A History of Thanksgiving

(Everything below is taken from The Miracle and Magnificence of America.)

Sir Walter Raleigh’s first attempts at settling the New World were disastrous. The English, who were now trying to gain a foothold in the New World, were succumbing to the same greed that had earlier blinded the Spaniards. Starvation, disease, hostile Indians, and other hardships, including a whole colony lost (the Lost Colony of Roanoke), led to dampened enthusiasm for New World expeditions.

It would be nearly 20 years after Raleigh’s initial ventures before enough English interest could again be sparked for more New World adventure. Despite recruiting “sermons” that contained messages of evangelical outreach, and the preamble of the Company’s charter, written by King James I, which contained the words, “…propagating of Christian religion to such people as yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worship of God, and may in time bring the infidels and savages, living in these parts, to human civility and to a settled and quiet government,” the lust for gold was, again, what drove European men across the Atlantic.

On May 14, 1607, headed by a seven-man council, which included John Smith, 144 men settled Jamestown. Because of their misguided efforts it was a disaster from the beginning. These men battled the elements, disease, Indians, starvation, and one another. The lone minister on the adventure, Robert Hunt, did his best to keep the others focused on God. His sermons went mostly unheeded; however, he persevered. By February of 1608 only 38 of the 144 remained alive.

The death rate did not abate with time. As Peter Marshall and David Manuel note,

For example, of the 1,200 people who went out to Virginia in 1619, only 200 were left alive by 1620. Why this horrible continuing death rate? There is no logical explanation, except one: year after year they steadfastly refused to trust God—or indeed to include Him in any of their deliberations.

The next settlers to cross the Atlantic would not make the same mistakes. They were not seeking wealth and prosperity, but a new home. They believed that America was their spiritual destiny. The Pilgrims (dubbed “Separatists” by the Church of England), and the Puritans who followed them, knew better than to undertake anything without God.

Aboard the Mayflower were 102 passengers, less than half of whom were of Pastor John Robinson’s Separatist flock. After a grueling two-month voyage, on November 11, 1620, they dropped anchor in Cape Cod, and heeding the advice and wisdom of their pastor, the Pilgrims drafted a compact that would embody the same principles of government upon which American democracy would rest. It read,

In the name of God, amen. We whose names are under-written…Having undertaken, for the glory of God and advancement of the Christian Faith and honor of our King and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic…constitute and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions and offices from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony…the 11th of November…Anno Domini 1620.

John Carver, who had chartered the Mayflower, was chosen as the first governor of the colony. His was the first signature on the Mayflower Compact, which is considered by many to be the world’s first written constitution. William Bradford would soon replace Carver as governor and would serve in that capacity for 31 years. On December 21, 1620, the Pilgrims settled at what would become known as Plymouth.

A replica model of the Mayflower. Created by Norbert Schnitzler.

 Though their efforts were “for the glory of God,” the Pilgrims were not immune to the many hardships of an untamed America. Before long, many started dying. William Bradford’s wife Dorothy was among the casualties as she fell overboard and drowned. (Initially, while dwellings were being built, the Pilgrims lived mostly aboard the Mayflower.) Due in part to a brutal winter, dozens would die in those first few months, including 13 of 18 wives. In spite of hardships, the Pilgrims were undeterred and drew ever closer to God.

The months turned into years and saw the Pilgrims develop good relations with the local natives including Massasoit, a wise and welcoming chief of the local tribes, Samoset, and especially Tisquantum, or Squanto.

In the middle of March 1621, just as the Pilgrims were coming out of the devastatingly harsh winter, a guard alerted his comrades with the cry of “Indian coming!” Wearing only a loincloth as he walked into the Pilgrims’ camp, Samoset astonished the English onlookers with a hearty “Welcome!” Then speaking surprisingly clear English, he followed his friendly greeting with a request, “Have you got any beer?”

The Pilgrims informed their friendly guest that they were out of beer, and offered him brandy instead. After a hearty snack of brandy, biscuit, butter, cheese, pudding, and roast duck, Samoset was ready to answer questions. In spite of their difficult and deadly plight, Samoset’s words gave the Pilgrims great cause to thank God.

On March 22, 1621, Samoset returned to the Pilgrims with Squanto, who spoke even better English. Squanto’s life is an amazing tale of God’s provision that very closely resembles the account of Joseph from Genesis, chapter 37. Soon after Samoset introduced Squanto to the Pilgrims, a meeting with Massasoit, chief of the Wampanoag people, was arranged. Massasoit, Samoset, Squanto, and dozens of Wampanoag warriors traveled to Plymouth to meet the Pilgrims. With Samoset serving as the interpreter for Massasoit, the meeting was extremely fruitful. A peace treaty and a treaty of mutual aid were struck with Massasoit that would last for decades.

Massasoit and his party returned home, but Squanto remained with the Pilgrims. Being a man without a tribe, personally witnessing the desperation of the Pilgrims, and already having adopted their faith, Squanto took pity upon his new-found English friends and wanted to help them succeed in their New World. He taught them how to fish for eels and alewives, plant corn and pumpkins, refine maple syrup, trap beavers, hunt deer, and other skills essential to their survival.

Squanto was instrumental in the survival of the Pilgrims—so much so that, according to William Bradford, the Pilgrims considered Squanto “a special instrument sent of God for their good, beyond their expectation.” Massasoit also was an amazing example of God’s providential care for the Pilgrims. Like Powhatan had been at Jamestown, Massasoit was probably the only other native chief on the northeast coast of America who would have welcomed the white man as a friend.

In early April of 1621, with supplies running dangerously low, the Captain of the Mayflower, Christopher Jones, decided he could remain in America no longer. On April 5, 1621, the Mayflower returned to England. As the ship disappeared over the horizon, almost certainly a nervous uneasiness came upon more than a few Pilgrims who remained in the New World. Their last ties to their former home were gone. They, perhaps, felt more alone than at any point of their amazing journey.

The summer of 1621 was beautiful and, thanks in no small measure to the help of Squanto, bountiful. Governor Bradford declared a day of public Thanksgiving to be held in October. Massasoit was invited. Surprising the Pilgrims, he showed up a day early with 90 of his tribe. To feed such a crowd, the Pilgrims would have to go deep into their food supply. However, Massasoit did not show up empty handed. He had instructed his braves to hunt for the occasion, and they came with several dressed dear and fat turkeys. The Thanksgiving turned into a three-day celebration filled with feasting and games.

