Tag: Socialism

MLLG

Dreaming of a Woke Christmas

George Noga

Dreaming of a Woke Christmas

Warning: candy canes resemble a shepherd’s crook

GEORGE NOGA

NOV 26, 2023

Santa Claus (please, no fat shaming) has been cancelled because he (preferred pronoun) is a phallocentric, cisgender, heteronormative, oppressive white male existing solely within an ageist authoritarian hierarchy. He is misogynistic and fraught with mansplaining, bropriation, toxic masculinity and white fragility.

Only unwoke children adhering to bourgeois capitalistic values and to moral absolutism (by not being naughty) receive gifts during the Celebration of Winter (formerly known as Christmas). Such children are brainwashed and seduced into a lifelong exploitative and metastasizing addiction to conspicuous consumption.

santa claus with red background
What? Me cancelled!

Santa’s bribes to gift-addled children are made by degendered, height-challenged, marginalized elves at the North Pole, a hostile post-colonial, non-union, right-to-work setting. The oppressed elves and reindeer must avoid stepping off the shrinking polar ice cap. At least ze (preferred plural pronoun for elves) no longer need to watch out for polar bears on passing ice floes due to their rapidly shrinking population.

Woke Christmas Shopping and Decorating

Scrooge-like robber barons such as Wal-Mart lure unsuspecting shoppers with elaborate decorations, holiday music and even (horrors) low prices. Some stores stoop so low as to provide ersatz Santas to lure, confuse and coax young children into an anti-proletarian lifestyle. If you should feel overwhelmed by microaggressions while shopping, seek a safe room with elevator music, teddy bears, images of frolickingly puppies, Play-Doh, warm milk and cookies. Should you need a rest room, make sure there is one available that comports with your gender identity at that moment.

Décor for the Celebration of Winter must exclude trees and anything intended to hang on trees. Also offensive are images of Santa, reindeer and anything red or green. Most offensive are nativity scenes. Avoid snowflakes and snow globes; however, making snow people is acceptable. Avoid holiday lights unless the power comes from solar or windmills as the energy wasted will lead to more fracking and pipelines. Be on high alert to avoid candy canes which resemble a shepherd’s crook – bummer.

Gift Guidelines for a Woke Christmas

Eschew toys made in China with slave labor; however, it is just fine to buy EVs that use child labor in Africa. Buy locally to avoid leaving a humongous carbon footprint. Take care to avoid cultural appropriation and non-intersectionality. Don’t use wrapping paper or cards as the environmental impact of paper products requires clear cutting of old growth forests and sacrificing spotted owls on the altar of unbridled consumerism. Moreover, disposing of all the waste requires countless new landfills. Lengthy after Christmas lines to return gifts attest to their utter depravity; obviously, people neither needed nor wanted the gifts. This is not gaslighting.

Avoid gender specific gifts; above all, this means NRA-inspired toy guns for the deplorable and irredeemably racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic and xenophobic boys in flyover land. They will cling to their new guns along with their religion. Avoid gifts from companies guilty of greenwashing.

Certain woke gifts are acceptable, such as birth control pills for birthing people on rape-infested college campuses. Personalized N-95 masks are a good choice. If all else fails, a Che Guevara sweatshirt always is sure to please your woke friends.

Vacations to socialist utopias such as North Korea, Gaza, and nearby Venezuela are popular with progressives; however, remind your recipient to bring zer (preferred pronoun) own toilet paper. If you can’t afford foreign travel, California, New York or Illinois are good substitutes. If you want to impress your favorite liberal, give zem (preferred pronoun) a U-Haul to Florida. For a really big splurge, you could provide private security to your blue state BFF in a sanctuary state where crime and looting are rampant, guns are banned, police have been defunded and cash bail eliminated.

Woke Christmas Dinner

Once all the unwanted gifts and materials are properly recycled with zero waste, avoid binge eating f/k/a Christmas dinner – an affront to those with food insecurities. Avoid grace or even a moment of silence as this is but a veiled attempt at prayer. Eat only organic, non-GMO, sustainable, local and fair-traded foods. Consider a vegan, PETA approved menu; tofu is a great alternative. Avoid turkey which is not free range and is loaded with growth hormones, mutagens, carcinogens and antibiotics. Bon Appetit.

