You Can't Go Home Again

Photo: Ileana Johnson, August 23, 2018

Untold numbers of people and families have escaped totalitarian and oppressive regimes with just the clothes on their backs. Some swam across treacherous rivers; some cut through barbed wire; some hid on the floorboard of a car, some fit into the carved out car seats; some walked across the desert, through dense forests, climbed mountainous terrain, or hiked into steep valleys.

Once they escaped dangerous territories, the surviving defectors trekked to the west, to freedom, to America, the shining city on the hill that held the promise of freedom and the opportunity to succeed, if they were willing to work hard and integrate into society peacefully and productively.

Things have changed in the last twenty years, borders are being erased by the liberal elites, countries are succumbing to multiculturalism and the invasion of the third world interested solely in redistribution of wealth or as the leftist PC police have told us repeatedly, social justice – code word for communist taking from the productive and redistribution to the unproductive as reparations for perceived grievances and injustices of the past.

The latest leftist euphemism, agrarian or land reform, hides the true goal of confiscation of land from white farmers in South Africa who must agree to a ten percent purchase price or else. Black South Africans have already been encouraged by their president to “cut the throat of whiteness.”

And so the white farmers must leave everything they’ve ever known behind, their homes and the rich farm land their families have turned productive from wilderness areas, and must flee to escape with their lives.

How long will it be before the productive farm land will become a wasteland and the formerly agricultural rich South Africa will turn to the World Bank for food handouts and imports like the former Rhodesia did when it became the bankrupt Zimbabwe?

Millions have escaped from communist regimes; sadly, many did not make it, shot at the border during their attempted escapes. Those who fled made it to the free west and were eventually able to return to their homelands for brief visits or even come back for good after the fall of communism in 1989.

A successful family now living and thriving in California, brother, sister, and mother had escaped from Iran. As defectors, they could no longer visit the country of their birth, the place where their dad had been buried. The closest they could get on a recent trip was the border between Turkey and Iran.

After a long drive and a difficult trek on rocky cliffs, the shining sun over the valleys miles away brought into view their former homeland where a religious Ayatollah rules with an iron fist and harsh prisons, where religion oppression and the threat of overt nuclear holocaust defines every facet of Iranian life. A once thriving civilization, Iran has fallen back into oppression in 1979 and religious domination by a few well-armed zealots.

The family trio were overcome with grief and emotion, so close to the country of their birth calling them back for a visit, yet so far away, kept at the border by an intolerant regime who dominates the entire population with one book.

Spreading like snow angels on the ground, their hands touched dirt and rocks, in an effort to melt back into the ancestral lands. By being there, the brother and sister felt that huge rocks had been lifted off their chests. It was only fitting that each carried home a small stone from the land bordering Iran.

Like millions of humans before them, they finally came to the realization that they could not go home again, literally and figuratively, no matter how badly they wished to go.

But if they could return, if their house they left long ago was still there, if they were allowed to retrace their steps from childhood or youth, they would not find what they were looking for because it is no longer there. People and life have moved on.

They would find out that they were just strangers in their own land, looking for the essence of their being, of their existence, that Je ne sais quoi, something intangible which resides only in a person’s soul and in his/her fleeting memories.

Capitalism is Oppressive, Give Us Free Socialism

H. G. Wells and Joseph Stalin

Photo: Coada adevarului.ro.com (The line of truth)

“There is no such thing as a free lunch, someone has to pay for it.”

The American socialist politicians are promising their voting constituents through such figures as Barney Sanders, the politician from Vermont whose economic fortunes have improved drastically since he ran for president, and the socialist Cortez from the Bronx who, although she has a degree from a prestigious and very expensive school, does not know anything about Economics or geopolitics, by her own admission, and shows her lack of knowledge every time she opens her mouth.

But her ignorance does not stop her equally ignorant followers to support her generous promise of free rewards:  health care, higher education, child care, and housing. Who can resist the promise of Santa Clause?

Higher education is hardly worth the paper the diplomas are printed on when the majors are social justice, women’s studies, racial justice, and other community organizing subjects that the young American communists are “studying” in droves.

