Link to The Epoch Times Article Featuring Yours Truly

https://www.theepochtimes.com/ileana-johnson-from-communist-romania-to-defending-us-freedom_3133378.html

Interesting Post on Lawmakers

“If you don’t get the picture by now, let’s paint it for you. The Congress and the Senate have spent years building an empire in which they rule. They have voted in protections from YOU, the PEOPLE, to protect themselves and their government cash cow. There’s really nothing we do but decide who gets to enter into the government millionaires club. Once in, we have absolutely no control over anything.”

-        Cathy O’Dell

My Musings from a Year Ago

Millennials have been indoctrinated to admire primitive cultures and to despise their own civilization. Why in the world would any civilized American want to revert to primitive societies or to the way of life a century or so ago?

Diana Gabaldon described the hard life of the 18th and 19th centuries best, "People ate, slept, and frequently copulated, crammed into tiny, stifling cottages, lit and warmed by smoky peat fires. The only thing they did not do together was bathe - largely because they didn't bathe."

Like I used to say in jest to southerners asking me in 1978 if we bathed in Romania, "we bathed once a month whether we needed it or not."

Of course, in reality, our bathing was predicated on whether we got hot water or any water at all. The communists had their own secret schedule to keep us starved and in need of water. Heat (via steam) was optional in winter.

The Lee and Fairfax Cemetery in Leesylvania State Park

View of Potomac

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2019

After a long downhill and uphill trek, across thick carpets of dead leaves covering tree roots snaking treacherously out of the ground, I reach the Lee and Fairfax Family Cemetery on the ridge top overlooking Occoquan Bay.

The remains of Elizabeth Fairfax and Henry Fairfax Sr. are interred here. Elizabeth Fairfax died November 6, 1847 at the age of 54 and Henry Fairfax Sr. died October 6, 1847 at the age of 74. Captain Henry Fairfax and his wife Elizabeth are buried in the enclosed portion of the cemetery. Captain Fairfax had purchased the Leesylvania Plantation from the Lees in 1825.

Leesylvania (meaning Lee’s Woods) Plantation became part of the Lee family legacy through the marriage of Laetitia Corbin to Richard Lee II in 1675.

Henry Lee II and his wife Lucy Grymes named the Plantation Leesylvania (Lee’s Woods). The home they built high on the ridge overlooking the Potomac River burned long ago but it was thought to resemble the Rippon Lodge, a neighboring home that was built around the same time. The Leesylvania Plantation home burned in 1790, shortly after Henry Lee II’s death in 1787.

George Washington, residing 14 miles up the river in Mt. Vernon, was a frequent visitor at the Leesylvania Plantation. His diary records dinner visits at the Lees on his way to Williamsburg and Fredericksburg on October 19, 1768, on October 30, 1769 (with his wife Martha and daughter Patsy) and on November 27, 1772.

Lee and Fairfax Cemetery today without headstones

Photo: Ileana Johnson December 2019

The cemetery was established by the Lee family when Henry Lee II died on August 15, 1787. His wife Lucy Lee (Grymes), died in 1792 and is the only other Lee family member buried here. A few of Lucy’s flowers, daffodils and daylilies still bloom around the woods. Henry Lee’s death was noted in the Virginia Journal and Alexandria Advertiser. He was a Senator for the District of Fairfax and Prince William. He was 58 years old and had dedicated thirty years of his life to the service of his country.

Lee and Fairfax Cemetery with bronze plaque

Photo: Ileana Johnson December 2019

Lucy Grymes and Henry Lee were married in 1753 and their home stood on this ridge to the east. There is a deep hole now where the foundation stood. There is no visible evidence of stones left.

Henry Lee was Prince William County Lieutenant and Presiding Justice for many years. He represented Prince William County in the House of Burgesses, the Revolutionary Conventions, and the State Senate from 1758-1788.

Lucy and Henry Lee had eight children born in Leesylvania House. “Light Horse Harry” was a Revolutionary War hero, Governor of Virginia, and father of Gen. Robert E. Lee. The Lee children served Virginia and Country in various capacities. Charles Lee was Attorney General of the United States. Richard Bland Lee was the first Congressman for Northern Virginia.  Edmund Jennings Lee was the Mayor of Alexandria.

