In our day-to-day it’s easy to forget the hundreds of thousands of unknown soldiers, choosing to protect our liberty by risking to die young for this nation to remain healthy and free. Their sacrifice can be squandered if we don’t understand that there is more than one kind of enemy. Our job, we need to go to the details, to the basics, deep down, to find and reject the enemy from within.
Many admirable people may get little notice; often it is the action of the many that adds up to a successful outcome. It is from the very small size of the grain of sand, from pounding large rocks, that the finest beach is made. Each of us contribute to making the economy successful, the community healthy, and the country strong and democratic. Your influence matters. We are the grain of sand building the quality of the beach, as an individual, as a family, a neighborhood, a city, a state, a country. This is true in the Barrio as in any other part of the world.
People who make the difference are mostly in the middle class, because at that level life meets all the physical human basic needs, not dehumanized by poverty, with economic access to good education. There are people who do not want to accept that, and that is why we must encourage every possible person to move up to this economic/ societal level, and above. They constitute the trickling-up effect.
History proves that when power comes from the top down, the elite and dictatorships are failures, despite their benevolence. Totalitarianism is destructive. Communist and socialist ideologies are paternalistic resulting in fiasco because the few in control will always dominate and exploit the masses as they pretend wealth to trickle down. It doesn’t. Nazism as fascism, and socialism leading to communism, extreme right and extreme left, are examples of power which from the top has killed millions of its own people to hold on to power. Communism in Russia’s Stalin with the tools of forced labor camps, famine, deportations, gun control, and police state terror, despite all that bickering about the struggle in the raising of the proletariat, up to seven million of its own people were annihilated to keep power, and to dominate other nations. In China, Chinese are killing Chinese. Mao killed 32 million. In Cambodia, Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime killed over two million of its own people. In Cuba, ten thousand political dissidents, of the educated middle class, were shot dead during the first year by Che and Castro. Freedom never exist in any communist country, while communists are free to mingle, act, and talk in a free country. Understand the difference, for they like to flip-flop.
Instead, in the United States, and nowhere else in the world, a quarter of million people died in The Civil War to free the slaves, not to enslave the free. Some people like to complain about how the Native Americans were killed, but they ignore how Indians were killing each other in greater numbers before the Europeans came. And they don’t do that now. Most of the Indian killings, as well as the expansion of slavery, took place under Democratic leadership, not by the entire country, an ideology which by deeds, not by good-sounding platitudes, pursued the divisiveness, annihilation, and continued mistreatment of Indians. This demonstrates that once a federal government gains power over ‘citizens’, totalitarianism will continue to dominate. As proven by the use of reservations, which is a form of active involuntary segregation, neither Democrats who caused nor Republicans who also continue to enforce it are doing the right thing.
The very far right, and the very far left, are both dictatorial by nature. In the Mongolian times, and Eastern European, Indonesian, African, Asian, Afghan, and Latin American dictatorships, including Peron, Noriega, Chavez, and many other totalitarian governments, they all wanted to redistribute wealth, but did they? And in what direction? Is it human nature to try to control others? Those who speak the loudest in favor of the poor do so because they have discovered how to milk it. Lip service says that the revolution will put the working class in power, establish social ownership through the means of production, and provide free health care as the primary element in the ‘transformation’ of society towards utopia. That is the stereotypical rhetoric of socialists and communists. But it is never so. They claim they want to force the wealth, equality, and health from the top down. It is a powerful emotional pull to a despairing struggling individual who sees no way out of their miserable condition, whether self-imposed or due to oppression. The poor blind followers are led to believe that life will improve if only the rich are made to share their wealth with the poor by force, even if the redistribution results in lower standards to a borderline poverty, but everyone will be at the same low level. That is what they mean by Equality, except for those who rule and their families, as is transparent when you see them handing out free money, but not their money, which they gained not by working hard for it, but through taxations and donations to campaigns and with kick-backs to the politician.
