Independent media, news reporting, analysis, opinion, forensic historical research presentations. From a Libertarian to Anarcho-Libertarian Anti-Federalist perspective.
At least ten bills are working their way through the California state legislature that would expand the state’s “red flag” law, according to the Los Angeles Times. The bills would, among other things, expand the list of people who could request gun confiscation orders and extend the duration of the orders from one to five years. We have truly entered dangerous waters. American states are one by one becoming little Communitarian / Bolshevik strongholds.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom is ready and willing to sign whatever gun confiscation schemes the legislature cooks up.
The governor signaled his support at a press conference touting the new ammunition background check law set to take effect July 1. He said he hoped a number of legislative efforts “to expand the scope of the red flag laws” would get to his desk. “I expect they will be supported overwhelmingly upstairs,” he added, referring to the legislature.
Of the ten bills that would expand and/or modify the state’s red flag law, two have the most serious potential to affect California gun owners. AB-61, introduced by Assembly Members Philip Ting, Al Muratsuchi, and Eloise Gómez Reyez, would expand the list of people authorized to ask a judge for a gun confiscation order.
Under current state law, an immediate family member or a law enforcement officer can request a judge to confiscate a person’s firearms if there is a “substantial likelihood” that the person poses an immediate danger to self or others. AB-61 would further allow an employer or a coworker who has “substantial and regular interactions with the person and approval of their employer” to request the order. It would also permit an employee or teacher of a secondary or postsecondary school, with approval of the school administration staff, to request a student’s firearms be removed, provided the student has been attending the school for at least six months. This is reminiscent of the Soviet Union. In Bolshevik Russia the citizens were used as weapons of the state in a similar campaign as if you “see something say something” style. Citizens in Bolshevik Russia would also use the state as a weapon against people who they had issues with or did not like. They would use this process to get even. And the government did not mind this as it kept everyone divided, controlled and in fear of government. In other words misuse of the process still served government interests.
The second bill, AB-12, would expand the maximum length of a gun confiscation order from one year to five years. In determining the duration of the order, the court would consider how long a person is “likely to continue” to be a danger to self or others. The bill allows the person under the order to request every year that the order be lifted, but they must prove that there is “no longer clear and convincing evidence” that they present a danger.
Other bills affecting red flag laws would require police departments to standardize their gun confiscation procedures and allow gun owners to voluntarily surrender their firearms to a court.
News of the expanded red flag laws comes the same week that California gun owners will be required to pass a background check for ammunition purchases.
America - we have been trying to warn you. What we were told about what they would never do 15 years ago by gun control advocates they are not only doing, but going way beyond.
America is under Talmudic law, not Sharia law
- By Michael Hoffman
https://revisionistreview.blogspot.co...
Michael Hoffman is the author of Judaism Discovered, and Judaism’s Strange Gods.
He is a former reporter for the New York bureau of the Associated Press.
In a post shared by RTR Truth media contributor Kellie Ann Sonnier we see the collectivist agenda to destroy the nuclear family on behalf of the state exposed #CPS #ChildTrafficking #Collectivism
Resurrect the Republic - Ammon Bundy sits down to have a conversation with Tom Lacovara-Stewart and the subjects are many and the conversation awesome. The video is Part 1 of 3 - the others to be released in the coming days.