An obelisk-shaped monument is dedicated to “Light Horse Harry” at the foot of the hilly and heavily wooded peninsula, in a circular driveway close to the Potomac River.

Lee and Fairfax cemetery with headstones in place

Photo: Archives

The Lee family headstones have disappeared long ago. There are park signs urging visitors not to take stones or bricks as souvenirs from the foundation of what remains of the plantation buildings, chimney, well, and barn. The missing Lee family headstones were replaced with a bronze plaque encased in brick by the Virginia Society of the Lees.

The Fairfax headstones were relocated in the Union Cemetery in Leesburg, near the tomb of their son, John Walter Fairfax, but the remains were not disturbed, they still rest in the enclosed cemetery. 

Fairfax home ruins (1825)

Photo: Ileana Johnson December 2019

Freedom of the Press and Freedom from the Press

Wikipedia photo

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says simply that Congress shall make no law “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” The courts have since bent over backwards to interpret and re-interpret the intent of the framers of the Constitution, depending on who the aggrieved parties were and whose interests were at stake.

The courts ruled on what is protected speech and what is not, how far journalists can go with their information, and how far they are protected when compared to private citizens.

For the longest time, the American public believed the press, the major newspapers, beloved radio personalities whose political biases nobody knew because they never made them public by staying neutral and objective, and sources such as NBC, ABC, and CBS.

We took pride in America in the freedom of expressing one’s opinion without the fear of going to jail for their views. We also knew that, by expressing such a view people left themselves exposed to judgment by their employer with the potential of losing one’s job or of being ostracized from certain organizations.

One of the basic “tenets” of the communist revolution was a free press.  Lenin was quite descriptive in his version of freedom of the press – “We demand immediate and unconditional recognition by the authorities of freedom of assembly, freedom of press and an amnesty for all political prisoners and dissenters. Until this is done, all words about tolerance, about religious liberty, will remain a miserable game and an indecent lie. Until freedom of assembly, of speech, and of the press is declared, there will not disappear the shameful Russian inquisition which persecutes profession of unofficial faith, unofficial opinions, unofficial doctrines.” He was, of course, referring to his communist brethren who were languishing in prison for various offenses, he had no interest in extending such freedom of the press to those who disagreed with the communist ideology. (Lenin, “The Autocracy is Tottering, Sochtneniya, Vol. VI, p. 314)

Nikita Khrushchev talked about an “objective press.” He decided which articles were objective and asked that they be published in the Soviet press because he believed they were “truthful and objective.” He was the arbiter of truth. But the “free press” the Soviets were cherishing was not really the press that the West viewed as free.

At the time, Turner Catledge of The New York Times wondered why foreign correspondents were censored by the Soviet Union but were not censored in the West. As we well know today, major U.S. publications are quite leftist and openly support socialism, the precursor to communism, and censor those who disagree with them.

Khrushchev responded to Catledge that wasting money on telegraph communications and paper would harm society with news that distort the real life of Soviet Russia and slander and manufacture instead of benefiting society. In such cases, he said, the authorities are justified in withholding false reports and not publishing them.

The USSR Constitution guaranteed “freedom of the press.” Pravda (The Truth) stated on December 26, 1958, “Article Seven – Anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda. Agitation or propaganda, conducted with he aim of undermining or weakening the Soviet power or committing individual, particularly dangerous crimes against the state, the spreading of slanderous fabrications with he same aim, defaming the Soviet state and social order, and equally the spreading of printing or storing of literature of this nature with the same aim will be punishable by imprisonment for a period ranging from six months to seven years or banishment for a period ranging from two to five years.” Discussions of war (“war propaganda”) was particularly distasteful and egregious to the Communist Party. So much for freedom of the press, Soviet style.

TASS, the communist party approved Soviet news agency, said in 1959, “We have no censorship, only control to prevent misuse of the freedom of the press.”

As most historians know, it was mandatory for all regional (oblast) newspapers in the Soviet Union to publish the exactly worded propaganda that appeared in Pravda. It was like today’s Democrat party giving its marching orders to anchors on various leftist channels who repeat the script religiously.

James Reston of the New York Times wondered “why poets, writers, and musicians followed a very narrow line of work” and why Pravda can be bought in New York, but the New York Times could not be sold in the Soviet Union.

