April 2018 Volume 56
What is fake and what is real? fake stories, fake events, fake scandals, fake people, fake documents,
fake videos, fake facts
Understanding the world around us has been made extremely difficult in recent years. Reading headlines is not enough to know what is happening in the world around you. Circumstances, timelines and context are lost. Often what worse is those who attempt to correct the record are accused themselves. Due to the use of social media, news and stories are often only found there and trusted. Trust and distrust manifests and the era of social division expands.
It is time to go backwards and have real conversations with each other, face to face. Texting and clicking is to cheat ourselves of relationships, truth and a wholesome human experience. We cant be lazy in the quest of achieving truth as we soon don’t know the truth from the fake news.
Watchmen of America is an organization built for expanding the human experience across the country for the sake of what is real and needed to thrive in an environment of chaos and unrest.
•Take any precautions you can. If the fire is rapidly approaching, you may not have time to take any precautions to protect the structure. However, if time permits, there are a number of things you can do to keep the building as safe as possible. Shut off any and all fuel lines, including propane, natural gas, and oil.[24]
•Move curtains and fabric-covered furniture away from windows and sliding doors. If the glass breaks, you do not want anything flammable near the window/door.[25]
•Remove any combustible objects from the yard, especially gas grills and fuel cans, and discard them as far from your structure and any nearby structures as possible.[26] You should also move any stacks of firewood as far from the building as possible.[27]
•If time permits, trim grass and vegetation as low to the ground as possible around the building and any external propane tanks. This will help reduce the combustible material that would allow the fire to reach you or the fuel source. More here: https://www.wikihow.com/Survive-a-Wildfire
https://www.ready.gov/wildfires
800 pound gorilla in the room, who is representing you in Washington DC?
Have you given real thought to who is representing you in Congress? Heck, do you know that representative’s name? It all comes down to the census and districts. Each congressperson has a constituency of 700,000 people. Is that effective? Some districts are made up of sanctuary cities, meaning that population is foreign. Does that seem right? In rural areas like southern Texas, a representative can have a huge land area due to the sparse population. What is the solution? There are 435 members of the House of Representatives, is that enough given population increases? Does this whole representative operation today work effectively? Should there be a change? Can it change? Would it affect the Electoral College process? Is there consent of the governed? Do we even know what our representatives are doing, that is if we even know their names? Maybe we have lots of gorillas in the room. The 2020 Census is upon us and many new questions are now included that have organizations and citizens upset. Should we ask questions like: Are you a U.S citizen? Are you in a same sex marriage? Are you legally permitted to have a job in the United States? How many people are receiving entitlements?
What do we know, what don’t we know and what should the government know?
Even in gun-free America, most of us aren't shooting
things as part of our day-to-day routine. So most
Americans actually know very little about guns.
Hollywood writers realized this a long time ago and,
being writers, used it as an excuse to never do any
fact-checking ever again.Handguns aren't the only things you can silence. Giantfreaking shotguns can even be fitted with a special silencer that renders them inaudible in quiet suburbanneighborhoods.Also, while silencers look all slick and expensive and fancy, Hollywood depicts that pretty much any long, hollow tube will do the job. Grab a two-liter bottle, stuff it with socks or something, and you can be just as dangerous as Mark Wahlberg in the movie Shooter.
The Myth:
Cautious spies and assassins know that if you're going to
take out a bad guy in an office, library, or in a bedroom
without waking everyone in the house, be sure to use a
silencer. It turns the concussive "bang" into a neutered
"ptew."
#5. Silencers Turn Gunfire Into a Gentle Whisper
The Problem:
Exploding gunpowder is loud. Really loud. As loud as a jet engine, depending on the caliber. A
little metal tube won't do a whole lot
to stop that.
An un-silenced gunshot is around 140 to 160 decibels--that's in the range where hearing it once
can permanently damage your ears.
If you've never had a gun go off next to you, trust us when we say it's loud enough that your
whole body will flinch at the sound of it
and your ears will definitely be ringing profusely. A silencer can get that all the way down to 120
or 130 decibels, aka the sound of a
jackhammer. Still loud enough to cause physical pain if it's close enough to you.
So a silencer really just makes a large gun sound like a smaller gun. If you're James Bond and
are sneaking into the enemy's
compound with a silenced pistol, you're basically hoping the guards will decide your gun is too
small and wimpy to be a serious
threat, and leave you be.
