The democracy and socialism cycle ...

Socialism has a great appeal to many.  That’s why democracy often leads to it.

It’s pretty easy to convince people to vote for politicians promising free stuff. When enough people vote only for their own self-interest, you get socialism. 

Which is weird in itself, since socialism purports to help everyone.  But most often it gets in because enough voters only want to help themselves.  They may rationalize they are supporting socialism for the common good of all, yet it’s really all about themselves.

They don’t want to pay back their own student loans or the loans their kids still owe. They don’t want to pay for their healthcare. They want a higher minimum wage for themselves for what's really a low-skill entry-level job. They want government to subsidize the cost of food, housing, broadband, college tuition, or whatever, because they simply don’t want to pay as much. 

They want government to support them and give them things they want, not because they couldn’t have these things on their own if they tried, but because they don’t even have to bother trying. They don’t have to work harder to get a better paying job. They don’t have to push themselves to learn new skills. They don’t have to pay to feed their own children. Or worry about losing their job because of poor performance or a bad attitude.  Or even getting a job. 

Why not just let your elected leaders handle everything for you? 

It’s very appealing. Not to everyone, but certainly to many.   

The new popular term is Democratic Socialism.  It means – according to people like Sanders, Warren and AOC – that the ordinary voter will still have a say in how socialism works and its scope. Maybe even to decide how private companies are managed, and how they compensate not just their executives, but ordinary workers, among other things. 

If that sounds suspiciously like “dictatorship of the proletariat,” that’s because it’s the same thing. Only without using those words. 

And it simply doesn’t work.  Socialism – which is what Sanders, Warren, AOC, and lately Kamala Harris are actually promoting – always fails.  There are two key reasons. 

Sooner or later, you run out of other people’s money to pay for all the free stuff.

That happens first. 

Government grows bigger to administer the proliferating range of free services, subsidies, and giveaways promised by politicians.  Spending rises but there’s actually less revenue coming in because fewer people are required to pay taxes and more are net recipients of government money.  So it starts raising taxes even higher on an increasingly smaller pool of taxpayers. 

Professionals and business owners who can afford to leave do so, or at least transfer their assets and businesses elsewhere to avoid the crushing tax burden. That depresses tax revenue further and increases unemployment, which means more people are on government assistance.  

Power and water utilities are often bankrupted because politicians essentially give away their services.  Then these utilities are effectively expropriated to keep services going. When that happens, reliable power and water service falters and outages become common because the people who knew how to operate these utilities are gone, replaced by patronage hacks and clueless bureaucrats.   

Government borrows heavily to cover the shortfalls between revenue and spending. It sells assets to cover interest payments, destroying collateral used to back its borrowing.  When that fails, if it can it prints more money, which devalues the currency and spikes inflation. 

Finally, when the socialist government runs out of the ability to borrow more, as it certainly will, and its currency and IOUs are worthless, it can’t afford to provide free stuff anymore. When the free or subsidized stuff stops, the population grown reliant on these suffers.  

The promise of socialism faces cold, hard reality. 

In short, subsidized food isn’t a great benefit when there isn’t enough to feed your family.  Free healthcare isn’t either if there’s little medicine or enough good doctors.  Subsidized power and water don’t help when the lights go out and the taps run dry for hours every day.

Socialist leaders then have two choices. Roll-back the free stuff while raising taxes even higher – which will outrage significant parts of the population and risk a revolution. Or move to the next step for many leaders when socialism completely unravels – double down on government control of everything. And terrify the population with the alternative to that.   

That’s why when socialism in the extreme fails it often leads to authoritarianism. Once the majority of the population is almost entirely reliant on government, voters are afraid to change the status quo. They willingly cede absolute power so the free stuff and subsidies stay in place, even when those start to dry up; they are told things will get much worse if they don’t. 

That’s a very powerful message. It’s how de facto dictators get elected.    

And once some leaders get absolute power, they never want to give it up. They’ll do practically anything to keep power. Including the use of martial law and military force, if necessary. Even when their countries are collapsing around them and their people are starving.     