The answer was priceless. Subscribers to the New York Times in the Soviet Union were almost non-existent because “Soviet people want the truth and your papers print a lot of untruths and misinformation. Why should we force that on our readers?” The Soviet authorities want their people to understand internal and international events more clearly and not be misled. And western journalists are incapable of understanding the Soviet writers and poets’ literary work. “You understand their literary work quite incorrectly.” (To James Reston of The New York Times; TASS, Oct. 11, 1957)

A “bourgeois newspaper” correspondent not “rightly assesses what he sees, just as not everyone can gaze at the heavens and see the sun as it really is.” In other words, the press can be “objective,” but the definition of “objectivist” is “objectionable” by Soviet ideology.

An op-ed in Pravda on January 27, 1960, said, “The press is a powerful force in the ideological indoctrination of young persons. However, at one time certain newspapers and journals of Latvia were somewhat drawn to objectivist reporting of various aspects of life in capitalist countries. Weak and ideologically depraved literary works were also printed. Party agencies were forced to take serious measures for improving the ideological content of printed matter.”

The oppressed proletariat in the Soviet Union and the other Iron Curtain countries was not stupid. They watched shows like Dallas and saw for themselves how American people lived under the maligned capitalism and the abundance of food in their grocery stores while communist stores were empty. They knew there was a better life beyond the tall barb-wired fences that kept them prisoners in the communist grey paradise.

It is laughable when an apparatchik was quoted saying, “In Moscow there is no censorship. Every correspondent can write what he wants except lies.” And that correspondent would never be heard from again after writing what he wanted.

William Randolph Hearst, Jr., agreed that the free American press has a different view of censorship from Khrushchev’s view. “If I fired everybody who wrote opinions with which I disagree at times, I’m afraid we would not have many people left in the editorial department.”

What about the “freedom to listen” to programs that the communist party found objectionable? The Soviets jammed the Voice of America radio programming because, they said, those voices were dissonant, and the communist authorities did not want the Soviet people to have a “wrong picture of the American people and their voice.”

Speaking to the Economic Club of New York on September 17, 1959, and Irritated that the public was interrupting him, Khrushchev offered to stop speaking if they did not want to hear what he had to say. “The Question of how and what our people should hear is the affair of our people. These questions are decided and will always be decided by the Soviet people themselves and their Government, without foreign interferences.”

It is sad to note that today, conservative Americans have restricted access to social media platforms, and many are periodically banned, and some are shadow banned. Invisible computer censors tell us that we “violate community standards” if we try to read an article, post a photograph, or a video that the leftist censors find objectionable. We are not sure exactly what these community standards are, but they must be quite specifically designed to encompass only conservatives and their viewpoints.

Some conservative Americans have the means to fight back against censorship in a court of law, which is something the communist era victims were not permitted to do. Coral Gables is being sued right now for censoring the showing of the ‘Trayvon Hoax’ movie. Unfortunately, few win against the powerful progressive machine that controls the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press. https://www.wnd.com/2020/01/american-city-sued-censoring-trayvon-hoax-movie/?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=wnd-newsletter&utm_campaign=dailyam&utm_content=newsletter

In the era of algorithmically designed information highway, do we really have freedom of speech, the freedom to post an opinion, to listen, read, or view? When the press receives its marching orders from the leftist elites who own all venues of the mainstream media, do we still have freedom of the press even though it is guaranteed in the Constitution? What good is a guarantee if it is not enforced? Do we even have freedom from the fake press that overwhelms the airwaves, bookstores, and the printing press?

Democracy of the Left

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.   - Alexis de Tocqueville

Athenian Democracy Politician Pericles giving a famous

speech Wikipedia photo

Politicians, their low information voters, and indoctrinated Millennials talk about our endangered democracy when their conservative opponents dare to contradict them. We know, however, that our country is a Constitutional Republic, not a democracy.

According to the legal dictionary, a constitutional republic consists of three branches, executive, judicial, and legislative which divide the power of the government equally, and the head of the state and other officials are elected by the country’s citizens to represent them.  As is often the case, these representatives, once elected, do not represent the interests of their constituents, of the American people, but their own and those of special interest groups who supported their candidacy.

Our country has a Constitution which limits the government’s power if it is followed. Unfortunately, over the years, it has been ignored and re-interpreted many times by the courts. The Supremes have construed our Constitution to mean something else at times in order to fit a pre-decided outcome, i.e., the Obamacare forced insurance which was deemed a tax by Justice Roberts.

