The Left’s rejection of American values is a very real threat

A recent poll reflects that 53 percent of Democrats now view socialism favorably, while 47 percent view capitalism favorably, almost an exact flip from a 2012 poll.

This should be no surprise to those who pay attention to things political, given the relative success of Sen. Bernie Sanders in the primary campaign in the 2016 election, and the unexpected arrival on the scene of the unknown Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who defeated a Democrat incumbent in a New York congressional primary. Both Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are openly socialist.

Democrats prominently display their dissatisfaction with America’s capitalist success, sometimes embarrassing themselves in the process. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo drew broad but deserved criticism when he stated, “We’re never going to make America great again. It was never that great.”

"We have not reached greatness," he said. "We will reach greatness when every American is fully engaged. We will reach greatness when discrimination and stereotyping against women, 51 percent of our population, is gone, and every woman's full potential is realized and unleashed, and every woman is making her full contribution."

Cuomo is confused on this issue, as he is on many others. Greatness to him is perfection, as he said, an impossible goal to achieve. Heaven knows he has missed that mark by miles.

Next up is House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. The 2017 tax cuts helped tens of millions of Americans, and as Cato’s Chris Edwards explains, those making between $40,000 and $50,000 a year saw a 46 percent reduction in taxes paid. The tax cuts also allowed companies to raise wages and give bonuses.

Pelosi, however, calls these benefits “crumbs,” and pledged to take them away if Democrats regain control of the House. You see, millionaire Pelosi, one of its wealthiest members, knows better how to spend people’s money than they do.

And then there is former CIA Director John Brennan, complaining that his free speech has been infringed because President Donald Trump rescinded his security clearance.

This seems much ado about nothing: He no longer works for the government, and Trump does not value his input and will not ask him to consult on matters requiring a security clearance, so he does not need one. 

In case you are wondering, the president has the authority to remove a security clearance from any administration employee who has one.

Furthermore, a security clearance has nothing to do with one’s right to free speech. In fact, having a security clearance may actually cause a sensible person, which Brennan plainly is not, to be more careful about what they say than someone without a clearance.

Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute, let the cat out of the bag regarding security clearances held by former government employees, and this makes it clear why so many former and present government employees rushed to Brennan’s defense.

“One of the reasons you’re going to see a lot of pushback and a lot of screaming on this issue of security clearances is that it goes to the heart of their ability to cash in,” Schweizer said on Fox News’ “Hannity” program. “If they don’t have a security clearance, they cannot cash in with [government] contractors in this way,” he said, referring to the revolving door between government workers who move to employment by government contractors.

A former government employee with a security clearance can work with private sector contractors on classified government projects; a former employee without one cannot. Both Brennan’s feelings and pocketbook have been hurt.

And Brennan’s shadowy and possibly criminal behavior while a government employee, and since, justifies taking away his clearance.

The brilliant columnist Wesley Pruden puts the increasingly socialist mindset of Democrats into perspective: “The latest polls show that Democrats now prefer the socialism that wrecked the economies of Europe to the capitalism that built America. Capitalism is an imperfect economic system, too, as Winston Churchill famously said, but its lasting virtue is that it is better than all the others.”

From the very beginning of the American idea, our Founders expressed concerns about how it all would end. Both our first and second presidents, George Washington and John Adams, had concerns.

Washington used his farewell address to warn that partisan "factions" could tear the country apart. "Democracy never lasts long," said Adams. "There never was a democracy yet, that did not commit suicide."

And James Madison, president number four, was afraid that liberty could be lost by "gradual and silent encroachments of those in power."

Everyone who thinks socialism is better than capitalism should be required to spend a month in Venezuela, once the crown jewel of South America, now a place with bare store shelves, a starving population, and the highest rate of inflation in the world at 27,364 percent on May 31.

Here at home, the fascist Antifa protestors chant “NO borders NO wall NO USA AT ALL” at their demonstrations.

Is all of this a signal of deliberate abdication of founding principles and ideals, or merely illustrate gross ignorance of them?

If you really want to complete America’s suicide and turn it into Venezuela, vote for radical socialist Democrats.

We need some of the things from “the good old days” back again

Some of us seasoned citizens look out across the social landscape and are aghast at what we see. Our relatively stable culture of a few decades ago has certainly changed. And not for the better.

Many people in the U.S. have come to a point where for them reality has degenerated into a matter of “whatever I think it is.” And an associated mentality is that whatever someone or some group of people thinks is important must be treated not only with respect but even acceptance, no matter how silly or irrelevant it seems to others. Kid gloves are the new fashion trend, lest someone’s tender feelings be affected.

Of course, only certain types of things qualify for this special treatment, and other things are automatically disqualified, and by golly, you had best know the difference.

If you are not hip to Political Correctness (PC), you are likely to run afoul of the PC Police, and be labeled any of the fashionable “ists,” like racist, chauvinist, sexist, or one of the “phobes,” like xenophobe, transphobe or homophobe, but not Anglophobe.

For example, it was once considered inarguable that men and women are different. Then came the women’s movement, and after many years of that, a famous magazine of the day published an edition with its groundbreaking discovery that “Men and Women are Different!” emblazoned on the cover.

Our society is plagued with problems that many of us could never have predicted, and have trouble accepting, or even believing. Among these are the younger generation’s penchant for ingesting Tide pods, the idea that the Christmas song “Jingle Bells” or bulletproof glass in certain crime-ridden business areas are somehow racist, or that any word containing the syllable “man” that has been part of the vocabulary for centuries now needs to be changed because it is sexist.