Topics:
- Migrant Crisis
- Breaking Free of the Left Right Paradigm
- Placing Principles over Party
- Censorship
- Israel Palestine
- Weather Underground
- Socialism - Bolshevism - Communitarianism
- Cloward Piven Strategy
- George Soros, the so called Maga bomber and Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting
- How one mans evil act wrongfully justifies more censorship
- Marxist "Hate Speech" Legislation - Policing THOUGHT
and much more..... RTR TRUTH MEDIA
All links Commercial Free
"AMMON BUNDY LIVE - MIGRANT CRISIS - CLOWARD PIVEN - COMMUNISM - WEATHER UNDERGROUND - ALINSKY - CENSORSHIP & THOUGHT CRIME" by R.T.R. TRUTH MEDIA https://t.co/nwA1vOj9wv
Tom Lacovara-Stewart sits down and hashes out a hot topic and debate on the Immigration situation beyond the Southern border with Gavin Seim who has taken a position of advocacy of a wide open border. We discuss the implications to freedom of movement as well as the Cloward Piven Strategy and the Saul Alinsky style tactics being used by the Soros group - Open Society Foundation. Is agenda driven Immigration to be considered authentic or is it weaponizing rights to achieve the agenda that Marxist Professors Cloward and Piven posited? Although the debate got intense at times, Gavin was a gentleman, and although I disagree with his position, it is only based on the theory that immigration is being and has been being used as a weapon to destabilize and communize us even further. This position is based on years of research. Personally I see the need for a wall moot if we were to end the welfare state. But until we do, we must hold out for as long as we can ... this is exactly what the Marxists Cloward and Piven posited as their theory to use against us... Saul Alinsky style...using the plight of the poor to overload us little by little until total collapse. What we are seeing today is just one of those small efforts in comparison to the global plan.....World Communism.
The following video is to show people was was really being stood for by many at the Bundy Ranch, in Oregon and in fact all over these states. With an ever growing number of political prisoners like Schaeffer Cox, Ed and Elaine Brown, Jeffrey Weinhaus, and so many more, we offer the education, understanding, and proof of the problem. The solution? TRUTH
This is a presentation for all American Patriots. I can not express the importance of the content in this as well as the research link information within. Everyone complains about the effects of the problem, never really being able to define the problem itself.
This is our testimony to the American people. In this presentation you will hear echoes of the complete truth of what we found through years of research and investigation. Our evidence you can find below. It speaks of an actual conspiracy, not a theory to bring the United States into a world Socialistic Communistic democracy to replace the Republic.
The 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution was never lawfully ratified. It was forced unlawfully into “legality” to bring upon us a national citizenship under the jurisdiction of a 10 mile square in Washington the District of Columbia. The Original 13th Amendment to the Constitution removed. We will be providing further documented truth to back all assertions made within. We are Patriotic Americans who love our nations (states) and the idea of us banding together for the idea that the individual was the most important of minorities. The minority of one. And in individual liberty ALL Americans should be able to seek remedy from the usurpation which has occurred. A tragedy was used to usher in a democracy . All men and woman who are responsible and know who they are and how to apply these ideals in their lives are all equal and should remain free and unmolested.
Appearing in this presentation:
Ryan Bundy
Cliven Bundy
Judge Andrew Neopolitano
Sean Stone
Tom Lacovara-Stewart
Bruce Ray Riggs
Professor Thomas Woods
The 14th Amendment was ushered in to
supplant the Republic with a communistic socialistic and corporate
fascistic democracy. Today we refer to it as "Communitarianism", or "the
3rd Way". The evidence to support this assertion is provided within the
body of this presentation.
This is all based upon jurisdiction unlawfully created by US Citizenship created not in 1789 but 1868.
GUN CONTROL
Just like the A.T.F. has said numerous occasions the 14th Amendment
GUN CONTROL as a "commercial crime" bypassing the restriction upon
government as to where they may not infringe.
CANNABIS LAWS (and all related statutes)
They are ALL UNCONSTITUTIONAL for several reasons. Cannabis laws just
like income tax and gun control derive there jurisdiction from the
Unconstitutional 14th Amendment It violates the Kentucky Virginia
Resolution of 1798 This is not one of the ONLY 17 powers the Federal
Government was given Per US Constitution as pointed out by James Madison
and Thomas Jefferson. See the research The Reconstruction Replacement
Government home page. Adopted by reference.
EXECUTIVE ORDERS
The the Executive orders of today numerically go back to The Lieber Code
or General Orders #100 Prepared by Francis Lieber, promulgated as
General Orders No. 100 by President Lincoln, 24 April 1863. Instructions
for the Government of Armies of the United States. This is the marshal
power established in the middle of the So called Civil War that Congress
never declared so a treaty of peace was never signed to resolve or
relinquish the marshal power as required per section 32 of the Lieber
Code . You want to stop the Executive orders the president then the
states need to sign a peace treaty or treaty of peace same thing to
settle the marshal power never settled from the Civil War Era. The
Reconstruction Acts and the 14th Amendment is held in place by this
jurisdiction.
