According to Newsweek magazine, we’re all socialists now, and it’s a good thing. The mainstream media are celebrating the destruction of the world’s greatest country, its system of beliefs, it ideals and personal guarantees. They proudly trumpet the sad fact that we now join the ranks of ’sophisticated’ socialist states such as those in Western Europe. This, as the rest of the world struggles to throw off the chains of socialism where it exists. As president Obama waxes eloquently about impending doom, clueless citizens rejoice at the news that Congress has passed a monumental spending bill masquerading as relief for the economy. The morons who support Obama are shedding tears of joy, convinced that they no longer have to pay for their gasoline or make their mortgage payments. Obama will make that all go away. Hallelujah. Let’s dance in the streets.

The ‘economic stimulus’ package contains very litte in the way of economic stimuli, and lots in the way of future payoffs for organized labor and other government-centric constituencies. It goes a long way toward making Democrats voter-proof at every level of government, with generous handouts focused on those groups that can deliver Congressional votes two years from now and for Obama’s re-election bid four years out. But handouts, pork, growing government to 30% of GDP and the usual Democratic shenanigans aren’t the most troubling part of this legislation. It’s the darker, scarier stuff buried in the fine print.

Tom Daschle may not be the next Secretary of Health and Human Services, but his dreary vision of nationalized healthcare will be implemented to the letter. He advocates the establishment of a national policy review board that literally holds life and death power over every American, regardless of their insurance coverage. This is important - regardless of their insurance coverage. This review board will distributed ’scarce’ healthcare resources on a ‘fair and equitable’ basis whether you have insurance coverage or not. In other words, a small, unaccountable, unelected group of federal bureaucrats will now decide whether or not you get a badly needed heart bypass operation, even if you can afford to pay for it out of your own pocket. Oh, but there’s more: If you don’t fit their demographic of a ‘deserving’ recipient for that bypass, your insurance premium dollars are confiscated and used to pay for that other person’s more politically correct bypass. You, the working stiff who paid for all this, can just go and die.

This is not exaggeration nor hyperbole. Al Gore is not writing this article. The above-mentioned mechanism to ration and direct healthcare resources is in the economic stimulus package Congress just approved. The federal government now has direct control of your life, your health and therefore, your economic output. Why it’s there is anyone guess. But, that kind of monstrous legislation is why Obama and the Congressional Democrats are in such a big hurry to get it passed. By invoking the potential for calamity, by spreading fear and rattling the economy, Obama and his puppeteers will turn us away from a free-market democracy and put us firmly into the clutches of socialism. And, according to Newsweek, it’s a good thing…

During his candidacy and his first few days in office, Barack Obama has made both public and private comments regarding the use and cost of various forms of energy. He famously whispered that as president he would attempt to bankrupt the coal companies and the utilities dependent on coal for power generation. Quite recently, he said that $5 per gallon gasoline would be good for the country. Because he’s never held a real job,  commuted an hour to work, wrestled with the problems of a small business or assumed personal reponsibility for a profit/loss statement, Mr. Obama knows nothing about the realities of life here in these United States of America. He wasn’t concerned about helping Mother Earth when these comments were made. He was talking about controlling the lives of Americans through the availability, cost and appropriate use of energy. With the dollar nearly valueless, energy is now the new currency. By constricting supply, redirecting its flow or outlawing certain uses, Obama and his puppeteers can now control the entire US economy.

The carbon credit cap-and-trade scheme provides no direct benefit to the environment, the economy or the citizenry. It does, however, give the government dictatorial powers to control industrial output, personal mobility, even the flow of information. All of it requires energy. Starve a certain economic activity of energy, and it disappears. Provide cheap, abundant energy to another sector, and it will flourish. That’s called a planned economy. See Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Chavez. Even if the carbon credit tax scheme (yes, of course it raises taxes) doesn’t come to be, Mr. Obama and the Democrats in Congress have a dozen other means to achieve nearly identical results. Energy, like money, can be used to reward political allies and punish opponents. Energy, like money, evokes strong emotions of envy, entitlement and greed.

If you’ve ever watched one of those post-apocalyptic movies that hit theaters every now and then, you can’t help but notice that almost every film, energy is highly prized. Everyone fights over the available energy source, be it ancient fuel depot or swine flatulence, to stay alive or to impose their will over others. The leftist wing of the Democratic Party senses this. The private foundations and academic loonies have been touting this as the ultimate means of control for decades. But, how to get Americans to relinquish their standard of living and personal mobility - both possible only with cheap and abundant energy?