That leads to totalitarianism.  Elections are rigged.  Opposition is suppressed, sometimes violently.  Already scant resources are redirected to the military and police to maintain control.

Yet, sooner or later, all totalitarian regimes fall.  

What takes their place? Why, calls for more democratic government. 

And the cycle begins again. It may take years, but it almost always happens. 

Look at Cuba. Look at Venezuela. Look at failed socialist states around the world. Closer to home, look at Puerto Rico, the basket-case on our doorstep. 

Don’t forget to look at the United States, too, if things continue as they are.     

Democracy leads to socialism. Socialism leads to authoritarianism.  Authoritarianism leads to totalitarianism. Which usually leads back to democracy in some form.

Unfortunately, that often happens after millions have suffered.   

Safe, legal and rare ...

The two extreme sides on the abortion debate are going way too far.

The majority of Americans support Roe v. Wade.  They think abortion should be legal, but with some restrictions. That’s been the view for decades now.

However, the debate over abortion – and a woman’s right to an abortion – rages on.  The rhetoric has gotten even more extreme in recent years since the 1973 Supreme Court decision. 

It’s always been about politics. And still is.  And will remain so. 

You can debate if the legal basis for Roe v. Wade was sound yet still agree with the outcome.     

Personally, I think it was sloppy jurisprudence by activist Justices based on an invented “right to privacy” that appears nowhere in the Constitution.  See if you can find it there.  You can’t. 

That’s because it doesn’t exist in the Constitution.  They made it up. 

Nor is it a law. The Supreme Court can overturn lower court rulings, but it can’t create law.  To be a law it would have to be passed by Congress and signed by the President.

To my knowledge there is no such Federal law protecting or prohibiting the right to an abortion. There’s just an opinion by the Supreme Court in 1973, on somewhat shaky grounds. No Congress, including this one, has ever wanted to resolve the issue.  To solve it would take away a powerful fundraising tool – and neither party wants that.   

Many Americans are opposed to unrestricted abortion on demand, but still believe it should be available with reasonable restrictions. Which was the basic outcome of the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision. In short, they are in the “safe, legal and rare” camp, which is where most Americans are, especially most American women. They largely support keeping Roe v. Wade in force. 

They are pro-life in the abstract; yet pragmatically pro-choice within reason. They don’t believe in promoting abortion, or celebrating it, but would oppose banning all abortions.

Accidents happen. Birth control can fail.  Women get pregnant when they didn’t want to, or simply aren’t ready to have a child for whatever reason.  Requiring them to carry a child to term as a result isn’t always the best solution, either for the mother-to-be or the unborn child.  

A much smaller, but very vocal and ardent, group of extreme abortion opponents want all abortion at any stage to be illegal, with no exceptions.  They see Roe v. Wade as a license to murder the unborn, even at the point of conception. They want Roe v. Wade overturned by any means.   

There are also extreme supporters of unrestricted abortion on demand. 

The extreme abortion on demand proponents want no restrictions on abortion at all.  They believe a woman of any age has the right to terminate a pregnancy for whatever reason, at any time. The most extreme of these believe that includes immediately after the delivery of a live baby. 

Both extremes have become more radical over the years. 

In some states, the extreme abortion opponents have managed to get laws signed to make performing any abortion – at any time, and under any circumstances – against the law and in some cases punishable by imprisonment up to 99 years.

In other states, extreme abortion on demand proponents have succeeded in getting laws passed that eliminate any restrictions on abortion. Any. One state even now allows the termination of a baby immediately after a live birth, if the mother wishes.   

Abortion opponents are screaming this permits legal infanticide.  Abortion on demand proponents accuse the abortion opponents of taking away a woman’s right to choose and control her own body, while ushering in a real-world version of The Handmaid’s Tale.