NATIONAL DEBT
It’s fake. The national debt comes from the 14th Amendment Section 4
which not only created the public debt the middle of section says we
have no right to question the validity of the public dept. The 14th
Amendment was NEVER Constitutionally adopted. But even if it was it
would still violate the supremacy clause of the US Constitution for
creating a citizen subject to a different jurisdiction and a different
form of government than what was originally established in the original
Constitution. It violates the Kentucky Virginia Resolution of 1798 This
is not one of the ONLY 17 powers the Federal Government was given Per
Article 1 section 8 clause 1-17 US Constitution as pointed out by James
Madison and Thomas Jefferson. See The Reconstruction Replacement
Government on home page.
INCOME TAX
The payment on the FAKE national or public debt. Income tax applies to
the Unconstitutional corporate 14th Amendment Personhood. That’s why
it’s the only one required to pay it.
– Show us the law. It does not exist, and it is our belief that Income
Tax is a redistribution of wealth scheme. Bruce believes in a total and
complete free market. Regulatory restrictions on FRAUD and DECEPTION
being the only valid restrictions to exist. We believe in the free and
voluntary trade between people. Allow the market to naturally set the
parameters, while lending very limited power to the government for the
protection of employees in common sense ways such as the need to prevent
corporations from exploiting people to the point of endangering them.
No more, no less.
SOCIALISM
It is wholly Unconstitutional.
Bruce Ray and Tom Lacovara-Stewart are Constitutional researchers and
historians. They have uncovered a great many deceptions and lies we have
been told about history, government and the relation of the two which
has taken us from Constitutional to Corporate. How the modern debt slave
came into being is what he wishes to expose and solve is exposed
within. Peaceful and clear solutions are revealed on http://DirtyUncleSam.com
ABORTION
- ROE v. WADE
ROE v. WADE was a 14th Amendment(corporate jurisdiction) decision. As
such the “corporate personhood” also known in law as a “artificial
person” does not begin till birth. There for the unborn does not have
rights till the personhood is established by birth. The original citizen
created and intended for us be be is found at Article 4 Sec 2 US Const.
This citizen is NOT a corporate citizen And therefore would be entitled
to rights at conception See Reconstruction Replacement Government home
page.
Bruce Ray is a Christian, and as such, he goes by what the Constitution
clearly states. We are ALL endowed by Our Creator, with certain
unalienable rights. The right to life being the first, is sacrosanct.
Bruce will not support, condone, or ever vote for any measure in which
is included any funding or support for the killing of the unborn. It may
shock many as to why however as his position has little to do with his
faith. In his interpretation of the Constitution, he believes that
nowhere in the Constitution does it place this authority into the hands
of government. Therefore, as such he believes it his duty to stand
against it politically. As it so is his position that it is morally
wrong.
EDUCATION
Bruce feels it is the parents right to choose the curriculum of their
children. It is not only NOT the position of the Federal Government, but
he believes that the Constitution completely is against any measure of
Federal involvement in the education of children.
ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION AND ANCHOR BABY’S (as understood "progressively")
Illegal Immigration and and anchor baby court rulings are all based on the 14th Amendment, and therefore repugnant to the organic Constitution
Alger Hiss, Elizabeth Bentley, and Bernard Redmont are the subjects of scrutiny.
By Alex Kingsbury, Staff Writer Originally published - July 17, 2009
DURING ONE OF THE MOST high-profile spy cases in U.S. history, onetime State Department official and accused Communist spy Alger Hiss was convicted of perjury based in part on several rolls of film found inside a pumpkin on a Maryland farm. In 1975, when the film was declassified, one roll was revealed to be completely blank; another contained such mundane information as manuals for military parachutes and fire extinguishers. Hiss claimed until his death in 1996 that the evidence known as the Pumpkin Papers vindicated him, but his claims often fell on deaf ears.
