Homestead mailing list

["Melody O." <melody AT crecon.com>]

At 01:14 PM 5/23/05 -0700, you wrote:
>
>>Republicans want everyone to be morally good, according to their (the
>>republicans') morals.  They don't mind big government telling people what
>>is morally best for everyone.
>>
>>Democrats want everyone to have the same: the same education and
>>intelligence, the same amount and kind of food, the same size and kind of
>>home; and they don't mind big government to pay for it and run it.
>
>I wonder if there is a list somewhere that shows the programs enacted by 
>both parties and their approximate annual cost. My sense of it is that 
>Republicans say they want less government but what they most want is lower 
>taxes. Who can disagree with the concept of a lesser tax burden? At least 
>under Bush II we have lower taxes but we also have more expenditures with 
>the inevitable result of massive debt. Who will pay the debt? What 
>economical alchemy will make such a program work? Democrats at least under 
>Clinton seemed to me to be more realistic regarding the tension between tax 
>levels and national debt.
>
>On balance I am more conservative than liberal. But Bush has made me 
>forever skeptical that Republicans are any more fiscally conservative than 
>Democrats. He saw the results of his father saying over and over again, 
>"watch my lips, no new taxes," and then raise taxes, so he learned the 
>political lesson: give the people the pap of programs but lower taxes and 
>let someone else do the heavy lifting of somehow digging us out of dirty
debt.
>
>I am one who deeply resents any president and the DC Whorehouse formerly 
>known as the US Congress mandating unfunded programs that hurt communities.
>

I have a conspiracy theory.  It is that the government is training us to
become slaves of and through their programs.  The most self-proclaimed
intellectual of society tend to lean toward socialism/communism with the
same group shouting, "Unintellectual idiot!" at the group that believes in
capitalism.  Those same intellectuals usually have a lot of capital
themselves, mind you, though they will sell the idea that capital is bad;
hypocrisy at its finest!  They want all to be equal (though they probably a
little *more* equal than others!).  They are great lobbyists.  They work at
creating laws to fit their agendas.  

My conspiracy theory is this:  There is a group of people that would like
all the "bourgeois" to go away. This includes anyony owning private
property or independent businesses.  Their mission is to produce a false
front of equality, when in the background the true government & friends is
just a little more equal than anyone else.  

Take a look at some examples:

If you have purchased your home and land, it is yours right?  Is it?  What
happens if you don't pay your property tax?  The government takes away
*your* property, right?  If it is *yours*, what gives them the right to do
that?

Let's say your house is getting to small for your family so you decide to
add a couple of rooms on to the existing house.  You go buy the lumber,
sheetrock, nails, and insulation and go to work.  What if a government
official comes by to take a look?  Can you simply invite him/her in to see
your progress and have them leave with feelings of admiration for your
self-sufficiency?  Probably not.  Instead they will ask to see your
building permit.  You have to ask *permission* to build on to your own home.  

Your family has owned land in a certain spot for years.  In the past five
years your nearby town has spread out and is now bordering your land.  The
town's people want an elementary school to be built, but where?  Well your
land looks like a good place!  At least close by that area.  Let's see.
We'll need a road.  The town would like to buy at least a little of your
property.  You claim you don't want to sell, so buzz off buster!  and they
go away, right?  No.  They use eminent domain to steal your place, um, I
mean buy your place (usually) for a fair (to them) price.

So who's "private property" is it anyway?  

What about businesses?  Do we really have free enterprise?

"If you’re free, you should have no trouble doing something that people
have done for time immemorial.  Buy a cow, shelter and feed and care for
it, milk it, and sell the milk. Go ahead, try it and see what happens.
Come back and let us know how free you are to do such a simple thing, which
has been done since the dawn of civilization." 
(from http://www.strike-the-root.com/4/hambidge/hambidge2.html)

The same goes for selling sandwiches, sno-cones, etc. without a permit.
You have to ask permission to do business.

What about taxes?  I have heard that at least 50% of our incomes are spent
on taxes.  That is a pretty steep number, but think about it: you get taxed
when you make the money, you get taxed when you spend the money, you get
taxed when you save the money.  

In the next few years we will have to have a national id (called a driver's
license) to do anything "federal" including flying on an airplane or
driving a car.  Travel will be limited to those who ask permission and get
licensed to do so.

And the list goes on.  I highly recommend reading the article that I quoted
from http://www.strike-the-root.com/4/hambidge/hambidge2.html .

But the governmental leaders aren't stopping at the control that they have.
 They want more.

So I'll recap my idea: 
The government is training us to become slaves of and through their
programs.  
Change is slow and quiet and is for security and "the good of the whole".
Through government's social programs, lawmakers are trying to make a front
of equality, when in the background the government & friends are just a
little more equal than anyone else.

Below is an exerpt of the Communist Manifesto.  Take a look and see if you
see similarities to changes that are going on in the Good Ol' US of A.  In
the quote there are steps that provide fertile soil for communism.  For
those who believe it could never happen here, it certainly seems to be
happening, and I don't think it is by chance.

>From the Communist Manifesto found at
http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html :

"The communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional
relations; no wonder that its development involved the most radical rupture
with traditional ideas. 

But let us have done with the bourgeois objections to communism. 

We have seen above that the first step in the revolution by the working
class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win
the battle of democracy. 

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all
capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production
in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling
class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible. 

Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of
despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of
bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear
economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the
movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old
social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing
the mode of production. 

These measures will, of course, be different in different countries. 

Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty
generally applicable. 

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to
public purposes. 

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. 

3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance. 

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. 

5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a
national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly. 

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands
of the state. 

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state;
the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the
soil generally in accordance with a common plan. 

8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies,
especially for agriculture. 

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual
abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable
distribution of the populace over the country. 

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of
children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with
industrial production, etc. 

When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared,
and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association
of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character.
Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one
class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with
the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize
itself as a class; if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling
class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production,
then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions
for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will
thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class. 

In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class
antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of
each is the condition for the free development of all."