‘If I am to suffer, I want everyone to suffer the same’. Envy and greed. Overall, communism alone has killed over 65 million to hold on to power. Notice how the very radical-left in Russia killed the rest of their own left to obtain submission by violence and murder in Russia’s Bolsheviks Revolution. The same thing can and will happen in the United States if millions remain asleep, where the radical left will end fighting and eliminating the left, who will suffer oblivion like the rest of the useful idiots. Little by little violence will begin to destroy American cities. The more radical will impose (legalize) redistribution by force and nest the arbitrary ending of private property, keeping their privileges to a small, selected few. Their killings are intentional, since communism requires the use of fear and force, not to mention the abolition of the middle class. Consider California! Many of California’s cities have leaned towards the radical left, which will result with pain and fear of crime for its citizens, a prelude to what could happen to other states. Mistakenly, some people try to criticize the United States for wars in trying to defend populations from the disruptive actions of others. Although we do need to recognize not all wars are been fought for pure intents, corruption in much of the criticism creeps in.
TRICKLE UP: In rich and poor families, each person is born poor and naked, and work up from there - a constant fact of life. Thank Heaven’s for inheritances. Without it, every person would have to reinvent the wheel every time, allowing just a very few to control the rest of us from the moment we are born. Inherited wealth is somewhat like inherited health; in life, you use what you get and improve it. Born poor is not a permanent condition. Civilization has increased the odds for larger numbers of people to come out of campfires in a cave. Better conditions are made by those who make it, paving the way for opportunities, supplies, and knowledge for others, like the best hunters did. If those that can make more did not do so, all humanity would remain poor.
We strive to leave a better world for our children. Wealth is not constant, and someone must create wealth for there to be more wealth, the more the better. The government does not create wealth. It only takes it and passes on what is not theirs. Since no one goes to work for someone who makes less money than they do, the wealthier that people get, the more opportunities for others to work and go up in wealth. Trickle-Up Effect. Wealth in wisdom, knowledge, health, and money. It takes freedom of decision-making for this to be widespread.
To paint a negative picture for all with examples of businesses who abuse their role, and there are some, is an intended disservice.
Notice how in very poor countries, the few in power are very rich, the rest are poor, making it hard for the poor to get out of poverty, and impossible in communist countries. There is no trickle-up in those countries; it’s all trickle down, - assuming it does. True democracies grow the middle class. An example of trickling-up is demonstrated in why so many people want to come to the United States, for only fair and free competition from the ground up will let them flourish, not so in their home country. Avoid handouts as cancer! Humans are born with the will and a genetic inclination to work, a driving force in most of us. There is more than the need to survive; we possess an innate eagerness to invent, accomplish, improve, and progress. Think of Jose and the tool library vs a handout for life. It is a false claim that fairness is when everyone’s needs are met by free government handouts so people can have the time to be creative and productive. However, nothing is free. The government will extract from you far more than they will provide, since they can’t make money except at your expense. This innate energy can easily be extinguished when controlled. The best possible formula is:
The goal of the people, the governed, is to select for themselves a government that will remove impediments and make prosperity possible for everyone, not forced into equal incompetent mediocrity. The key is Individual freedom, not collective compulsory equality.
Throughout the history of man, spreading individual freedom was the result of the ideology of love your neighbor as yourself, equally free, which fortunately coincides with a free market ideology. Think about it! Life has never been, nor will it be, fair. Selecting a few failures to undermine free will, is a disservice. Therefore,
Imposed redistribution of wealth is a crime against humanity!
It should be part of the violation of human rights because it is stealing by
arbiters who seldom, if ever, distribute their own wealth, only other’s.
Yours, not theirs!
In socialist countries, the state exploits all workers, educated or not, through taxes and what they claim to be ‘necessary regulations’, in other words CONTROL. The redistribution of wealth by those who did not earn it but want to control it is necessary and it is done by mishandling taxes on the rich and exploitation of the poor and uneducated workers - not to be done in a fair democratic, capitalistic, free market with no corruption. A free market allows for fair competition, checks and balances, separation of power, so those who compete legally will rise up, the more the better, opening the way so more can go and bring others with them, regulations only to protect against abuse. That’s where we should be now! Are we heading there?
Wealth doesn’t trickle down, it trickles up. You make more, employ more, you help other people make more, and they will employ more and make you more as a result. The Trickle-Up Theory formula is simple. This is how in the Barrio we will level the playing field.
