By Douglas V. Gibbs
Greece is a wet dream to socialist liberals. They have government health care, a third of the working population is employed by the state with primo benefits and a "can't be laid-off" clause in their contract, the unemployment benefits for the rest keep some of the bills paid for some of the citizens, and the national debt is sky-high - oh, and Greece is bankrupt, and asking for a bail-out by the rest of the European Union. Sure, they think they have social and economic equality, and they do to a point, I suppose - everyone is equally poor. . . except for the intellectual elitists who make up the ruling class.
One of the factors at play in Greece's financial woes is the high rate of government employment, so to save some dough there is talk of ending some of those jobs. As a result, the workers have gone on strike and are protesting in the streets. Isn't that something? The fact that a third of the country is employed by the government, with expensive benefits packages and pension plans, is a part of what put the country into dire straights, but those people have been so brainwashed that they are entitled to such things, they have taken to the streets to protest against Greece taking actions to prevent its collapse!
Take a good look, kids. Greece is the future of America, should Barack Obama continue to have his way.
Over a year ago Larrey Anderson penned a piece about European Socialism, shortly after Obama took office. Mr. Anderson made no bones about what Obama is, and he saw what Obama was going to do before he did it. And to those who voted for Obama that are now scratching your heads thinking, "Gosh, this isn't what I signed on for," I hate to say it, but we told you so.
The Founding Fathers knew that this kind of leader, socialists like Barack Obama, were out there too. That is why the U.S. Constitution was written with the intention to limit the authorities of the federal government. They wanted us to be nothing like Europe for a reason.
How often do you hear the argument, "We are the only Western Nation without Universal Health Care?" We are the only nation that hasn't bought into the madness of socialism for a reason.
As Mr. Anderson reminds us in his "Waltzing on the Titanic" piece, if Europe has done anything for us, they have given us a glimpse at the future should we continue down the destructive path the Democrats seem so happy to take us down.
Upon visiting Europe you will realize that the young people tend to sit around. Not all of them do so, for there is a small shred of sanity still remaining, but for the most part in places like France, Italy and Greece, the young people "tend to sit around, smoke Marlboro cigarettes, drink espresso (and Coca Cola), and (at least until this election) bitch about America" because they have all the time in the world, considering they have no jobs and all.
Like your run-of-the-mill liberal they have decided, as did the Nazis, Soviets, Chinese Communists, and Fascists of history, that capitalism is evil (although China recently took a small sip of capitalism, and likes it!). They have been taught that capitalism is evil from an early age. It is not up to their individual selves to make things happen, as far as they are concerned. Social and economic equality, as Europeans see it, is the duty of the government.
The government can, and should, provide health care, employment, and eventually, guaranteed retirement benefits for everyone.
Sure, they realize that their own governments are failing, and that the socialism they are currently living under is corrupt. But rather than consider that perhaps it is Socialism in the first place that is causing them their woes, they have decided their problems are only due to the current loser socialists, but in the next election they'll bring in some real socialists, and those guys will fix the problem for sure.
As Anderson points out, "Most European countries have become, essentially, plutocracies. The socialist governments give lip service to wealth redistribution but they are tightly interwoven with the "old money" in the banking system and in big business. . . [bailouts are] handed out to the big bankers and to big business. That is how socialism works. Politicians, bankers, and big businessmen do an age-old dance in triple time. There is no trickle down economics in socialism. Almost all of the money stays at the top."
Europeans, however, thanks to the lifetime of indoctrination that teaches socialism is good, and capitalism is evil, always come to the conclusion that as bad as they have it, at least they are not America, which is under the evil spell of capitalism.
Barack Obama pointed out that the image of America as seen through the lens of worldwide eyes is not good, and told us that he planned to alter the worldwide opinion of America so that we could be seen favorably. Obama believes those Europeans, for example, look upon America with disdain for a whole host of things that he spent an entire trip to Europe apologizing for. He apologized, essentially, for us bailing Europe out when Nazi German stood ready to dominate over the disarmed appeasers during World War II, he apologized for our involvement in nations around the world as our humanitarian aid flows into those countries, and our military holds off dictators and despots, and he apologized for our perceived "arrogance," as if we should be ashamed for prospering while the rest of the nations suffer under the weight of their bad decisions, and attachment to civilization killing socialism.