The First Thanksgiving, by Jean-Léon Gérôme.

A few weeks after the first Thanksgiving and about a year after the Pilgrims arrived in the New World, the Fortune sailed into Plymouth on its way to Virginia. The main cargo was an additional 35 colonists and a charter granted from the New England Company. There was tremendous celebration over the new charter; however, unlike the Indians, the new colonists arrived virtually empty handed. They had no extra clothing, food, or tools. The Pilgrims would have to adjust their winter food rationing plan severely.

The winter of 1621-1622 was as difficult as feared. The Pilgrims entered what has been described as their “starving time.” Some reports reveal that at times, food rations for each person were a mere five kernels of corn per day. Miraculously, that winter not one Pilgrim died of starvation.

There was no Thanksgiving celebration in 1622. When the spring planting season of 1623 rolled around, the Pilgrims realized that to fend off further hunger and rationing, a corn harvest at least twice as large as last season was necessary. However, a lackluster work ethic prevailed among them. This was mainly because the contract entered into with their merchant sponsors in London required everything the Pilgrims produced was to go into a common store and be shared. As Rush Limbaugh has often pointed out on his radio broadcast that celebrates Thanksgiving Day, the Pilgrims were languishing under socialism.

The leaders of the colony then decreed that for the additional planting, individual plots of land would be split, and the yield could be used at the planters’ discretion. Thus, as the concept of private property was introduced, the Pilgrims seemed infused and invigorated with new hope and purpose. As Marshall and Manuel point out, “The yield that year was so abundant that the Pilgrims ended up with a surplus of corn, which they were able to use in trading that winter with northern Indians, who had not had a good growing season.”

On November 29, 1623, two years after the first Thanksgiving, Governor William Bradford made an official proclamation for a second day of Thanksgiving. In it Governor Bradford thanked God for their abundant harvest, bountiful game, protection from “the ravages of savages…and disease,” and for the “freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience.” Well over a hundred Natives attended, bringing plenty of turkey and venison along with them.

The Pilgrims, and the Puritans who followed them, had the proper perspective. As Bradford would so discernibly note, “As one small candle may light a thousand, so the light kindled here has shown unto many, yea in some sort to our whole nation…We have noted these things so that you might see their worth and not negligently lose what your fathers have obtained with so much hardship.”

May the light of those first Thanksgivings never be extinguished.

Copyright 2020, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of The Miracle and Magnificence of America 

tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

The Democrats Deserve Bernie

If nothing else is learned during the 2020 election season, this one lesson must be taught, shared, and passed down through the ages: the Democrat Party of 2020 absolutely deserves Bernie Sanders. Of course, many Democrats will deny this, because they well know that Crazy Bernie is a presidential electoral disaster just waiting to happen. Every caucus and primary he wins or finishes strongly in puts the democrats closer to that well-deserved reality.

Despite their recent efforts—Mike Bloomberg entering the race, Hillary declaring Sanders a “career politician” that “nobody likes,” James Carville complaining that Sanders wants criminals and terrorists to vote from jail cells, Chris Matthews lecturing the American left on the perils of socialism—Bernie keeps polling well and winning races. Much to the chagrin of Democrats, whether he wins or loses a particular primary, Bernie is going nowhere soon.

Frank Bruni of The New York Times agrees. He recently warned his fellow liberals, “Sanders will be a major force in the Democratic race until the end. He’s perhaps the only candidate about whom that can definitively be said.” Nevertheless, Bruni and his ilk keep hoping that somewhere “there’s a moderate around whom [Democrat] voters can coalesce.”

Of course, as has long been clear to anyone with a proper worldview, there are no more “moderate” Democrats running for president. In fact, there are few “moderates” to be found anywhere in today’s Democrat Party. This should surprise no one. Having a bunch of leftist radicals duke it out for your party’s presidential nomination is what happens when, among many other lies, you spend decades telling the electorate that they have a “right” to virtually everything under the sun, and the government’s main job is to provide you with such things.

In spite of the warnings of men like C.S. Lewis, tens of millions of Americans are now, or are longing to be, Willing Slaves of the Welfare State. The platform of today’s Democrat Party rests upon two duplicitous notions: 1.) the godless pagan principle of “Do What Thou Wilt,” and 2.) the presence of an “omnicompetent” Big Government that is ready and willing to mother us.

Despite the claims of modern Democrats, such a modern State exists, as Lewis put it, “not to protect our rights but to do us good or make us good—anyway, to do something to us or to make us something.” Something indeed. Lewis concludes that under such a regime, “There is nothing left of which we can say to them, ‘Mind your own business.’ Our whole lives are their business.”

Even without a socialist in the White House, Democrats—and other like-minded politicians (remember: Bernie’s not a Democrat)—have been practicing their trade long enough to build a massive Big Government beast. Under the guise of “vote for me and I’ll make sure you get [insert campaign promise],” generations of Americans have been seduced into surrendering their “business” to this Big Government.

In the United States, by far the largest employer is government. Local, state, and federal government (including uniformed military personnel) employs well over 23 million Americans. This is more than twice the number of employees of the top 25 private employers in the U.S. combined.

The largest educator in the U.S. is government. About 90% of all U.S. children attend a k-12 godless government school. Over 70% of American students who attend college do so at a state school. Education accounts for nearly half (about 11 million) of the total federal, state, and local government workforce.

The largest “charity” in the U.S. is government (which, of course, brags about it!). Americans gave a total of approximately $427 billion (about $292 billion from individuals) to private charities in 2018. In 2016, Americans received over $800 billion from means-tested (recipients required to be below a certain income level) government programs (housing, food stamps, WIC, Medicaid, and the like). When non means-tested programs (Social Security, Medicare, unemployment, and so on) are included, the total is a shocking and staggering $2.3 trillion dollars.

And of course, Americans now have made health care the business of Big Government. Thus, instead of liberating, liberalism has simply made tens of millions of Americans comfortable in, or at least comfortably accustomed to, their government-made chains.

A man cannot be free unless he has economic independence. As C.S. Lewis put it,

For economic independence allows an education not controlled by Government; and in adult life it is the man who needs, and asks, nothing of Government who can criticise its acts and snap his fingers at its ideology. Read Montaigne; that’s the voice of a man with his legs under his own table, eating the mutton and turnips raised on his own land. Who will talk like that when the State is everyone’s schoolmaster and employer?

