http://americanvision.org/3720/socialism-is-mob-violence/It seems to be little more than casual news these days when riots break out in Athens, Paris, London, or some other socialist haven. Greeks riot over austerity; we huff. Francs mob over retirement age; we chuckle. Most recently, London students riot over the threat of higher tuition; we snore. We snore right through the glass breaking and all.
It just seems commonplace to us, I guess, that Europe is a Continent of adolescent children who throw things and break stuff, writhing in tantrum, when they don’t get their way. And they have a common phrase over there, “Crazy Americans.” We could reciprocate, but choose to ignore.
What no one seems yet to have pointed out in all the recent news reports is the obvious: socialism itself is by definition mob rule. It is the most powerful organized and collected interests in society leveraging government force to sate their lusts. To do so they extract wealth from other members of society, divvy the loot amongst themselves (the pirate image is too mild—it is more like hyenas over a carcass), and stuff their gullets.
Socialism is the political embodiment of plunder. It is the denial of the rule of law, or private property, individual liberty, and therefore of Christianity.
This system of governmental piracy unleashes at least two important aspects: the lusts of the mob, and the police-power of the mob.
The lusts of the mob manifest the depravity of man: rebellion against maturity, responsibility and honesty. The curse of the fall—the thorns and sweat—are, consciously or not, assumed to be overcome not through godly ethics, but through political policy. That is, through man’s legislative fiat, not God’s—man’s law-order, not God’s. By passing a law limiting work hours, price controls, wage rates, etc., the mob proclaims itself free of the need to work, build, plan, save, sacrifice, etc. This is fallen man’s futile proclamation that he is free, and free indeed. It is futile and blind—blind to the fact that this alleged freedom must be imposed by force of government. “Free at gunpoint.”
But someone has to pay the bills. So the rich get soaked; then they quit producing as much as they would in a free market; then general productivity declines; then national living standards decline; then the State prints and borrows to maintain its promises; then the debts start to get called. Someone has to pay those bills. You can’t just legislate them away indefinitely.
Eventually, someone, somewhere, must sacrifice, work hard, and produce. And those unnecessarily receiving an unnecessarily generous dole must take some cuts.
This means “austerity.” But austerity means backlash from the lustfully entitled mob. The conversation goes like this:
“We need cuts.”
“Yes we do.”
“Who will take the cuts?”
“Not me. You take the cut.”
“No, not me. You take the cut.”
Someone has to decide where and when cuts will come. But when they are announced, then the police-power of the mob comes into play. By “police power” I simply mean mob force, mob violence. The mob riots, burns, shatters, breaks, murders. The message: “Not me. You take the cut.”
Let us review this scenario in the recent events:
Recently, the Greek national debt threatened to sink the entire Eurozone currency, and even possibly the good will among the European Union itself (a socialist political organization self-consciously and officially symbolized by a divine rapist, Zeus, who in mythology raped “Europa,” the namesake of today’s victim). Debt burdened by state employees’ unions, pensions, and other entitlements, was simply unsustainable.
Austerity was announced. People would have to cut back—a drastic cut of 7 percent for public sector employees’ bonus pay, cuts in extra bonuses called “holiday” bonuses, a few percentage tax increases here and there, and no more automatic increases for state pensions. These cuts are planned to last two whole years! It is a horrible thought—temporary cuts of no more than seven percent, most no more than two.
A Greek mob of unionists rioted, tossed Molotov cocktails, burned down a bank, and killed three people including a pregnant lady.
Not much was different in France, although fickle French socialism moves its radicals to erupt over matters much less austere. Two main groups have rioted: labor unions and students. Labors unions strike and riot over government mandated increases in retirement age. French students riot because, well, they’re French students.
The French simply want their socialism. Remember, in 2005, they voted against a European Constitution because it was not Marxist enough in favor of French entitlement.
But the bills, like all socialist bills, will come due.
Someone had to decide on some cuts. So, French president Nicholas Sarkozy, with nerves of steel, just signed into law the brazen step of raising the minimum age requirement for government-sponsored retirement by a ghastly and oppressive two years. Poor hapless French workers can no longer eat cake at 60, they must wait until 62.
Imagine these oppressed workers toiling in a slavish environment a whopping government-mandated 35 hours per week, and receiving on average only 40 paid vacation days per year, and now having to bear the added opprobrium of enduring this burden an extra two years. Two more years! Two more years before going from a government-funded workers’ paradise to a government-funded retirees’ paradise.
Strikes and even riots broke out all over France, especially with vandalism in the wealthy town of Lyon, and suburbs of Paris.
By comparison with the French, the Greeks have it much rougher. They only get 37 paid days a year.
British austerity beats them both. It only offers its poor huddled masses only 36 paid free days by government mandate.
In the teeth of such a bestial abandon of capitalist exploitation, poor Brit students have—as any sane and self-respecting individual would—stood up against outrageous reform measures. Parliament announced a plan to cut public debt by $128 billion by targeting one of its high public costs—higher education. The plan is to raise student fees at public universities to an exorbitant $14,000 per year—still less than the average resident ride at an American state university (imagine going to Oxford or Cambridge for the price of, say, West Virginia University). The thought of paying one’s own way to college was too much to bear:
British students rioted violently, bashing the conservative party headquarters in London, breaking glass, injuring people.
“Not me. You take the cut.”
In a letter to Supreme Court Justice Thomas Johnson, dated June 12, 1823, Thomas Jefferson praised the American system of representation, Constitution law and amendment: “And it has been the peculiar wisdom and felicity of our constitution, to have provided this peaceable appeal, where that of other nations [of Europe] is at once to force.”
Despite a few nuances in the style and justification of force applied, not much has changed.
America is still fundamentally different than Europe, for now. While we had heated town halls for a couple years, we focused our energy on the lawful event: the election. The only real violence came in reaction from union members on the left, paired with plenty of lies and propaganda trying to demonize the forces of freedom. We endured, we waited, we elected; now we live with the results as long as we must. We pray for a better day when God in His Providence will give us an even better opportunity, and we plan and prepare for that day to come. Christian political “activists” avoid violent mob action as it is a direct sell-out to socialism and a denial of Christianity.
Crazy Americans.
As I wrote in God versus Socialism:
Socialism is the belief . . . that stealing is acceptable as long as another man or group of men says so. Socialism believes in theft by majority vote, or theft by a majority of representatives’ votes in Congress. Socialism is the belief that it’s OK to steal from your neighbor if you do it by means of the government’s gun. Socialism places man, and ultimately the State, in the place of God. Man becomes owned by other men, instead of by his Maker. Socialism is an entirely humanistic, God-denying, God-usurping belief. (p. 9)
We see merely the logical extension of this plundering group of men in the European mobs. They essentially skip Congress, parliament, the State, etc., and go straight to the source—the lusts and power of the mob. This is socialism incarnate. It is unredeemed and satanic.
The Christian has so much more to offer. The vestiges of Christian federalism still restrain our system, even if Courts and lawmakers have long-since abandoned the ideal; and even if socialistic interests—pensioners, private-public corporate deals, labor unions, social security, agricultural subsidies, the military industrial complex, and the pharmaceutical-medical-insurance-industrial complex—have torn at the seams of the system for decades. We still have a slim view of the path back to peace and freedom, should we have the will and integrity to take it.
Topic: Socialism IS Mob Violence (Read 618 times)