So why do silencers even exist? Well, if you're in an outdoor, noisy environment, they can make
quite a bit of difference. Specifically,
they make it really hard to tell where exactly the shot is coming from, or how far away it is.
Let us sum it up: It still sounds like a freaking handgun. It does not make a soft thud that you
could mistake for a kitten landing on
a pillow.
#4. Machine Guns are Magical Death Machines
The Myth:
It's an old joke by now that nobody runs out of bullets in action
movies
(unless it's suddenly convenient to the plot, that is). Hollywood
shows
some restraint with revolvers--usually no more than 10 or 11
shots per
six-shot cylinder--but damn, do they go hog-wild with anything
that fires
full-auto. So much so that that most of us have wound up with
an
utterly ridiculous concept of how those guns work. They're
seriously
depicting these things firing a hundred times more bullets than
they can
actually hold.
Because you can't actually see the bullets in a machine gun,
Hollywood takes this as a blank check to treat the inside of
a gun as a magical bullet factory. So in Commando we see
Arnold fire without changing magazines for what seems like
half of the movie:
The Problem:
If you've watched a news broadcast about U.S. troops in
Iraq, or played Modern Warfare, you've seen these guns:
That's an M4 Carbine. It holds 30 bullets in a standard
magazine, and an AK-47 that also holds 30 bullets in it's
standard magazine.
AK-47
M4
These weapons empty their magazines after only four seconds. That's because fully-automatic
weapons fire really friggen fast-- around 700 rounds per minute. Only you don't have 700
rounds in the gun, you have 30. So, do the math.
In fact, a U.S. infantryman only carries approximately 210 rounds total, which means a battle
conducted with full-auto machine gun fire would be over in less than a minute even if you count
the time it takes to switch about 7 magazines.
Fortunately, they fire on full-auto so rarely, .....that many of the military's rifles don't even have
that capacity.
"But wait!" you say, "I've seen war footage from Vietnam and Iraq and everywhere else and you
can totally hear machine fire chattering in the distance at all times. Somebody's using it,
dammit!"
That's true, they're just not shooting people with it. Full-auto is only really used for suppression
fire, that is, to make the bad guys duck their heads and hunker down while your people
maneuver into position. In fact, virtually all bullets are used for this. For each insurgent killed in
Iraq and Afghanistan, 250,000 shots are fired that hit absolutely nothing.
About three tons of ammunition for every one dude killed. Picture Arnold lugging that shit
around.
#3. Bulletproof Vests Are Magical Force Fields
The Problem:
In the real word, the vest that protected Back to the Future's Emmett
Brown from the terrorists would only have been
useful for its ability to keep all of his bits in one convenient (for the mortician) package. In fact, despite an additional 25years of armor development, no body armor today would be able to protect Doc from that kind of assault.
The Myth:
Somehow your best laid plans have gone awry, and now a bunch of
Libyans in a Volkswagen van are out for your blood. They plan to
shoot you repeatedly with their AK-47s,
but you have an ace in the hole: a bulletproof vest.
In movies, body armor (made from a material called Kevlar) turns
most guns from magical death-wands to hilariously overbuilt Airsoft
rifles. A burst of fire from an AK-47 at
point-blank range would turn most men's torsos into gooey paste
suitable for spreading on crackers, but add a slab of Kevlar and you
might as well have a Gandalf's magic
protection bubble glowing around your torso.
The type of bulletproof vest you can actually conceal under
your clothes provides exceptional protection against most
handguns. But against an assault rifle like the terrorists
were using in the movie, no way. It's only slightly more
effective than body paint and prayers to Khorne.
Our troops do have their own body armor, meant to protect against
that sort of thing. It's much heavier and more rigid. But even it's only
rated for effectiveness at further than 14 meters distance. When police
wear body armor (45 percent do not) they don't tend to wear full
military body armor. Probably because it weighs 33 freaking pounds
and costs thousands of dollars. Since less than one percent of guncrimes involve military-style rifles, this is generally a pretty safe tradeoff.