Bernie Sanders’ policies would do nothing to promote economic independence, and would massively grow Big Government. Among other grossly expensive ideas, Bernie wants to enact the Green New Deal (GND), make college “free” for all, while also canceling all student loan debt—all $1.6 trillion of it, and of course, his signature campaign promise, provide “free” healthcare for all.

None of this is new. Bernie has been promising “free” stuff his whole political career—which, as Hillary pointed out, is the only career he’s ever had! For example, as the far-left climate website Grist points out, Bernie isn’t just another “Green New Deal bandwagoner,” he’s “the Godfather of the Green New Deal.”

As John Zmirak correctly noted last year, the GND—a $16 trillion dollar behemoth—is not public policy, but rather “a delusional wish list, a ransom note pasted together with clipped out words from storybooks and glued in place with bubblegum.” Yet, almost exactly a year ago, the “anti-socialist” Chris Matthews spent a large portion of his MSNBC show Hardball defending the GND.

As NewsBusters pointed out,

Matthews spun the Green New Deal as something no one could possibly object to, ignoring things such as every building in the U.S. needed to be modified or replaced if it’s not up to snuff, while cars and meat would be banned.

MSNBC hosted a town hall in order to make “the case for the Green New Deal.” If the GND isn’t socialism, then Elizabeth Warren is a Cherokee Indian.

Along with Sanders and Warren “moderates” Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg have “embraced” the GND. Virtually every Democrat who is running or was running for president supported the GND. What’s more, this socialist absurdity has 12 cosponsors in the Senate and 90 cosponsors in the House. But suddenly, Democrat pundits are worried that the “Godfather” of this foolish monstrosity is on the verge of leading their party!

Likewise, Bernie has long touted single-payer healthcare—essentially “Medicare for all”—and, until it looked like he might actually become the Democrat nominee, almost no one in the left-wing media stood up to him. On the contrary, many media leftists—such as Rachel Maddow—agree with Bernie on Medicare for all. When Warren finally joined Bernie in the “Medicare for all” parade, Maddow and Matthews’ network, MSNBC, sang her praises.

According to Vox the reason Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez upset 10-term House Democrat Joe Crowley in New York’s 14th District was because she “championed Medicare-for-all (in addition to free college tuition and a jobs guarantee, among other progressive policies).” To no one’s surprise, AOC was one of Bernie’s earliest endorsers and is one of Bernie’s strongest supporters. To a large extent, Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie, and other radical leftists are now the face of the Democrat Party.

Media leftists, along with like-minded elites in the Democrat Party, have no one to blame but themselves for this. Their decades-long march to the political left—almost always in opposition to the truth—along with preaching a mountain of so-called “rights” in order to bribe Americans into voting for democrats, has also forced us to debate what is marriage, infanticide, how many genders exist, and who is a male and who is a female. Thus, such leftists should not be surprised that the electorate they’ve so “educated” prefers a legitimate socialist as their presidential nominee. 

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2020, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

With Abortion and Socialism, Democrats Are Peddling Slavery Again

In 1860, with the election of Abraham Lincoln as U.S. President, the newly-formed Republican Party controlled the U.S. House, Senate, and presidency. As was the case with most every state in what would become the Confederacy, my home state of Georgia cited slavery, republicans, and the election of Lincoln as its reasons for seceding:

A brief history of the rise, progress, and policy of anti-slavery and the political organization into whose hands the administration of the federal government has been committed [the republicans] will fully justify the pronounced verdict of the people of Georgia [who voted to secede]. The party of Lincoln, called the Republican Party under its present name and organization, is of recent origin. It is admitted to be an anti-slavery party. . . . The prohibition of slavery in the territories, hostility to it everywhere, the equality of the black and white races, disregard of all constitutional guarantees in its favor, were boldly proclaimed by its leaders and applauded by its followers. . . . [T]he abolitionists and their allies in the northern states have been engaged in constant efforts to subvert our institutions.

The Confederate States of America was formed at the Montgomery Convention in February, 1861. For the southern states—and anyone else in the world paying attention—the agenda of the newly formed (and electorally victorious) Republican Party agenda was clear. Every party platform since the creation of the Republican Party had forcefully denounced slavery. After the infamous Dred Scott ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1857, the subsequent Republican platform strongly condemned the ruling and reaffirmed the right of Congress to ban slavery in the territories. On the other hand, the corresponding Democrat platforms praised the Dred Scott ruling and condemned all efforts to end slavery in the U.S.

With its recent unashamed embrace of socialism—they used to avoid such talk—along with its decades-long devotion to killing children in the womb, the modern Democrat Party is again aligning itself with ideologies and institutions that have little to no regard for vast swaths of humanity. Since the dawn of the twentieth century, socialism—the economic system of communist countries—and abortion are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions of human beings.

As Breitbart reported late last year, with nearly 42 million killed in their mothers’ wombs, abortion was the leading cause of death worldwide in 2018. Since the infamous Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, the abortion holocaust has claimed the lives of over 60 million American children. Given such horrific numbers, with unborn children being the most innocent and helpless among us, and given that a mother’s womb should be one of the safest places in the universe, the plight of the unborn is the greatest civil rights battle of all time.

Yet the modern Democrat Party has never been more hostile to unborn children. As soon as they took control of the U.S. House this year, sex-worshipping democrats wasted little time in revealing their wicked and perverse priorities. In an attempt to end the partial government shutdown, democrats’ initial legislative funding proposal sent to the republican-controlled Senate repealed the pro-life “Mexico-City Policy” and provided $37.5 million for the pro-abortion United Nations Population Fund.

Days later, democrats in New York stood and cheered after Democrat Governor Andrew Cuomo signed into law legislation that allows for the killing of children in the womb right up to the moment of birth. In other words, the culture and ideology that gave us the gruesome Kermit Gosnell passed legislation that will only create more infanticidal fools.

Not to be outdone in their efforts to kill the most innocent and helpless among us, soon after the New York infanticide bill was signed into law, Virginia democrats proposed their version of an after-birth abortion bill. Distracting from his blackface scandal, Virginia’s governor, democrat Ralph Northam, infamously defended the legislation. Republican Senator Ben Sasse put it well when he noted,

In just a few years pro-abortion zealots went from ‘safe, legal, and rare’ to ‘keep the newborns comfortable while the doctor debates infanticide.’