Despite decades of FBI scrutiny, frenzied Red scares, blacklists, loyalty boards, and show trials aimed at ferreting out Communist infiltration, many, perhaps most, of those who acted in the service of the Soviet Union never had a Pumpkin Papers moment. But newly released documents from U.S. and Soviet archives show that hundreds of people, from the famous to the obscure, crossed paths with Soviet intelligence during the pre-World War II years. They include the country's most famous physicist, Robert Oppenheimer, novelist Ernest Hemingway, and civil servants like Hiss. There were journalists, too, like Walter Lippmann, I. F. Stone, and Bernard Redmont, a former correspondent for U.S. News who has been denying spying allegations for more than a half century.
In the two decades since the end of the Cold War, various archives in formerly Communist countries, from Georgia to East Germany, have been opened to historians, who have eagerly pored over their files in the hopes of fitting more pieces into the Cold War's most vexing jigsaw puzzles. (It is an unfortunate irony, some scholars note, that some of the best Cold War documents come from abroad rather than from the United States, where they are still classified.)
A new history of Soviet espionage in the United States during those critical pre-World War II years takes full advantage of a brief peek at one of the crown jewels of Cold War history, the brown and green file folders of the KGB's American Department. Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (Yale University Press)was written by a pair of American Cold War scholars, John Haynes and Harvey Klehr, and a former KGB officer and journalist, Alexander Vassiliev.
For a tantalizingly brief two-year period in the early 1990s, Vassiliev was given access to Stalin-era KGB files in order to write about KGB operations. The new book shows how the Soviets went about the business of spying, its failures and successes, and, most interestingly, the names of the Americans from whom the KGB received information.
Since Vassiliev wasn't able to take the originals outside the archive, he filled more than 1,100 notebook pages with the text and marginal notes of thousands of KGB files, often verbatim. Years later, he smuggled the notes out of Russia. Last month, Vassiliev donated the original notebooks to the Library of Congress. The project is not without controversy, partly because researchers have had access only to the notes which Vassiliev, a former Russian spy, took but also because the copies are often the only piece of evidence against those fingered as spies, most of whom are long dead.
But the Vassiliev notebooks are just one piece of the spying puzzle. In 1996, the National Security Agency released voluminous records of the top-secret Venona Project, including many partially decoded Soviet cables detailing spying. Because the cables used code names to shield the identities of KGB sources, they were of limited use to U.S. intelligence. What's significant about the newly released Vassiliev documents is that they contain both the code names from the Venona cables and the actual identities.
A final confirmation?The most famous person who crops up in the new book and accompanying documents is Hiss, who had been convicted of perjury because of the Pumpkin Papers but was never convicted of more serious crimes.
The material in the Vassiliev notebooks corroborates the suspicion that Hiss was a longtime agent of Soviet military intelligence. That echoes the findings of Venona Project analysts, who concluded years ago that the code name "Ales" in the intercepted Soviet cables was "probably Alger Hiss."
The KGB files also corroborate that Julius Rosenberg, who was executed for espionage in 1953 along with his wife, Ethel, was indeed a Soviet agent.
Other Americans are vindicated by Vassiliev's KGB notes. For instance, they say that Robert Oppenheimer continuously refused to help the KGB, much to Moscow's frustration. After a public investigation into his loyalty, Oppenheimer lost his U.S. security clearance. Like many other accused "Red sympathizers," he spent the rest of his life defending his reputation. The Vassiliev documents concur with numerous other sources that show it was other scientists and technicians on the atomic bomb program who helped the Soviets develop a nuclear weapon.
One of the most compelling pieces of Vassiliev's notes is a 1948 memo from Anatoly Gorsky, the chief Soviet spy handler in Washington until 1945. It lists the code names and true identities of members of a spy ring run by Elizabeth Bentley. A private citizen who was a member of the Communist Party of the United States, Bentley triggered one of the most public spy trials in history when she began naming names of all those who had helped her spy for the Soviets in the years before the war.
The Vassiliev notes show that the Bentley ring was one of the most successful that the Soviets ever orchestrated. "The single most disastrous event in the history of Soviet intelligence in America was Elizabeth Bentley's decision to turn herself in to the FBI in 1945 and tell all she knew," Vassiliev and his coauthors conclude in Spies.
