“Neo-Socialists and You”

By William L. Garvin

“The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of “liberalism,” they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation without knowing how it happened…I no longer need to run as a Presidential candidate for the Socialist Party. The Democrat Party has adopted our platform.”
Norman M. Thomas, 6-time Socialist candidate for the U.S. Presidency

It has been said that a mistake is when a politician tells the truth. Such was the case when Representative John Dingell, (D, Michigan) stated “The harsh fact of the matter is when you're going to pass legislation that will cover 300 [million] American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.” (emphasis added) With apologies to T.S. Eliot, that’s how freedom ends, not with a bang but with a strangling gaggle of regulations and thousands of new pages of bureaucratic gobbledygook in the continually and rapidly expanding government lexicon.

Just as Antonio Gramsci recognized that a true workers’ revolution would never occur in the United States, so have modern progressive/socialists recognized that outright ownership/takeover of all private means of production will not be permitted by the American people. Recognizing this evolution, the American Heritage dictionary defines socialism as “an economic system in which the production and distribution of goods are controlled substantially by the government rather than by private enterprise, and in which cooperation rather than competition guides economic activity. There are many varieties of socialism. Some socialists tolerate capitalism, as long as the government maintains the dominant influence over the economy; others insist on an abolition of private enterprise.” This has resulted in a Socialist split between revolutionaries and reformists. The reformists or neo-socialists are smarter than their predecessors and are achieving many of their goals by rigid regulation and micro-management of increasingly large sections of the private sector.

This exponential expansion of the current Administration is very much like uncontrolled ivy. The tentacles continue to reach out, grow, and spread until they choke out all other living matter. We see on a minor scale that the EPA now is training and registering every private contractor who installs windows and doors in the dangers of lead paint. Without the mandated time, training, and cost, contractors will no longer be able to change your door or window even in the name of energy efficiency. That’s the small scale. This is of course the same EPA that is offering a $2,500 prize of your tax money for the best YouTube video of “why regulation is good”! Then there’s the large scale of ObamaCare which will add 17% of the private economy to the 15% the federal government already controls. The overwhelming bureaucratic nightmare that Dingell refers to will eventually dictate and control huge chunks of the health care and health insurance industry simply by making compliance virtually impossible for private providers. The devil is always in the details, especially when there will be over 100 new federal boards and commissions created by the recently enacted legislation.

Now that the Pelosi “fog of controversy” has passed, maybe she will explain why premiums went up in Massachusetts and Tennessee with their mandated coverage and why the premiums in Massachusetts are the highest in the land. Maybe she will explain why the number of people going to emergency rooms in those states actually increased rather than decreasing as promised. Maybe she will explain why the actual costs were astronomically higher than what was initially projected. How many government projects ever come in under budget? What about the nationalization of student loans? Is it a far reach to suggest there is a significant potential for control and subsequent abuse of who gets aid and subsequently admitted to colleges and universities under the guise of “social justice,” “fairness,” and “redistributing the wealth”?

If you don’t think that’s enough, how about the latest crisis and financial reform bill. Maybe Senator Dodd can explain why we are setting up a $50 billion permanent bailout for banks too big to fail? If they do, taxpayers are on the hook again and government will assume control. These government regulators are the same ones who were asleep at the wheel (or at the porn site) during the last meltdown. And exactly why is it that the new financial reforms do not address Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, two of the biggest financial institutions, and the prime catalysts for the housing meltdown? It is probably for the same reasons that the health care bill did not have any tort reform of significance.

To the neo-socialist, all they have to do is chip away, bit by bit, freedom by freedom. Eventually, through rule and regulation all the little dogs will be driven off by the big dogs. When the big dogs get too big to fail, our elitist government will step in, dismantle them and assume operational responsibility. We see the trial runs with Government Motors and ObamaCare. Next is manufacturing and industry with cap and trade. It’s beginning to look like we shouldn’t even bother to control our borders. After all, there’s always a need for new voter/soldiers in the neo-socialist revolution.