That democrats are now debating infanticide shouldn’t be very surprising, as no less than Barack Obama himself helped push them along this evil path. Hoping to follow Mr. Obama as the next democrat president, virtually every democrat candidate for U.S. President supports what could only be described as infanticide. Martin Luther King Jr.’s niece, Alveda King, was exactly right when she asked and answered:

How can the "Dream" survive if we murder the children? Every aborted baby is like a slave in the womb of his or her mother. The mother decides his or her fate.

As the Nazis did with the Jews, and as pro-slavery Americans did with black Africans, modern abortion apologists have de-humanized those they find undesirable or those whose lives they want complete control over. On Fox News’ The Story, author and commentator Rachel Campos-Duffy compared abortion to slavery:

Our country has been divided since [1973] when Roe vs. Wade was passed, and I believe that in my lifetime, the only way this is going to be resolved is Roe v. Wade [being] overturned. It’s going to go back to the states because this issue is as fundamental as an issue was back in the middle of the 1800s called slavery. This is an issue about who gets to decide who is human enough so they can do whatever they want with that person, or the person they’re saying is not a person. This is such a fundamental human rights issue.

Like abortion, socialism is a “fundamental human rights issue.” In the last 125 years, only socialism rivals abortion in the slaughter of human beings, and like abortion, socialism is a form of slavery. In 1884, in his seminal work The Man Versus the State, philosopher and political theorist Herbert Spencer warned of “The Coming Slavery.” He wrote,

All socialism involves slavery…The degree of his slavery varies according to the ratio between that which he is forced to yield up and that which he is allowed to retain; and it matters not whether his master is a single person or a society. If, without option, he has to labour for the society, and receives from the general stock such portion as the society awards him, he becomes a slave to the society. Socialistic arrangements necessitate an enslavement of this kind…There seems no getting people to accept the truth…that the welfare of a society and the justice of its arrangements are at bottom dependent on the characters of its members; and that improvement in neither can take place without that improvement in character which results from carrying on peaceful industry under the restraints imposed by an orderly social life. The belief, not only of the socialists but also of those so-called Liberals who are diligently preparing the way for them, is that by due skill an ill-working humanity may be framed into well-working institutions. It is a delusion. The defective natures of citizens will show themselves in the bad acting of whatever social structure they are arranged into. There is no political alchemy by which you can get golden conduct out of leaden instincts. [Emphasis mine.]

One hundred and thirty-five years ago, Spencer—one of the most widely read philosophers of his time and “the single most famous European intellectual in the closing decades of the nineteenth century”—warned the world of what socialists would bring and who was “diligently preparing the way for them.”

Nevertheless, thanks mostly to socialist regimes, the twentieth century was the world’s bloodiest. From China’s Zedong and the Soviet Union’s Stalin to Cuba’s Castro, the twentieth century is littered with godless socialists who attempted to enslave and murder their way to Utopia. Tens of millions died in the forced-labor camps that socialism requires. Tens of millions more died in the poverty and starvation that socialism inevitably produces.

Many leading democrats today unashamedly embrace socialism, including some running for president. Those democrats who have yet to stoop to praising socialism openly have many policy proposals that are indistinguishable from what one would find in a socialist state. Yet modern American democrats insist their version of state control of most every facet of our lives will be different.

Tragically, as has been the case with abortion, many Americans seem to have bought into democrats’ socialist propaganda. According to a recent Gallup poll, a growing number of Americans have embraced at least some form of socialism. This is mostly due to the increasing number of democrats who view socialism favorably. As the same Gallup poll also notes, since 2010, a majority of democrats have had a favorable view of socialism. A similar Gallup poll last year revealed that a significantly larger number of democrats (57% to 47%) now prefer (“have a positive view of”) socialism over capitalism.

All the information we now have at our finger tips—including the nasty scenes from Venezuela—and it seems the lure of spending other people’s money—like the lure of (supposed) sex without consequences—still proves too much for too many. It took a civil war to rid the U.S. of the institution of slavery. Let us hope and pray that, in spite of what some are forecasting, it doesn’t get to that with abortion or socialism. 

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2019, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

Guess What’s Worse Than “Creepy Uncle Joe.”

It turns out that handsy Ol’ Uncle Joe really is a bit “creepy” after all. We can all say that, now that enough democrats have told us this is the case. At least this is the current take of certain presidential-minded democrats who’ve decided that they no longer want or need Joe Biden. If these democrats were in their right minds, they would realize that loveable Ol’ Joe—with his hair sniffing and back rubbing and face pecking—is among the least of their problems.

Nevertheless, right now many in the democrat party simply want to be done with Biden because of “inappropriate touching.” This is the man who served in their party as Vice President for eight years and as a U.S. Senator for 36 years. By inappropriate touching, they mean things like hand-holding, forehead-to-forehead conversations, holding women “for a beat too long” at receptions, and the like. No one is alleging anything criminal, nor is anyone using the phrase “sexual harassment.”

What’s more, very little we are hearing from Biden’s accusers and their accomplices is new information. It seems clear that these accusations against Biden are little more than a political ploy by some democrats who hope to rid themselves of what they see as an old straight white man who doesn’t seem quite hip or radical enough to be their presidential nominee. As Brent Bozell and Tim Graham recently put it,

The Democrat-media complex has suddenly decided that Joe Biden has a creepiness problem. Why now? Why not when he was vice president for eight years? Does anyone remember the allegedly fierce White House press corps pelting the press secretary with questions, asking when then-President Obama would tell his understudy to stop putting his hands on women -- and little girls -- and putting his face uncomfortably close to theirs?

In spite of the efforts of his fellow democrats who want the “creepy old man” label to force him to just go away, Joe Biden seems to be leaning toward making them beat him the old fashioned way: at the ballot box—or at least Biden hopes to force his opponents to have to work hard in rigging the primaries. Whether Biden runs, or whether he gets the nomination, the efforts against him remind us that democrats remain blind to the real problems within their party.

For example, far worse than space-invading Biden is biology-denying Biden. Recall, more than once, Joe Biden has called “transgender equality” the “civil rights issue of our time.” Because of his efforts and the efforts of those like-minded in the Obama administration, among other perverse—or “creepy”—things, boys started using girls’ restrooms and locker rooms. Soon afterward, boys started—and continue—to take trophies from girls.

In addition, because of their lust to promote liberal dogma on sex and sexuality, again ignoring sound science, morality, and common sense, the Obama-Biden administration lifted the long-held Combat Exclusion Policy, and U.S. women became eligible for front-line combat operations. In other words, time and again Joe Biden and his like-minded ilk—which includes pretty much every democrat running for president—continue to ignore the truth about something as fundamental as the difference between males and females. They turned their wicked ignorance into disastrous policy for the nation. Quite a bit worse than serial hair sniffing, don’t you think?