Honestly, both extremes are crazy.  They are pushing these ridiculous state laws for no other reason than to polarize the country politically even further.  One side claims they’re hoping for a showdown in the Supreme Court; the other frankly doesn’t care if the Court hears the cases or not – they’re already making political hay out of the overreaction by the anti-abortion fanatics.  

Abortion opponents think with a conservative majority on the Court, it’s their best shot in years to overturn Roe v. Wade and send decisions about abortion back to the states.

That’s wishful thinking at best; there’s virtually no chance the Court will ignore more than 45 years of precedent altogether.  It may have a shaky Constitutional foundation but throwing it out would set off a firestorm.  Plus, the Court – with either a conservative or liberal majority – usually favors maintaining or extending rights, rather than curtailing them.  The most likely outcome is that it gets upheld by a 6-3 or 5-4 vote, with a couple of strong dissents.  Anti-abortion extremists lose. 

Abortion on demand proponents – pushed by progressives in the Democrat Party – don’t really care whatever the Court decides.  They’re already using the issue to bash Republicans, and especially Trump, ahead of the 2020 election. They’ve framed it as a women’s rights issue. And a powerful tool to drive angry women voters to the polls for Democrats. 

They win either way. If the Court somehow overturns Roe v. Wade – a real long shot – that still helps Democrats two ways: it bolsters their argument that the makeup of the Court needs to be changed and the next Justice must be a liberal and probably a liberal woman; next, that conservatives (Republicans) don’t care about women at all.

My bet is if these most extreme laws get to the Court, the Court knocks down all of them using Roe v. Wade as precedent, without additional comment.

And we’ll all be back to square one. Which is what everyone wants anyway. 

Including both the Republican and Democrat parties. Then both sides can continue to use the abortion issue for fundraising.  That’s why they’ll never resolve it legislatively in Congress.       

The reality is, virtually nobody is pro-abortion. But outlawing all abortion immediately on conception with no exceptions, even when the life of the mother is at risk, is unrealistic.  

Roe v. Wade may be imperfect at best, but it’s worked for more than 45 years.  

Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill ...

Once again, the left and Democrats prize symbolism over substance. 

Nothing against Harriet Tubman, famed abolitionist and suffragette, but she’s not a founding father, former Secretary of the Treasury, or former President of the United States. 

The left and Democrats want her image on the $20 bill to replace that of Andrew Jackson. 

Jackson was a former Representative, Senator, Justice on the Tennessee Supreme Court, General, Hero of the Battle of New Orleans, Vice President, and President. He’s also the only President in our history to fully pay off the national debt.  However, he also owned slaves.

And that’s the publicized liberal rationale for kicking him off the $20 bill.  The slave thing. But the real reason they want Tubman on the $20 bill is to pander to segments of their base. Tubman checks five important boxes for them: she was black; she was a slave at one time; she was an abolitionist who smuggled slaves to freedom; she was a suffragette; and she was a woman.

Unfortunately, her hands aren’t entirely clean. But you won’t hear much about that; you’ll only hear glowing praise for her heroic actions to oppose slavery and advance women’s rights. 

That’s ignoring another part of her past. A not so praiseworthy part.      

Tubman recruited volunteers to join with abolitionist John Brown, who’d already murdered five men in Kansas, for his planned attack on Harper’s Ferry in 1859.  Brown referred to her as “General Tubman.” Brown’s plan – which Tubman knew and endorsed – was to seize that Federal armory by force and distribute its weapons among slaves to start a bloody rebellion.

It ultimately failed after the deaths of defenders, hostages, attackers and some of Brown’s own family.  Afterward, Brown was hanged for treason along with other members in his raiding party. 

So Tubman played a big role in trying to start a bloody rebellion. Ever hear that before? 

Probably not. It doesn’t fit the left’s or the media’s narrative.  To them she’s a saint.

Jackson’s bad because he owned slaves when it was perfectly legal to do so.  Whatever we all feel about slavery now, slavery was very common then; even some freed blacks owned slaves.  Tubman, on the other hand, plotted with John Brown to attack and seize a Federal armory and start a race war, which certainly wasn’t common at the time, but somehow that’s okay.