Refuting allegations. Bentley ran a network of spies that included, she claimed, a former press officer for the State Department named Bernard Redmont. After Bentley's confession, but before any trial, the FBI began tailing Redmont and his wife.
Based on Bentley's confession, government agents read his mail, tapped his phone, and kept tabs on his job applications, according to declassified FBI reports. One of the jobs for which Redmont, a former marine, applied was as a correspondent with a new publication run by prominent conservative columnist David Lawrence. The G-men erroneously listed the magazine in their surveillance reports as U.S.Reports & World News.
In a trial stemming from the Bentley case, Redmont, then the Paris correspondent forU.S. News,denied being a Communist or a spy. He said that he and Bentley "discussed only material that was available and given to hundreds of other newspaper reporters and agencies and that could have been gotten by listening to the radio any day of the week." But the fact that his name was all over the front pages was enough to shatter his reputation. Lawrence fired Redmont as soon as his testimony hit the papers.
Years later, he found work again in newspapers and then with CBS News, leading to a distinguished career that took him to Boston University, where he served as the dean of the journalism school. Now retired, he lives in Massachusetts.
But the KGB documents offer evidence that Redmont may have been a spy after all, one who operated under the Soviet code name "Mon," according to Vassiliev and his coauthors. Haynes, a historian with the manuscript division of the Library of Congress, says the evidence against Redmont is strong. KGB memos from December 1945 and 1948 reported that Mon had been compromised when Bentley talked to the FBI. "He may have been a minor source, but documentary evidence is that he was a source," the authors write.
But the case against Redmont is anything but closed and, unlike many others named in the book, he is able to refute the charges. What emerges from the Moscow archives and the Venona cables is a picture of two agencies, the FBI and Soviet intelligence, that were both under intense political pressure and inclined to exaggerate their own efficacy. The FBI was largely unable to thwart Soviet spies, was prone to abuses in its hunt for enemies, and often overstated its successes, says Athan Theoharis, a professor at Marquette University and an expert on FBI counterintelligence. Soviet spy handlers, meanwhile, were also under tremendous pressure to produce results and justify, among other things, their expense accounts. They'd sometimes listen to commercial radio news reports or read newspapers, summarize them, and send the results back to Moscow as if they'd gathered top-secret information through their spy networks.
There may be a strikingly benign explanation for the fact that Redmont's name appears on a list in the Moscow archives, says Svetlana Chervonnaya, a scholar and documentary producer in Russia. She suggests that Redmont may have been considered by the KGB as a "journalistic asset," someone used to obtain information and, more important, as an avenue for promoting the Soviet line in the media. The latter was of particular interest as early as the 1930s. "Most often, the journalists were not aware they dealt with intelligence operatives who were undercover as Soviet Embassy press officers or did not deal directly with the Soviets at all," says Chervonnaya. That was the case with Walter Lippmann, the Spies authors conclude. I. F. Stone, meanwhile, actively assisted the KGB, and Ernest Hemingway, according to the files, was given a code name "Argo" but never provided any information.
No one has ever been able to point to any information (secret or otherwise) that Redmont passed to Soviet handlers, nor is there evidence he ever took KGB money. Years of FBI surveillance turned up nothing, and bureau agents repeatedly asked that the investigation into him and his wife be closed. No one ever alleged that he had in any way compromised national security.
Redmont said in an interview last year when the Vassiliev documents surfaced that he "never understood why anyone would name me as a spy. I am not now a spy, and I have never been a spy." And he now says he's dismayed to have the issue dredged up after so many years. "It was a very sad and poisoned period in American history where an allegation was equivalent to a conviction. I'd like to think we've moved beyond that, but maybe we haven't," he says.
Soviet paranoia. The parade of declassified materials raises a larger and perhaps more important question for historians of Cold War spying. Namely, was it worth it? In another new Yale University Press book, Alger Hiss and the Battle for History, journalist Susan Jacoby agrees that Hiss was most likely guilty. Yet that fact is insufficient to justify the McCarthyism and self-destructive Red-baiting that ensued, she writes. The same could be said of the Redmont kerfuffle.
