If I may, I would like to play the socio-political theoretician. The modern American leftist dismisses the idea his beliefs are socialist and is able to get away with it, (much to the chagrin of sober-minded realists) because U.S. style socialism is a new species. Not unlike some heretofore undiscovered tree frog found enjoying flies in the Amazon. New coloring, different markings, yet still very much a frog.
Traditionally when one thinks of socialists, images of bearded men and hairy women—sweating in some dark Café, plotting to do away with the bourgeoisie come to mind. Or perhaps a figure, hunched over a camp fire in a jungle somewhere, (sweating) dressed in olive drab beside his comrades, inspiring the proletariat to rise up and overthrow their capitalist oppressors by force in a violent upheaval, ¡Viva la Revolución!
And that is the way it has happened in most of the places stricken with socialism. It begins with an intellectual degenerate, inspiring revolution amongst the lower classes in a society, who are then armed—socialism normally attacks from the bottom up.
In a society as powerful and throughout most of our history, incredibly prosperous like the United States, socialism cannot rely on the old ways. The old ways work well in underdeveloped nations, but in the West, a softer revolution was in order.
"You Americans are so gullible. No, you won't accept Communism outright; but we'll keep feeding you small doses of Socialism until you will finally wake up and find that you already have Communism. We won't have to fight you; we'll so weaken your economy, until you fall like overripe fruit into our hands." ~ Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita was right in as much as we are all but completely there, he was wrong in that America is not awake. So well has the left's agenda worked in America, wakefulness is a state beyond reach for far too many people.
In America socialism doesn’t rise from the bottom, it is a pincer with power infecting the top of our society, manipulating the bottom. The pincer's target however is unchanged—the middle class, the true bourgeoisie.
The middle class in western societies controls the means of prosperity, the capital. Whether it manifests as goods, services…Or the most important capital of all, productive working people.
The middle class is not just the strata controlling capital, it is also the largest in the nation and the population most vested in maintaining stability. It is therefore the most frightening element in a society for socialists and therefore undermined at all cost.
For the socialist oligarchy on top, it is about power and maintaining power—For the lower strata it’s about envying what they have not achieved by their own energy, it is resentment, a destructive force readily and habitually used by the socialists on top. Grant entitlements and you will be loved, believed and rewarded with power.
The leftist top is therefore vested in maintaining a sense of victimhood and entitlement in the lower classes. so the leftist elites work tirelessly to subvert the hard work of the middle class.
This is why the gun-control issue is so vitally important today. You see, leftists, socialists in general, are not at all against guns, not the ones on top at least. No ruling socialist is. It is important to arm the people, until you have reached your ends, then it is important to disarm the people, just in case enough of them do shake off their state of somnolence.
The elites have to keep the guns in the hands of those it controls. They cannot control the middle class, so the guns must be eliminated or at least reduced in the largest and least controllable strata. The strata standing in the way of complete control.
The leftists now control much of law enforcement and the military at the top, but in a more circumspect manner they also control the weapons on the bottom of society.
You see, crime is a part of that lower pincer exerting pressure on the middle. Criminals cannot be effected by gun laws, because they don’t obey them. The criminal, like law enforcement and the military, will always have access to firearms.
The poor who are not criminals, and a great deal of the gullible in every strata, are taught through liberal agitprop to hate guns. This is accepted by many of the poor even while they themselves are often the victims of the crimes they are most likely, due to circumstances to encounter personally.
The number of those guns on the bottom rises commensurate with the economic pressure exerted from the liberal’s failed economic policies at the top. Crime rises when those of already questionable character, react to fewer opportunities and choose destructive behavior.
Oppress the free market with out of control taxation and the threat of more of the same. Compound it with absurd regulations as a reaction to false science and woefully bad business models, all working to weaken job growth and reduce opportunity and voila, you increase your pool of victims/voters.
Tragically, the middle, the key to prosperity, is trapped between a government it fears is becoming too powerful and criminality growing ever larger and bolder. All while facing an assault on their ability to defend themselves with any level of equality from either point of the pincer.
Why are elements of the government working to undermine the group of American citizens least responsible for the misuse of firearms? Because that is what socialists do.
When I read the Vice President is quietly pressuring the state of Colorado to enact some of the strictest gun laws in the nation in order to have a state in the West, a state other than liberal bastions like, California, New York and Illinois comply with the President’s gun agenda, I am as always reminded of Scripture:
And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret. But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is light.Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, Redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Ephesians 5:11-16
Digital Publius