#2. Gratuitous Cocking
The Problem:
That "click" is the sound of a hammer being cocked back, and movies seem to be saying,
"This means the gun is ready to fire now, baby!" It doesn't mean that, however. It actually
doesn't mean anything. The gun was already good to go. For instance, the guns our hunky
Irish assassins are using in Boondock Saints (the Beretta 92F--the same gun John McClane
uses in Die Hard), is made so that pulling the trigger also cocks the hammer for you, to save
you the extra step and the extra two seconds during which you could get shot. The "cocking
the gun to show you mean business" must date back to Westerns, back when those old
revolvers forced you to cock them between each shot (something that was made obsolete 150
years ago--so, yeah, Hollywood is even slower to catch up with gun technology than they are computers).
The Myth:
Movies treat the cocking of a gun like an exclamation point. When
Hardass McBadCop interrogates the lone surviving henchman,
you can safely assume that, at some point, he's going to make his
gun go "clickety-clack" to let the poor schmuck know he means
business. The sound of a clicking gun is so ominous that the
MacManus brothers use it to close out their little prayer in themovie Boondock Saints:
By the way, when you fire one of these guns like the Saints have, it's made so that it leaves the
hammer cocked back in between shots (the reason is it makes the trigger a little easier to pull).
We bring this up because that means the MacManus brothers purposefully de-cocked their
guns before shooting that mobster, just so they could make that sound.
It gets sillier. When movies show somebody with a gun that doesn't have a hammer back there
to be cocked (like a shotgun or assault rifle) they substitute either the pumping of the shotgun or
pulling back the slide on the automatic. It's the only way to get a cool clicking sound for
dramatic effect. The problem is that on these guns, that only serves the purpose of ejecting an
empty shell and sliding a new bullet into the chamber--something that already happened the
last time you fired it. So every cool "click" would be accompanied by the somewhat-less cool
sound of one of your perfectly good bullets falling to the floor.
#1. Bullets Explode Everything
Propane, hydrogen and oxygen work the same way. As long
as it is packed in a pressurized metal cylinder, you can be
sure shooting it will result in an explosion large enough to
blow through any jam the screenwriter gets the protagonist
into. Shoot an oxygen tank in a shark's mouth and he'll
blow like he's spent all week munching on dynamite.
The Myth:
In the movies, bullets and anything mildly flammable have a
matter/anti-matter relationship. The second hot lead
touches a car's gas tank, it and everyone inside are going up
in flames. This is incredibly convenient for those times when
Morpheus needs to flash-fry two creepy dreadlocked albinosor a Buick full of raw bacon.
The Problem:
The manufacturers of automobiles and pressurized containers really don't
like liability lawsuits. If their products could
be turned into a fireball the size of a city block with nothing more than a
sudden impact or puncture, every car accident
would look like the Fourth of July, every pile-up would look like a Michael
Bay movie.
The Mythbusters famously demonstrated the falsehood of both the "shoot
the gas tank" myth and a ton of other gun
myths in two of their episodes. As it turns out, you actually have to Coax a
car into exploding by doing things in a very
particular way. If you can punch a small hole in the tank, light a fire outside
of it, and vaporize the gas inside to the point
that the tank over-pressurizes, then you could probably get it to light.
Assuming you use special tracer bullets.
What's so illogical about Hollywood's "handguns can
explode a car" principle is that their bullets can't penetrate
anything else. There's one movie where John Cusack is
hiding behind a shelf of potato chips at a convenience
store, safe from the dozens of bullets slamming into them.
And if the good guy takes cover behind a car door? Hell, he
might as well be holed up in Fort Knox. Ironically, while
guns are useless for exploding a gas tank, they'll punch
through a car door with ease. Everything we know is
wrong. If those out there who were raised on action movies
have to fend off a Red Dawn-style invasion, it's going to bea total disaster.
DID YOU KNOW?The very first gun ever invented was called a
FIRE LANCEThe Fire Lance was a very early gunpowder weapon that
appeared
in 10th century China during the Jin-Song Wars. It began as
a small
pyrotechnic device attached to a spear-like weapon, used to gain acritical shock advantage right at the start of a melee.
DOWN HOME COOKING WITH MAMA TARGUS
People often ask me hey what do you do for treats if you have dogs?