On the subject of sex/gender, in our time it was uncommon or non-existent for someong born with the physical plumbing of a male who thought they should be a female, or vice versa. In those days sex and gender were the same; if you were born a female, you exhibited female characteristics of behavior, and vice versa. While it was true that some females might demonstrate less feminine/more masculine traits than most, and some males might demonstrate less masculine/more feminine traits than most, the differences between one’s biological sex and preferred gender did include people actually trying to switch genders, as is being done today.

These days many people react emotionally, believing those reactions are the solution to many problems. Finding causes through logical analysis has become a foreign concept. The horrific tragedy of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida is a recent case in point.

Many people automatically returned to banning weapons like the one used by the mentally ill shooter used as the solution. Yes, some of those do so out of ideological impulse, but others are unable to see past the knee-jerk reaction of blaming the gun rather than the perp. And it is increasingly the case where mere disagreement with these emotional responses produces insults rather than productive discussion.

Also these same people want to blame an organization for the tragedy, for the same reasons. The National Rifle Association (NRA) and its five or so million law abiding members through some illogical magic have become the reason this young cretin killed 17 students and teachers at his former school.

Some questions for these folks:

Did the NRA fail to follow up on multiple warnings about the shooter’s mental state and criminal activities?

Did it prevent the school from installing security measures that could have kept him out of the buildings?

Did it tell the deputies who were on site not to go in and confront the shooter?

Did it persuade local authorities to stop arresting young wrongdoers and instead send them to counseling so the area’s profile would look better?

Did it whisper in the ear of this mentally ill fool that he should go to the school and kill people?

Was the shooter one of its members?

The answer to each of these questions is, of course, a loud and definite “no!” Further, as time passes, we learn more about what actually happened, and what didn’t happen that should have happened, which should reiterate the wisdom against reacting too strongly, too quickly.

These things demonstrate that America isn’t America anymore. And they outline the problems facing the country. How do we start from this crazy situation and restore the nation to the America that was the most free and stable yet imagined by humans?

Americans have done a lousy job teaching the younger generations the history of America and the traditions that evolved as a result of its creation. Too many of us do not know those traditions, and more than a few do not appreciate them. Consequently they do not honor them. The current culture is one that has few strong, unwavering principles, and those that remain are under attack.

How long can America survive floating aimlessly along, having abandoned the very traditions and values that made it the great nation it once was?

Federal welfare programs give freely and demand little

Americans, it is said, are the most generous people in the world. We give to our friends and neighbors and fellow countrymen when they need help, of course, but we also help those who live thousands of miles away in other countries.

We are quick to provide a “hand up” to Americans in need, to help them over rough spots and get them back on their feet so that they can then take care of themselves. There are those who for various reasons are unable to help themselves, and we don’t mind continuing to provide assistance for them.

The hand up is sometimes called a “safety net,” a device to save those truly in need from falling into despair. But for many the safety net has turned into a hammock, no longer a device to help out in an emergency or time of trouble, but an easy way of life for those who would rather let others provide for them than provide for themselves.

This is sometimes a matter of availing themselves of a good opportunity, while at other times it is a matter of culture: Far too many Americans have been taught through actual experience that it is not so difficult to live off the government and charitable interests.

A friend taught a class in the 80s in a junior high school whose student body had a not-so-good reputation for academic achievement. He told the story about his first six-week grading period, using a grading system that was designed to reward honest effort as much as a grasp of the subject matter to get a passing grade. Of the 37 students in his class, half failed; only a few earned decent grades.

When he asked them how they were going to survive after they grew up and were on their own, if they were unable to get a passing grade in a class designed to guarantee passing if you just made an honest effort, one of the students said: “Well, Mr. Smith, I’m going to do like my parents: be on welfare.” That career choice surprised him, and so did the agreement of many of the other students.

This situation, mirrored in towns and cities across the nation, is the result not of the “hand up” efforts of caring Americans, but of hammock-like government welfare programs, which give much but demand little.

President Lyndon Johnson declared a War on Poverty in the January 1964 State of the Union address. “This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America,” Johnson stated.

His actual stated goal was not to prop up living standards artificially through an ever-expanding welfare state, but instead to strike “at the causes, not just the consequences of poverty.” Ultimately, he wanted “not only to relieve the symptom of poverty, but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it.” A noble goal, as so many government initiatives are, at least at first.

Twenty years ago, another president pledged to “end welfare as we know it.” On August 22, 1996, President Bill Clinton filled a campaign promise by signing welfare reform, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, into law.

This time there were new wrinkles: after two years of receiving benefits, welfare recipients would be required to work, and incentives were removed that encouraged having children out of wedlock and breaking up families to get benefits. There was also a five-year lifetime limit on total time of receiving benefits without working.

How have these programs worked out? Familyfacts.org reported in 2012, “Total federal and state welfare spending has increased more than 16-fold since 1964. Even since the 1996 welfare reform replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) with the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, spending has increased by 76 percent and by more than 20 percent since 2008.”

President Obama, the Washington Examiner reports, “took the Great Recession as an opportunity to get as many households as possible into the food stamp program, an important part of his stimulus package. One result was that the number of able-bodied adults with no children who receive food assistance doubled.”

Because the value of food stamps and welfare payments are looked at as income, the overall poverty rate has not changed much since the War on Poverty began. However, both the number of Americans on welfare and total welfare spending have soared.

The goal should be to reduce both poverty and welfare spending. Two states, Kansas and Maine, have implemented a requirement for able-bodied childless adults to work for food-stamp benefits, and the results are impressive.

In Maine, 80 percent of those affected by the requirement left the food stamp program, and in Kansas, the total of those affected dropped 75 percent very quickly, and 60 percent had work within a year, according to the Examiner.

When it was easy to stay home and collect food benefits, many were happy to do so. But when required to work, these recipients quickly got out of the hammock and went to work, abandoning government support.

People are often content to do as little as possible, but will do what they must.