Cortez has no idea how she’s going to pay for everything free she promised but Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts proposes to nationalize private industry. She can’t let private property stand in the way of establishing a socialist nation where the means of production are owned by the state. https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/elizabeth-warren-plan-nationalize-everything-woos-hard-left/

In addition to the “Trump Derangement Syndrome” which afflicts millions of Democrat voters, statism has become the platform of the Democrat Party, which is now a very socialist version of its former self.

Ayn Rand defined statism as “collectivism, the belief that a man’s life and work belong to the state, to society, to the group, the gang, the race, the nation, and the state may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be its own tribal, collective good.” http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/statism.html

Fabian socialists like H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw would be very proud of our American youth today. Like their European counterparts, they want to reach the goals of socialism through political process and legislative bodies in order to avoid revolution or armed struggle.

Guns, after all, in the hands of ordinary citizens are dangerous, they must be disarmed. In their opinion, only the wise government should have arms. We can see how well that is working in Europe where citizens have nothing to defend themselves with against the Muslim invaders.

Europeans are not allowed free speech. If they try to speak against those who do them harm each day, they wind up in kangaroo courts and then given jail terms for hate speech.

Young American voters love the idea of a Fabian socialist welfare state in the vein of the European states that have such generous welfare and high taxes. Small European nations boast about higher college education rates. In addition to free tuition, they give monthly stipends to their studious populace that can take as long as six years to finish their bachelor’s degrees.

Who would not want to get paid to “study” for six years at the expense of taxpayers who foot the bill and willingly pay as much as 56% of their income so that their dwindling progeny can get a leisurely college degree?

Their Fabian socialism college graduates are now living in the formerly homogenous but now multiculturalist societal dream that is turning into a nightmare of their own making, caused by the tolerant admittance into their midst of endless economic refugees from Africa and the Middle East, refugees who refuse to integrate and are creating violent chaos across Europe.

What a great model to emulate here in the United States! After all, the Democrats and some Republicans alike have deemed that we are not diverse and tolerant enough; we must be forced with the help of the tin pot dictators at the U.N. into population social engineering submission.

So what is free under socialism in general that is worth having? In the true socialism society I grew up in, education was free until you decided to move to another country and then you had to pay back all the education you received. The state explained that someone else, i.e. the evil capitalists, was going to benefit from the stellar education you received.

Colleges had a limited amount of seats at each university and the competition was fierce. Only a very small percentage of the high school graduates made it to college. And there were no private colleges allowed. The rest had to study in a trade school or find a job working for the state in a menial proletarian job.

Just because you had the best of grades and higher education was free, it did not necessarily mean that you got in. The children of Communist Party members in good standing were admitted first, no question asked and no exams were necessary. The remaining seats were given to the candidates with the highest scores on various college entrance exams.

Some parents chose to bribe the committee members and their children had secondary dibs. Eventually, the best, the brightest, and most studious competed and were ranked for the remaining seats.

Child care and kindergarten were free too, but the seats were limited, much less than the number of children and there was a pecking order which placed the children of the proletariat last.

Health care was also free but it was hardly worth the poor services provided. The wait was long, the surgeons marginally qualified, and the drugs needed to care for the sick were missing from pharmacies due to the ignorant central planning by the Communist Party.

Housing was not free, the proletariat had to pay what the statists decided and it was Spartan and very small in large concrete block apartments without elevators. The exception was nine-story or higher buildings in which elevators were found but broken most of the time. The upside was that people were forced to walk and climb a lot and had good cardio workout and nobody was fat.

Aside from the “freebees” I mentioned, nothing else was free and there was no free speech allowed. You could choose to speak freely but then you were quickly disappeared, never to be seen again.

European Fabian socialists don’t exactly live in the lap of luxury either. Apartment residents are often multi-generational, sharing the same space with mom, dad, siblings, grandma, and grandpa. And apartment renting rights are passed on from generation to generation in a will. Owning a home or a condo is quite expensive and the waiting lists for government housing are quite long.