Well I say, lets get cooking. Dogs are an important part of anyone's
life. And if you have dogs like Targus and I do, they will love the fact
that what you cook is healthy and awesome. We have 3 Malamutes
which are the highlight and joy of our life. They are our silly children
and stand guard when Targus and or I are not at home. So by doing
that, they deserve treats just because.
So lets get cooking!!
Steaks – depending upon how much you want to make will determine how much you buy. 1
steak will give you a good amount of treats
Pickling Salt (about ¼ cup)
Grill Mates Montreal Steak Seasoning (about ¼ cup)
Buy the cheapest steak you can find. The grainier and thick the better. Now remember Targus
and I have 3 dogs so we always by at least 4 and when they are on sale.
Freeze before you use it. It makes it easier to cut. Take steaks out and unwrap. Put steaks on a
plate and put in your microwave. Heat on high for 1 minute. Put steak on a cutting board and
cut to about 1/8” thick.
Place steak strips on cookie sheets lined with tin foil or parchment paper. I use a cookie grate (pictured below) set on top of the cookie pan
Make sure that you leave room between the pieces of steak. When done, mix your pickling salt and seasonings together – sprinkle over the steak. Heat oven to 150 degree's
and let cook for at least 3 to 5 hours. This method is called drying your meat. You will know when it's done because the texture is hard.
Take out and let cool. Remember to keep them on your counter top far away from your doggies or in my case Targus and the dogs. Transfer doggie treats to a Tupperware container. Put them in your fridge. They will last for up to 2 to 4 weeks depending upon how much you want to spoil your favorite friend. Remember cat's love them too.......
DOG BISCUITS
1 ½ cups whole wheat flour
2 cups rolled oats (not quick)
1 cup milk
½ cup water (hot)
2 cubes beef or chicken bouillon
Use your hot water to dissolve the bouillon – let cool
Beat your milk, water and bouillon cubes with water until well blended. Pour into dried ingredients and mix well. Press out onto an un-greased cookie sheet
and cut in squares or shapes. Bake at 300 degrees for 1 hour and then turn off the oven heat and leave the biscuits in the oven to harden. Poof!! A treat any
doggie would love!!
DOG POOCH MUNCHIES
3 cups whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon garlic salt
½ cup soft bacon fat
1 cup shredded cheese
1 egg – slightly beaten
1 cup milk
Preheat oven to 400 degree's
Place flour and garlic salt in a large bowl. Stir in bacon fat. Add cheese and egg. Gradually add enough milk to form a dough ball. Knead dough and roll out to
about 1 inch thick. Mash down to cookie size – place on greased cookie sheet. Bake about 12 minutes until they start to brown. Cool and dish out!!
Now folks, its the time to start thinking about the pesky pests that live outside and could effect or harm you doggies or kitties. Targus and I have lots of woods
around our house and needless to say, I'm always worried about ticks!! - Purchase water soluble sulfur powder at your local feed and seed store or another store in
your area. We buy ours at Feed and Seed – put sulfur in a grass spreader and go over your entire area – back and forth and back and forth or you can put 1 cup of
sulfur per 1 gallon of water, mix and use a garden sprayer. When you plan to do this, make sure that there is no rain in the forecast for at least 3 days – Ticks
can't survive the sulfur powder and thus they won't attack your loving animals. You may want to repeat this a few times during the spring just so that your grass
areas get plenty of mixture. So far by doing this, we have not had any issues with our doggies and they and us are the more happier for it.
Remember folks your animals are your best friends......even when one of them is your husband!!
Socialism/Communism Versus Capitalism today
Political rights and civil liberties around the world deteriorated to their lowest
point in more than a decade in 2017, extending a period characterized by
emboldened autocrats, beleaguered democracies, and the United States’
withdrawal from its leadership role in the global struggle for human freedom.
Democracy is in crisis. The values it embodies—particularly the right to choose
leaders in free and fair elections, freedom of the press, and the rule of law—are
under assault and in retreat globally.
A quarter-century ago, at the end of the Cold War, it appeared that
totalitarianism had at last been vanquished and liberal democracy had won the
great ideological battle of the 20th century.
Today, it is democracy that finds itself battered and weakened. For the 12th
consecutive year, according to Freedom in the World, countries that suffered
democratic setbacks outnumbered those that registered gains. States that a
decade ago seemed like promising success stories—Turkey and Hungary, for
example—are sliding into authoritarian rule. The military in Myanmar, which
began a limited democratic opening in 2010, executed a shocking campaign of
ethnic cleansing in 2017 and rebuffed international criticism of its actions.
