The Socialist Way

I was complaining online about the blatant hypocrisy of Obama's government: "this is a new era of responsibility" And then he recommends to his cabinet a long line of tax cheats who suddenly saw the light and paid up (well, what they owed minus the fines) and even Geitner gets confirmed to oversee the IRS. "No lobbyists" And then one lobbyist after another gets an exception so they can work on the government in the area they lobbied for. "I will allow every bill I sign to be available to the public for five days before I sign" And then he signed the Lilly Ledbetter Act and overturned the Mexico City Policy without the public's foreknowledge. And of course, he pushed the infamous "stimulus" bill (aka crap sandwich) to be passed by legislation BEFORE they had any chance to read it, and left it sitting there on his desk for three days before he actually signed it -- but we didn't have time to see it beforehand.

One of my friends, an immigrant from socialist Poland, simply wrote, "That's the socialist way: do as I say, not as I do."

In a column on Townhall.com today, Thomas Sowell dealt with the socialist tendency to twist word, saying the exact opposite of what they mean to make something SEEM better than it really is. Thus, the "Employee's Freedom of Choice Act" actually takes away a person's right to a secret ballot when voting on getting a union or not. The stimulus bill was named the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act." A careful look at what's in it shows very little intends to recover the economy, very little is reinvestment. They call it that, but . . .

Steve Chapman tells about a legendary riddle Abraham Lincoln posed: If you count its tail as a leg, how many legs does a dog have? The answer is four. Counting the tail as a leg doesn't make it a leg.

So the socialists know how to lie, and that convincingly. The conservatives assume people already know and feel what they do. But according to Sowell, "The expression, 'It goes without saying. . .' is a fatal trap. Few things go without saying. Some of the most valuable things in life may go away without saying-- whether loved ones in one's personal life or the freedom or survival of a nation."

We have to learn how to express what "goes without saying."