Also recall that biblically-ignorant Biden preceded Barack Obama and the Supreme Court in voicing his support for legally redefining marriage. To prove his apostasy, Biden has even officiated a same-sex “wedding.” As if a legal redefinition of the oldest and most foundational institution in the history of humanity wasn’t enough of a blow to Christianity, in 2012 the Obama-Biden administration issued its notorious contraception and abortifacient mandate.

Through these other nefarious efforts, Biden, Obama, et al have regularly waged war on Christianity and religious liberty. Ignoring the centuries-old beliefs of those who don’t share his perverse modern views on marriage and sexuality, as Vice President, Biden strongly supported passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). As Ryan Anderson put it,

[ENDA] tramples First Amendment rights and unnecessarily impinges on citizens’ right to run their businesses the way they choose. The proposed legislation does not protect equality before the law; instead it would create special privileges that are enforceable against private actors.

Again, virtually every democrat—including those running for president—share such oppressive views on Christianity and religious liberty. Instead of making life more difficult for us Christians, I would prefer a hug from Joe Biden.

Killing newborn children who happen to escape the deadly instruments of an abortionist and emerge alive from their mothers’ wombs is far worse than anything a moral person would deem “creepy.” Yet modern democrats are actually making the case for what could be described as “post-birth abortions.” Infanticidal democrats are concerned that Joe Biden is not sufficiently devoted to the cause of killing the unborn—or even the newborn, if necessary. It seems Mr. Biden is a bit too “creepy,” but not quite heartless enough for modern democrats.

If you would be “creeped out” by someone coming into your home and stealing your stuff, then socialism is probably not your thing. Nevertheless, democrats’ embrace of all things socialist is only rivaled by their lust to make legal nearly every perversion imaginable in the sexual realm.

Whether the “New Green Deal”—supported by a majority of leading democrats—or Medicare for all—supported by most of the democrats’ 2020 presidential field, along with an “aggressive and expanding” group of over 100 Congressional democrats—in the vain pursuit of utopia, modern democrats continue to promise to spend other people’s money. As I noted recently, for a picture of just how worse than “creepy” socialism can be, take a look at Seattle, San Francisco, or Venezuela.

So we have hair smelling, hand-holding, and hugging vs. socialism, infanticide, and those who can’t—or refuse to—tell the difference between males and females. Given such, I’ll take “creepy” over the democrats’ platform any day.

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2019, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

“Seattle is Dying” because Liberalism is Killing It

If you haven’t seen the KOMO News special Seattle is Dying, you need to. (Watch it here.) The hour-long show does a sound job of depicting the ugly decline of one of the most beautiful places in America. However, the piece misses the forest for the nasty, dirty, twisted trees.

Of course, part of the root of the problem in Seattle is political, but Seattle is Dying virtually ignores the liberal politics behind Seattle’s foul decline. As John Sexton at Hot Air put it, “There’s really no escaping the fact that the current situation is the result of political decisions.”

And yet, reporter Eric Johnson [the KOMO reporter behind the story] said on Facebook that he though[t] politicizing the story was a mistake. He says he’s received many offers to comment on national shows that lean either right or left and he’s turned them all down. He really seems to believe that people on all sides of the aisle can see the problems and the solutions regardless of where they are coming from.

Johnson begins his report by describing the “seething anger” of Seattle residents who no longer feel safe in their city. Scenes of filth—that rival what is seen in third-world countries—and “lost souls” litter the hour-long report. Residents and small business owners are “mad” and “embarrassed” at the fact that, in many places, their city, simply put, “looks like sh-t.” And law enforcement personnel are little to no help at all.

One small business owner describes the police as “a bunch of twinkle-toes…[who] don’t have enough authority.” It’s virtually unanimous among those fed up with what Seattle has become, that law enforcement are not to blame. Frustrated Seattle residents say that the police have had their hands tied—or their toes “twinkled”—by the politicians and the courts. They point especially to Seattle’s mayor and city council.

At a townhall meeting, seething residents scream at city council members to “enforce the law” and otherwise get tough on the violent and destructive homeless so rampant in Seattle. Using FBI data from 2017, Johnson shows a graphic that displays the number of property crimes for the 20 largest U.S. cities. Easily out-pacing all other U.S. cities are Seattle and San Francisco.

Given that liberal politics and policies have turned San Francisco into a literal toilet—where one must consult “poop maps” in order to navigate the streets safely —citizens of Seattle should not be shocked that the democrats who run their city government are getting similar results in their liberal efforts against crime and filth.

A 61-page report compiled by Scott Lindsey analyzes the criminal activity of 100 “prolific offenders” who regularly threaten Seattle neighborhoods and streets. Johnson interviewed Lindsey for Seattle is Dying. Lindsey was asked, “Of the 100 that you looked at, what percentage of them were homeless?” The answer: 100 percent. Lindsey is also asked, “What percent showed signs of addiction?” The answer: 100 percent. Yet Seattle mayor Jenny Durkin (D) says “It is wrong to conflate homelessness with a rise in crime.”

Homelessness and crime are “conflated” like disease and homosexuality. And just as is the case with homosexuality, liberals like Jenny Durkin want to tell us “her truth.” After all, if you’re a liberal, it’s not that important to be factually correct. Seattle is run exclusively by politicians like Durkin, and despite the anger of residents over the issues of homelessness, crime, filth, and the like, it doesn’t look like Seattle is going to elect conservatives—or even republicans anytime soon.

In fact, there are some recent reports that Seattle is going to continue its leftward march. In January of this year a headline in The Seattle Times read, “The Seattle City Council may be up for a big shift all right — further to the left.” The article notes,

With a wave of retirements, it’s true the council is prepped for a major political realignment. But if anything it’s even further left.

“Socialists into City Hall!” is how the Seattle chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America sees the opportunity, according to a meeting notice this month for the group…Already Democratic Socialist members are running vigorous campaigns for two of those empty seats. Community organizer Tammy Morales is the early favorite in Harrell’s South End district, as she nearly defeated him in 2015. And Shaun Scott, a Black Lives Matter activist and local writer, is vying for Johnson’s seat.

An upcoming meeting will feature Morales, Scott and Seattle’s one current elected socialist, Kshama Sawant, talking about how it’s they who are really going to take back the city. “Socialists have a different idea of what Seattle should look like,” the announcement says.