TRIGGER WARNING: Merry Christmas to all our readers from MLLG!

© 2023 George Noga
More Liberty – Less Government, Post Office Box 916381
Longwood, FL 32791-6381, Email: mllg@cfl.rr.com

MLLG

Socialism and Bottled Water

George Noga

Socialism and Bottled Water

A simple bottle of water explains socialism’s failure

GEORGE NOGA

Water began to be sold in single serve bottles in the USA during the 1970s. There always had been a small market for sparkling water and for bottled water in parts of the world where tap water was unsafe or of poor quality. But who would have fathomed that Americans would shell out good money for bottled water when safe, good quality water runs scot-free out of faucets, fountains and coolers?
bottled water

I am educated in economics and would like to believe I would make the best possible decisions to serve my fellow man. However, if I were a 1970s era socialist government planner, I would not have allowed our economy’s scarce resources to be used to produce and to distribute bottled water. After all, no one would buy it; right?

I would have been dead wrong; consumption now is 1 million bottles per minute.

Today, bottled water is the second largest beverage sold – ahead of both milk and beer. In 2022 Americans spent over $30 billion to buy 16 billion gallons. That pales in comparison to China which consumes nearly 100 billion bottles annually. The world market is over $300 billion and is forecast to hit $500 billion by 2030. Every day, people across the globe consume 1.3 billion plastic bottles, or about 1 million per minute. A Harris poll showed that 94% of Americans buy bottled water. Worldwide, 600 million households (about 2 billion people) drink bottled water. Whew!

All of my economic training, smarts, logic and pristine intentions would have failed dismally in discerning the preferences of my fellow man. I would have completely misjudged the creativity and ambition of entrepreneurs and the behavior of consumers armed with a free choice. Had I been the chief central planner for a socialist government in the 1970s, there would be no bottled water today.

One million bottles of water are consumed every minute!

However, as dead wrong I would have been about bottled water, no one would ever have known of my mistake because it would have been impossible to know what would have happened with free people in free markets.

Of course, it isn’t just about bottled water. There would be no copy machines, personal computers, smart phones, internet or a host of other products we take for granted today. IBM originally estimated the world market for copy machines at 5,000 and for personal computers at 100. The cognoscenti of the time believed the internet would be used only by government and universities.

No socialist government would have produced copy machines or personal computers or facilitated the internet. If perchance they had produced copiers or PCs they would have been shoddy – just like their cars (the Trabant comes to mind) that had less horsepower than today’s riding lawn mowers.

The humble bottle of water, available in any store for around one dollar, shatters the myth, arrogance and fatal conceit underlying socialism and all command economies.

© 2023 George Noga
More Liberty – Less Government, Post Office Box 916381
Longwood, FL 32791-6381, Email: mllg@cfl.rr.com

MLLG

Adam Smith Tricentennial

George Noga

Why there is no capitalist manifesto
GEORGE NOGA – JUN 25, 2023

This month is the 300th anniversary of Adam Smith, born June 1723 in Kirkaldy, Scotland. Adam Smith was not the father of capitalism, as he often is called, but the first to articulate its principles. He is known for his invisible hand metaphor explaining how self-interested individuals operate in a system of mutual interdependence and direct economic life more effectively and fairly than government intervention.

a statue of a man standing in front of a building

Adam Smith did not invent capitalism because it evolved organically. No intellectual ever wrote a capitalist manifesto. Capitalism doesn’t require pointy-headed professors to theorize; it just happens naturally. To the eternal pique of liberal elites, no one is capable of controlling capitalism, whereas socialism requires controllers, i.e. the same progressive savants who castigate capitalism. Capitalism is egalitarian and rewards those who best serve sovereign consumers; i.e. their fellow man.

Capitalism evolved in prehistoric times

Capitalism evolved organically. For example, Paleolithic fishermen worked incessantly, spearing just enough fish to survive. Then along came one nascent capitalist who thought of a net. Since neither he nor anyone else had any capital he could borrow, he worked longer hours for months to accumulate enough surplus fish (his capital) to give him time to make a net. With his net he generated a fish surplus to trade for other goods. He also financed others who, in turn, specialized in different skills, with the resultant benefits from the division of labor. Our first capitalist became wealthy, but his capital also made everyone else much better off.

“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interests.”