If anything, scholars at a recent Smithsonian conference on Vassiliev's notebooks suggested, KGB reports to Stalin probably reassured the paranoid Soviet leader of the true intent of U.S. foreign policy. Much as mutually assured destruction with nuclear arsenals perversely calmed Cold War nuclear tensions, mutual spying may have reassured policymakers that they truly understood the other side.
Nonetheless, the Soviet Union exhausted considerable efforts to identify and detain suspected agents provocateurs and built a police state on a foundation of denouncers and gulags. The United States, meanwhile, had its own show trials and televised denunciations before the House Un-American Activities Committee and shattered often innocent lives with allegations and innuendo. Even if new evidence suggests that all the smoke was not without fire, McCarthyism remains in the lexicon as the embodiment of politically motivated character assassination. While spy hunts did catch some of the guilty, it is unclear if it was worth the cost to the innocent when nations turned on themselves for crimes both real and imagined.
Over the last couple of years major social media, news and video platforms have been actively engaged in the censorship of what they believe to be fake news and information. Often spearheaded by third-party review organizations known to have biased views, there have been countless examples of unpopular speech and commentary that has seen its distribution suppressed or outright banned.
While there is most certainly a human element involved in the review and flagging of information, mega Silicon Valley conglomerates have also implemented automated systems to identify potentially hateful and repulsive content.
To give you an idea of the kind of automation in play and what words and ideas are being identified as running contrary to the principles of media aggregators and distributors, consider that Facebook recently banned America’s founding document from being posted.
Since June 24, the Liberty County Vindicator of Liberty County, Texas, has been sharing daily excerpts from the Declaration of Independence in the run up to July Fourth. The idea was to encourage historical literacy among the Vindicator‘s readers.
The first nine such posts of the project went up without incident.
“But part 10,” writesVindicator managing editor Casey Stinnett, “did not appear. Instead, The Vindicator received a notice from Facebook saying that the post ‘goes against our standards on hate speech.’”
The post in question contained paragraphs 27 through 31 of the Declaration of Independence, the grievance section of the document wherein the put-upon colonists detail all the irreconcilable differences they have with King George III.
Stinnett says that he cannot be sure which exact grievance ran afoul of Facebook’s policy, but he assumes that it’s paragraph 31, which excoriates the King for inciting “domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages.”
The removal of the post was an automated action, and Stinnett sent a “feedback message” to Facebook with the hopes of reaching a human being who could then exempt the Declaration of Independence from its hate speech restrictions.
Referencing recent polls and the popularity of Bernie Sanders among the youth, famed economist Walter E. Williams laments the signals that “young people prefer socialism to free market capitalism” in America.
The reason for this, he believes, “is a result of their ignorance and indoctrination during their school years, from kindergarten through college. For the most part, neither they nor many of their teachers and professors know what free market capitalism is.”
I have great admiration for Dr. Williams, but it struck me that this doesn’t paint a complete picture.
First of all, the youth may not have a firm grasp on the virtues and benefits of a free market, but they certainly know what socialism is, economically speaking. They know it involves the government engaging in the coerced seizure of wealth from some to provide for others. They just really like that idea.
Secondly, while there is indeed an alarming lack of truthful instruction in schools and universities about socialism’s dark and murderous legacy that Dr. Williams later cites in the article (over 116 million deaths in the twentieth century alone), I find the conclusion that public-school teachers and college professors are to blame for the youth’s affinity for socialism far too convenient and simplistic an explanation.
Academia is generally the scapegoat we point toward when lamenting our indoctrinated leftist youth. But academia’s tendency to lionize socialism as virtue rather than an evil is not a new phenomenon, to be sure. It’s been that way for many decades. There must be something different in these youths’ experience today which might better explain this trend.
Herein lies the more troubling observation that we seem to prefer not to recognize. Young people are being driven the arms of socialists not solely based upon what they’re being taught in the classroom, but by the example America has set before them.
There are two distinct components to this.
