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Socialism Won, by Robert Gore

Posted by straightlinelogic 5 years, 8 months ago to Government
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It’s the wrong tense. The past tense is the correct one, socialism arrived long ago. In the US, it unpacked its bags February 3, 1913, the day the Sixteenth, or Income Tax, Amendment was ratified. When the “community as a whole” —a euphemism for government—has first call on individuals’ incomes, socialism has established its vital beachhead. Everything from there on out is a mop-up operation.

For what is “the means of production, distribution, and exchange”? The minds, bodies, time, and effort of individual producers, which the income tax expropriates. Once a government steals those, there’s nothing it cannot steal, including, via regulation, the ability of producers to produce. To impose socialism on a nation, first impose it on its individuals.

This is an excerpt. For the complete article, please click the above link.
SOURCE URL: https://straightlinelogic.com/2018/07/12/socialism-won-by-robert-gore/


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  • Posted by $ allosaur 5 years, 8 months ago
    In the second to the last paragraph when me dino read "--they need to be guided and governed by an expert and virtuous elite," I busted out laughing.
    Expert and virtuous? Such as whom? The Constitution-gnawing termites of the Deep State? The self-serving career politicians and appointees who thrive in The Swamp?
    Put all that expertise and virtue in your mouth and you won't live to see the next day for all the gagging, retching and dying you'd do.
    Don't get me wrong, Mr. Gore, me dino gets what you're referring about a socialist's misguided point of view.
    After me dino finished laughing, me dino eyes drifted down to the bottom of the article to read, "You Should Be Laughing At Them." I do believe that pertains to the Prime Deceit book promotion there.
    Nevertheless, maybe that's how we should react to this "painful truth" in freedomforall's reply.
    Laugh most particularly at the self-appointed elite's pretension of possessing more expertise and virtue than the masses they imagine as being beneath their superior personages.
    Laugh right back into their smug lordly faces!
    Yikes! Guess what~and it does relate~just now swam into me dino's dangerous mind!
    Strzok's contemptuous smirking face!
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  • Posted by ColHogan 5 years, 8 months ago
    Socialism will continue to win until republicans and so-called conservatives develop spines and begin to fight collectivism using the tenets of capitalism and individualism, and give up their religious nonsense.
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    • Posted by chad 5 years, 8 months ago
      The only difference between Republicans and Democrats is the lie they will tell you get elected. They have no intention of growing a spine because they have not intention of reversing collectivism anymore than the Democrats.
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    • Posted by LibertyBelle 5 years, 8 months ago
      Dream on. Promote Atlas Shrugged and hope for the best. I saw a foreign lady today reading a book about Capitalism, and asked her about Ayn Rand. "I love Ayn Rand," she replied. Still, the only book of hers she claimed to have read was Anthem, although I think she said she had heard of The Fountainhead. And I told her Atlas Shrugged was more fun; it moved faster, though it was longer. I told her about the meetings my group has once a month. Who knows, we might get another recruit. Things often have to be done slowly, one step (or piece) at a time.
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  • Posted by mccannon01 5 years, 8 months ago
    Extraordinarily well said, SLL. The only exception I have is 2/3/1913 was mainly an acceleration of what was already taking place. My Rev War ancestors were able to live on their land, build their home, plant their crop or offer their skill/service, with no payments to anyone, including government. However, when localities "stole" the land and homes and forced yearly payments (called property taxes) from them in order for them to remain living where they were, then "socialism" (government supremacy over the people - in the name of the people) had been established even though it wasn't called "socialism" at the time. I figure each state, county, and municipality had their own timetable of beginning this gunpoint theft, but I also figure most, if not all, predated 2/3/1913.

    I'm especially fond of the "434 socialists" who just won't admit it truism.

    Also, thanks for the new vocabulary word of the day: "eleemosynary".
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    • Posted by freedomforall 5 years, 8 months ago
      Thefts started early as you said, mccannon01.
      "In 1796 seven of the fifteen states levied uniform capitation taxes. Twelve taxed some or all livestock. Land was taxed in a variety of ways, but only four states taxed the mass of property by valuation. No state constitution required that taxation be by value or required that rates on all kinds of property be uniform. In 1818, Illinois adopted the first uniformity clause. Missouri followed in 1820, and in 1834 Tennessee replaced a provision requiring that land be taxed at a uniform amount per acre with a provision that land be taxed according to its value (ad valorem). By the end of the century thirty-three states had included uniformity clauses in new constitutions or had amended old ones to include the requirement that all property be taxed equally by value. A number of other states enacted uniformity statutes requiring that all property be taxed."

      However it got worse.
      "By the beginning of the twentieth century, criticism of the uniform, universal (general) property tax was widespread. A leading student of taxation called the tax, as administered, one of the worst taxes ever used by a civilized nation " ...
      "The property tax as a percentage of own-source general revenue rose from 1902 until 1932 when it provided 85.2 percent of local government own-source general revenue. Since that time there has been a significant gradual decline in the importance of local property taxes.