Enter the bogeyman - Al Gore, with an alarming vision of an environmental Armaggedon, replete with celebrity endorsements, Bruce Springsteen playing background music and thousands of militant morons flooding into the streets.  And so, Big Al and the environuts have trotted out their shameless scam of global warming to scare gullible Americans into scaling back their energy use and accepting the exhorbitant tax schemes that are being layered into energy costs. The environmental bogeyman frightens Americans into giving up their personal mobility, scaling back their standard of living and limiting their economic freedoms.

The media play along. In recent days, Exxon was again lambasted for its ‘obscene’ 2008 profits of $45 billion - a one time event. No one in the mainstream media bothered to report that over half of this profit was confiscated by the US government in the form of corporate income tax. Nor did they mention that Exxon actually collected nearly $300 billion in federal gasoline taxes for the government and turned it over within a few hours of collecting it. It costs Exxon lots of money to collect those taxes, do the reporting and transfer funds collected from thousands of gasoline stations and credit card issuers. Exxon was not reimbursed. The government expended no effort in collecting those taxes, other than to call the bank to see if they were deposited. And then, moments later, our government spent it. Out the door. Up in smoke. Never to be seen again. At some point, if voters allow it to happen, the government will take control of the oil and coal industries to ‘protect’ us from price gouging, when in fact it’s the hidden taxes in energy prices that are making them unaffordable to working Americans.  Once the means of production are controlled (Hugo Chavez playbook, p. 1), the government can impose its will as it sees fit. Whomsoever controls the levers of power, now controls each and every one of us.

So, when the brownouts start happening on a regular basis, when local radio stations featuring conservative talk show hosts are put on a limited broadcasting schedule to conserve power, and when your monthly electric bill is roughly equal to your mortgage payment, remember who started it all - Obama and his cronies in Congress. Their dreary utopia of equally shared misery is the best that socialists can offer.

Otto von Bismarck, the Iron Duke that unified Germany in the mid-1800s once said that the average citizen who upholds the law and enjoys his sausage wouldn’t want to see how either is made. The same can be said of parasites who’ve harmed this country and its citizens. Using the institutions of democracy - the right to vote, the right of free speech and assembly, an open legislature, an impartial judiciary and the separation of powers, the parasites and their champions have short-circuited the safeguards put in place by the writers of the Constitution. And they were provided cover by a biased and agenda-driven media cabal.

Enemies of the American way of life have been at it for some time and have refined their craft to an art form. They comprise a large part of the Democratic Party and its patrons, themselves top-tier parasites. Everyone thinks parasites are those who simply don’t want to work or are looking for a free handout. Actually, top-tier parasites work very hard for their piece of the action. What makes them parasites is that their reward is so gigantically out of proportion for their efforts.

Think of the lawyers who ‘represented’ taxpayers in every state against Big Tobacco. Who made billions? Certainly not the states who brought suit against the tobacco companies, nor those sickened by or dying of smoking-related illnesses. Individual lawyers charged the states they were representing as much as $39,000 an hour for their services, based on the percentages they exacted from the awards paid by Big Tobacco.

Then there are the union bosses who live off the dues collected from industrial workers for whom they provide so little in the way of promises made. By the way, if you’re an influential liberal, you can serve on the boards or regional councils of a few non-profit liberal political action committees and collect a stipend from each. It’s possible to earn $200,000 a year for part-time work. Not bad by anyones’ standards.

Lobbyists. Consultants. Academics. The list goes on and on. Well-educated. Smart. Well-connected. It’s like a club. Except, you the taxpayer don’t belong. Only your paycheck does. You have little say about how the money is spent or who gets that money. Unlike a private charity, you can’t dictate where the government spends your money, even though our Constitution absolutely grants you the right and privilege to do so. Your concerns and misgivings about where this country is headed will be dismissed as stupid, regressive and possibly racist. You can’t possibly know as much as the liberal elite. Don’t question their motives or their results. They know what’s best for you.

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Think of parasites as an organizational pyramid or multilevel marketing enterprise. Maybe a better descriptor is Ponzi scheme. At the top of the pyramid are the liberal elite, the union bosses, trial lawyers, environmental gurus and political hacks that exhort Americans to sacrifice more, tighten their belts and stop complaining about higher taxes, loss of personal freedoms and economic opportunity.

