Two from the American Thinker

There are two articles up today at the American Thinker that I wanted to highlight to my readers. The first is Political Extremism, Left and Right by Bruce A. Riggs. I am always impressed when I read an article by someone who "gets it." This is such an article.  While the Marxist theory seems to be a beautiful idea on the surface-from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs-it ultimately ignores human nature and can only be sustained by a totalitarian system.  To Alinsky's "make them live by their own rule book" I say "you first," because they always fail to live up to their promises.  Let's look at a quote:

It requires a totalitarian state because it is a delusional quest to return man to an egalitarian herd from which he evolved thousands of years ago. And as the history of the twentieth century shows, humanity rebels against such coerced devolution. Marx's elimination of private property coincidentally strips incentives to produce. The result is social decay to a dismal level of perpetual shortages and shared poverty -- just ask the citizens who stood in the endless bread lines of the former USSR.

The radical Left's denial of human nature carries with it the arrogant assumption that humans are little more than replicated androids content to do whatever government mandates. This is simply elitist wishful thinking which projects sheep-like docility on independent beings which are more feline than bovine in nature -- and you can't herd cats.

The revolutionary socialists' road to its egalitarian fantasy world is less about achieving an altruistic "social justice" than it is about pursuing a self-serving, compulsive quest for personal redemption: The revolutionists denied human nature at work. It is a zealotry which, history shows, has led to the perverse belief that wholesale executions, killing fields, mass starvations, and forced-labor gulags are perfectly legitimate, even necessary, means of creating the perfect socialist world. These slaughters were done solely to extinguish the educated, innovative, entrepreneurial, productive "bourgeoisie" -- the "greedy" middle class whose existence was/is intolerable to the priesthood of this ostensibly egalitarian, if murderous, Collectivist ethos.

You will notice also, in all the discussion, that Marxism is a materialistic theory, as is Capitalism. But here's the difference: Marxism requires you to give up your God, and to view the State as a god. Capitalism leaves that entirely up to you. Soviet Russia was an actively atheistic State. The Communists did not entirely get rid of the Church, but it was suppressed with regulations and spies.  A lot of people who might have been drawn to the Church were kept out by fear.  The Churches were also prevented from satisfying the social needs of their communities, as they do here.  The State didn't want anyone showing it up, least of all the Church.  So, if you were brave, you could "worship" but you couldn't practice your religion.  Practicing Christianity means discipleship, which inevitably leads to providing social services for those in need.  Hitler took a different approach.  He solved the problem by substituting a pagan State wherein the pagan sources from which he cobbled together his "religion" supported the Nazi ideology.  But many pastors and priests were jailed and killed for speaking out. 

Man is more than his physical needs.  Indeed, to see man as only a collection of physical needs is to see him as only an animal.  But then, maybe that's why they see no moral impediment to killing millions of people.  After all, don't we destroy those animals among our stock which don't meet the physical characteristics, and don't have the proper temperament?  Seeing human beings as a collection of physical wants, needs and appetites leads to seeing them as essentially farm animals, and worth about as much when they can no longer perform for you.  We used to call that slavery.

Next up is an article entitled A Clear and Present Danger: Obama, a 'Living Constitution' and 'Positive Rights' by Monte Kuligowski.

We're not talking about the Constitution's enumerated functions of the federal government; we're talking about reading into the Constitution a list of positive rights which satisfy leftist notions of "political and economic justice."

and

Lost on the left, however, is the fact that the Bill of Rights was enacted to protect the states from central control. In spite of history and context, the U.S. Supreme Court has long since turned the amendments passed to protect the states against the states. The Warren Court ran wild in that abuse, telling the states and their localities what they couldn't do -- by overturning timeless speech and religious traditions of the people and effectively nationalizing political correctness.

Go read the whole thing. For myself, I need to go harvest some grass.