In sharp contrast, socialism never has happened organically. All the failed attempts throughout history to achieve Utopia, Xanadu, Zion and Valhalla were spearheaded and financed by some ivory-tower dreamer. That explains, as well as anything, why capitalism always succeeds and why all forms of collectivism always fail.

More Wisdom from Adam Smith

Adam Smith wrote many other pithy statements about economics and capitalism, which continue to have relevance for those of us in the twenty-first century. His point in Wealth of Nations about comparative advantages of trade still resonates.

“By means of glasses and hotbeds, very good grapes can be grown in Scotland and very good wine too can be made of them at about thirty times the expense for which at least equally good can be brought from foreign countries.”

Smith’s statements about the role of government also are valid 300 years on.

“Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.”

“To hurt in any degree the interest of any one order of citizens, for no other purpose but to promote that of some other is evidently contrary to that justice and equality the (government) owes to all the different orders of citizens.”

“The statesman who attempts to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capital would not only load himself with unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could be entrusted to no council, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had the folly to fancy himself fit to exercise it.”

Perhaps my favorite Adam Smith quote applies (in spades) to today’s virtue-signaling progressives, private-jetting climate alarmists, greenwashing corporations, limousine liberals and their ilk. Adam Smith had their number 300 years ago when he wrote:

“The man who has performed no single action of importance, but whose whole conversation and deportment express the justest, the noblest and most generous sentiments, can be entitled to no very high reward. We ask him, what have you done.”

Adam Smith’s genius lie in being first to clearly explain an economic phenomenon that is as old as our Paleolithic fisherman who first generated an economic surplus. Remember, no one ever wrote a capitalist manifesto because it wasn’t necessary. Unlike all forms of collectivism, capitalism is organic and consistent with human nature. That explains why capitalism and free markets succeed and socialism fails.

© 2023 George Noga
More Liberty – Less Government, Post Office Box 916381
Longwood, FL 32791-6381, Email: mllg@cfl.rr.com

MLLG

Equity Means Socialism

George Noga

What if everyone was equal?

Equity Means Socialism
By GEORGE NOGA – APRIL 9, 2023

Collectivism has gone by many names: socialism, communism, fascism, Marxism, democratic socialism, Utopianism, Fabianism, progressivism – and now, the most mellifluous term of them all – equity. Despite its euphony, equity is just another code word intended for maskirovka and to make socialism palatable – just as politically correct hospitals refer to death as a negative patient outcome.

The horrors of socialism, in all its names and iterations, has been the subject of dystopian works such as Atlas Shrugged, Animal Farm, 1984 and Brave New World. Herein, I take a fresh look at what equity could look like in the 21st century.

Harrison Bergeron

Kurt Vonnegut’s short story, Harrison Bergeron, published in 1961 provides one spine-chilling perspective. It is set in the year 2081, after the 213th Amendment to the Constitution is ratified making every American equal. A powerful new government czar, the Handicapper-General, strictly enforces the law so that everyone performs at the lowest common level. Everyone is handicapped. Those who are good looking must wear masks; those who are strong or athletic must carry weights; those who are smart must wear earbuds to disrupt their thought process. For example, more proficient ballerinas are weighted down and masked to counteract their gracefulness and appearance so the audience won’t feel bad about their own appearance.

The protagonist is 14-year-old Harrison Bergeron, a genius, tall, incredibly handsome, athletic, strong, artistic and brave. The Handicapper-General forces Harrison to wear earphones, glasses to cut his vision by 50%, disfiguring makeup, blackened teeth, a red rubber nose and 300 pounds of weight to compensate for his prodigious strength. However, Harrison decides to live unimpeded by government interference. Note: There have been several movies made of Harrison Bergeron.

Achieving Perfect Equity

Following is my idea for how perfect equity could be achieved today? The most progressive minds in America could create a master algorithm incorporating all known markers of success and failure. The algorithm would take into account, inter alia, DNA, race, gender, sexual orientation, height, weight, IQ, life expectancy and appearance. Exogenous factors in the algorithm would be birth place, social class, family income and educational level.

The end result of the master algorithm would be a polygenic score assigned to everyone at birth. Those with positive scores would pay a polygenic tax, while those with negative scores would receive a corresponding benefit. The taxes and benefits would vary in direct proportion to how much the scores were positive or negative. The scores would be reevaluated and adjusted periodically so that any inequalities that emerged would be corrected. Done correctly, this could make everyone equal.