At the bottom are the stupid schmucks that support and believe in the parasite elite, expecting to get something out of this whole pyramid scheme. They usually get the short end of the stick - a few handouts and some useless programs. The middle class gets stuck paying for handouts to the parasites, including the very top of the pyramid.

Let’s use trial lawyers as an example. When one of these parasites is advertising for slip and fall injuries or asbestos-related disease on television, they’re aiming at the bottom of the pyramid. They promise to get their clients big money awards with no fees and no risk. Obviously, they neglect to tell these poor folks, who indeed may have a legitimate claim, that they’ll receive just a small fraction of any award. The trial lawyers aren’t advertising to the upper middle class (aka the taxpayers). No self-respecting small business owner, corporate exec, doctor or professional would even consider representation by an ambulance-chaser. The trial lawyers aim their advertising at the poor, unemployed, hopeless and desperate. They are typically in financial trouble, uneducated and unfamiliar with how these legal parasites work their game. So, they end up signing away their rights in a class action suit or bundled case, and receive far less than they deserve. The trail lawyers, on the other hand, make millions, usually by overwhelming the court or the accused with hundreds of simultaneous claims. Just to the clear the docket, many judges will urge the accused to settle, even if they’re completely blameless.

Obviously, trial lawyers resist any legal reforms that would stop this gravy train. They invest heavily in the Democratic Party, donating millions. In fact, in most states, trial lawyers are the largest political donors. They have enormous influence.

Politicians work the system in a similar manner. They promise the poor, uneducated, hopeless or shiftless just about anything to get elected, knowing full well they can’t possibly deliver on those promises. Once in office, they create programs and laws that take money from working Americans and redistribute it to those who can’t or won’t provide for themselves. But, the government is incredibly inefficient in the redistribution of wealth. For every dollar collected in taxes, only 20 cents actually makes it to the person who needs it. The other 80 cents is used up by the government to ‘administer’ the redistribution. Wouldn’t we be better off with private charities doing this work? After all, even the least efficient private charity still delivers 70 cents of every donated dollar to the proper recipient.

Socialist politicians masquerading as Democrats don’t really want private charities to exist because they are competition. Instead, they want government to assume the roles of benefactor, parent, guidance counselor, personal financier, doctor and therapist in the name of ‘fairness’ and ‘compassion’. What’s really going on is that socialist politicians have been able to manipulate the poor and working class to their own advantage, creating a powerful voting bloc. That voting bloc is kept motivated by promises of even more government handouts at the expense of the ‘rich’, who truly don’t deserve their wealth no matter how hard they worked for it. By inciting class warfare, they keep themselves in office.

Much like the trial lawyers who promise big cash awards and instead grab most of it for themselves, politicians promise the poor and working class handouts and special privileges, knowing they can’t deliver. Instead, that money is absorbed by the politicians’ real constituency - huge government bureaucracies, the labor unions representing them and politically connected government contractors who are themselves unionized or generously underwrite liberal causes. There is one other, very important beneficiary of the redistribution game - activist organizations that directly engage with the poor, the disenfranchised and working poor or pretend to represent them in some way. Many, like the ACLU and A.C.O.R.N., receive direct government funding so that they can continue to foment class hatred and despair among millions of Americans, instilling in them a sense of entitlement instead of a sense of empowerment.

But it’s not just the poor and working class Americans who look to government handouts. Wall Street has snagged billions in taxpayer money to prop up billionaires and a culture of entitlement. Unlike the millions of poor and working poor that have only one vote to cast, the relatively small number of Wall Street honchos and financiers write big campaign donation checks. They buy their political clout, just like trial lawyers. Ask Democrats Barney Frank and Chris Dodd. When the Wall Street people overstep their bounds, when they truly screw up, these cobras lean on the American taxpayer. And the American taxpayer is completely unaware that the government, steered by politicians, dispenses money based on political considerations above all else. So, if billions are handed out to the poor, millions of poor each get a couple bucks. If billions are handed out on Wall Street, millions of bucks go to just a few people. The top of the parasite pyramid generally gets the same amount of money as the bottom of the pyramid - it’s just spread out among fewer people. And they have no problem taking it. After all, it’s free!