Meanwhile, the world’s most powerful democracies are mired in seemingly
intractable problems at home, including social and economic disparities, partisan
fragmentation, terrorist attacks, and an influx of refugees that has strained
alliances and increased fears of the “other.”
The challenges within democratic states have fueled the rise of
populist leaders who appeal to anti-immigrant sentiment and
give short shrift to fundamental civil and political liberties.
Right-wing populists gained votes and parliamentary seats in
France, the Netherlands, Germany, and Austria during 2017.
While they were kept out of government in all but Austria,
their success at the polls helped to weaken established parties
on both the right and left. Centrist newcomer Emmanuel
Macron handily won the French presidency, but in Germany
and the Netherlands, mainstream parties struggled to create
stable governing coalitions.
Perhaps worst of all, and most worrisome for the future, young
people, who have little memory of the long struggles against
fascism and communism, may be losing faith and interest in
the democratic project. The very idea of democracy and its
promotion has been tarnished among many, contributing to a
dangerous apathy.
The retreat of democracies is troubling enough. Yet at the
same time, the world’s leading autocracies, China and Russia,
have seized the opportunity not only to step up internal
repression but also to export their malign influence to other
countries, which are increasingly copying their behavior and
adopting their disdain for democracy. A confident Chinese
president Xi Jinping recently proclaimed that China is “blazing
a new trail” for developing countries to follow. It is a path that
includes politicized courts, intolerance for dissent, and
predetermined elections.
The spread of antidemocratic practices around
the world is not merely a setback for fundamental
freedoms. It poses economic and security risks.
When more countries are free, all countries—
including the United States—are safer and more
prosperous. When more countries are autocratic
and repressive, treaties and alliances crumble,
nations and entire regions become unstable, and
violent extremists have greater room to operate.
Democratic governments allow people to help set
the rules to which all must adhere, and have a
say in the direction of their lives and work. This
fosters a broader respect for peace, fair play, and
compromise. Autocrats impose arbitrary rules on
their citizens while ignoring all constraints
themselves, spurring a vicious circle of abuse and
radicalization.
The United States accelerates its withdrawal
from the democracy struggle
A long list of troubling developments around
the world contributed to the global decline in
2017, but perhaps most striking was the
accelerating withdrawal of the United States
from its historical commitment to promoting
and supporting democracy. The potent
challenge from authoritarian regimes made
the United States’ abdication of its traditional
role all the more important.
Despite the U.S. government’s mistakes—and
there have been many—the American people
and their leaders have generally understood
that standing up for the rights of others is
both a moral imperative and beneficial to
themselves. But two long wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq and a global recession soured the
public on extensive international engagement,
and the perceived link between democracy
promotion on the one hand and military
interventions and financial costs on the other
has had a lasting impact.
China and Russia expand their antidemocratic influence
While the United States and other democratic powers grappled
with domestic problems and argued about foreign policy
priorities, the world’s leading autocracies—Russia and China—
continued to make headway. Moscow and Beijing are single-
minded in their identification of democracy as a threat to their
oppressive regimes, and they work relentlessly, with increasing
sophistication, to undermine its institutions and cripple its
principal advocates.
The eventual outcome of these trends, if unchecked, is
obvious. The replacement of global democratic norms with
authoritarian practices will mean more elections in which the
incumbent’s victory is a foregone conclusion. It will mean a
media landscape dominated by propaganda mouthpieces that
marginalize the opposition while presenting the leader as
omniscient, strong, and devoted to national aggrandizement. It
will mean state control over the internet and social media
through both censorship and active manipulation that
promotes the regime’s message while confusing users with lies
and fakery. And it will mean more corruption, injustice, and
impunity for state abuses.
Q: What countries have a dictatorship
government?
A: Cuba, Syria, and North Korea are three
countries that have a dictatorship. Besides
dictatorship there are many other forms of
authoritarian government. As of today, 50
countries in the world are rated as "Not Free"
by Freedom House. Freedom House, an
American non-governmental organization
(NGO), rates each country based on their
citizen's political rights and civil liberties,
and labels them as free, partly free, or not
free. Their most recent report names 50
countries as not free, including China, Russia,
Iran, and Saudi Arabia. According to their
research 36% of the world's population lives
in a country that is not free.
