Some good news! And boy do we need it.
First of all, our military has a single job — the duty of single-mindedly defeating our enemies, crushing their will to survive so that they surrender and never bother us again — or terrifying them from attacking us or our allies, or our interests, in any way.
As self-destroying and bureaucratic as our own military is now, under Joe Biden, as distracted as it has become from performing that, its one and only duty, as deliberately-weakened, self-defeated (after Biden’s deliberately-humiliating Afghanistan capitulation and gift of $85 billion of the most advanced weaponry to terrorists), and as deliberately-emasculated as it has become under Biden and his worthless, “Woke” commanders, it looks like the Chinese military is, in its even more extreme Collectivism/Socialism, even worse, EVEN MORE ROTTEN.
Thank God. And, for the sake of our survival through the rest of Biden’s “presidency,” let’s hope so.
Collectivism/Socialism in all its forms, including, of course, Communism (actually, just another name for Socialism) as its most undiluted, extreme, blatant form, always corrupts everything it infests because, as its central purpose and guaranteed outcome, IT POLITICIZES EVERYTHING it touches, putting politicians and bureaucrats in charge of everything, politicians and bureaucrats who themselves are all socialists/collectivists.
It does so by simply doing what Socialism/Collectivism does — REMOVING WHATEVER IT TOUCHES FROM PRIVATE HANDS AND HANDING IT TO THE STATE AND ITS BUREAUCRATS. That is literally the very definition of politicization — and of corruption — and, of course, of Socialism/Collectivism.
That inherent politicization and corruption is what Socialism/Collectivism is all about: politicization, its central element, DELIBERATELY ELIMINATES THE INDIVIDUAL and all individual responsibility from whatever it infects and infests.
And that’s why they, Socialist/Collectivists never have any problem, ultimately, ELIMINATING REAL INDIVIDUALS in every way. Because Socialism/Collectivism always ends up being a totalitarian tyranny, a tyranny that survives by terrorizing the people under its rule.
Eliminating, canceling, is what Collectivists/Socialists always do; AND THEY ARE DOING IT NOW increasingly in the United States. Everyone here knows it and is watching it happen before their/our very eyes. And the Socialists/Collectivists among us rejoice that it happens, every time it happens, and go literally insane when one of their targets refuses to be canceled, targets like Donald Trump, in particular. Or Sarah Palin. Or countless others who refuse to bend the knee to them and who they can’t destroy – yet.
When the malignancy that is Socialism/Collectivism infects/infests an entire country, as it has in China, and AS IT IS DOING TO US INCREASINGLY, its very purpose is the elimination of the entire idea of citizenship, the elimination of all individual merit, or its opposite, as the basis for rewards and punishments, the COMPLETE ELIMINATION OF ALL PRIVATE PROPERTY RIGHTS (yes, that’s what Karl Marx insists on above all else in “The Communist Manifesto”), making everyone’s “property” nothing but the property of the bureaucrats/The State, allowed to be in subjects’ (they are no longer real citizens) hands only as a gift, literally a gratuitous transfer, from whoever rules the state, transfers that can be taken away to benefit someone else at any moment, purely at the discretion of the ruler (there is always a ruler).
The only “Merit” ever recognized under Collectivism/Socialism involves one’s membership in one or another officially-recognized supposed-“victim” group (based on race, sex, family lineage and/or purported economic class) and, above all, one’s particular virtue signaling, one’s very-visible loyalty to the Collective or its leader, SOME UNIQUELY-COSTLY PERSONAL SACRIFICE for the sake of the Collective or one’s superior. The Collective’s “great writers” and other “artists” are only recognized to the extent that they promote some “narrative,” some fiction, some lie everyone is required to pretend is true, one of the endless lies demanded by the Collective – or, as always, its supreme ruler
Those are not bugs of Collectivism/Socialism; THEY ARE ITS FEATURES, the fulfillment of its purpose.
Collectivism/Socialism is imposed on countries by force of some kind, as it was in Russia and in Cuba and in Communist China, or by trickery, in a stolen or completely-fraudulent election, as it has been repeatedly in South America (one man, one vote, one time).