The welfare state, and the collapse of the nuclear family
There can be no reasonable argument against the fact that our American welfare state is a practical manifestation of socialist economic principles. It is the coercive seizure of property from taxpayers predicated upon a moral imperative that a government broker must seize and redistribute wealth to those who “need” it more.
The welfare state is also an all-out assault upon the institution of marriage and the family. This is because the welfare state is bolstered and grows by this cultivating greater “need” among constituents, and married couples with families “need” the welfare state less than single-parent families. It should be noted that the data prove beyond a shadow of doubt that marriage promotes financial self-sufficiency. And as Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation notes: “It is no accident that the collapse of marriage in America largely began with the War on Poverty and the proliferation of means-tested welfare programs that it fostered.”
“Collapse” is an apt description of what has happened to the institution of marriage in America since LBJ’s crusade to destroy it began. At just a cursory glance, the number of single-parent homes had increased from 9% in 1960 to 34% by 2013.
Why? It’s a simple matter of government-subsidized incentives. “As means-tested benefits expanded,” continues Rector, “welfare began to serve as a substitute for a husband in the home, and low-income marriage began to disappear.” As marriage is unquestionably a boon toward a family’s financial stability, this “created a destructive feedback loop: Welfare promoted the decline of marriage, which generated a need for more welfare.”
Adding to this problem, the welfare state actually penalizes marriage among this demographic, which is in direr need of this financial stability that marriage can provide. “For example,” Rector goes on, “if a single mother who earns $20,000 per year marries a man who earns the same amount, the couple will typically lose about $12,000 per year in welfare benefits. In effect, the welfare system makes it economically irrational for most low-income couples to marry.”
This was a destructive act against the American family, unquestionably. The net effect of this government-approved economic prescription for low-income families is that a massively increasing number of Americans, the children of those households, are entering adulthood today with a sense of entitlement to enjoy the wealth that others have provided via hard work and industrial prowess. It is all entirely normal for them to collect this redistributed wealth, as it was normal for their parents.
This has little to do with what they learned or didn’t learn in the classroom. It has everything to do with the example that their parents set for them at home. And it could be argued that their parents set that example because government officials we have elected throughout these past decades have continually incentivized them to do so.
How is it possible that we now wonder why so many among this expanding demographic prefer the idea of wealth redistribution, which is the central tenet of socialism, to the principles of a free market?
And this leads to the second, broader reason.
In the eyes of the youth, our government already practices “socialism”
Again, this isn’t a matter of the youth not understanding that coercive wealth redistribution is the central tenet of socialism. It’s a simple matter of the youth observing the examples which are laid before them which America has created.
Interestingly, Dr. Williams notes this, but doesn’t seem to recognize that this might be a primary reason as to why so many youths subscribe to the tenets of socialism:
Tragically, two-thirds to three-quarters of the federal budget can be described as Congress taking the rightful earnings of one American to give to another American -- using one American to serve another. Such acts include farm subsidies, business bailouts, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, welfare, and many other programs.
If up to three-quarters of the revenue that the government seizes from individuals is redistributed for the benefit of others, how is it justifiable to not classify our nation as a socialist state? Like the child of the welfare home, American youths have simply observed that government taking wealth from some to provide for others is simply how the government legitimately works, because that is how the government has worked their entire lives, and for many decades before that.
Yes, we can and should blame academia for dismissing the virtues of individual liberty enshrined in our Constitution, but what have we done in recent decades to protect and advance those virtues? The question is the uncomfortable one, and it is why we prefer to simply blame the professors for indoctrinating our children.
We cannot roll back the legislative mistakes of the past overnight, and I fully understand that. The only question we should ask ourselves is this: what can we do to constrain our federal government in the future from seizing rights which do not belong to it, according to our foundational social contract which was predicated upon the liberty of the individual above all things?
Perhaps our taking bold legislative strides away from socialism today will compel the culture, and our youth, away from socialism in the future. Only then will we reverse what seems to be a rising tide of groomed socialists poised to swallow all of the ideas and virtues that once defined America.
economic principles. It is the coercive seizure of property from taxpayers predicated upon a moral imperative that a government broker must seize and redistribute wealth to those who “need” it more.