Visit www.howobamagotelected.com for an eyeful of unnerving and infuriating video clips that unmistakably demonstrate the extraordinary influence the electronic media have over elections, the voting process, voter awareness and the functioning of our democracy. The people interviewed in this clips were not morons. But it was astounding to witness how precisely the media cabal can attenuate negative information about Obama or Biden while amplifying erroneous or negative information about Palin and McCain. Please note that Palin takes precedent over McCain. Without her, McCain wouldn’t have captured 45% of the popular vote and Obama would have been voted into office by an apparent landslide. It’s not that Obama was a sterling candidate, even though the media lavished attention on his candidacy and hushed up the questionable aspects of his history and character. It’s simply that John McCain was such a horribly bad candidate. Palin rescued the hapless boob from a horrifying defeat that would have sent the absolutely wrong signal to America and the world. That’s why the media cabal was so intent on destroying Palin, because she kept Obama from claiming an overwhelming mandate that would have empowered him to plunge this country into socialism. As it stands now, some Republicans might even summon up enough courage to object to he more extreme measures proposed.

The parasites and their champions are fully aware that a voter-proof Democratic Party will protect their gravy train. Over the past 125 years, the Democratic Party has come to exemplify the most unsavory aspects of the democratic system, where power and votes are brokered and sold. The Democratic Party has perfected the power-dependency duality of patronage politics. And so, the Democrats felt perfectly justified to thwart the will of the people, put up a dangerously incompetent and ideologically suspect demagogue for President, and gamble with the future of this country for their own short-term gain. This is not an isolated incident. This is the overarching goal for the Democratic Party - they want to make themselves voter-proof. By doing so, they enrich and empower their exclusive constituents: labor and teacher unions, government at all levels, trial lawyers, environmental extremists, government contractors and yes, unbelievably - Wall Street. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. Many of the Wall Street honchos are Democrats because their personal philosophy goes hand in glove with the mindset of other top-tier parasites like union bosses and trial lawyers. After all, as an investor or retiree, you’re just a mark, a source of commissions and fees. This accumulation of money by unions, trial lawyers and wealthy liberals allows the Democrat Party to buy its way into office and then ‘redistribute’ taxpayers’ hard-earned money to friends and political allies. Don’t think that the media cabal won’t ask for real money for being instrumental in getting Obama elected. That’s the way the game is played. Too bad most Americans will never know.

The events in Washington DC are a chilling indicator of just how badly average Americans misunderstand their current predicament. Amidst the applause, the outpouring of joy and nonsensical optimism lies an astounding depth of ignorance as to the motives and intent of the Anointed One and his retinue. The self-reinforcing cycle of bad education and badly educated Americans allows socialists to usurp our economic freedoms. It blinds most Americans to the true motives of a Democratic Party that has abandoned democracy for the unbridled power of a socialist regime. Laura Ingraham’s radio show featured clips of typical Obama fans expressing (or attempting to) their rationale for supporting this newly-minted president. Most of them couldn’t complete a sentence, much less coherently explain why they’re so infatuated with Mr. Obama. Their random utterances were nothing more than mindless parroting of Obama sound bites that had been repeated over and over by the mainstream media in the months running up to this coronation ceremony. They clearly don’t understand what they’ve voted for, who represents them and what will happen once Democrats make themselves voter-proof at every level of government.

Barack Obama knows exactly what he’s doing, as do all of his advisors and departmental nominees. The only person along for the ride is the Gaffemeister himself, the honorable Joe Biden, ably assisted by his wife, whose only priority in life appears to be the endless refinancing of his real estate holdings. And, of course, keeping his son and relatives out of the media spotlight.

As the celebs and rock stars pour into the capital to spend thousands of dollars on overpriced event tickets, limos and hotel suites, the proletariat fill the streets, cheering on the passing of free-market economics and equal opportunity. The TV anchors and print propagandists are beside themselves in apoplectic, eye-twitching ecstacy. But no one in the mainstream media asked how this will all shake out - not in the months since the election and certainly not in the last few days. 