Mythical Germanic Kingdom

In the real world perfect equality is a chimera. If all wealth were equalized, within a few years the wealth distribution would return to the status quo ante. Equity is merely the latest stalking horse for socialism. Interestingly, no sci-fi (or other) writers have ever written a positive story about a society where everyone is perfectly equal.

Something in the human condition makes some people (usually those with nothing to lose) dream of collectivism – the term du jour being equity. This post provided a peek at what perfect equity might look like – Harrison Bergeron with a 300-pound weight and algorithmic polygenic scores. How much of that kind of equity do you want?

Despite the failure of all forms of collectivism throughout the ages, progressives dream of a world, like the mythical Germanic kingdom, where candy grows on trees, lemonade flows in rivers and the fattest, ugliest and stupidest person is king.

© 2023 George Noga
More Liberty – Less Government, Post Office Box 916381
Longwood, FL 32791-6381, Email: mllg@cfl.rr.com

 

 

MLLG

The First Thanksgiving in America

George Noga

The enduring lesson of Thanksgiving is the triumph of freedom over socialism.

The First Thanksgiving in America

By: George Noga – November 20, 2021

This Thanksgiving, as your family gathers to celebrate, regale them with the indelible lessons of the first Thanksgiving in America and not with the usual feel-good, warm, fuzzy, multi-cultural and politically correct narrative of Pilgrims sharing their first harvest and peacefully celebrating with their Wampanoag neighbors. This fusty canard about Thanksgiving is mostly false and offers no enduring life lessons.

The Pilgrims did not invite the Indians to the first Thanksgiving 

The Wampanoags were not invited to the harvest feast but crashed the party after it had begun, not to celebrate but to remind the Pilgrims they were there at their mercy. The relationship turned violent soon thereafter. Native Americans regard Thanksgiving as a tragedy leading to genocide, loss of land and slavery. Americans have been taught a story that is historically incorrect and that ignores the true lessons of Thanksgiving.

The True and Enduring Lessons of Thanksgiving

Following is the authentic story of Thanksgiving in America and its timeless lessons about human nature that speak to us even today. It is an inspiring and uplifting story about human survival, adaptation and eventual triumph over starvation and death.

Once upon a time, good and righteous people seeking a better life came to settle in America; they had sincere and lofty ideas about how they would govern themselves in the new world. They believed that sharing all work and benefits equally was just and even noble. They strove gallantly to make such a socialist system work.

The Pilgrims starved under socialism but prospered with capitalism

But after enduring social dissonance and unfathomable hardships, they came to the realization that a system of communal property is incompatible with human nature. They quickly took decisive action and instituted private property rights. The next harvest resulted in a veritable cornucopia, and they held a feast to celebrate. Today, we celebrate this triumph of freedom over socialism as the first Thanksgiving in America.

The authentic Thanksgiving narrative is about early Americans overcoming starvation, death and collectivism. It is about understanding that socialism always results in starvation amidst plenty. It is about understanding that severing the link between work and benefit is contrary to human nature. It is about understanding that socialism is such a perversion that people choose starvation over living and working communally.

People in Plymouth (and Jamestown) literally chose death over socialism. Yet, all these same people who, one year earlier, starved under socialism suddenly became industrious, inventive and prosperous when they had property rights. And that, dear readers, is the authentic narrative of the first Thanksgiving in America!

A HAPPY AND AUTHENTIC THANKSGIVIING TO ALL OUR READERS

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Our next post about climate change reveals a climate threat that is far worse.

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May Day 2022 – Commie Compilation

George Noga

Humans have dreamt of a temporal paradise since the Garden of Eden.

May Day 2022 – Commie Compilation

By: George Noga – May 1, 2022

May Day commemorates the Haymarket riots, which to socialists symbolize the struggle for workers’ rights. It is the most important holiday in socialist countries such as Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, Venezuela and former Soviet republics. In observance, we present a compilation of the failures of collectivism from many different angles. We do this because polls show many younger Americans prefer socialism over capitalism. Also, progressivism is a gateway drug for socialism.

