Here are some traditional characteristics of this country Obama and the political left ‘hope’ to change, in no particular order:

• Free speech - greatly reduced with thought-crimes (Hate crimes) laws, as well as backdoor ‘Fairness Docrtine’ policies already in the works.
• Judges who respect the proper role of judiciary - gone, in favor of activist judges who rule by personal feelings and believe in a ‘living’ Constitution, which means no Constitution.
• Free markets - mostly gone in favor of a command and control economy.
• Fair elections - mostly gone with rampant voter fraud via ACORN, etc.
• Equal protection or rule of law - gone, in favor of equality of outcomes.
• God - gone from the public square completely.
• Keep and bear arms - gone.
• Property rights - further restricted and can be confiscated at any time by the state.
• Economic freedom - further restricted with more taxes, licenses, fees, regulations.
• States rights - further eroded in favor of federal power.

If they truly had their way, America would look nothing like the nation it was before, and would be reduced to another European-like socialist nation, at best. Our Constitution, for all intents and purposes, would be rendered null and void, and turned into just a museum curiosity.

Ask yourself this question; does Barack Hussein Obama have more in common politically/philosophically with Thomas Jefferson or Hugo Chavez of Venezuela? You can compare and contrast Obama with any of the other Founding Fathers to any socialist dictators, and reach the same conclusion. Obama is far more in line philosophically with authoritarian socialists. I know some will object that Obama does not want concentration camps. Yes, they may differ in degree, but not in kind. There is no such thing as a safe amount of socialism. Soft tyranny is still tyranny no matter how you slice it.

Obama sayshe believes in free markets, says he wants a small government, etc. But Obama says a lot of things. He is deceiving the people like the masterful politician he is. Don’t listen to what a politician says to know what he believes, look to what he does. Actions really do speak louder than words. His actions, friendships and political alliances are far more revealing than his soothing rhetoric.

You don’t try to change the country fundamentally if you love and respect it. Obama’s ‘Hope’ is to completely undo everything that made America great to begin with. From free markets, to limited government, to the Bill of Rights, Obama and his supporters are either for greatly reducing or eliminating altogether the foundations of American exceptionalism. It is absolutely frightening to consider the consequences of what that will mean to this country and the world, but that is what Obama ‘Hope’ represents.

Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder said that the president will seek to reinstate and make permanent the ban on so-called ‘assault weapons’, despite Obama promising on the campaign trail that he would not be a gun-grabber. Obama told voters “I’m not going to take your guns away”, and “Lawful gun owners have nothing to fear. I think people can take me at my word.” We see his word is worth little or nothing.

Dianne Feinstein (D-Ca) was the champion of the 1994 so-called assault weapons ban. She said these guns are “more deadly” and are the weapon of choice for gangs. Wrong. All firearms are potentially lethal, and so-called assault weapons are no more deadly than any other firearm. Gangs and drug cartels obtain their guns on the black market and from foreign sources. Taking them away from the average citizen accomplishes nothing against crime.

The U.S. Department of Justice conducted two studies of the consequences of the 1994 assault weapons ban. In 1999, Bill Clinton’s Justice Department looked exhaustively at the ban’s effects. It concluded that “the public safety benefits of the 1994 ban have not yet been demonstrated.” In 2001, a second Justice Department review similarly found no evidence that the ban had a statistically significant effect on violent crime. A congressionally mandated study by the Urban Institute reached comparable conclusions.

So-called assault weapons are used only in a tiny fraction of crimes compared to handguns and so-called ‘Saturday night specials’. Data compiled by criminologist Gary Kleck put the frequency of ‘assault weapons’ use in all violent crime at 0.5 percent. Most criminals do not prefer these types of weapons because they are more difficult to conceal and more costly to obtain. More people are killed each year by drowning compared to ‘assault weapons’.

The new tactic is to claim that by banning these types of guns it will help Mexico with their drug cartel violence. Aside from the fact that robbing Americans of a constitutionally protected right to aid a foreign government is ludicrous, there is no evidence to suggest that banning these semi-automatic firearms will help Mexico’s problems. And even if guns were coming from the US into Mexico, it’s not a gun issue, but a border issue. Secure the borders and you won’t have to worry about illegal guns or drugs crossing the border (not to mention illegal people crossings).

Most of the people get their news and information from the mainstream media, which is manifestly anti-gun. People need to be educated about the myths surrounding guns in general and ‘assault weapons’ in particular. Why is there this scary word ‘assault’ attached to certain guns? Can’t you assault someone with any gun, or a knife or just about anything else for that matter? So that word is meaningless, aside from its usage as a buzzword to help demonize certain semi-automatic firearms.

‘Assault weapons’ are NOT machine guns. Fully automatic guns are called machine guns and cannot be owned by the general public (with extremely rare exceptions). When you pull and hold the trigger of a machine gun, multiple bullets are fired. If you pull and hold the trigger of an ‘assault weapon’, a single bullet is fired, which is no different than any hunting rifle. In fact, one of the rifles that would be banned is the common AR-15 Sporter rifle, which is commonly outfitted for hunting.