For an idea of what socialists think Seattle should “look like” visit the Facebook page “Seattle Looks Like Sh-t.” For an idea of what socialists think things should look like on a national scale, examine Venezuela.

Seattle's socialism

As Seattle is Dying notes, the Puget Sound Business Journal estimates Seattle and outlying areas spend $1 billion annually—a number that is “almost certainly underestimated”—addressing and responding to the homeless situation. Eric Johnson exasperatingly declares, “The more money we throw at the problem, the worse it gets.” Yet, almost certainly, the solution to Seattle’s homeless crisis, according to Democratic Socialists of America—along with plain-ol’ democrats—involves spending even more money.

With his voice full of frustration, Johnson declares that what’s happening in Seattle “isn’t about dollars, it’s about human lives…How can watching human beings live and die in filth and degradation and madness be right?” Of course, it isn’t “right,” but when dealing with moral issues, those with a liberal worldview cannot be trusted. Thus they certainly should not be given political power.

As has always been the case, the moral problems that plague the world defy mere political solutions. However, sound politics is certainly part of the solution, and that part of the answer is really rather simple. If Seattle voters truly want to cure to what is killing their once-beautiful city, they must stop electing liberals.

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2019, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

Guns Don’t Kill People, Liberalism and Radical Islam Do

After the recent attack on Manchester by Islamic terrorists, British author and journalist Douglas Murray provided a simple two-word suggestion for what help prevent future such violence in Great Britain: “less Islam.” To bolster his point, Murray pointed out that, “countries like Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic have very little Islam and very little Islamic terror. By contrast, France has a great amount of Islam and a great amount of Islamic terror.” Of course, Islamic apologists “promptly went bananas” (Murray’s words).

As we have seen for years now, and as recent events again demonstrate, “Islamic apologists” include not only those deceived by Islam, but also includes those deceived by liberalism as well. I say again, there are few greater threats to life, limb, and liberty in the world today than liberalism and Islam. Radical Islamists drive the vans, pull the triggers, slash the knives, strap on the bombs, cut off the heads, and so on, while radical liberals in the media and the state houses—among other dastardly and deadly things—provide the political cover for the slaughter to continue.

In spite of the obvious differences in their worldviews—the “Do What Thou Wilt” godless philosophy that dominates in modern liberalism vs. a rigid, uncompromising (and man-designed) religious code that dominates radical Islam—both share a common trait that deceives one (liberals) into thinking that the other (radical Islam) can be “tolerated:” a disdain for Christianity.

Millions of Christians and other such “apostates” (tens of millions by some estimates) continue to die at the hands of Islamists. For one of the worst examples (one the media often ignores), according to Africa: The Holocausts of Rwanda and Sudan,

Well over two million southern black Christians, Muslims, and animists in the Sudan have died, the great majority civilians, in a genocide that few in the world have heard about. Since 1983, ethnic cleansing and a religious holy jihad (since 1992) have created a holocaust that rival the two great genocides in Europe (the Holocaust and Stalin’s Gulag)…In the Nuba Mountains the Arab Muslim fundamentalists practiced an age-old custom of taking blacks into slavery, forcing conversion of many to Islam, and then decided to wipe out the fifty tribes by genocide, similar to the situation in Darfur in the west.

Tragically, modern liberals are so desperate to rid the world of Christians and Christianity that they will tolerate almost anything, except authentic Christianity. What’s more, as the violence from radical Islamists rages on (and on, and on), time and again, liberal pundits and politicians, as they are forced to address the bloodshed—and after even their own are murdered—go to absurd lengths to avoid even the hint of a mention of Islam. As Daniel Greenfield put it after knife-wielding Muslims rampaged London, “Islamic terrorism has no religion even when it’s shouting, ‘This is for Islam.’”

Of course, after yet another round of killing in the name of Islam, godless liberals also give us the obligatory—and lazily idiotic assertion that—when it comes to “violence in the name of religion” the “Christians did it too!” To liberals, all religious extremists are equal, though, when one honestly compares radical Christianity with radical Islam, nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, when it comes to killing the innocent, violent religious extremists of any flavor could learn a thing or two from the violent anti-religious extremists that dominate the modern left. The greatest murderers in the history of humanity were the godless socialists and communists of the 20th century. As renowned scholar, educator, and author Walter E. Williams notes,

Between 1917 and 1987, Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin and their successors murdered and were otherwise responsible for the deaths of 62 million of their own people. Between 1949 and 1987, China’s communists, led by Mao Zedong and his successors, murdered and were otherwise responsible for the deaths of 76 million Chinese. The most authoritative tally of history’s most murderous regimes is documented on University of Hawaii professor Rudolph J. Rummel’s website and in his book “Death by Government.”

Multiple sources, including professor Rummel, conclude that, in the past century, atheistic regimes worldwide have led to the deaths of tens-of-millions, with some sound estimates putting the total number of deaths at more than 250,000,000!

Very often, the drive to kill was an effort to purge religion—especially Christianity—from the state. Even Wikipedia notes that the slaughter in the Soviet Union started with multiple “anti-religious” campaigns that began in the early 1920s, where “new legislation…severely prohibited religious activities and called for a heightened attack on religion in order to further disseminate atheism.” In 1937 alone, more than 85,000 Russian Orthodox priests were executed.

Though there are certainly distinctions between the godless socialists and communists of the 20th century and the European and North American liberals of today, there are also very scary similarities. In his mid-19th century Critique of Socialism, Alexis de Tocqueville summarized well the ideology of socialism when he wrote,

They unceasingly attempt to mutilate, to curtail, to obstruct personal freedom in any and all ways. They hold that the State must not only act as the director of society, but must further be master of each man, and not only master, but keeper and trainer. For fear of allowing him to err, the State must place itself forever by his side, above him, around him, better to guide him, to maintain him, in a word, to confine him. They call, in fact, for the forfeiture, to a greater or less degree, of human liberty, to the point where, were I to attempt to sum up what socialism is, I would say that it was simply a new system of serfdom [a medieval form of bondage].

Sounds much like the efforts of modern liberals doesn’t it? And even when they claim to be champions of “personal freedom”—as is often their cry when it comes to everything to do with matters in the sexual realm—modern liberalism is still filled with violence and bondage. With nearly 60 million unborn children killed since 1973, U.S. abortion-supporting liberals must be the envy of genocidal maniacs the world over. American abortionists have managed to turn what should be one of the safest places in the universe—a mother’s womb—into a killing field. Worldwide, since 1980, a staggering 1.5 billion children have been aborted.