Q: What are some examples of command economies?
A: Examples of command economies include the former Soviet
Union, China, North Korea and Cuba. One of the defining
characteristics of this type of economy is the fact that all
decisions relating to the economy are decided by a central
body, such as the government or leader. Laws, directives and
regulations are used to implement the decisions made by this
body.
In a command economy, all aspects of business, including
how goods are produced, how much they are sold for, and how
many of the goods are produced, are variables that are defined
by the state. In essence, this means that all businesses in the
economy are run by or for the state.
One of the advantages of a command economy is that it makes
it easier to mobilize the resources of a country. However, the
disadvantage is that the needs of the society are often not fully
met, since the market is driven by what the government
dictates rather than what people actually want. It is common
to find thriving black markets in such settings, which people
use to get access to any products they need but cannot get
through official government channels. Innovation is frequently
stifled in such an economy because regulations may not
change quickly enough to take advantage of new ideas.
How did America Forget What 'Socialist' means?
In 1936, when Franklin Roosevelt sought reelection to the presidency, some of his critics
labeled him a “socialist.” The charge was so incendiary that the White House moved quickly
to rebut it, labeling it an accusation “which no patriotic, honorable, decent citizen would
purposefully inject into American affairs.”c
purposefully inject into American affairs.”
That was then. Today, in America, for the first time in nearly a century, socialism is not a dirty
word, or a shunned label, for many people. On the contrary. President Barack Obama, with a
minimum of controversy, has reopened relations with the unabashedly socialist regime in Cuba,
demanding almost no concessions in exchange for becoming the first U.S. president in 88 years
to visit the island. (Indeed, on the eve of the president’s arrival, Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign
Affairs declared that Cuba—together with China—was committed to the “irreversibility of
socialism.”)
Meanwhile, the overwhelming and seemingly improbable support among America’s youth for the
74-year-old Bernie Sanders—a self-described democratic socialist who once proudly defended
communist dictatorships across the world—is the latest example of a historical illiteracy that
treats socialism as a benign economic system that is more equitable and fair than capitalism. A
Pew poll from June 2015 shows a staggering 69 percent of voters under 30 expressing a
willingness to vote for a socialist for president of the United States. This was well before
Sanders’ electoral successes in the early Democratic primaries. A more recent YouGov survey
found that voters under 30 actually have a higher opinion of socialism (43 percent in favor)
than they do of capitalism (32 percent in favor).
Watching the false hope of socialism be resurrected amid ignorance of basic 20th century history is
particularly distressing for me. I am a millennial American myself, but I am also head of the Victims of
Communism Memorial Foundation. I have dedicated my professional life to honoring the millions who
paid with their lives so that totalitarian leaders could build their socialist “utopias.”
Many are still paying. Today, 20 percent of the world’s population continues to live under communist
regimes, in China, Vietnam, Cuba, Laos and North Korea. These countries are some of the worst
violators of human rights in history. China operates its own “gulag” system of labor camps for political
prisoners.
Ignorance of socialism and America’s decades long struggle against it has become the norm, and the
data suggest this norm will only harden as a generation of Americans pass away and national memory
fades.
For a generation with no memory of bomb shelter drills or sledgehammers smashing the Berlin Wall to
pieces, the sad reality of life under socialist rule has been forgotten, and the lessons of the Cold War
have been relegated to the “ash heap of history” alongside communism. Instead, the concept of
socialism has often been confused with liberalism. Socialism seems like a fine idea that means a more
social equitable society for everyone—free health care and free education for starters. Socialism
conjures the image of a place like Sweden and Denmark, which contrary to popular belief, are not
socialist systems at all. In fact, Danish Prime Minster Lars Lokke Rasmussen responded to claims by
Senator Bernie Sanders that the Scandinavian countries were socialist by saying: “Denmark is far from
a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy.”
Socialism is not roads, welfare, and free education. Socialism has always had a more ominous goal and
shares close historical and ideological connections with more reviled terms: Marxism and communism.
Karl Marx took socialism to what he viewed as its natural conclusion: The “abolition of private
property.”
