Apparently city Coun. Chris Stephan’s well aimed missive at the leftist leanings of this paper’s editorial team has struck a nerve in the community. Letter writer Mike Falkenberg wonders if Stephan thinks we should mark socialists with a scarlet S and ship them off to re-education camps.
Well, outstanding idea that it is, I’m afraid that would be taking a page out of the playbook of the socialist team, Mr. Falkenberg.
In his haste to castigate Coun. Stephan for his fair criticism of the fallacy of arguing for ever more expansion of government, simply so they can have even more money to do even more things wrong than they already screw up, Mr. Falkenberg manages to unmask the socialist tendency towards ignorance of history.
Firstly, Falkenberg seems to make the assertion that, historically, conservatives have had a routine hankering to round up political opponents and send them off to “re-education camps.” Sorry to burst yer little bubble, there Mike, but it was the Soviets, the Nazis, and the Communist Chinese — all socialists — who liked to pack their dissidents off to the camps. One hundred and fifty million of them. That’s not the kind of trick limited governments like Coun. Stephan and I believe in can pull off.
And, just so you know, there’s a guy named Castro who still has jails full of people who have committed the heinous crime of being “anti-revolutionary.” I hear his island is a great vacation spot. You should go there and check it out.
Falkenberg also asserts that capitalism caused the Great Depression, as well as the recent recession that still grips the U.S. and will likely cause further economic collapse in Europe.
Wrong again, Mike! While the stock market crash of 1929 was a direct result of a capitalist free market, the Great Depression was the product of intense meddling in the economy by the Roosevelt administration. Virtually all historians agree that the Depression was extended by several years due to Roosevelt’s imposition of federal government influence into myriad sectors of the economy, resulting in reduced employment, savings, and re-investment.
In the same vein, the most significant cause of the recent recession was the Clinton administration’s strong-arming of the banks via the Community Reinvestment Act. This single piece of legislation outweighs all other factors combined in bringing on the financial woes of 2008 onward.
But, the election of the socialist Barack Obama has led to a repeat of the Roosevelt financial fiasco.
Since taking office, the Obama administration has saddled the American people and economy with 68 pages of new federal regulations per day, with no sign of abatement. Think that helps create taxpaying jobs? Think there’s more than a dozen mating pairs of Bigfoot in Clearwater County?
There’s a reason we get fed up with those who advocate more and more government, Mike. Mostly, it’s our money you want us to invest, and in things we often really don’t want.
Worse, we end up paying far too much for ideas that don’t work, and when they don’t work, nobody but us lowly taxpayers are the ones shouldering the burden of failure.
Yeah, I’m all for shipping socialists off to countries that have embraced socialism more than we. Shoot, I’ll pay half the airfare. I figure it’s way cheaper than having those folks around here.
Bill Greenwood
Red Deer