In addition, guided by the false belief that “Do What Thou Wilt” (especially in the sexual realm) frees us from the shackles of the “antiquated” ideas on morality and personal ethical behavior, liberalism has set about to discredit and abandon many of the eternal and inescapable absolute truths set down by our Creator that should be the cornerstones of all good government. Thus, almost any sexual perversion imaginable is, in the U.S. today, a “right.” And instead of being free, tens of millions of Americans are now slaves to their sexual desires. As a result, STD rates in the U.S. have reached record, epidemic rates.

Of course, just as there are many Muslims who are not terrorists, there are many liberals who are not Christian-hating, terrorist-tolerating, sex-crazed abortionists. However, just as the world’s greatest problem with violent terrorism lies within Islam, the world’s biggest problem with godless, pleasure-peddling statists lies within liberalism.

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2017, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

Zuckerberg vs. Zuckerberg

Would the Mark Zuckerberg of 2017—who recently gave the commencement address at Harvard—have started Facebook? Likewise, would the Mark Zuckerberg of 2004—who was instrumental in building the world’s largest, most popular social networking website in the world—have given the 2017 commencement address at Harvard University?

As has been well documented over the last several days—most notably by Rush Limbaugh—Zuckerberg’s 2017 commencement address was laden with socialistic language and ideas that run quite contrary to what is necessary to build a company with thousands of employees and whose annual revenue is measured in billions of dollars. (Ask Venezuelans.)

For example, 2017 Mark Zuckerberg told Harvard graduates that it’s time we get about “redefining equality to give everyone the freedom they need to pursue purpose.” Yet the 2003-2004 Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t too keen on the notion of “equality” when he intentionally delayed a social networking project—Harvard Connection—he had agreed to work on for fellow classmates while a student at Harvard—the project that at least gave him some of his inspiration for Facebook—in order to complete first his own personal project that would directly compete with his classmates’ project.

As Zuckerberg would declare to classmate Eduardo Saverin in an IM (instant message):

Check this site out: www.harvardconnection.com and then go to harvardconnection.com/datehome.php. Someone is already trying to make a dating site. But they made a mistake haha. They asked me to make it for them. So I'm like delaying it so it won't be ready until after the facebook thing comes out.

In another IM exchange with his high school friend Adam D’Angelo, Zuckerberg would reveal that he was contemplating whether he was going to “f*ck the dating site [a reference to Harvard Connect] people over and quit on them right before I told them I’d have it done.” In the same IM exchange, weighing whether to complete Harvard Connect, Zuckerberg declared,

I also hate the fact that I'm doing it for other people haha. Like I hate working under other people. I feel like the right thing to do is finish the facebook and wait until the last day before I’m supposed to have their thing ready and then be like “look yours isn’t as good as this so if you want to join mine you can…otherwise I can help you with yours later.”

Weeks later, just prior to meeting with the Harvard Connect people, in another IM with a friend, Zuckerberg reveals how he has decided to resolve his conflict with the competing projects:

Friend: So have you decided what you're going to do about the websites?
Zuck: Yeah, I'm going to f*ck them

How very corporately ruthless of him. In other words, the very project that made Mr. Zuckerberg tremendously wealthy and famous, the project that allowed him—a Harvard dropout—the opportunity to give Harvard’s 2017 commencement address was not born out of some leftist notion of “equality.” Of course, Zuckerberg’s personal project would become Facebook and would quickly spell the end of Harvard Connection (later ConnectU) and all similar social networking websites. Not very “equal,” huh?

The story of Facebook’s founding and the relationship between Zuckerberg, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra is well documented and simply does not jive with socialist drivel Zuckerberg spewed in his recent Harvard address. In case you were unaware, or have forgotten, Zuckerberg’s conflict with his competing Harvard classmates went on for years, well past 2004 and the launch of Facebook and the now defunct Harvard Connect.

To this day, Zuckerberg—rightfully so, I think—rejects the notion that he “stole” the idea and any “source code” for Facebook from the Harvard Connect project, and that Winklevoss twins and Narendra are (or were) somehow “equal” partners in Facebook. (Though they were not recognized as “equal” partners in Facebook, because of their lawsuit against Zuckerberg and Facebook, and a settlement worth tens of millions of dollars, the Winklevoss twins and Narendra also made out quite well, themselves.)

Yet, it wasn’t only against the Winklevoss twins and Mr. Narendra that Mr. Zuckerberg acted rather “capitalistically.” In early 2004, prior to the February 4 launch of what was then “TheFacebook.com,” Zuckerberg acknowledged that, because he thought it would (GASP!) “make money,” another fellow Harvard classmate—Eduardo Saverin—provided $15,000 for the original servers necessary for TheFacebook.com. Saverin’s initial investment netted him a 30% stake in the project.

According to Business Insider, “By April, the site was doing so well that Mark, Eduardo, and a third Harvard sophomore named Dustin Muskovitz formed The Facebook as a limited-liability company (LLC) under Florida law.” In June of 2004, Zuckerberg and Muskovitz dropped out of Harvard and moved to Palo Alto, California to work on TheFacebook.com full time. Saverin remained at Harvard and was to work on three things: “to set up the company, get funding, and make a business model.”

The relationship between TheFacebook.com and Saverin quickly cooled. It was the issue of funding that defined the divide between Zuckerberg and Saverin. Soon after arriving in Palo Alto, Zuckerberg and Muskovitz ran into Sean Parker. Parker was best known for cofounding Napster, the extremely popular internet file-sharing (especially music) service. Parker was soon installed as TheFacebook’s president. His chief responsibility was to do what Saverin apparently wasn’t: find investors.

Parker secured Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal, as TheFacebook’s first big investor. Thiel put up $500,000 and Saverin was deemed “expendable.” To rid themselves of Saverin, Parker proposed Zuckerberg employ some “dirty tricks” used by Thiel and other well-known big-time tech investors. Zuckerberg agreed.

The plan, again, according to Business Insider:

Reduce Eduardo's stake in TheFacebook.com by creating a new company, a Delaware corporation, to acquire the old company (the Florida LLC formed in April), and then distribute new shares in the new company to everybody but Eduardo.

Very much in line with the idea of “wealth inequality”—and quite contrary to Zuckerberg’s Harvard address—the plan was carried out and Saverin’s stake in the company went from 30% to less than 10%. As Business Insider put it, “Mark’s plan had succeeded. Eduardo was, for all intents and purposes, gone.”