Class warfare is a long-running theme in socialism, even in this country. American socialist (and failed
presidential candidate) Eugene Debs promised a world where “no man will work to make a profit for
another.”
The process of transforming “capitalist property”—that is, something legitimately purchased,
inherited or otherwise earned—into “social property” for everyone is when socialism becomes sinister.
This promise of redistribution always involves winners and losers picked by the government. What if
one has acquired capitalist property and does not wish it to become “social property?” Well, then the
government might have to step in and take it.
The loss of private property—which ensures one’s independent
livelihood—perforce erodes one’s ability to exercise free speech. What
if the owner of some capitalist property taken by the government
dares to protest its seizure? That sort of dissent must be stifled to
maintain order, so free speech is replaced by government-sanctioned
propaganda. Unpopular opinions are shamed, and those expressing
them are barred from forums like colleges and universities.
How do we know? Because we’ve seen it happen time and again.
Ninety-nine years ago the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia showed the
danger of combining socialist ideas with totalitarian violence, which
created modern totalitarian communism. The result in more than 40
national experiments since then has been either totalitarian
dictatorship or economic collapse, costing some 100 million lives
before the communist experiment collapsed in Europe and the Soviet
Union.
To be sure, not everyone in these societies was a loser, which gets at
one of the great paradoxes of all socialist systems: the extreme
inequality that allows a cabal of party members to control the
political and economic power in a country to the exclusion of an
overwhelming majority of the citizens. Only socialist countries have
achieved the tragic distinction of launching rockets into outer space
while millions of their citizens starve to death in famine. Now that’s
inequality!
The Center for Global Policy at George Mason University has recorded
an interesting historical development. Its Political Instability Task
Force plotted a chart showing the percentage of countries in which
mass killings were occurring from the end of World War II until the
present day. For most of the second half of the 20th century, that
percentage increased steadily. Then, in the early 1990s, a precipitous
drop occurred, and in the 2010s we have seen the lowest percentage
of countries on Earth with ongoing mass killings ever recorded. What
happened in the early 1990s? The Cold War ended and millions were
freed from behind communist walls and secret police holding cells.
This was also when our millennial generation was born.
Millennials either missed the Cold War entirely or were
young children in its final years, with little or no
conception of the triumph of liberty achieved with the fall
of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics (USSR). They do not understand the
menace that socialism— combined with power—posed to
the people it enslaved and to the free nations that it
threatened. The violence and brutality of the communist
regimes of the past are irrelevant, just lines in the history
book somewhere between the Spanish-American War and
9/11.
It’s more personal for older Americans. Perhaps some of
their friends or neighbors—or they themselves—arrived in
this country just ahead of Soviet tanks that were rolling
into their homeland. Perhaps they remember the stories
of citizens of these supposed utopian socialist prison
states arrested, “disappeared,” tortured, or shot simply for
trying to cross a border. Perhaps they remembered
cowering under their school desks during drills in case of
a nuclear attack, planned in communist Russia and
launched from communist Cuba.
This is the context young American voters should know as
they prepare to cast their vote this year—many of them
for the first time. We should all be mindful of the power of
words and ideologies, and how discredited ideas can
flourish again as memories of their failure fade. We cannot
forget the lessons of history. All of us, but especially the
youngest among us who will have to live in that world for
the longest, should make this election about the future by
rejecting the ugly, violent legacy of socialism’s past.
Submitted by Targus
KEEPIN THE SUNNY SIDE UP!
After any school shooting, the natural course from the masses is to push for gun control...
On Thursday, May 27, 1999, Darrell Scott, the father of Rachel Scott, a
victim of the Columbine High School shootings in Littleton, Colorado,
was invited to address the House Judiciary Committee’s sub-
committee. What he said to our national leaders during this special
session of Congress was painfully truthful. They were not prepared for
what he was to say, nor was it received well. It needs to be heard by
every parent, every teacher, every politician, every sociologist, every
psychologist, and every so-called expert! These courageous words
spoken by Darrell Scott are powerful, penetrating, and deeply personal.
There is no doubt that God sent this man as a voice crying in the
wilderness. The following is a portion of the transcript:
Since the dawn of creation there has been both good and evil in the
hearts of men and women. We all contain the seeds of kindness or the
seeds of violence
.