This is the paradise pure socialism and Fabian socialism bring. Perhaps Cortez, the Latina from the Bronx, should spend some time in Venezuela to experience on her own spoiled capitalist skin what socialism brings to a formerly wealthy country.

 

Smart Growth and Green Growth - It Is Not What You Think

 

“Global Sustainability requires the deliberate quest of poverty, reduced resource consumption, and set levels of mortality control.”   -  Professor Maurice King

Progressives (regressives) have been educating (indoctrinating) our American children for decades, inculcating (forcing) ideas such as political correctness (approved speech), globalism (one world government), global warming/climate change (redistribution of wealth), income equality (confiscation of wealth), resistance (anarchy), social justice (reverse discrimination), and tolerance (intolerance).

Progressivism has generally succeeded in creating a few generations of snowflakes (melting babies given to tantrums) and college graduates whose degrees were expensive and useless. But nobody is complaining about higher education escalating costs and globalist indoctrination.

Progressives have been urging their followers to make everything smart (U.N. compliant), to learn to deal with water shortages (water usage control) and to plan for green growth (control and destruction of property rights).

Progressives and their U.N.-affiliated organizations have preached to impressionable youth that it is for the common good (collectivism) and advanced the cause of global citizenship (U.N.-dependent global migrant). Teachers have been quite busy attacking patriotism, nationalism, and sovereignty while promoting destruction of one’s culture and history. https://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/education/item/23333-un-global-citizenship-education-plan-pushes-social-justice

Smart growth/green growth (controlling and destroying property rights) has been pushed in local communities unaware of the globalist “sustainable visioning” (global communism) and “nudged” (forced) under the guise that the community had actually demanded it and voted for it.

Free grant money from the federal and state government came with sustainability strings attached to preserve farm land (take it out of production via conservation easements). Once the farmers received free money, they were not allowed to develop their own land or produce crops on it.

Smart Growth imposed population diversity (government-mandated race and ethnic balance), encouraged in every neighborhood through HUD’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH). https://www.huduser.gov/portal/affht_pt.html

Obama’s administration combed neighborhoods to record income levels, religious affiliations, and racial and ethnic composition. If a neighborhood was not diverse enough for their liking, policies were put in place to diversify it.

Local government’s social engineering plans forced people to live in denser populated mixed-use communities on smaller tracts of land per unit in order to eliminate the need to commute to work, school, shopping, or play.

The idea behind such social engineering was that areas more densely populated have less mobility and are easier to control. It is exactly what communists did during decades of forced Stalinization, with disastrous results for the population forced off their lands into high-rise concrete block apartments.

Social engineering was amply addressed in U.N. Agenda 21 (1992) which morphed into Agenda 2030 (2015). This newer version expanded the idea that urban sprawl (suburbia) is dangerous to the environment and the planet. Their Smart Growth/Green Growth plans emphasized the implementation of walkable communities, rail trails, bike paths, “complete streets,” “strong communities,” and other visions of utopia, using various organizations such as the National Association of Realtors (NAR) and the American Planning Association (APA). https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/Agenda21.pdf

NAR is part of the Smart Growth Network which also includes the EPA, National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), American Farmland Trust, Rails to Trails Conservancy, and the State of Maryland. http://smartgrowth.org/category/partner-spotlight-archives-page/

What would Smart Growth/Green Growth do? The euphemisms behind the real concepts sound placid enough. The propaganda materials say that the community will be beautiful, well-controlled, with high-rises and shopping within biking and walking distance, a quaint ride on a trolley to the market, “wind turbines turning lazily in the background to supply all energy needs,” solar panels on every roof, no “dirty smokestacks, no cars, no parking nightmares, no gridlock, no urban sprawl, no crime, everyone lives in perfect harmony.”

As our own county advertised, “The Potomac Community Design Guidelines and Vision of a New Woodbridge have long called for mixed-use developments based on Smart Growth principles, such as transit-oriented development and connecting neighborhoods to amenities such as parks and entertainment hubs.”

