The Great U-Turn - James C. Bennett - National Review Online

An optimistic James Bennett see recent political movements in the US as a u-turn from the socialist lurch experienced over the last several years. American progressives and socialists lean on the demographically indulgent Social Security and Medicare programs as successful and popular accomplishments in the Marxist remake of the American economic and liberty experience. As he correctly identifies here.....

Optimistic progressives pointed to the accomplishments of the New Deal and the Great Society as evidence that the U.S. could and eventually would achieve their full agenda. Social Security was, after all, a universal welfare entitlement, even if it had to be disguised as insurance; Medicare was the seed of a socialized medical system. Many of the eastern and West Coast states had gone farther with the progressive agenda than the country at large. They were the richer and better-educated parts of the country, and were therefore beacons of the future.

However, he also identifies that the whole progressive program actually trades individual liberty for the greater good by centralizing American society in Washington. Indicative of this slippage of rights is one where the Obamessiah seemingly reread what was on the teleprompter in a speech recently, (see the video, here), where he eliminated the mention of the creator in a passage in the Bill of Rights and substituted inalienable rights for unalienable rights. Essentially eschewing the American foundation of personal rights from those we are born with granted by God and replaced with rights granted by government. Remember, those rights granted by government, inalienable rights, can be taken away whereas those granted by God, unalienable rights, cannot.....

For decades — at a minimum, since the beginning of the Progressive Era, and arguably earlier — America had been on a course toward a more centralized society, one in which individualism as it had been understood since before the Founding — a society built on independent families living on their own properties, most of them farms — was being replaced by a different vision. The progressive vision was one of citizens as employees whose existence was mediated by negotiations among large corporations, unions, and government agencies. For such subjects, “rights” were to be a designated set of entitlements granted by those organizations.

I am not so optimistic by this slippage of rights. We are trading essential God given rights of life, liberty and happiness for an encumbrance on our lives and our children's lives to provide these newly granted economic consumption rights. Such programs as Social Security and Medicare will ultimately hold citizens hostage to government arbitrarily allowing citizens to enjoy these economic rights that they supposedly paid for over a lifetime. After paying into these programs for a lifetime, who is going to voluntarily give up these government minted rights? And why will our children voluntarily give up so much of their property, fruits of their labor and economic future just to fulfill the promises that the people collecting these benefits made to themselves through a unaccountable government? It seems to me that it would be foolish for them to do-so except through coercion and seizure of this property.

So, how can this u-turn be effected? At one point, many will have to voluntarily give up property (future economic payments) or these rights that they have dutifully earned or paid for. A whole new world of haves and have-nots will be created. Arbitrarily decided through a central authority that has absolutely no idea how to maximize the outcome for society as a whole. And this gets to the whole central theme of American progressive socialism, the creation of a society where people enjoy the the equality of outcomes and not the equality of opportunity.

I do not believe that that a free people will allow themselves to be held hostage to these socialist nebulous ideals. There will always be those that fight within the political process, as Mr. Bennett optimistically theorizes, but also there will be those that fight outside the political process, such as black market operators and organized criminals, and this includes the prospect of bloody and deadly violence.


The Great U-Turn - James C. Bennett - National Review Online