The death of my wonderful daughter, Rachel Joy Scott, and the deaths
of that heroic teacher and the other eleven children who died must not
be in vain. Their blood cries out for answers.
The first recorded act of violence was when Cain slew his brother Abel
out in the field. The villain was not the club he used. Neither was it the
NCA, the National Club Association. The true killer was Cain, and the
reason for the murder could only be found in Cain’s heart.
In the days that followed the Columbine tragedy, I was amazed at how
quickly fingers began to be pointed at groups such as the NRA. I am
not a member of the NRA. I am not a hunter. I do not even own a gun. I
am not here to represent or defend the NRA — because I don’t believe
that they are responsible for my daughter’s death. Therefore I do not
believe they need to be defended. If I believed they had anything to do
with Rachel’s murder I would be their strongest opponent.
I am here today to declare that Columbine was not just a tragedy —
it was a spiritual event that should be forcing us to look at where the
real blame lies!
Much of the blame lies here in this room. Much of the blame lies
behind the pointing fingers of the accusers themselves.
I wrote a poem just four nights ago that expresses my feelings best.
This was written way before I knew I would be speaking here today:
Your laws ignore our deepest needs
Your words are empty air
You’ve stripped away our heritage
You’ve outlawed simple prayer
Now gunshots fill our classrooms
And precious children die
You seek for answers everywhere
And ask the question “Why”?
You regulate restrictive laws
Through legislative creed
And yet you fail to understand
That God is what we need
Men and women are three-part beings. We all consist of body, soul,
and spirit. When we refuse to acknowledge a third part of our make-
up, we create a void that allows evil, prejudice, and hatred to rush in
and wreak havoc.
Spiritual influences were present within our educational systems for
most of our nation’s history. Many of our major colleges began as
theological seminaries. This is a historical fact. What has happened
to us as a nation? We have refused to honor God, and in so doing,
we open the doors to hatred and violence.
Continued…
.
And when something as terrible as Columbine’s tragedy occurs —
politicians immediately look for a scapegoat such as the NRA. They
immediately seek to pass more restrictive laws that contribute to
erode away our personal and private liberties.
We do not need more restrictive laws. Eric and Dylan would not have
been stopped by metal detectors. No amount of gun law can stop
someone who spends months planning this type of massacre.
The real villain lies within our own hearts.
Political posturing and restrictive legislation are not the answers.
The young people of our nation hold the key. There is a spiritual
awakening taking place that will not be squelched!
We do not need more religion. We do not need more gaudy television
evangelists spewing out verbal religious garbage. We do not need
more million dollar church buildings built while people with basic
needs are being ignored.
We do need a change of heart and a humble acknowledgment that
this nation was founded on the principle of simple trust in God!
As my son Craig lay under that table in the school library and saw his
two friends murdered before his very eyes — He did not hesitate to
pray in school. I defy any law or politician to deny him that right!
I challenge every young person in America, and around the world, to
realize that on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School prayer was
brought back to our schools. Do not let the many prayers offered by
those students be in vain.
Dare to move into the new millennium with a sacred disregard for
legislation that violates your God-given right to communicate with Him.
To those of you who would point your finger at the NRA I give to you a
sincere challenge. Dare to examine your own heart before casting the
first stone!
My daughter’s death will not be in vain! The young people of this
country will not allow that to happen!
Be courageous enough to do what the media did not — let the nation
hear this man’s speech. Please send this out to everyone you can!!!
Side note:
Among those who made or presented statements to the subcommittee that
day were Eric H. Holder, Jr., a Deputy Attorney General with the
Department of Justice; James E. Johnson, an Under Secretary for
Enforcement with the Department of the Treasury; Darrell Scott, the father
of two victims of the Columbine High School shootings (one of whom, his
daughter Rachel Joy Scott, was killed); David Grossmann, a retired Ohio
juvenile court judge; Dr. John R. Lott, Jr., a law and economics professor
at the University of Chicago’s School of Law; Wayne LaPierre, an
Executive Vice President of the National Rifle Association; James E.
Chambers, an Executive Director of the Sporting Arms and Ammunition
Manufacturers Institute; David M. Kennedy, a Senior Researcher with the
Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University; Gerald Flynn, a
National Vice President of the International Brotherhood of Police; and Bryl
Phillips-Taylor from Virginians Against Handgun Violence.