Soapbox: Misinformed ignore facts about America’s socialism

By Tom Loret | Twentynine Palms |Hi-Desert opinion page |Posted: Tuesday, August 9, 2011

In response to “Socialists ignore facts about America’s greatness,” by Wayne Stamm, in Saturday’s paper.

Mr. Stamm has been misinformed. Stalin was raised and educated in the Greek Orthodox Church and modeled his totalitarianism on the patriarchy of his order but called it “socialism.” Hitler was a Catholic until the day he died, called it “national socialism,” and pope after pope never found cause to excommunicate him. Does Mr. Stamm really think North Korea is a “socialist” state?

The reason I ask is because off-the-shelf conservatives usually ignore facts about America’s socialism and once you understand that nearly everything most of us value was given to us by liberal socialists, I’ll bet you’ll be on that plane yourself.

For example, did you know that Francis Bellamy wrote the Pledge of Allegiance in 1892 and was a flaming, radical vice president of the Christian Socialists? They revered the teachings of their liberal socialist mentor, Jesus, and used the Sermon on the Mount as their socialist manifesto. Read it lately? To avoid disunity, Bellamy wrote the pledge with no reference to a “god” because he preferred universal, socialized goodness to sectarian gods. He and his living relatives all vehemently opposed the fundamentalist right-wing Christians who demanded “under God” be added, but against all protests and suits could not stop its hijack and plagiary.

Mr. Stamm is led by beliefs, not truth. There is a difference. For example, we are not the most successful continuous form of government in the history of mankind. Who told him that, his stockbroker? We are less than 300 years old and are a runaway mess. Other cultures, such as China, have counted their government model in terms of millennia. Not successful, you say? Ask them.

Closer to home, the Iroquois trace their formal beginnings to 1,000 AD. Theirs was a decentralized, socialist constitutional form of government that was used as the model for our Constitution. Don’t believe me? Give Tom Jefferson and George Washington a lookup. They were guests of the Iroquois and studied their ways long before the capitalist genocide, rape and pillage destroyed their lands, property and lives — the way they do to us.

Too much too handle? OK. Let’s make it easy. I will list just a few things that Mr. Stamm and his friends may have enjoyed courtesy of liberal socialists: Social Security; Medicare-Medicaid; Peace Corps; unemployment insurance; welfare (corporate and low-income); civil rights; student grant and loan programs; safety laws (OSHA); environmental laws; prevailing wage laws; right to collective bargaining, which brought about paid medical insurance, paid vacations, and pensions; worker’s compensation; the Marshall Plan; flood-disaster insurance; school lunch program; women’s rights, Fair Labor Standards Act that established minimum wage, anti-child labor and a 40-hour week and time-and-a-half overtime.

Lets’ see, there’s the FHA-HUD that created 44 million residential homes for our vets and families in distress; USDA programs; Farmers Home Administration; rural water districts, rural electricity (REA); the GI Bill; the Veterans Administration; FDIC and FSLIC; the establishment of the Securities Exchange Commission that produced the socialist “bail-out” of capitalist bankers; all the oil subsidies that put America on the map; the federal highways....

I am running out of word space here, so I’ll make Mr. Stamm a deal. If he names me one thing a Republican or a capitalist has done for him, we’ll call it even. Or better yet, describe to us his version of heaven. Do the rich capitalists get deluxe accommodations? And, I would also suggest that he thank the editor of this paper for washing out his verbiage.

Have a nice flight

Soapbox: Socialists ignore facts about America’s greatness

By Wayne Stamm
Joshua Tree | Posted: Saturday, August 6, 2011 12:00 am

Our great country and its form of government represents one of the most successful, continuous forms of government in the history of mankind. Do we have our faults? Sure, we are after all human being and naturally flawed. Even though we have less than 5 percent of the world’s population, we have contributed to more than half of the innovation, patents, new medicines and medical technologies, breakthrough inventions, i.e. computers, software, and numerous other inventions have revolutionized life around the world. As Americans, we are almost always the first to respond to disasters anywhere in the world, helping to save lives and help less fortunate people recover. We as Americans are easily the most generous people on the planet. Our willingness to give has not been limited to finances but also human capital, as we have saved the world from evil dictators and evil governments at an enormous cost to us in lives and financial sacrifice.

Our republic with its Constitution, Bill of Rights and the ability to amend it when we discover we have made mistakes makes us different than any other governments in the past. Can we improve? Absolutely! Most of us desire to do just that.

It is depressing, however to read the editorial pages of this newspaper and to see the blissful ignorance of a few that seem to be published almost weekly. These liberal, socialist-leaning (children) want to blame our great country for everything in the world. None are so blind as those who refuse to see.

One of the greatest aspects of our society and form of government is the fact that all of us are free to speak and express our feelings. We are not, however, entitled to our own facts. These anti-American socialists lie about almost everything they state on these pages. Their overall theme is that Republicans are all bad and to blame for every illness in the country and that the left-leaning Democrat socialist progressives are a nirvana. They couldn’t be more wrong!

The collapse of the housing market and financial industry is one of the most glaring of these errors. While not exclusively the fault of the Democrats, it is pretty darn close. The bottom line is that Democratic administrations going back to Jimmy Carter and exacerbated by Clinton, deliberately removed the safeguards in the mortgage, housing, and banking industry in order to buy votes from the under classes.

...There is a terrific new book out that details what happened, it names names, places, events and the calamitous outcomes that have destroyed our economy. This book, “Reckless Endangerment,” puts all the myths and half truths to bed. I have a proposition for these socialist-leaning proponents and that is, that I will start a fund to provide first class airfare for any of them who want to move to the utopian communist country of their dreams. One slight catch, you must renounce your citizenship to accept the deal. What say you? God bless America, the best society the world has ever known.

EDITOR’S NOTE — This guest soapbox was edited to remove personal and ableist insults.