Why not put her on the $20 bill, then? 

The Trump administration – specifically Treasury Secretary Mnuchin – has said that Tubman won’t go on the $20 bill anytime soon.  Democrats are howling that’s a sign that Trump is a racist.

I don’t believe it has anything to do with racism but more with keeping the images on our currency from becoming playthings for politicians and special interest groups. I’m good with that. 

On postage stamps, okay; if you want a stamp with Tubman on it, or anybody else, living or dead, real or imaginary, I don’t care. Hell, Elvis got a stamp – and he’s no American hero, sorry.  So did a lot of other people. Stamps are disposable. Just like popular trends. Something to think about.  

Once you start replacing images on our currency to appease special interest groups, where does it end? Does every new administration get to put their own heroes on our currency?  Would a President Bernie Sanders – God forbid – decide to put Karl Marx on the $50 bill? Would a President Ocasio-Cortez – shudder – replace current portraits with a yucca plant or jicama to honor indigenous people?

What’s next? Kicking George Washington – another slave owner – off the $1 bill and the quarter and replacing him with someone more palatable to the current whims of the left? Then what about Thomas Jefferson?  Should Benjamin Franklin – a legendary philanderer – also lose his spot to appease the current #metoo movement? 

And how do we choose who takes their places?  Should it be by popular vote via texts and e-mails, like choosing winners on American Idol?

It’s just nonsense. It’s the same silliness responsible for renaming roads, schools, public buildings, and tearing down monuments using revisionist history to appease one group or another. Proponents feel virtuous that they’re correcting some historical evil, but they’re really just trying to edit history they don’t like; in time, others might want to rewrite their history, too.

If you dig deep enough – as I just did with Tubman – nobody’s squeaky clean.  Especially if you judge them only in the context of today’s culture of political correctness.           

The general public – black, white or whatever – isn’t obsessed with changing the portraits on our currency.  There’s no great groundswell of support for this. 

They just want our money to hold its value, something the left and Democrats don’t seem to care as much about.  Or, frankly, about really helping the larger black community with real jobs and education instead of making meaningless gestures like this and calling for reparations.  

The dust up over Tubman on the $20 bill – like the call for reparations – is purely political. And baseless. And patently disingenuous. It’s one more example of symbolism over substance. 

Another historical note: the first person killed by John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry was an innocent black man, who had the misfortune to be working on a train attacked by Brown. 

Remember, Harriet Tubman provided volunteers and helped in the planning for that. 

The danger of "righteous indignation" ...

It makes some otherwise normal, rational people go off the rails.

And it can accelerate.  Once someone falls prey to it, even the smallest things, real or imagined, or completely fake, can push them further into the realm of virtual insanity.

Worse, some now feel entitled to let loose and abandon any moral restraints they once had.  That’s because they are responding in their view to an offense so grave, so terrible, so evil, they have the right – nay, the moral obligation – to do practically anything to counter it. 

Including resorting to physical violence. 

Righteous indignation powers ISIS and innumerable jihad-like movements around the world. It powers white supremacists. It also powers the Antifa and BLM activists.  It powers the extreme right and the extreme left, among others.  It breeds mindless hate that ignores facts, reason, and anything else that might serve as an anchor to reality for those lost in its thrall. 

Once righteous indignation starts it’s easy to keep going.  It’s also easy to feed the fire and inflame people even further, pushing them to commit acts they’d never do otherwise.

That makes it the preferred tool of demagogues and propagandists. 

If you’ve wondered how the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem witch trials, the Nazi invasion of Poland, and the slaughter of millions of innocent Jews happened, that’s how.  The motives behind these atrocities may differ, but why so many other ordinary, decent people then willingly joined in resulted from righteous indignation artificially fomented by the perpetrators. 

Righteous indignation festers like a virus within some people.  Some are predisposed to outrage.  It’s also highly communicable. It takes surprisingly little to spread; all it takes is a bit of encouragement, a nudge, from the right people with the right message to fire up in people harboring the virus.  Before you know it, you’re in a full-blown epidemic. 