Socialism fails in theory and practice: Throughout history socialism has failed everywhere it has been attempted; it never has succeeded for a group larger than a small clan, family or tribe. There is not one example where socialism has improved the human condition over a sustained period of time. Collectivism fails because it is fundamentally contrary to human nature and ignores and misaligns incentives.

Collectivism is a lie: Commies promise you liberty; you get the Berlin Wall and closed borders with watchtowers, razor wire and minefields. They promise prosperity; you get lines, rationing, shortages and shoddy goods. They promise hope; they give you nihilism. They promise truth; you get Pravda, censorship, propaganda, and banned internet. They promise life; they give you death – murdering over 100 million of their own people. They promise a workers paradise; you get a phantasmagoria of lies, terror, slaughter, misery, poverty, injustice, kleptocracy and social pathology.

Socialism is just like Scandinavia: Progressives assert socialism is just like Sweden and other Scandinavian countries. Sweden experimented with socialism in the 1970s and it was a colossal failure. They abandoned socialism and embraced free market capitalism. Today every Nordic nation is capitalist. They provide robust social benefits only because their capitalist economies generate great wealth. Sweden is not prosperous due to socialism; it is wealthy because it abandoned socialism. Moreover, if Sweden were a US state, it would be the poorest one – and by a wide margin.

Initial successes are illusory: Socialism can appear to work briefly as socialists plunder a nation’s wealth. They confiscate assets, loot industries, strip natural resources, run huge budget deficits, and borrow to the hilt. They tax the wealthy to oblivion, print worthless currency, hyperinflate, pillage banks and beg for foreign aid. They impose price, rent and currency exchange controls. For a time, these measures give the illusion of progress, but all socialists have done is steal a nation’s patrimony. After socialists are done pillaging, it always ends the same, i.e. starvation amidst plenty.

Jamestown and Plymouth: Both colonies initially were governed under socialist principles. All property was communal and there was no direct link between work and benefit. Both experienced mass starvation and death – even cannibalism. They starved to death en mass rather than work collectively. They literally chose death over socialism. Once private property rights were restored, the colonies prospered. The very same settlers who had starved under socialism, now thrived under capitalism.

Trabant versus Mercedes: The best car ever produced under socialism is the Trabant. It had a two-cylinder engine and 26 horsepower – similar to a riding lawnmower. The gas gauge was a dipstick and oil had to be mixed in with the gas in precisely the correct proportion. There was no fuel pump and the gas tank was placed above the engine for gravity flow. Payment in full was required up front and the car would be delivered in 12 years. The Trabant was made in East Germany; a few miles away in West Germany, consumers had their choice of VW, Audi, BMW, Porsche and Mercedes-Benz.

Head-to-Head Comparisons: Many years ago there were five islands, all of them poor and bereft of natural resources. Two of them chose command economies and collectivism; the three others chose free market capitalism. A half century later, the socialist islands are impoverished hell holes and the ones that chose capitalism are rich. It’s as simple as Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan versus Cuba and Puerto Rico.

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Progressives continue to harbor quixotic dreams of utopia; perhaps they will get it right the next time. But for the entirety of human history, it is the god that failed.

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Next is a special posting about the beginning of the spending crisis.
More Liberty Less Government – mllg@cfl.rr.com – www.mllg.us
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Socialism, Toilet Paper, Taxes and More

George Noga

Socialism resulted in chronic shortages of meat, fish, bread, milk and yes – toilet paper.

Socialism, Toilet Paper, Taxes and More

By: George Noga – February 27, 2022

Democratic Socialist or Social Democrat: It is critically important which word is the noun and which is the adjective. Socialists like Bernie Sanders and AOC like to cloak themselves in the mantle of Scandinavian social democrats, who promote robust social benefits – but all within the ambit of a capitalist democracy. Don’t be fooled by this maskirovka. When the words are reversed, socialist becomes the operative word and democratic merely a modifier. Social democrats give you countries like Sweden and Denmark; democratic socialists give you hell holes like Venezuela and Cuba.

Socialist Humor: A journalist enters a store in Venezuela and asks if there is any meat. The clerk replies, “This is the store with no fish; the store with no meat is across the street.” The journalist dutifully writes in his notebook “no fish, no meat“. Next, the journalist goes into a bakery; finding no bread, he jots down “no bread“. Then he goes into a dairy store and once again finding the shelves bare, he enters “no milk“. A secret police agent following the journalist then goes up to him and says, “You could be shot for writing that“. Whereupon, the journalist writes in his notebook “no bullets“.

