Trickle Up Poverty (11 page)

The teachings of Karl Marx, known as Marxism, formed the basis of communism and socialism. Marx, however, was more of an armchair quarterback, waxing eloquent about how the system should be changed yet never doing any of the heavy lifting. He never held a political office or position of leadership from which to implement his notions. By contrast, Russian revolutionary and avowed atheist, Vladimir Lenin, was a hands-on kind of guy.

True, Lenin loved to theorize about Marx’s ideas with the other thinkers of his day, but he was far more pragmatic. Lenin quickly moved from the theoretical to the practical. And, he was quite a persuasive orator.

Given his ability to talk a good game and persuade others about his socialist ideas, Lenin was elected Chairman of the Council of the People’s Commissars. In that capacity, Lenin wasn’t above the use of propaganda and the manipulation of the press to sell his new Marxist-Leninist communist program, saying, “The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses.”15

To sell his ideas to the peasants, Lenin modified Marx’s order of economics over politics, enabling him to usher in his concept of a socialist economic system while solidifying the Soviet Union. In other words, he leveraged the lofty ideals of socialism—”From each, according to his abilities; to each, according to his needs”—to promote communism that, in theory, delivered a classless society through force, centralized planning, and control by an authoritarian government.

Lenin wasn’t above twisting a few arms or breaking a few necks along the way, having signed execution lists to weed out at least twenty-five czars. I’m not suggesting that he was paranoid; he just backed his rhetoric with a rifle. As Lenin has said, “One man with a gun can control 100 without one.” In 1918, Lenin authorized the execution of the Russian Royal Family and the deaths of another 765 insurrectionists.16 No wonder there were two assassination attempts on his life. Regarding the application of socialism, in spite of his best efforts, Lenin only scratched the surface.

Which brings us to Joseph Stalin, the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Stalin was heavily influenced by the writings of both Marx and Lenin. No doubt he was familiar with Lenin’s opinion that “The enemies of the workers are the capitalists of all countries.”17 So, what’s one of the first things Stalin did when he came to power? He thought it would be a great idea to topple the capitalists in various industries and replace them with a more efficient and fair state-controlled ownership.

Did his idea work?

Let’s consider what happened to the farm industry in Russia.

Prior to Stalin’s tinkering with the system, the farms in the Soviet Union were individually owned and operated by small family farmers, much as you might have in parts of this country today. These farmers, known as kulaks or individual landowners, were the backbone of the agriculture industry for the Soviets, having worked the soil for generations. Before Stalin intervened, the kulaks were quite productive and the people were eating fairly well.

That wasn’t good enough for Stalin. Why? Because he had embraced Marx and Lenin’s view that evil capitalists were the antithesis of socialism. For socialism to work, the capitalists had to be weeded out. And, as Marx had taught, “The theory of Communism may be summed up in a single sentence: Abolition of private property.” Since the farmers were landowners who sometimes employed a handful of others, that made them a threat to communism and, as such, Stalin said they had to go.

At the barrel of a gun if necessary.

What’s more, Stalin was of the opinion that the government, with the help of a centralized game plan, could run the farms better than the farmers. He figured he’d eliminate the profit motive of these greedy individual farmers and, by nationalizing the agriculture business, make it more efficient, increase productivity, and expand farmland output. Or so the man thought.

In that respect, Stalin’s behavior is no different from Barack Obama’s imposition of a socialist revolution here in America. From the moment Obama came to power, he leveraged the power of the government to nationalize major portions of the economy and private industries. Few sectors of American life haven’t been impacted by the far-reaching arm of this president.

From the auto industry, the banks, and various financial institutions, to Obama’s plan to snatch expansive tracts of land depriving the middle class of mining, farming, and cattle-raising opportunities, and commandeering the energy industry through his green socialism scheme of cap-and-trade, Obama is hell-bent on crippling capitalism through massive taxes and his bureaucratic state. His unswerving commitment to nationalize health care is nothing short of a power grab in which he hopes to co-opt and destroy one-sixth of the economy by any means possible, legal or otherwise.