But when, in a previously-free society, people agree, in an honest election, to have it imposed on themselves, they do so always based on multiple lies, after the country has already been terribly corrupted to the point that a majority of people have been led to believe that corruption and lies are so prevalent throughout their country that, in their minds, everything in their country is totally corrupt (corruption which has actually been achieved by the Collectivists/Socialists imposing their power bit by bit, over many years, as they have been doing in the United States in multiple ways, particularly since 1906).
But, as the people who actually subscribe to and accept Collectivism/Socialism for themselves soon find out, in doing so, rather than fixing the corruption and lies, all they do is impose a more massive form of corruption on themselves, with a new, completely-corrupt ruler who has no limits on his power. Think Napoleon. Or Stalin. Or Communist China. Or Hugo Chavez. Or the power Joe Biden thinks he has to force everyone in the country to stay in their homes and/or take a “vaccine” against their will – just because he chooses to demand it.
THE OPPOSITE OF A COLLECTIVIST/SOCIALIST COUNTRY is one, like ours was, AND IS STILL SUPPOSED TO BE, in which the government and its officials at all levels are ruled by the Rule Of Law, the Constitution, which limits the power of those officials very strictly, to prevent their power from ever becoming absolute or discretionary; and citizens’ behavior is RULED BY THE COMMON LAW, ALONE, the Common Law administered by courts (primarily state ones) alone, NOT BY UNELECTED BUREAUCRATS, not by administrative agencies and their always-worthless “regulations,” abominations masquerading as laws since they are not created pursuant to the procedures required in Article I of our Constitution, abominations created one and all to criminalize citizens’ otherwise-legal and non-harmful behavior, criminalization effected to force everyone constantly to bend the knee, to request the bureaucrats’ permission before taking actions which hurt no one and are perfectly legal under the Common Law, permission from unelected bureaucrats in agencies, each with the unconstitutionally-combined powers of legislature, executive and judges. Bureaucrats with power over everything. Exactly like in the USSR, exactly what is forbidden in our Constitution.
In our formerly-free republic, and supposedly still now, since no one has repealed the Constitution explicitly, and it remains, as it says “The Supreme Law Of The Land,” private property and freedoms of contract and assembly and expression of all citizens are all protected by both the Constitution and the Common Law from incursions by anyone, especially by the government, and we, as citizens, have all the freedoms described in the Bill Of Rights.
Collectivism/Socialism empowers only the government, its politicians and bureaucrats, taking that power from the people, always in a zero-sum game, always demanding that there be not a single limit on those in power, the bureaucrats and politicians who are in charge of everything in everyone’s life.
It does so by vesting all the power of everyone within the state, power taken, again, because it must never be forgotten, in a zero-sum game, from all the former citizens, former citizens reduced by the tyranny to being servants of the state, vesting all that power in a single, central ruler (or a committee), a ruler who rules through unelected, uncheckable bureaucracies.
Because Collectivism/Socialism always demands that there never be any limits on the power of the Collective, it precludes the existence of anything like the United States Constitution, and it eliminates the Rule Of Law under the Common Law, substituting for it the rule of men, the rule of bureaucrats.
All of that is expressly forbidden in the United States because our Constitution’s text narrowly limits, and explicitly defines, the permissible powers of the US federal government, and also those of the states (the states are required, under the Constitution, to remain republics, and never to interfere with anyone’s Freedom Of Contract, and have other constraints imposed on them). And the Common Law only punishes citizens FOR MISBEHAVIOR, and grants rewards when they are harmed, rewards to be paid by those who harm them, all only as determined in a court by a judge and jury, never requiring citizens to seek permission from bureaucrats for any of their actions – THE VERY OPPOSITE OF THE RULE OF BUREAUCRATS UNDER COLLECTIVISM/SOCIALISM.
Without those limitations on the power of the state (or rather, limitations on those people who are vested with the powers of the state, the politicians and bureaucrats), Collectivism/Socialism reimposes on the people the Law Of The Jungle, where brute power alone rules nakedly with no constraint whatsoever, no Rule Of Law to govern it, brute power exercised directly by those bureaucrats against the subjects/slaves of the state, treating them like a defeated enemy.
Under the Law Of The Jungle, which is always the supreme law under Socialism/Collectivism, those in power always have the equivalent of absolute power, absolute power which always corrupts absolutely — until they are removed physically, often violently, from any power over others.