Instead, in the Trickle-Down Theory, where the government can only keep things going by taking the money from the top and everywhere and sending it down, call it ‘redistribution’, or trickle-down, after keeping most of it, since the government doesn’t make money. It only prints it. Free market entrepreneur trickles up, while government trickles down. If you had the power and the money, how much of it would you be inclined to send down???
It is a diversion to imply that effecting powerful government projects aims to trickle down wealth; the real intent is to suck it up, and keep it upstairs, while intentionally impoverishing the population. Handing out free money is a temporary stage to gain control. That is why economic boycotts are ineffective and counterproductive. They feed their intended agenda.
The City’s rehab program in the Barrio was a trickle down. We changed that, and they fought us. A consumer entrepreneur society moves things up, create and hires more. The politician and the bureaucrats take more from us, and pretends to pass it down. A simple ineffective formula.
Socialism is going back to feudalism of the Middle Ages, as old as when the king’s landlords distributed wealth. The enemy of the poor is the controller of other people’s wealth simply by preventing wealth from raising up, preventing a middle class, eliminating the competition to the nobility. Communism weakens the economy by intent, infiltrating, like capillary action, and manipulating job supply.
Regulations that kills jobs, like for ecological reasons, and handicap entrepreneurs are not mistakes. They are deliberate.
In addition to killing jobs, liberals are creating new monopolies and bureaucracy, as part of the political game. While a more natural increase in wealth is shown by these sources; evolution (the survival of the fittest) and the lesson of the talents in Christ’s parable.
Individuals left behind for lacking the capacity to support themselves should have community but not governmental support, as the impersonal government truly does not care. It uses number of people in its system merely as a steppingstone to political gain.
Churchill said, “The main vice of capitalism is the uneven distribution of prosperity. The main vice of socialism is the even distribution of misery.” Only by elevating each individual can all members of society truly prosper. It will not happen by downgrading everyone to collective mediocrity. He also said, “I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.”
Notice how placing the incompetent in positions of authority is a good way to lower the common denominator and keep control and power. To help the disadvantaged at the forced expense of the prosperous is futility, it is the role of the incompetent. When you see incompetent people assigned to decision-making roles, I is not by mistake; there is a science behind it.
My experience working with government has shown me that there is no magic formula that makes government workers know any better or behave any better than those in the private sector. The same in ‘Social-Democracies’ with the intent to combine the best of two worlds, retaining the means of production by the Estate retaining ownership or control. The estate is a monopoly, pretending it is for the benefit of the collective, but socialism is developed by taking from the collective, and capitalism is developed through individual efforts of the people.
Thomas Jefferson said, “A government big enough to give you everything
you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.” And they do! No government can create a free economy or a free individual. Every time someone says, “take it from those that have it for those that do not,” they
are dipping into your pocket, - even if you are a have-not, - reaching out
to control you and all others. Socialism is based on government imposition. Free health care, gun control, and overregulation are forms of control. They play with your emotions in the shadow of what Jefferson said of “a government big enough to take everything you have…”
Remember Robin Hood? It is a work of fiction. Only missionaries give their own to others. No politician or bureaucrat is a missionary. The only way you can truly give something is if it is yours, everything else is hypocritical. The one exception to this fact is EDUCATION[xxvi]. The key to the trickle up process. Knowledge is power. The true sharing of power. You take knowledge from those who know and pass that on to others. In this case, it is beautiful. It is a power that remains in your brain, not in your fingers or pockets or stomach. Amen[xxvii].
Just as capillary action in adobe walls absorbs humidity unnoticed up from the base of the wall, like in this picture, turning adobe to dust, and collapsing the structure above, so does socialism. Our strongest point turned into weakness by ideology infiltration. This is happening in our society with the attempt to erode the power of our Constitution, family, and religion. While humidity on the base of a wall is like socialism creeping in, infiltrating, in a titanic struggle preventing wealth from trickling-up, and competing for the supremacy of the American mind and soul. While capitalism trickles-up, heavy communism trickles down, undermining the base of communities and countries and tearing them down. Social collapse is more dangerous than ecological disasters.