The advertised “Principles of Smart Growth” happen to coincide with those of U.N. Agenda 21:

-         Mixed land use

-         Compact building design

-         Walkable neighborhoods

-         Preserve open space, farmland, natural beauty, and critical environmental areas (if farmland is preserved, who is going to grow food?)

-         Varied transportation choices (rail, buses, bikes, all reducing mobility for Americans who are in love with their roads and cars)

-         Less or no parking, thus forcing people to give up their cars (many “stack and pack” high-rise tiny apartments have no elevators and no parking)

-         Segregate the rich who can afford to buy expensive homes in Eco-Villages, away from “stack and pack” high rises where the poor will be housed.

Globalists want to make “holistic” decisions with land use and transportation using Smart Scale Grants, promising to alleviate congestion. All the problems in our county could be easily solved if highway 1 and I-95 would be enlarged; they are the only major roads that carry traffic for locals and for those in transit between states.

The “stack-and-pack” living in a 200 square foot aPodments high-rise in Sammamish, Washington is described by a resident who “shares the kitchen with seven other tenants on the second floor.” To get to a loft cubicle, she must climb six flights of stairs in the absence of elevators. Cars are not allowed because of global warming. The micro-apartments are smaller than a hotel room, rent for $600-900 per month, and contribute to the population density rise in the area.

According to Tom DeWeese, President of the American Policy Center, The American Planning Association (APA) commissioned a study of Smart Growth policies and it concluded that they do not work. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01944360903409584?journalCode=rjpa20

But the Smart Growth planners in your area keep telling you that you live the wrong way, you are not living the green and smart way.  And there is the nagging question, why exactly do we have to “harmonize” our local, regional, state, and federal Smart Growth development plans to fit the United Nation’s Agenda 2030? Why must we live the way the third world U.N. bureaucrats dictate?

The state and local planners receive ample grants to entice and convince them that “cities and human settlements must be made inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable.”

The U.N. Agenda 2030’s sustainable goal number 11.7 supports “positive economic, social, and environmental links between urban, peri-urban, and rural areas by strengthening national and regional development planning.” https://una-gp.org/clancyt/files/goals/goal11.pdf

How are these global directives translating into smart growth regional or urban planning in your area? As Tom DeWeese pointed out, all you have to do is look at Portland to see the “stack and pack” smart growth results where the “complete street,” “traffic calming,” and “strong communities” are in full effect, “on one side is a vast, dense development,” with high-rise, mixed-use buildings, and “on the other side is nothing but open land.”

“The result of Portland’s grand plan is that its increased density destroyed the entire livable atmosphere of the community. Congestion is worse, housing and consumer costs are higher, and urban services, including fire, police, and schools, have declined as the city took money from these programs to subsidize high-density developers.” https://americanpolicy.org/2015/01/05/private-property-rights-and-socialism-do-not-mix/

In our county more and more apartments are crowded per acre despite the scarce highways and traffic bottlenecks; the entire area is significantly congested by condos and apartments which fill every available space that is not occupied by wildlife and state parks.

Preserving the farmland, not for agriculture purposes but placing it in private environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) trusts’ control for future generations, is locking it in “conservation easements” in perpetuity in which the landowner, according to a specific contract, must ask permission to do anything on his property.

As Tom DeWeese described, “if the Smart Growth plans are fully implemented, as advocated by the APA and NAR, density in American cities will be as much as three times higher than those currently in New York City.”

 

 

My Article Link Today at the Epoch Times in New York

https://www.theepochtimes.com/socialism-is-part-of-communism-and-its-talking-points-dont-reflect-reality_2620447.html

Welcome Everyone, Take Our Country

I remember the curiosity and kindness that greeted me in the southern part of the United States in 1978.  People went out of their way to meet this foreigner to their lands who came from such a far-away country. Many did not know where my country was but they knew it was an Iron Curtain nation where people lived under religious oppression, could not go to church, have a Bible in their homes, or pray. But they could not fathom the exploitation of the soul, body, and mind that my people had to suffer under totalitarian communism.