And under the Law Of The Jungle — the rules that govern under Collectivism/Socialism — the most ruthless and unprincipled and vicious person is the one who always ends up setting all the rules everyone else has to follow.
That’s why when there is no Rule Of Law, the rule of law being the opposite of the Law Of The Jungle, you always end up with a Napoleon or a Stalin or a Hitler or a Castro, or any of the endless other monsters in history.
Collectivism/Socialism is all based on hatred, yes hatred of human nature as it is (that’s why it never has any problem killing millions), based on the lie (among the thousands of other lies it’s based on) that INDIVIDUALS ARE NOT LIVING BEINGS WITH SOULS AT ALL, but rather mere cogs in a soulless machine, mere subjects who, as Collectivism/Socialism’s proponents fantasize, can become selfless, “New Men,” transcending all who came before them.
Collectivists/Socialists characterize all non-Collectivist human behavior (what Marx pejoratively called Capitalism) as having been driven by “selfishness,” “selfishness” they claim their supposedly-wonderful system transcends. That is their purported “moral” justification for the force they demand be used against and on all their subjects, the former citizens if they do this in America, who they insist on imposing their corrupt ideology on.
The term “selfishness” is Socialist/Collectivists’ slanderous, pejorative description of the natural desire of all humans to make things better for themselves, the human nature which everyone has and has always had — including Socialists/Collectivists — human nature which they utterly detest and claim they can IMPROVE ON — but only if their subjects are loyal to the party, or whoever its leader is, a leader whose power over them is always absolute, because there simply are no limitations on it.
Because Socialism/Collectivism repudiates the Common Law to govern humans and make their actions non-harmful to others, it cannot contemplate the VIRTUE OF PROFIT received by people acting in their self-interest WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THE COMMON LAW, in a manner which INCREASES THE WEALTH OF THE NATION AS A WHOLE, not just their own, with Socialism/Collectivism idiotically pretending to be morally-superior and slandering all desire for self-improvement as supposedly-“immoral selfishness.” This from people who don’t believe in God at all, and so have no textual or other basis for any morality, and believe in none.
But of course, as shown by the article below, in the Chinese military, that loyalty can always be bought, one way or another. In fact, without the Rule Of Law and considerations of actual merit (instead of, say, someone’s family or race or gender, or how much he is willing to pay the person who has arbitrary power to choose or reject, in selecting them for a position), it is always bought one way or another BECAUSE IT IS NEVER EARNED, not by anything that normal people would recognize as real merit.
It is basic to Collectivism/Socialism that under it people are forbidden to reap what they sow — except to the extent that they are, by virtue of their purported victim-status and/or their particular, self-sacrificing loyalty to the Collective and/or their Party, entitled to privileges of some kind, or sow bribes of one kind or another.
It doesn’t eliminate competition between human beings, as its most romantic advocates fantasize. Instead, it imposes the most vicious, street-fighting kind of competition, competition where the most vicious and ruthless rule and make up their own rules, which everyone else must slavishly follow.
And when bribing and corruption and lies is what everyone in the system does for their own survival, out of self-interest (self-interest which they must always serve), AND EVERYONE KNOWS IT, everyone stays silent about all that, and the corruption and lies becomes THE UNSPOKEN TRUTH, something no one will accuse anyone else of, the reality about everything which is really going on; and prosecutions for corruption themselves become purely political, with corruptly-appointed prosecutors going after only those very selectively-chosen to be harmed by those in charge, since everyone is corrupt in order to even survive, let alone prosper, with the necessity for success — paying off a superior — itself always exposing everyone to vulnerability of being removed by that same superior — or his opponent, someone who is even more ruthless.
But no one ever becomes, as the Collectivist/Socialists pretend, selfless: everyone always cares about himself.
And so when merit itself is no longer a criterion for success or failure, when those are based purely on political considerations by those in power, and merit itself is even insulted constantly by being punished instead of rewarded, the whole thing rots.
It’s what happens within any bureaucracy: It ends up rewarding only power of one kind of another, and money is always power – even for genuine communists.
In response to:
Clifford Ribner is a Tax Lawyer, Litigator, and Trial Lawyer based in Tulsa, Oklahoma and he is the author of Freedom’s Last Stand – A Common Sense Guide to Understanding the Tyranny of Collectivist Ideology and How We The People Can Recover Our Stolen Constitutional Rights.
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