“Workers were issued their own personal roll of toilet paper.”

Toilet Paper and Socialism: Commies are not only incapable of producing meat, fish, bread and milk, they could not produce toilet paper. In workplaces throughout the Soviet Union, there never was any toilet paper in the stalls because it instantly would be stolen. Instead, each worker periodically was issued his personal roll of toilet paper for use while at work. This is not a joke; welcome to the socialist workers’ paradise.

Note: We do not publish these vignettes to heap ridicule, however well deserved, on the commies of yore and their present day look-alikes. Our purpose is to remind people that this will happen here if we continue down the path of progressivism.

“The IRS answers only 3% of all calls to taxpayer services.”

Democrat Tax Increases: House Dems voted for 87,000 more IRS auditors to conduct 1.2 million more audits annually. Incredulously, this equals only 13.8 audits per year for each new agent. There is something terribly wrong with this metric; why can’t each agent perform five or ten times that number? I am reminded of Will Rogers’ quip, “Thank God we don’t get all the government we pay for“. To make matters worse, the burden of the new audits would fall predominantly on small business and the middle class; the wealthy use high-octane tax professionals and are effectively audit proof. The Democrats want to fund IRS enforcement by 2,300% more than taxpayer services. Last year 97% of all calls to IRS taxpayer services (help line) went unanswered.

The law passed by the Dems raises the effective personal income tax rate to 57.4%, the highest in the developed world. Many blue states will have a combined marginal rate above 60%. They voted to increases the top marginal capital gains rate to 37% – the highest in 50 years. They also voted to increase the tax on home heating fuel.

Identity Politics: The EPA recently issued a press release heralding new appointments to its Science Advisory Board; it began as follows: “Today the EPA announced the selection for membership of the Science Advisory Board, which will be comprised of 22 women and 25 men, including 16 people of color, making it the most diverse ever.” How comforting it is to know that our science is in the hands of a group balanced by race and gender. This is a disservice to any appointees selected on the basis of merit.

Biden announced his Supreme Court appointment would be a black woman. This not only would be illegal in the private sector, it is a colossal disservice to his nominee. Biden is announcing his nominee will be selected based on identity and not on merit.

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Next on March 6th – The progressive assault on our democracy.
More Liberty Less Government – mllg@cfl.rr.com – www.mllg.us
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Socialism’s Promises Versus Its Realities

George Noga

They promise Elysium, Xanadu and Zion; you get Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea.

Socialism’s Promises Versus Its Realities

By: George Noga – October 31, 2021

Happy Halloween! Imagine an entire nation going trick or treating hoping to get a treat of Utopia, but instead gets a trick of dystopia. Today there are only three truly socialist states: Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea; former socialist states include the USSR, China Vietnam, Yemen, Cambodia, Eastern Europe and several in Africa. China (today), Sweden and the Nordic nations have market economies and are not socialist.

Why do so many people desire socialism despite its dismal record? Socialists make high falutin, seductive promises such as: “from each according to his ability; to each according to his need”. They appeal to a basic human egalitarian ideal that the world somehow would be better if everyone held hands, sang Kumbaya and shared equally. Many intellectuals believe their ideas are superior but they must have control over others to achieve their goals. Another path to socialism is incrementalism and this is the great danger now facing America; we are slouching toward socialism.

Almost everyone understands that socialism fails to deliver the goods, while capitalism delivers a veritable cornucopia. Yet America is moving closer and closer to socialism. It’s like taking increasing doses of a potent drug we know eventually will kill us but that delivers a momentary high. Americans – especially the young – are beguiled by the Siren song of collectivism and its flirtatious promises. Therefore, it is altogether fitting that we examine socialism’s myriad promises and compare them to the results.

The Promises Versus the Realities of Socialism

They (socialists) promise you liberty; they give you the Berlin Wall and closed borders with watchtowers, mine fields, razor wire, and vicious dogs. They promise equality; they give you equal squalor and poverty. They promise a clean environment; they give you a toxic wasteland. They promise modernity; they give you Chernobyl and Aeroflot. They promise a classless society; they give you elites with dachas living in decadent luxury. They promise freedom; they give you Gulags, Stasi and the KGB.