The poor opinion of America, in reality, has nothing to do with what we have done. It all revolves around the fact that those people have fallen under the same spell that the people under Soviet rule did. They have been taught that capitalism is evil, and as a result America must be evil as well because the American People will not allow themselves to vote in socialism and be as miserable as the rest of the world.
This all takes us back to the 60s when Soviet leader Nikita Kruschev said, "We will bury you!"
At the time the fools that heard him say that infamous line assumed Kruschev meant that the Soviet Union would bury us from a military point of view. They figured that Kruschev was articulating that Soviet troops, and possibly Cuban troops (like a Red Dawn situation, I suppose), would be marching across the American countryside in an attempt to take over America, shooting it out with armed Americans that have taken advantage of their 2nd Amendment rights for that very reason.
Kruschev was not talking about a military take-over of America. The Soviet leader was talking about
ideology. Socialism is a religion to these people, a freedom killing religion that, like Islam, uses itself as a disease to infest the enemy, rotting a nation from within. The propaganda and ideological infiltration as Kruschev was referring could be used as a weapon just as much as, if not more than, military operations or militant terrorism.
The disease of socialism, the Marxist step towards Communism if you read the Communist Manifesto, has marched across Europe, and is now pounding on the doorway of America. A wave of dependence on the government, an entitlement mentality, is sweeping across America. The seeds were planted over a hundred years ago, and the machinery was put into place by far left socialists like Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson, and now we have met the shark, and Obama wishes us to jump over that shark to a point of no return.
A brand new socialism is coming, wrapped up in a package with a tag labeled Hope and Change - but there is nothing new about what Obama is offering, or about what the liberal Democrats are attempting. The same exact promises have been offered many times before, and the result is a collapsing European economy, and a failed socialist system.
The socialists know theirs is one of failure, but are convinced that the reason their version of socialism is failing is because America has not jumped on board the Bolshevik Train to ruin.
Barack Obama scoffed in a speech about the nature of what he is doing, and he may not even realize the implications of his socialist policies (but I doubt that. . . I am a firm believer he knows exactly what he is doing, and that these socialist liberals have been planning this bloodless coup for generations). The United States has reached that moment in history where we can choose one of two paths. We can follow Europe to the sinking ruins of socialism, or we can continue to be prosperous and great and follow what led us to this point in time - a free market anchored in capitalism and liberty.
We complained about the spending habits of Bush, and argued that he was hardly a Conservative - then replaced him with someone who was willing to spend more (and now has raised the debt limit so that he and the Democrats can spend even more only weeks after Obama chastised everyone for bad spending habits) with aggressive socialist policies.
Yes, I know everyone wants to brush away any talk that Obama is a socialist, or that the President of the United States, and the Congressional Democrats, would purposely destroy our system to replace it with a corrupt system of socialism. As I mentioned earlier, when in his meeting with the Republicans in Baltimore, Obama dismissed any talk of his plans being Marxist in nature with the wave of his hand, and a little chuckle accompanied by the shake of his head, as if that would be good enough to convince everyone that the wolf in sheep's clothing was indeed not a wolf.
If he is not a socialist, prove it. Go through his website, and scour all of his "actions" (actions speak louder than words, after all) and tell me: Did you find any policies grounded in free market principles?
Remember, what Obama is doing now has been tried in Europe for three generations, and it has not worked. It has failed.
The propaganda has worked, however. The politicians, bankers, and big businessmen are throwing bailout money around to each other while claiming they are for the man on the street, and you fell for it. Obama promised to look out for you, and then bailed out AIG, the big banks, and the big businesses. The money is staying at the top. And the progressives, largely populated by Democrats, did this not because those business entities were too big to fail as they claimed, but so that the government could have say over the operations of those businesses. Obama and the Democrats bailed out the big players of the struggling industries so that they can dictate to these companies whether or not they can pay bonuses promised to executives, encourage CEOs that don't play ball with them to resign, and be involved directly in the day to day activities of these businesses.
And that is something much worse than the socialism Europe is seeing, and is more in line with the socialism Europe has seen. . . and the name for it is fascism.
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Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
Waltzing on the Titanic - American Thinker
Obama Signs Debt-Limit Increase Into Law - Wall Street Journal
Roubini: Euro Zone Could Collapse Due to Greece, Spain - MoneyNews
Did We Just Get Lectured on Fiscal Responsibility By the Guy With the $1.6 Trillion Budget Deficit? - Hot Air
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