So how then do they define ‘assault weapon’? It is defined purely by cosmetics and nothing more. This irrational gun-banning crusade is based only on the appearances of certain guns. Some look like their military counterparts, but are NOT the same thing; internally and functionally they are different. Therefore there is no rational basis to ban these types of firearms.

Watch as the news media begin focusing more of their stories on gun crimes. This is intentionally done to help the Obama Administration enact more gun control. If they get their way, the Second Amendment will be further eroded until it is almost gone (which is their ultimate goal). Do not fall for the lies and deception from the anti-gun Democrats and their cheerleaders in the mainstream media.

The political, academic and media elites hate the idea of the people being armed because they do not trust the people. These immoral and arrogant aristocrats see the American people as small-town rubes to be subjugated and controlled. However, they do trust government agents to have ‘assault weapons’, as well as full machine guns, because they have direct control over them.

This is just another step on the road to banning all firearms. The anti-liberty crowd is devious in their tactics and uses what has been called incrementalism. Meaning, they will slowly take away rights piece by piece, so you don’t notice the infringement all at once, while claiming they just want ‘common sense’ restrictions with every seemingly small step.

Tyrants, criminals, and the political left all prefer their victims unarmed. Only an immoral person would deny a citizen the right to exercise one of the most fundamental aspects of liberty imaginable. The right to keep and bear arms has been an integral part of our nation since its inception, and We The People should not allow the erosion of that valuable right.

To answer the question posed by my last posting we need to turn to the schools and universities. The root cause of the socialist ideas in popular culture can be traced directly to the education system in this country. It is here where many of the journalists, reporters, news anchors, writers and politicians received their worldview.

The academics have many fashionable theories as to how things should work in society and the world, many of them utopian, but ultimately they are incorrect and often make things much worse.

The late William F. Buckley, Jr., famously wrote: “I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.” But he went on to explain why he would make this preference: 

http://thenationalscene.com/source-socialisms-influence/

The Left, with its belief in socialism and other forms of utopianism, always fail because they reject the core truths of mankind. Conservatives understand that mankind can never achieve perfection on this earth, while modern liberals believe it can. The history of the last century has proved that when movements attempt to perfect mankind and its institutions, it always ends in catastrophe.

Socialism, fascism, Nazism, communism, etc. are all forms of collectivism that have some things in common. Among these are the ideas that the troubles that plague mankind are due to corrupt institutions and ineffective leaders; that if we only remade the institutions of society with the right leadership, we can achieve some kind of utopia. That criminals and the poor are a product of broken or outdated capitalistic systems. That a classless society in which all are equal is achievable. That religion is bad and science is all that is needed to explain everything. That the State should be all-powerful and essentially worshipped by the people. That the State should control the economy and redistribute the resources according to the elite who know better because of their ’superior’ education. Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao and others believed in this, though they had differing way as to how to achieve a socialist paradise. Regardless of the means taken, the end goal was always the same. Continue Reading

If you asked the average person on the street if they want the government in their lives taking their money and controlling their choices, most people would say no. Of course no one wants to be controlled by bureaucrats or have less freedom, but the erosion of liberty is an inevitable consequence of the ideology that Obama and the Left ascribes to. When you switch a society from an individual to collectivist based, you must give up many economic and personal liberties. There is no way to have a nation that is part free, part collectivist. Capitalism cannot coexist with socialist policies and an ever-increasing government; they are mutually exclusive.

The Obama Administration has already toyed with the idea of nationalizing the banks, and will soon nationalize health care. How have other nations fared with nationalizing major parts of their economy? Every nation that has nationalized health care has to ration care for its people (except for the elite of course), with long waiting times and inferior equipment. The old Soviet Union had nationalized it farms. The result? A nation that was once an exporter of food, now could not feed its own people. It is clear from studies that nations with the greatest poverty also have the largest government control over the economy.

Socialism has long been discredited everywhere it was put into action, whether in a giant like the former Soviet Union, or the small island of Cuba. Every form of collectivism believes it has the right blueprint for a perfect society. It does not matter if they call it communism, Marxism, fascism, Nazism, Fabian socialism, syndicalism, or just plain socialism; they are all different flavors of the same poison. They all have as their end goal the same impossible objective; they only differ in the ways they believe they can get there.

Those on the political Left believe, in spite of all the evidence, that it is possible to perfect humanity and its institutions, and form a utopian society. They believe with the right leaders and enough tinkering in society they can achieve this fantasy. Lenin and Hitler believed the same thing. Human nature is unchanging, and as such, the only form of social organization that works best is individual liberty with free markets. No other system has ever produced a higher standard of living for the greatest number of people. It is not perfect, but no system is, and if you try to chase the mirage of perfection, you will only create tyranny and oppression. No matter how well your intensions may be, it’s best to remember the saying that the road to hell is paved with good intensions.

Utopias have never existed, and can never exist, at least under the rulership of human beings. That would explain why the word ‘utopia’ literally means ‘no place’.