Notes from a cold war baby 11/2/08

div>If you read my blogs on a regular basis you know that most of the time I stay away from political topics. Some time back I did post an article by David Mamet that goes a long way to explaining my own political metamorphisis.

I deviated from my usual political reticence this morning when I reposted a couple bulletins that I thought served well to help inform my friends of the charachter of our Democratic presidential nominee. Thinking that my Myspace work was done for the day, I set out to accomplish some cleaning tasks (my favorite thing to do-NOT). As I was scrubbing the bathtub, I realized that my liberal and Democratic-voting friends might not pay any attention to the bulletins or scoff at them as right-wing nut job propaganda. They do focus on the candidate's life, influences, beliefs and obfuscations, so I reasoned that maybe I was shining my light on the wrong aspect of the candidate.

So, you ask, what is a cold war baby and what does any of that ancient news have to do with the presidential election taking place in two days?

I was born in 1960, and spent my formative years in the shadow of the OTHER superpower, the Soviet Union. I'm sure it's difficult for anyone who came of age after the fall of the Berlin wall to imagine that even though we lived our lives as carefree kids and teens, the threat of nuclear war always lurked in the shadows.(I must thank RH and his blog for reminding me of this easily overlooked piece of business) So again, what does this have to do with 2008 and the choices we face come November 4th?

The point is this-socialism doesn't work.

All you have to do is read the history of the Soviet Union to understand that millions of ordinary people died because of the "plans"of their leaders, life was so miserable for most of the people that foreign travel was not allowed, and the only information came from the government, so of course the people had no choice about what to believe; it was all or nothing. While the vast majority of the population stood in line for every possible everyday commodity (bread, shoes, etc etc etc) the Party hierarchy and loyals traveled abroad and shopped in special stores stocked with all kinds of ordinary (and not so ordinary) luxuries. The party also fabricated every scrap of economic data that they fed to their people and disseminated abroad, and with no incentive to work hard, many working people became demoralized and very cynical and worked only as much as they had to, further weakening the economy. All of this was going on behind the closed doors presented to the outside world-Sovietologists examined every picture of the leaders at the annual May day parade to see who was really in charge.

I'm not going to continue here because I'm not a Soviet expert, but if you do some reading to inform yourself about how socialism works in the real world then you will understand what I'm talking about. Don't even get me started on China! Different situation though; Mao was just another in a long line of emperors-the Chinese people have been ruled by an iron fist of one sort or another for thousands of years.

So-please go back to what the candidates are saying and the policies they espouse, and you will see that the democratic candidate says a lot about the redistribution of wealth-eg socialism. The reason they put Joe the plumber through the wringer is that he represents millions of Americans working hard for themselves and their families. And please, if you vote democratic on Tuesday, don't EVER complain about higher taxes; whose money do you think the politicians will use to fund all their programs?

I leave you with a cartoon that Mark alerted me to last week; I posted this in a bulletin but it bears repeating because it says it all so well:

Thanks for reading and have a great Sunday-as for me, I have to finish cleaning the bathroom.