As We Prepare For November's Elections, A Thought To Ponder From Tom Paine

Well, not that Tom Paine...an admirer of his, a British subject who spent two decades working in Eastern Europe after The Wall fell, only to return home to a country debilitated by the same ideas that ruined Eastern Europe:

More than half of mankind experienced socialism in the twentieth century. Almost all of us experienced some less full-blooded implementations than were tried behind the Berlin Wall. There has never been a greater experiment in all human history and It led to the deaths of millions and the impoverishment of billions. If ever an idea was ready for the dustbin of history, surely this one was? Yet it marches on. A zombie ideology; dead but still a threat.

As the noise increases in the coming weeks, OS hopes we keep our focus. We don't need a glib hustler who would rather hang out with the ladies on 'The View' while in New York, at the expense of meeting with world leaders who have need of face time.  We need a sober grown-up, even if he is stiff as a board in front of an audience.

We need someone who has not drunk the socialist koolaid, insisting we partake with him.

Let's Remember, Ya'll: Himself Really ADMIRES Chavez

This from a English-language Venezuelan blog OS has been following of late, The Devil's Excrement.

Last May, Hugo Chavez ordered the expropriation of a dairy farm, Hacienda las Carolinas, stating that the 'land was unproductive, and its owner, Diego Arria, used it solely to invite his friends over to drink whiskey'.

(OS reads a bit of Spanish, and was stunned to read that line in the announcement, so he's including the quote below, just to be certain his old eyes weren't deceiving him.
El primer mandatario aseguró que las tierras estaban improductivas y que su dueño, Diego Arria, las utilizaba “sólo para invitar a sus amigos a tomar whisky.)

The first link is one to click, fer sure, fer sure. It's the 'before and after' pictures of the hacienda: before, when Mr. Arrias was inviting his mates over for whiskey, and after, six months after the great socialist hero Chavez heroically confiscated it on behalf of the proletariat.

Hmmmm.....

A couple of points immediately come to mind.

(1) If, indeed, Mr. Arias were using the farm as a gentleman farmer operation where he could invite his mates to visit, drink, hunt, play cards, etc.--all of them legal activies--then that's his own business, and not the business of any arm of the government, anywhere, anytime. If Mr. Arrias wished to abandon it and let it go fallow, well, that's his business as well. That's how a culture operates under a sane rule of law that deliberately limits the power of the state.

(2) Obama, and a lot of the folk around him, really admire Chavez, and Castro, and Mao, and Stalin--all of whom engage(d) in wholesale expropriation of property from private hands in order to 'redistribute' it to their own favored constituencies. In every case, poverty resulted. Along with a lot of starvation, prison camps, etc. Remember Stalin and the kulaks? Millions died, and a great nation that once exported grain to the world became a massive importer, just to keep the population fed.

The pictures of this farm are illustrative, and powerful, because they can easily be understood. ThePeopleInCharge, having already expropriated some big chunks of the economy, will be very tempted by our houses and lands, our savings accounts, our pension savings, our small businesses, if the crunch really comes. And OS, hoping he is wrong, suspects we are in for one.

OS hopes ever'body keeps them in mind as November approaches, 'cuz that's future we face unless we all stand up and say Hell, No!. We need to do this now, while we still have a ballot box, and the ability to make use of it.