Whatever or whoever Mr. Zuckerberg is today, his Harvard speech was anything but surprising. If it wasn’t already so, Zuckerberg has now made clear that—after having employed and personally benefitted from the forces of capitalism—what worked for him is not for everyone else. He is firmly entrenched in the long and growing list of modern liberal-activist CEOs who feel, as Kevin Williamson recently put it, “obliged to act as public intellectuals as well as business managers.” The main job of these “public intellectuals” is to promote the liberal agenda—especially when it comes to the moral issues.

As Williamson also notes—and as Zuckerberg makes clear—many of our modern capitalists are “not much interested in defending the culture of capitalism,” but instead favor a “collectivist view of the world.” Of course, this view also embraces the notion that political power should rest in the hands of the “progressive” few. After all, “The decisions they have made for themselves have turned out well, so why not empower them, or men like them, to make decisions for other people, too?”

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2017, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

Dear Cornel West: Pity the Sad, Sorry, and Sick Fruit of Liberalism

Radical liberal, and prominent member of the Democratic Socialists of America, Dr. Cornel West, wants us to "Pity the Sad Legacy of Barack Obama." He begins,

Eight years ago the world was on the brink of a grand celebration: the inauguration of a brilliant and charismatic black president of the United States of America. Today we are on the edge of an abyss: the installation of a mendacious and cathartic white president who will replace him.

This is a depressing decline in the highest office of the most powerful empire in the history of the world. It could easily produce a pervasive cynicism and poisonous nihilism. Is there really any hope for truth and justice in this decadent time?

West goes on to write about character, destiny, truth, and the public good. I guess it's lost on this Harvard and Princeton educated liberal that, when you refuse to stand up for the most innocent and defenseless among us (the unborn), and when you oversee the perverse legal redefinition of the oldest institution in the history of humanity (marriage), your pleas for "justice" and your laments about "truth" might fall of deaf ears.

As I implied in a tweet earlier today, U.S. liberals (with little to no political opposition) oversee the most unjust and unsafe places in America. (Again, the fruit of liberalism is rotten indeed.) Likewise, but on a much worse and larger scale, the socialism that West represents has produced some of the poorest most dangerous places in the world.

Trevor Thomas

Socialism Breeds Tyranny and Disparity

After the fall of the Czarist government in 1917, Vladimir Lenin, founder and leader of the Bolshevik Party, returned to Russia to seize power. The Marxists who would eventually rule Russia first met in 1898. Calling themselves the Russian Socialist Democratic Labour Party, the group would later split in 1903, and the Bolsheviks were born. Bolshevik means “majority;” however, in spite of this, Lenin knew that his party lacked the support of anywhere close to a majority (even after chanting “we are the 99!”) to replace the provisional government that followed the early days of the revolution.

By late 1917 the Bolsheviks overthrew the provisional government in Petrograd (St. Petersburg) and plunged Russia into a three-year civil war. The Bolsheviks’ efforts were not just military. As noted in The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union, “The Bolsheviks were also fighting a political and social war to convince the people of Russia that socialism was the best system for them.”

For centuries, Russia was ruled by a Czarist autocracy (not to be confused with the Obama administration). At the turn of the twentieth century, the vast majority of Russians—more than 90% by some accounts—lived as nothing more than peasants, while the Russian elites—nobles, and so on—lived in extravagant luxury. Such inequality highly motivated the revolutionaries and quickly made them quite popular.

Led by Lenin and motivated by Marx, the Bolsheviks envisioned a classless society, thus private property was outlawed and confiscated. Land and industry was seized by the state or socialized. Banks, railroads, farms, and factories were nationalized. The Bolshevik Party soon became the Communist Party, and an all out propaganda campaign continued to preach the benefits of socialism.

Early on, realizing that, though the revolution had succeeded, they still had widespread enemies, the Bolsheviks established a police force, the Cheka (which later became the KGB), to combat their political opponents. Of course, Lenin never believed in a fairly elected government. He felt that those who had the best interests of the people at heart—he and his loyal supporters—should govern. Thus, as he, himself, had forecasted, Lenin resorted to violent suppression of those who opposed him.

Following Lenin, Stalin only escalated the persecution. Thus, the Russian people traded one type of tyranny and oppression for another. They traded one ruling class of elites—the aristocracy—for another: the Communist Party elite. Stalin’s successor was Leonid Brezhnev. Admiring her son’s massive vacation home, Brezhnev’s mother nervously remarked, “Well, it’s good, Leonid…but what will happen if the [Communists] come back?”

Ignoring history and common sense, “Occupiers” rail against the wealthy in America. “Ultimately, the bourgeoisie [capitalist ruling class] won’t go without violent means,” declared a speaker at an Occupy Los Angeles rally. He continued, “Revolution! Yes, revolution that is led by the working class. Long live revolution! Long live socialism!”

What fools! Never has so much wealth (and power) been concentrated in the hands of so few as there is under socialist regimes. The Soviet Union is the classic historical lesson. Occupiers decry capitalist “greed” yet ignore the greed of those who would use the force and power of big government to confiscate the wealth of one citizen to give it to another.

Never have so many lived under abject poverty as those suffering under socialism. Never have so many suffered and died as those who were subjected to socialist leaders claiming to have their “best interests at heart.” On the other hand, never have so many been lifted out of poverty and prospered as those with the economic freedom that capitalism allows.

Consider some of the richest Americans today. Bill Gates sprang from an upper-middle class family to become the wealthiest man in the world. Steve Jobs was adopted by a machinist and an accountant. Dropping out of college after only one semester, Jobs slept on the floor of friends’ homes and returned Coke bottles for food money. At his death, Forbes listed his net worth at $7 billion.

Sam Walton waited tables and later worked for JC Penny, making $75 a month. He borrowed money from his father-in-law to purchase his first store. His three surviving children each have a net worth of over $20 billion.

Time and again, these stories have played out in America. Only under the economic freedom seen in America can someone experience such a rise. These men (and women) have enriched not only themselves, but millions of other Americans along with them. Jobs have been created and communities built with the entrepreneurs that America empowers.

Now, of course, this is not to say that becoming a wealthy person is the highest ideal under American liberty. Also obviously, such liberty does not always mean that life is just and fair for everyone. However, as I have said before, and as history teaches us, the tyranny of big government is far worse than the sins of free men.

Copyright 2012, Trevor Grant Thomas

At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com