How will the overtly leftist campaign promises of Barack Obama be transformed into government policy and legislation? How will Obama, ably assisted by Nancy Pelosi and Hary Reid, shred the Constitution and destroy everything that makes America different, and therefore, better? It will be obvious. It will be plain and straightforward, and the Republicans will be aghast at how easily a republic can be dismantled and replaced with a totalitarian system. With unbelieving eyes, they will see legislation passed in Congress and signed into law at the White House, confirmed by the Supreme Court and put into action by the bureaucracy. Every last bridge back to a free society and a free market will be set ablaze. And, it will be saluted with great fanfare by the media cabal, academics and the liberal elite. It will be cause for a celebration. Freedom will be snuffed out with guitar riffs and wild applause.

It’s only a matter of time before everybody in America begins clamoring for a bailout. At the height of the crisis in September of 2007, it made sense to pump money into the credit markets to keep the economy from grinding to a halt. Problem was, banks started using those taxpayer funds for just about every purpose except lending. On top of that, investment banks and securities brokers demanded to be chartered as bank holding companies so that they, too could get a little bailout boogie. The TARP fund was gamed and compromised within hours of the very first fund transfer. Treasury Secretary Paulson tried a mid-course correction and a head fake, only to find that the momentum he’d whipped up in Washington also meant that this runaway beer truck he created was impossible to stop and impossible to steer. It’s no doubt that Paulson was dismayed and angered by the actions of self-serving bank executives. That initial $700 billion went over the guardrail, never to be seen again. But, the banking sector’s behaviour created a wave of me-too bailout supplicants. And so, the bailout boogie began.

Not all of Wall Street was hurting, but they received funds anyway. Hank Greenberg’s monster, AIG, didn’t need a nickel. The insurance holding company could have been auctioned off in pieces, since each individual piece was a free-standing, self-sufficient and profitable enterprise, with the US government acting as receiver and funding day to day operations until the entire enterprise had been sold at a profit. This is something the government actually knows how to do. It happens in bankruptcy court every day of the week. Instead, taxpayer funds are given directly to the executives who created the mess in the first place. No one gets a pay cut, no one has their stock options taken away, no one is fired. Instead, they make a mocking ’sacrifice’ by not taking oversized bonuses that they didn’t deserve in the first place. This is absurd. It encourages parasitic behaviour and it emboldens other people to scheme and game the system.

And so, the gravy train is pulling into the station. Every purported victim, every charlatan and schemer, every influence peddler and power broker, is busy lining up to get their ‘fair share’ of the taxpayers’ personal net worth. Yes, that’s precisely what they’re doing - they are stealing the personal net worth of the upper middle class, which pays 80% of all taxes collected. Aided and abetted by politicians and bureaucrats, Americans are going to find a huge number of players doing the bailout boogie. It will quickly spread beyond carmakers, insurers and homeowners, and it probably won’t stop until the government goes broke or the dollar is worthless. We’ve crossed over the hump, that dividing line, between pretending that our government has some fiscal control and just throwing all common sense out of the window.

Political pundits and TV newsreaders make much of ‘crony capitalism’ - as if all capitalism is based on monopolistic tendencies. The mainstream media will usually characterize this as conspiratorial corporate collusion aimed at hapless consumers. Monopolies or price-fixing never last because they’re inherently inefficient and unmanageable in a dynamic free-market system. One needs only to look at OPEC, an openly conspiratorial and monopolistic bunch. Whenever OPEC oil ministers agree to set market prices at an artificially high benchmark it only takes a couple of weeks before one of their own is exceeding their production quota or lowering their prices. Despite all their machinations, they can’t control the price of oil. It’s market forces and human nature at work - good, bad or indifferent.

Typically, ‘crony capitalism’ involves government intervention or collusion, because the ‘cronies’ involved are usually government officials, elected or otherwise. Free-market capitalism by its very nature wouldn’t tolerate an unfair advantage, because market forces and competition would undermine the enteprise with an unfair or unethical advantage. This was true when our own government got involved in the corrupt practice of handing out special charters to politically connected individuals who would then form steamboat, railway, subway or trucking lines. These government-sponsored businesses were inherently inefficient and unprofitable not only because of the amount of bribery and graft involved, but because workers and management didn’t apply themselves, confident that their government charter protected their incomes. This is as true today as it was in the 1840s, when crony capitalism first began to appear. Compare Northern Suffolk Railways, a profitable private-sector operator, to Amtrak, a government-controlled operator that costs taxpayers millions each year. Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, both government-chartered lenders, were subject to corruption and political gamesmanship that triggered the mortgage meltdown.

