All of you people out there who have been warning Americans against Socialism, what will you tell them now that it’s here? Didn’t you see it arrive? You can’t have missed it. It came bearing billions in taxpayers’ money to bail out the richest of the rich. That’s right: I’m referring to the government’s buyout of the pillars that hold up the country’s financial system.
If you look up Socialism in the American Heritage Dictionary, you will find the first definition is:
Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.
With the government now owning Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, etc., America has become a Socialist state. (Sorry, you can’t be a little bit pregnant or a little bit black – and you can’t be a little bit Socialist. As we say down heah in the South, you is or you ain’t.)
You will recall that when Hillary Clinton (photo at left), John Edwards and Barack Obama proposed a government-backed health care system, the alarm was sounded: Socialism! America is the land of the free and the home of the brave, the argument went. You take your chances. The lucky and the smart get rich. The poor and dumb wallow in misery and die before their time. If you can’t afford to pay for health care, buy insurance and make the rich richer. If you can’t afford insurance, ain’t that just too bad?
Isn’t it curious that not a peep has been heard from the free and brave now that the rich are the ones who are benefiting from government intervention? Those guys took their chances. They rolled the dice and came up snake-eyes. Ain’t that just too bad? So let them eat cake… Of course I’m kidding! I’m talking about the rich here, not some Detroit auto worker or Virginia textile worker… or any other kind of “worker” who has been abandoned by the American government. And I’m talking about a financial system that generates billions for the few and pennies for the many.
Don’t be misled by the crocodile tears politicians shed for working folks whose retirement funds were caught up in the debacle. How many times has the government stood by and watched those investments go up in smoke? Remember the folks who were wiped out when the Internet bubble burst? And what about the millions who are losing their homes to foreclosure as I write this?
Socialist or not, this is America. And in America, the few long ago figured out how to own the government, and how to fool the many into voting for the deal. So when the few get into trouble, the government uses the taxes paid by the many to provide a soft place for them to fall. You don’t think that’s fair? See you at the ballot box in November!