They promise Apple, Google and Disney; they give you lines, shortages and shoddy goods. They promise peace; they give you war. They promise hope; they give you nihilism. They promise a Volkswagen; they give you a Trabant. They promise Eden, they give you hell on earth. They promise plentitude; they give you rationing. They promise Utopia; they give you dystopia. They promise truth; they give you Pravda.

They promise Elysium, Xanadu, Valhalla and Zion; they give you North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela and the USSR. They promise comradeship; they give you the secret police. They promise freedom; they give you totalitarianism. They promise progress; they give you stagnation. They promise fulfillment of eternal dreams; they give you nightmares. They promise hope; they give you lives of quiet desperation. They promise a new social order; instead, they give you a smorgasbord of virulent social pathologies.

They promise Sweden; they give you Angola. They promise pristine intentions; they give you devastating results. They promise education; they give you propaganda, reeducation camps and little red books. They promise Singapore; they give you Yemen. They promise technology; they give you antiquated products. They promise the arts; they give you censored and banned books, movies, radio, TV and internet. They promise justice; they give you show trials, preordained verdicts and persecution.

They promise butter; they give you guns. They promise a treat; they give you a trick. They promise a workers’ paradise; they give you nations held captive to keep workers from escaping paradise. They promise morality but are the embodiment of evil in the world. They promise good government; they give you kleptocracy, oligarchy and cronyism. They promise elections but they murder or imprison opponents and journalists. They promise abundance; they give you starvation amidst plenty. They promise a better life; they give you death, killing 100+ million of their own people.

Socialists promise the moon; instead, they give you a phantasmagoria of lies, terror, slaughter, misery, poverty, injustice, death, desperation and social pathology.

Our next post about elections in America is titled: Run Forest Run

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MLLG Special: The Camouflaged Nexus Of . . . Climate Change, Critical Race Theory and the Spending Crisis

George Noga

There is a hidden connection among climate change, race and the spending crisis.

MLLG Special: The Camouflaged Nexus Of . . .

Climate Change, Critical Race Theory and the Spending Crisis

By: George Noga – July 18, 2021

Three mega-issues changing America are linked in ways not well understood. Climate change is regarded, including by President Biden, as an existential issue in the literal sense and not the philosophical sense of mankind’s search for meaning. The spending crisis will change America forever and Critical Race Theory has become an accepted part of pedagogy in schools, universities and workplaces throughout America.

The common denominator of these three issues is socialism along with its misanthropic stepchildren: communism, progressivism, and liberalism. In each case, unreconstructed socialists are the driving force behind the cause. They are working in tandem toward the same goal – whether or not they coordinate their efforts. They receive financing and succor from a coterie of camp followers and useful idiots including progressive groups, academia, public sector labor unions, teachers, media, government bureaucrats, NGOs, entertainment, organized religion, social media – and even sports and business.

Climate Change and Socialism

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism, die-hard Marxists were homeless. They decided to pursue their goals via a back door by taking over the environmental (and later, climate change) movement. They simply cloaked their anti-capitalist agenda in green language and became watermelon environmentalists, i.e. green on the outside but red on the inside. Patrick Moore, a founder of Greenpeace, said, “Following the collapse of communism, Marxists hijacked the (climate change) movement. Their far left agenda is about socialism, not ecology or (climate).”

Critical Race Theory (“CRT”) and Socialism

Marxism is based on class conflict and the belief that workers would seize the means of production and create a utopian socialist society. However, socialist-style regimes proved dismal failures, murdering over 100 million of their own people. The human carnage and economic toll were so great even die-hard Marxists couldn’t hide from it. Moreover, Marxists came to understand workers in the USA, Western Europe, Japan and many other places never would buy into the notion of class struggle.

Just as Marxists knew they needed a back door (environmentalism and climate change) to achieve their goal, they also recognized they needed an alternative to class struggle. They decided to substitute race (and ethnic) struggle for class struggle and BINGO, Critical Race Theory was created. Masters of maskirovka, commies decided on the euphemism “equity” as their mantra. By equity they mean an end to private property and redistribution of everything according to race. There would be no individual rights, only group rights. At its core, Critical Race Theory is virulent socialism.