Sanity, logic and facts go out the window, replaced by righteous indignation. Righteous indignation substitutes more easily manipulated emotions over reality.  It’s the stuff from which otherwise ridiculous conspiracy theories can be manufactured, facts be damned.    

Did Trump collude with the Russians?  Is he a pawn of Putin? Did Russians rob Hillary of the Presidency?  Is Trump a white supremacist?  Does he hate all immigrants?  Is he a racist? Does he hate gays? Is he a criminal who should go to prison for obstructing justice and other crimes? 

There are no facts to support these allegations against Trump.  None.  That does not stop these charges being repeated time and again by those in the media and Democrats in Congress or campaigning for 2020.  The sad part is that many of them know full well all these allegations are not only baseless but demonstrably false.  Yet they persist, hoping to foster righteous indignation in the American public, simply because they hate Trump and his supporters. 

Not because he’s done anything wrong, but because he represents a challenge to their agenda. 

Meanwhile, the same people in the Democrat Party and the media are attacking on a variety of other fronts, again using righteous indignation as their weapon of choice to avoid facts and produce the results they desire.

Stacey Abrams still claims she won the race for governor in Georgia. And she keeps saying the only reason she doesn’t have the job now is racially motivated voter suppression. This is demonstrably false. She lost by almost 55,000 votes, even though she outspent her opponent by $2 million in an election where voter registration and participation were among the highest in Georgia in decades, including among blacks. There’s no proof of any voter suppression. 

However, many in the media and many Democrats still publicly say she actually won. That’s impossible, of course.  They know it, too.  But they are hoping the charge of racially motivated voter suppression will cause righteous indignation among blacks and other minorities – and their liberal base – to drive more votes for Democrats in the next election.    

Hillary is the queen of righteous indignation.  She's still playing the same card of the aggrieved victim who really won against Trump, again with no facts on her side. She claims she was robbed by Russians, sexism, dirty tricks, and an archaic Electoral College system.  

In reality, Hillary herself lost the election by being a terrible candidate who made really bad campaign decisions. Plus, she called almost half of America “deplorables.”

She did win the popular vote, mainly by running up her numbers in a single state (California), but she lost fair and square in the Electoral College. That’s the only thing that mattered.

As powerful a weapon as righteous indignation can be, it’s a double-edge sword. 

Two can play the righteous indignation game, in other words. And you can carry righteous indignation too far; then it can become a weapon for the other side.  

Democrats and the media viciously smeared Brett Kavanaugh with false charges of decades-old sexual misconduct, hoping to inflame righteous indignation among women. This backfired when Kavanaugh refuted all their claims and responded with his own righteous indignation at their attempts to destroy him and his family merely to settle political scores.  

When Democrats and the media perpetuated the Russia collusion hoax nonstop for two and a half years, calling Trump a traitor who would be forced from office by the Mueller report, they were caught off guard when the Mueller report found no evidence of collusion.  

Now, spurred by righteous indignation over the reported abuses of Mueller’s team – and the FBI and other intelligence agencies – the pendulum may be swinging the other way.  Senate and House Republicans, AG Barr, the DOJ’s Inspector General, and an experienced prosecutor in Connecticut, are on the path to exposing those responsible for starting the hoax. 

The result may be that some former and current high-ranking officials will be indicted.     

Fortunately, righteous indignation does have a life cycle. It needs to be constantly fed or the public eventually tires of it.  When you run out of new things to feed it, it slowly withers. 

Democrats and the media don’t realize it, but the signs are already starting.  If they keep going, the righteous indignation they crave to maintain will shift to the other side; their villains – such as Trump and AG Barr – will become victims of injustice in the eyes of many. 

And their current heroes – such as Comey, McCabe, Cohen, Clapper, Brennan, and Mueller – will become the villains.

Such is the nature of righteous indignation carried too far.