      The decline in the revenue importance of the property tax is more dramatic when the increase in federal and state aid is considered. In fiscal year 1999, local governments received 228 billion in property tax revenue and 328 billion in aid from state and federal governments. If current trends continue, the property tax will decline in importance and states and the federal government will take over more local functions, or expand the system of grants to local governments. Either way, government will become more centralized."

      https://eh.net/encyclopedia/history-o...

      Taxes will never be high enough to fully finance government.
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      • Posted by mccannon01 5 years, 8 months ago
        Thank you, freedomforall, for taking the time to offer this reply and for the link to the article. It is a site I haven't seen before and I'll have to explore it.

        I've paid off my mortgage, but now my combined property taxes is more than my mortgage used to be. I may be retired, but I'm still a serf to the royal government.
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  • Posted by term2 5 years, 8 months ago
    Its all about money. When a government gets money, it becomes more powerful and then uses that power for its own agendas. We have to keep the government from getting any more money if we want to contain it. What we dont give them willingly through paying taxes, they just print anyway. Its a bad situation. We need to stop the money presses NOW.
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  • Posted by $ Abaco 5 years, 8 months ago
    The word that comes to mind is "beautiful". This is beautiful the way it is written. Sharing with friends. I really like how you, like me, back out of the current paradigm to look at our current system from a high level, questioning what things would be like if we instituted broad, simple reforms to back government back out of our lives. This, unfortunately, is extremely unusual thinking these days...heresy, even.

    Earlier today I was thinking back on the conversation we once had. I hope all is well with you and yours, Robert.
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    • Posted by 5 years, 8 months ago
      Thank you.

      Once in a while I think about that conversation, too. I just told my next-door neighbor, who have a 3-month old baby, about the dangers we discussed. He was grateful and said he'd take the appropriate precautions.

      Things are well with me, and I hope they are with you and yours, my fellow heretic.
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  • Posted by LibertyBelle 5 years, 8 months ago
    I put considerable hope (that is, a considerable percentage of the hope I have) in the home-school movement. Of course, a lot of homeschoolers are misguided in that their motive and processes are religious, but at least it involves a considerable opposition to statism.
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  • Posted by chad 5 years, 8 months ago
    An indication that the masses are not ready to take back their right to exist from the state is it's failure to recognize that America is not on the road to Socialism but is already there. When conservatives talk about America being on the road to socialism they are failing to realize it has arrived. When the conservatives get excited because a Trump appointee for the Department of Education is for easing restrictions on home schools and is not interested in closing the doors to the DOE and eliminating it completely it indicates that the conservatives are happy with trimming the leaves and not killing the weed.
    Well thought out article which succinctly and articulately defined the problem. I am not certain socialism can be changed, only a few who desire to learn may find their way because of you but that is still worth while. Thanks for your effort.
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  • Posted by $ puzzlelady 5 years, 8 months ago
    A clear and incisive analysis by a scrupulously objective observer. Thank you, Robert. There has ever been a conflict between what individuals want for their own freedom and what the group in which the individual seeks to function wants and needs. Ever was a leader, a chief, the strongman, able to force and subjugate his clan, tribe, followers to contribute to the group's benefit. Like the Mafia that extorts protection money, a society demands its members to pay up towards communal projects and programs. It is in the social DNA that adherents/members/fellow citizens must share in the expense of maintaining the group. And if you don't give it willingly, we'll take it by force. Roadbuilding, for example--all residents get to use them, so should pay. It's like a user's fee but morphed into extortion.

    This idea that all should contribute becomes a paradigm for laws and regulations that little by little evolve into a hatred of the rich for having more and a demand to help the "deprived" with free handouts, taken, of course, from the rich as the most visible resource. Little by little this notion takes hold and becomes an entire political philosophy. And because a group or mob has more gravitational force than a lone individual, their socialist ideas take on more and more power. Respect for the rights of a single individual is pushed aside for the benefits of a majority, a collective, fueled by envy. It is nothing more than the natural motivation for survival and well-being grown into a cancerous avarice. It is easy, then, to label those who have produced value and provided themselves with a cushion of wealth and comfort as selfish and self-serving and somehow symbols of social injustice. At the extreme, such a society ends with the beheadings of the aristocrats.

    It always comes down to who takes what from whom, and how. As long as there is an abundance beyond need, people can co-exist in peace. The moment a scarcity appears, the contention and predatory practices arise, whose ugliest terminus is genocide. And the practitioners of that philosophy think it's noble, not realizing that it will eventually turn on them.

    How many more times does this wheel have to turn before humanity learns and embraces the philosophy of individual rights, removing force and fraud from all human relationships.
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  • Posted by Owlsrayne 5 years, 8 months ago
    Watching the Socialist Swamp at it's finest in the Televised Strozk hearing I envisioned them to be the first ones up against the wall when the revolution comes. They show themselves to be the worst of the worst in who they don't represent. They are showing us what Venezuela of the United States would look like.
    I agree with Robert that the shades of socialism were instituted by our government over a century ago. The only way to change it if the citizens of this country take back the gov't from the socialist swampies.
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