be great because they’ll vote Democratic and ensure a socialist dynasty to outlast our lives. And our lawns will look spectacular.
Never discussed is the experience of the French, the Greeks, the North Koreans and other socialist dictatorships where the price of all these perks is a severe limit on freedom and perpetual economic strife. Nor the experience of those who lived under Communist rule in the former USSR, where shortages of everything were the norm for those who didn’t do business in the black market. Third, the experience of China, who saw an economic explosion of growth once the ruling Communist party allowed capitalism to do what it does best. There is as I write this, at least two concurrent economies in Cuba, the peso economy and the dollar economy. Under the peso economy there is rationing and shortages. Under the dollar economy things are expensive but far more available. This is the utopia being offered to us as a more perfect nation.
In most cities in this country there is public housing. Some of the people living in our public housing are on disability. We, the taxpayers, pay for their room, board, medical care and pretty much everything they need/want. This is the socialist utopia being marketed to us as a more perfect life. What do my friends, who live in public housing want? Out. They want to be off the dole, paying rent or a mortgage, clean, sober, independent. If things were so perfect in public housing, why would they want to leave? Within our public housing, where everything is paid for, the black market thrives. You can get everything for a price. Drugs? Yep. Sex? Absolutely. Movies & Music. All you want. Just keep the cops out and ignore illegality or the source of your acquisition. Public housing, which is intended to be an act of mercy and a hand up instead of a hand out, ends up being a roiling, festering wound on a city, full of rot and crime.
This is pitched to us as a better life. This is what billary wants for us. I am voting Republican this election. I fear it will be pointless, that the billary mashup will be Bush/Clinton again and we’ll have another 4 years of slick Willie loose in the White House without the small limits of needing to behave as President. Things were bad enough under Obummer. His disregard for the rule of law has been stunning. Hillary, elected, will be far worse. She is the architect of Obummer Care. She wants to go further, to socialized, single payer medical care run by the government. Bush, though, won’t be much better. If we elect Bush, it will be further confirmation that we have forgotten the reasons why we became a nation in favor of a socialist dictatorship. It will be proof that an era of dynastic rule has become the norm. Our nearly 240 year experiment with rule under a democratic republic will have ended. Welcome to our brave new world.
I’m still voting Republican. It’s a choice between a slim chance of change and no chance of change. As narrow a vote for change that my vote will be, at least it is a vote for change. It needs to be Sunday afternoon, when we realize that the promises of our populist, socialist politicians are impossible to realize without severe negative consequences. I feel for the people of Greece. They have been sold down the river by their politicians. As painful as it may be, the best thing for them is to have their participation in the Euro and the European Union end. Then maybe we’ll get the hint and vote for grownups who realize that limited, effective government is better for us than the massive, ineffective government we have.