Hindsight is 20/#@?! Part 1

A Series on America’s Inclination toward Communism

In 1848, a man by the name of Karl Marx (with the help of his friend Friedrich Engels) spear-headed a political movement that would haunt the world for the next century and a half. They rendezvoused in London with other communist atheists from around the world and hatched a dark revolution of ill-fated ideas, summarizing them into ten statements that eventually became the “ten planks of the Communist Party.”

Ideas have consequences!

Fortunately, we who live in the modern world have the wonderful benefit of hindsight at our disposal, through which we are able to quantify the damages of Karl’s dark ideas, as they materialized over the last one hundred and fifty years of world history. My question is this: Are we using the hindsight of history as we “progress” as a nation, or not? Let’s look at some of the ten planks of the Communist Party that were written back in 1848 and contrast them with current American political realities. As you read this three-part series over the coming weeks, I’ll let you decide the answer to that question:

1848 Communist Plank no. 1: Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

2005: Kelo v. City of New London: A case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States which was a gross   violation of property rights and a misinterpretation of the Fifth Amendment benefitting large corporations at the expense of individual homeowners and local communities.

1848 Communist Plank no. 2: A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

1887: The Socialist Labor Party first advocates the concept in the United States.

1892: Five years later, the Populist Party demands the same.

1894: Joining the appeals of the Socialist Party and the Populist Party, the Democratic Party succeeds in the effort to make Marx’s theory an isolated reality.

1913: In the madness of a popular rage, America rejects the flat-tax system and passes the 16^th Amendment, ensconcing Marx’s ideology of the progressive income tax at the federal level. (A day later, on February 26^th, pigs fly, and America’s founders roll-over in their graves.)

2001: THE SUPREME IRONY! The nation of Russia and its current President Vladimir Putin (former head of the Soviet KGB) transforms his previously ruined economy (ruined by the ideals espoused in their progressive tax system, no less) by instituting Russia’s NEW FLAT TAX system! After 70 years of communist destruction, in the first two years following the adoption of the flat tax, Russia’s economy grows a whopping 10%!

2008: Barak Obama runs his campaign for the presidency touting the need to reproduce the great economic error of the Byzantine Empire and further skew America’s crazy progressive tax system against the most successful of our citizenry.

(Devoid of any sense of history – Americans decide to repeat it…and elect Obama.)

1848 Communist Plank no. 3: Abolition of all right of inheritance. (Death Tax)

1916: Democrat President Woodrow Wilson called upon Congress to create America’s “death tax” (Democrats like to call an “estate-tax” to this day) making yet another dream of Karl Marx a reality within the bounds of his greatest enemy – America.

1935: Two decades later, Democrat President Franklin Roosevelt praised, enhanced, and ultimately increased the death tax, as he stated, in order to “regulate the wealth of a few for the benefit of many.”

2009: According to President Obama’s budget [see footnote 1 of Page 127] the freshly elected Democrat President calls for the largest increase in the death tax in U.S. history to take place in 2010.

(Hooray for HOPE and CHANGE! Yes we CAN! Yes we CAN!)

In this first column, we’ve only barely scratched the surface of the beliefs of the old-world communists – briefly touching on the first 3 of the 10 planks. In the coming articles we’ll carefully examine the rest. Meanwhile, consider this simple conclusion:

In his own mind, Marx made it clear that the 10 planks of the Communist Party were the necessary steps America would need to take, in order for Communism’s utopia to finally “win-over the hearts and minds” (to paraphrase with a popular slogan) of the American people. Many years later, the Soviet dictator, and Marxist devotee, Vladimir Lenin, when remarking about the transition strategy of Marx, said, “Communism is Socialism in a hurry.” Hindsight is only 20/20 when (and if) we use it.