This should come as no surprise given the fact that Barack Obama is a dedicated disciple of Saul Alinsky, the Chicago Marxist and community organizer of choice for leftist revolutionaries. Alinsky was an ultra-liberal and “communist/Marxist fellow-traveler,” one writer, a former communist, asserts. This writer further explains that Alinsky “helped establish the dual political tactics of confrontation and infiltration that characterized the 1960s and have remained central to all subsequent revolutionary movements in the United States.”18

Alinsky codified his America-hating strategies of confrontation and infiltration in his book, Rules for Radicals, which he dedicated to Lucifer.19 You might say that gives new meaning to the idea that the devil is in the details. What’s more, Alinsky’s model for an anti-American revolution is built upon “the strategy of working within the system until you can accumulate enough power to destroy, it was what sixties radicals called ‘boring from within.’ … Like termites, they set about to eat away at the foundations of the building in expectation that one day they could cause it to collapse.”20

These Alinsky-inspired tactics and actions by President Obama and his czars are guaranteed to cause trickle up poverty for the American middle class, which is the same thing Stalin caused, as you’ll see, when he nationalized the agriculture business in Soviet Russia.

Let’s not dwell on the fact that Stalin never planted a turnip and had no idea what was involved in running a farm. For whatever reason, Stalin placed his faith in the brilliant government bureaucrats in Moscow, believing they could do a better job than the kulaks who actually had dirt under their fingernails. Almost overnight, Stalin’s regime swung into action, enforcing the collectivization of agriculture.

It was the way of “The Man of Steel” (Stalin), or the feel of his crushing heel.

In the early 1930s, Stalin proceeded to steal the land from the people—ordinary men and women like you and me—arresting those who refused to go along with the program. Millions of kulaks were exiled to distant corners of Russia.21 Many landed in Stalin’s Gulag labor camps, and more than twenty thousand who resisted were executed. Yes, there was widespread resistance because, in simple terms, as musician Frank Zappa once quipped, “Communism doesn’t work because people like to own stuff.”22 What was the fruit of Stalin’s takeover of the farming industry?

Russia experienced widespread famine of biblical proportions.

An estimated ten million Russians died from starvation because Stalin’s promise of government efficiency and increased output turned out to be nothing more than fiction, a product of Stalin’s fertile yet warped thinking. In fact, “the people who grew the grain were dying at a rate of 25,000 a day.”23

Prior to 1917, Russia had always been a significant exporter of grain. In fact, Russia was the “most important grain exporting country” 24 in the world. After Stalin’s communist takeover and the practice of a state-controlled agricultural industry, Russia’s grain export business ground to a halt. In fact, in order to meet its own needs, years later Russia was forced to import upwards of six million tons of grain annually. This embarrassing situation continued until 1994 when Russian farmers were finally able to begin modest exports of grain.25

Let’s not lose sight of the fact that this loss of productivity and massive, unnecessary loss of life occurred because Stalin put socialism into practice, bringing it out of the theoretical realm in ways that neither Lenin nor Marx himself had ever tried on such a large scale. What’s more, this dictator and disciple of Marxism-Leninism became one of the worst mass-murderers in history.

This isn’t an isolated example of the failure of nationalization. History continues to repeat itself.

We see this happening just about anywhere the government takes over a private industry in any country down through the ages. If you look at government-run industries around the world, very few of them are profitable. Take Airbus. It’s run by a joint consortium—France and Germany and several other European countries—and it’s still dependent on government aid. These governments must keep pumping more money into the company to keep it airborne. One report pegs total government subsidies at more than $200 billion over the last four decades.26

Airbus, by the way, competes with our Boeing company, which has no such benefits as government subsidies. Boeing just produces a better airplane for a lower price, which, of course, customers want to buy. Because Boeing is profitable, the employees have jobs, the economy grows, and the country benefits. That’s the fundamental difference between socialism and capitalism.