There was a welcoming committee everywhere I went which made my adaptation to freedom and American life so much easier. I jumped every time there was a knock on the door and my heart raced when I saw a highway patrolman, an officer, or the sheriff. To me, they were not there to help, on the contrary, they were there to oppress just like the police I had experienced in my communist country.

In order to come here, I had to provide papers to the American authorities that I was in good health and I had means of supporting myself not become a burden on the welfare system. Only then did I acquire an entry visa.

Legal immigrants did everything within the confines of the law. It took time, money, and effort, but in the end, it was all worth it. Melania Trump’s parents became naturalized American citizens the right way, following the law.

This country had laws, rules, and standards of immigration because they wanted newcomers from all corners of the world to make a contribution to this society and make it greater, not suck it dry of resources and welfare.

American people and their official representatives tasked with protecting our country were suspicious and very thorough before they approved someone’s visa, green card, citizenship application, and eventual naturalization.

Marrying someone for a green card was certainly illegal and punishable with fines and jail time. Today, a cable channel actually makes a reality show out of breaking the law in order to obtain a green card by marrying a desperate American who wants to find love in the third world.

How times have changed! Former Vice President Joe Biden said, “We want unrelenting immigration until whites are an absolute minority.” He was preparing for Caucasians of European descent to be in absolute minority by 2017. Apparently he expressed the Democrat Party platform and the wishes of the Democrat voters. The rest of the country was rather shocked, to put it mildly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtIi8QR5Mzs

Marlene B., a military wife and mother said, “Isn’t it wonderful that all your ancestors including fathers, husbands, and sons died fighting to keep America free so we can give it away to the third world!”

The globalists have unilaterally decided, without as much as a vote, to open the borders of the developed rich countries and to welcome the flotsam and jetsam of the third world across any developed country’s borders, including ours, in search of generous welfare, free medical care, housing, public education, college education, and food.

Globalist billionaires and corporatists are the arbiters of redistribution of our wealth to the third world and of the forced diversification of the population into an easier controlled mass of humanity, no laws, only those that the globalist elites want to enforce.

Politicians and their main stream media sycophants falsely repeat that our immigration laws are broken. The truth is that our laws are not broken, they are not enforced.  

It is the corrupt political system that is broken, a fetid Swamp composed of dishonest men and women without a conscience and allegiance to America, with the sole agenda of re-election in order to maintain the intoxicating and enriching power at all costs even though, bringing in as many illegals as possible to vote Democrat in perpetuity, is destroying our country. They don’t care that their own children and grandchildren will have to survive in a lawless and violent banana republic.

Illegals who speak no English, have no loyalty to America, and know nothing about our country, are keeping them in office for decades. When these politicians are out of office and gone, the flood will drown us all and by then nobody will remember who broke the dam and caused such misery.

Demographic suicide started decades ago with the destruction of family, of faith, the deviant sexual revolution, moral relativism, and the establishment of cradle to grave daddy-government. It is exploding now with the open border agenda and the right of free mass migration across the globe, pushed and enforced by the United Nations. http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/theme/international-migration/

The illegal border jumpers are well organized as soon as they set foot on our soil and, with the help of Democrat money and community organizers, demand same rights as any American citizen, while waving the flags of their broken-down countries they hailed from, and desecrating our beautiful American flag.

It does not have to be this way--only if the majority population obliviously agrees to open borders and mass migrations. Perhaps Richard von Coudenhove Kalergi’s plan of widespread miscegenation outlined in his book, “Praktischer Idealismus,” is further along in its implementation than most of us realize.

Mark Twain once notably said, “Every civilization carries the seeds of its own destruction, and the same cycle shows in them all.”

Should we, instead of having a border wall and sovereignty, start leaving our doors wide open and place huge signs at the former border, “Welcome everyone, and please take our country?”

Perhaps liberals should make good on their open border mentality and take out their front doors, inviting anyone in who wishes to come into their home and to take whatever they want.

 

 

 

Link to my article today at The Epoch Times

https://www.theepochtimes.com/un-green-growth-education-envisons-state-control-of-private-property_2611758.html