Pure capitalism has little in common with crony capitalism. In fact, crony capitalism is more closely aligned with socialism, where the government owns businesses outright. When government gets involved in business, those businesses will be run with the vision, energy and efficiency of government itself. In other words, it will be a disaster. Which doesn’t provide us much hope now that government is part-owner of banks, broker-dealers, insurance companies and carmakers.

It’s like opening up your credit card statement and gasping at the amount due. Someone had gotten hold of your credit card number and charged up thousands of dollars at a seamy strip club. You call the credit card company. They refuse to reverse the charges and insult you by implying that you were in fact the strip club patron. And then, they jack up your interest rates to 33% because you exceeded your credit limit, too. You complain to various state and local agencies. No one can help. You’re stuck paying thousands of dollars at exhorbitant interest rates over the next few years. Every month, as you write that check, you’re burning up inside. If you ever find the parasite who did this to you…

Well, it’s about time American taxpayers did the same thing to politicians and bureaucrats. These people have looted us time and again. They’ve lied to us, they’ve cheated us and they’ve defrauded us. They are the ultimate parasites and prostitutes. And given the level of suffering they’ve created, it’s even more infuriating to find that they’re cheap prostitutes to boot. Representative Barney Frank and Senator Chris Dodd stonewalled the Bush administration’s efforts to investigate and regulate both Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae as well as lenders like the now bankrupt Countrywide Mortgage which gave both Frank and Dodd special VIP loans with terms that neither will disclose. In other words, for a few hundred thousand dollars in bribes, they started the ball rolling on the entire credit meltdown mess. It will cost Americans trillions in new taxes.

This is reminiscent of Bill Clinton’s deal with China. Al Gore was sent to San Francisco to pick up a bag of cash from a Buddhist temple, ostensibly from a Chinese general back on the mainland. In short order, China was granted Most Favored Nation trading status, which opened up our financial system to Communist China. The Chinese were able to open up banks in the US, establish foreign currency exchanges and participate fully in the international credits and payments system through the direct efforts of Bill Clinton. Interestingly enough, an Arkansas corporation - WalMart, became China’s largest trading partner. Walmart used the pricing advantage to destroy its competition in the US, most notably KMart and Sears, among thousands of smaller enterprises. All of this for a measly $450,000 in cash.

Barack Obama shamelessly accepted more than $38 million in untraceable, unaccountable prepaid credit card contributions from nameless donors and millions more from unknown oversease donors. All of this is illegal and specifically prohibited by law. It didn’t matter. No one was going to investigate the matter because to do so would imply a ‘racist’ motivation.

There’s plenty of precedent to indicate that most politicians and bureaucrats don’t work in the public’s interest. In fact, they’ll burn billions of dollars in exchange for a relatively modest campaign contribution. It’s anyone’s guess what Barack Obama has promised in private to whoever it was that provided millions in untraceable campaign donations. But, rest assured it will cost the taxpayer many times that figure.

Most Americans think that corruption is just a little bite, a piece of the action, that lubricates the political system. The problem is that corruption creates huge economic impacts that usually mean more taxes or less purchasing power. That’s because bribes and influence peddling is necessary to push something that’s completely illogical, economically suicidal or totally inequitable through the legislature or the executive branch. And that wasteful or economically destructive initiative, be it oversized government programs or special exemptions, must be paid for in some manner. And politicians always make sure it’s the taxpayer picking up the tab.

Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich recently appeared on a Discovery Channel program that attempted to explain economics and capitalism. Reich, a seemingly well-educated man, kept referring to capitalism as simply dressed-up greed. In his fevered mind, there appeared to be no place for capitalism in the world, because it was based on greed. He referred to the writings of Adam Smith as proof that greed was the underlying motivation for capitalism - not personal achievement or bettering one’s life, not even providing the best for one’s family. It was just simple greed. Reich is not an idiot, but he is a demagogue. He’s entitled to his opinions, but when they are amplified and broadcast across the country, his extremist views influence others. The program provided no opposing views or commentary. This insult to our open, free-market economic system went unanswered, as do many other such insults.