Spending Crisis, Modern Monetary Theory (“MMT”) and Socialism

Most groups pushing for MMT and massive spending, debt and deficits are socialist. Once again, they are seeking a back door to socialism. Progressives understand Americans will not accept socialism under normal circumstances; therefore, they must create an emergency serious enough to beguile Americans into accepting the hitherto unacceptable. Thus, we have a spending crisis that will result in horrors so frightening people will accept anything – especially if they are promised it is only temporary. The spending crisis is yet another back door to a socialist United States of America.

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There you have it – the nexus of climate change, CRT and spending; they all represent back doors to socialism. The leaders of these movements know full well what they are doing but are few in number. They must rely on camp followers and useful idiots, i.e. clueless liberals besotted with feel-good progressive bromides and good intentions.

We must stand up to these assaults on our liberty and way of life. That requires the courage to speak the truth and to withstand the slings and arrows directed at you by elitist mobs. But courage begets courage and a majority is one person with courage.

Next on July 25th – The school choice movement in America.
More Liberty Less Government – mllg@cfl.rr.com – www.mllg.us

A Chinese Thanksgiving: The Story of Xiaogang

George Noga
Plymouth and Jamestown have much in common with the village of Xiaogang.
A Chinese Thanksgiving: The Story of Xiaogang
By: George Noga – November 24, 2019

          This year marks the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China; it was celebrated with great pomp throughout China. Something far more transcendent and ineffable took place on November 24, 1978 – exactly 41 years ago today – in the tiny Chinese village of Xiaogang; that story is suppressed even today by the Chicoms. Following is the amazing true story of the quiet revolution that saved China.

         After taking power in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party (Chicoms) abolished private land ownership and forced peasants into communes. The result was predictable; by 1978, 40 million had starved to death with survivors near death. In the village of Xiaogang there was no food. Farmers dug up roots, boiled leaves with salt and ground roasted tree bark into flour. Then something truly remarkable happened.

           On November 24, 1978 a farmer, Yan Hongchang, invited heads of Xiaogang’s families to attend a clandestine meeting. The farmers signed a 79-word pledge to divide the commune’s land into individual family plots; each agreed to submit his share of the decreed quota to the state but got to keep the rest for his family. What happened next was predictable – and also inspirational. The farmers produced a grain harvest of 100 metric tons – equal to 20 years of quotas. There is no official record of the village having a thanksgiving celebration following the harvest, but I’ll bet it had one.

        The Chicoms tried to suppress news of the Xiaogang miracle, but word quickly spread throughout China. Within just two years, Deng Xiaoping decided to abandon collective farming. He allowed peasants to farm their own plot of land and to sell most of the harvest in unregulated markets. The rest is history. A tiny group of farmers, who understood human nature, stood up to the immense power of the state. Today there is a small museum in Xiaogang commemorating the farmers with a copy of their pledge. There also is a banner proclaiming: “The origin of our nation’s economic rise“.

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        Events in both Jamestown and Plymouth parallel what transpired in Xiaogang. The earliest Americans starved to death en mass under socialism but prospered when given property rights. Socialism was such an affront to their humanity that they died rather than pervert their human nature. If they would have worked as hard under socialism as they later did under capitalism, they would have prospered. Yet, they chose death over socialism. Whether it is in Xiaogang, Plymouth, Jamestown, Caracas or Pyongyang socialism always ends the same way, i.e. starvation amidst plenty.

         This Thanksgiving share with your children and grandchildren the authentic story of Thanksgiving in Jamestown, Plymouth – and Xiaogang. Without private property rights there is no abundance and there is no Thanksgiving – ever. When we sever the link between work and benefit, the inevitable result is privation and misery. If you want a veritable cornucopia to share with others, only capitalism can produce it.

        Pilgrims celebrating their harvest with Native Americans is a warm, fuzzy, feel-good, multi-cultural, politically correct myth that ignores authentic, enduring lessons, i.e. socialism fails and capitalism succeeds. Americans 400 years ago understood these lessons better than progressive politicians today who advocate a return to the principles that created mass starvation in Jamestown, Plymouth and Xiaogang.

Next on December 1st – the oxymoron of government accountability.
More Liberty Less Government  –  mllg@mllg.us  –  www.mllg.us