The More Power They Have, The Less You Have

When it comes to government control, I don’t care which topic we’re talking about—be it nationalizing private business, introducing socialized health care, crippling the military through sensitivity training, or redefining marriage in the name of tolerance—every time the government seizes control of your rights and starts meddling with your choices, a part of your freedom dies. Let me put it to you this way: the more power they have, the less you have. It’s a simple principle of life and yet so many sheeple don’t seem to know this.

In Barack Obama’s case, he does know this. That’s the whole point.

He’s been brainwashed by the myth of Marxism-Leninism and, in spite of the overwhelming evidence that socialism impoverishes the people, leads to oppression, robs individual freedom, and bankrupts nations, Obama is committed to transforming America into a socialist state. As President Ronald Reagan has said, “How do you tell a communist? Well, it’s someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin.”27

Obama has read them.

I understand them. Which is why I oppose him.

Let’s look at the thread weaving the past to the present.

Karl Marx had an idea essentially born out of the fact that he suffered from a severe dose of class envy. Lenin put feet on Marx’s theories and added a few of his ideas to the mix creating Marxism-Leninism. The result was a disaster for the people. The middle class suffered, not benefited. Along comes Stalin, a student of Marxism-Leninism, who tried his hand at it. The results? An even greater disaster for the middle class who were further impoverished.

Everywhere Marxism-Leninism has been tried, it has failed.

Along comes our neophyte president, captivated by Marx, who wants to turn America into the socialist state first envisioned by Marx. In addition to what Obama has said and done, one of the clearest signs of his creeping socialism can be found in Obama’s inner circle who, as I’ve established, are fans of Mao Zedong, the brutal dictator of China. What you may not know is that Mao was yet another student of Marxism-Leninism whose regime created widespread economic and social mayhem for the people of China.

When I talk about President Obama moving America toward socialism, I’m not talking about a benign European socialism, which the media thinks Obama is engaging in. I am talking about the hard line Marxist-Leninist attitude that was most clearly described not only by Marx and by Lenin, but also by Mao Zedong in his little red book, Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong. “With a Marxist-Leninist attitude,” Mao wrote, “a person applies the theory and method of Marxism-Leninism to the systematic and thorough investigation and study of the environment. He did not work by enthusiasm alone. But as Stalin says combines revolutionary sweep with practical-ness.”

What does that mean with regard to Obama?

Obama’s a very practical man. He’s studied the lay of the land—the “thorough investigation” Mao speaks of—and determined that the most practical way to accomplish his socialization of America was to co-opt and socialize one-sixth of the American economy. This power grab would be Obama’s first building block on the road to a Marxist-Leninist state, which is why he spoke so often about the need to reform health care on the campaign trail and made it his top priority as president.

Mao goes on to write, “In order to guarantee that our party and country will not change their color, we must not only have a correct line and correct policies, but must train and bring up millions of successors who will carry on the cause of the proletarian revolution.” Notice the emphasis on the word “correct.” Do you hear the phrase “political correctness” in that? The PC crowd doesn’t understand what they’re saying when they argue in favor of political correctness. When they make concessions in terms of what qualifies as “correct” speech, they move the country toward an early phase of a communist dictatorship.

Mao develops this thought further, saying, “What are the requirements for worthy successors to the revolutionary cause of the proletariat? They must be genuine Marxist-Leninists and not revisionists wearing the cloak of Marxism-Leninism.” That sounds like he’s describing Obama’s manufacturing czar Ron Bloom who agrees with Mao “that power comes largely from the barrel of a gun” and the Mao-loving former White House Communications Director Anita Dunn who turns to the mass murderer of China for inspiration. One other passage from Mao is in order. He writes:

Our party organizations must be extended all over the country and must purposely train tens of thousands of cadres [who] maintain extensive, constant and close ties to the working people. This is a major measure of fundamental importance for a socialist system.