Contrast Reich’s opinions with the observations of Alexis de Tocqueville, a French writer and political scientist who toured America in the early 1800s. He was struck by the incredible energy and vitality of everyday Americans - simple men and women who worked doggedly at improving their lot in life. He observed that this was possible only in America, because only in America did hard work pay off for the common man. Therefore, it wasn’t ‘greed’ that motivated Americans over the last 200 years, it was the possibility, the certainty, that if they worked really hard, no one could take their newly found prosperity away from them. It energized them, it gave them hope for a better tomorrow. And yes, a very few people became very rich doing so. But, the more important point is that hundreds upon thousands became very prosperous - much more so than if they’d remained in Europe. It was the growth and political stability of a solid middle class that distinguished America from any other nation at any other time.

This has always been the central argument against capitalism — the poor are exploited by the greedy rich. In Europe, the poor had been exploited by the rich and powerful for centuries, well before capitalism existed. And, there were proportionately more poor people in Europe during the 1800s than in America. They were held back by social barriers, denied education and opportunity, prohibited from relocating to areas with better economic conditions. This was the reality of life in England and Europe. Slavery was abolished in the United States by presidential decree in 1861. But only after pressure was applied by other European governments did Russia finally abolish serfdom for Ukrainian peasants in 1862, freeing hundreds of thousands from centuries of bondage. The lack of opportunity and incentive was a fact of life for millions of Europeans.

In America, those who escaped the rigid social and economic structure of Europe were becoming landowners, opened small businesses and sent their children to universities. This was impossible anywhere else in the world and in many places is still impossible today. What America’s largely classless society was able to accomplish was the marvel of the modern world - a relatively well functioning capitalist system with minimal interference by aristocrats, autocrats and bureaucrats. Was it perfect? No. Did excesses and failures occur? Yes. But, it’s still the best system ever devised by man. The irony is that the liberal elite who preach against a free-market economy and capitalism have benefited most from its bounty.

Take Robert Reich as an example -  he attended Dartmouth College and won a Rhodes scholarship to study in England. The Rhodes scholarship was endowed by Cecil Rhodes, a capitalist and diamond merchant. Reich then taught at Harvard University, the wealthiest educational institution in the world. Harvard endowments exceed $45 billion, most of them gifts from capitalist alumni. At Brandeis University he was the Maurice B. Hexter Professor of Social and Economy Policy at the Heller School of Social Policy and Management. He’s currently a professor at UC Berkley’s Goldman School of Public Policy. Maurice Hexter, Florence Heller, Richard and Rhoda Goldman are philanthropists who endowed the institutions that paid Reich’s salary. Where did their money come from? Capitalism. This ingrate, along with his former girlfriend Hillary Clinton and thousands of other liberals, have no problem taking money from capitalists only to turn around and bite the hand that feeds them.

But then, this is what liberals do. They resent the fact that someone else has worked harder, worked smarter or had the good fortune to accumulate wealth. Envy is a powerful emotion. It’s corrosive, destructive and insidious. Envy, dressed up as public policy, is what threatens free market capitalism. Demagogues like Reich and Obama have used envy to whip up class warfare, turning it to their own advantage. Socialism is their choice of socio-political structure, not because it’s inherently better than capitalism, but because it can be easily controlled by a small elite. That’s right: Socialist activists like Reich and Obama firmly believe in their own superior intellect and abilities, and they’re more than happy to impose their ideology on the rest of America. The average American can’t seem to grasp this. Why would someone dedicate their lives to telling other people what to do? There doesn’t seem to be any profit in it. And that’s the key - Americans are so conditioned to a direct linkage between effort and material reward that the desire to accumulate personal power is totally foreign.

They don’t understand it because they’ve never lived under despotic rulers or communist totalitarianism. Josef Stalin murdered millions and destroyed entire civilizations. He controlled the Soviet Unions economy with an iron fist. As the supreme ruler, he could have any material thing he wanted. And yet, he lived like a pauper. This is unfathomable to the average American. Unfortunately, Americans will need to get used to it. Obama’s monstrous plan to grow government means that all Americans will be working for the government, whether they understand it or not and whether they like it or not.

Reich, Obama and other well-educated liberal elites have no problem taking money from capitalists to feather their own nests. They have no problem taking money from taxpayers, either. Using our tax dollars, they will build a utopia in their own image and likeness. And, they’ll do it in the name of ‘fairness’. At some point, Americans will wake up and find themselves yoked to a huge and unyielding machine that sucks the life out of them. But it will be too late. Betrayed by liberal ideals, Americans will have allowed the most despotic form of government to take hold. They will have thrown away their freedoms and their future.