Merriam-Webster defines democracy today as “a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives,” or “the practice or principles of social equality.”

Webster’s defined democracy in 1961 as “a form of government in which the supreme power is lodged in the people collectively.” But collectivism breeds communism and chaos.

In the actual etymological definition of democracy, it means “power of the people.” (demos, Greek for populace, and kratos, Greek for power, strength)

There were and are quite a few totalitarian states that used the word “democracy” or “democratic” in the name of their country, i.e., the German Democratic Republic, the former Soviet satellite nation that ruled its people with the help of the dreaded Stasi.

There was nothing democratic about this state and it was visibly obvious by the Berlin Wall built to keep the East Berliners trapped inside the socialist state, away from the free West Berliners.

The lesser known visually was the infamous Iron Curtain, an actual wall with barbed wire which ran for hundreds of miles the length of the former German Democratic Republic. The watch towers made sure any citizen trying to flee, who was not blown up by the land mines placed strategically around the wall, was shot by soldiers armed with machine guns.

Stalin wrote that “There have been times in the history of our Party [Communist] when the opinion of the majority or the momentary interests of the Party conflicted with the fundamental interests of the proletariat. On such occasions Lenin would never hesitate and resolutely took his stand on principle against the majority of the Party…” In other words, he became the benevolent dictator because he knew best what people wanted.

Lenin was clearer, “Soviet socialist democracy is in no way contradictory to one-man rule and dictatorship, a dictator sometimes fulfills the will of the class.”

In communist rhetoric and semantics, Democracy is a very essential word. Communist nations are ‘people’s democratic republics.’ The communist party declares arrogantly that 98 percent or more of its people show up to vote, approving of the communist regime. Never mind that people were forced by fear of disloyalty charges to come to the precinct to vote and that there was only one candidate on the ballot, such candidate having been approved by the communist party and thus having no power to change anything.

Khrushchev had his own definition of democracy – he drew a parallel between “bourgeois democracy” and “people’s democracy.” In the people’s democracy, the electorate and their representatives are entirely beholden to the communist party leaders, the proletariat, peasants, and intellectuals. In the bourgeois democracy, he said, the representatives serve lawyers, bankers, consortiums, monopolies, members of boards, leading corporations, etc.

He said, “Bourgeois democracy is the democracy of the rich. Under it the popular masses are pushed aside from administration; the popular masses cannot take part in the discussion and decision of social and political questions concerning the people as a whole. Thousands of obstacles are raised before the working class of the capitalist countries in order to prevent any of the workers from getting into Parliament or Congress….” (Conquest Without War, 1961, p. 372)

According to socialists/communists the one-party state serves the interests of the proletariat best. (See the disaster that is California, a one-party state) Socialists believe that “Only in undemocratic countries do several parties exist.”

Lenin believed that “The state belongs to the sphere of coercion. It would be madness to renounce coercion, particularly in the epoch of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Stalin explained that under the dictatorship of the proletariat the bourgeoisie would have no universal freedom, no freedom of speech, press, assembly. The state would grant maximum of freedom to the “proletarian strata in town and country and deny even a minimum of freedom to the remnants of the bourgeoisie.”

The dictatorship of the proletariat was “the working-class leadership in the struggle to overthrow the power of capital, to win and consolidate people’s government and build a communist society.” (p. 377)

The Soviet Bolsheviks stated that “It was precisely socialist democracy that enabled the Soviet people to get rid of such ‘freedoms’ as the right to choose one’s exploiter or to be unemployed, the right to starve or to be a hired slave to capital.”

I do remember being extremely hungry under Ceausescu’s socialist democracy and standing in long food lines daily in order to avoid starvation. I am extremely glad that I can choose my employer under capitalism, that there is capital to start new businesses, and there are entrepreneurs with ideas, who know how to start a new enterprise that would hire employees to do the job necessary, not a communist community organizer who has never created anything useful in society except empty words and chaos.

The Bolsheviks described themselves as the defenders of the poor and of the downtrodden. It is how Socialist Democrats portray themselves today.

Alexis de Tocqueville said, “Despotism often presents itself as the repairer of all the ills suffered, the support of just rights, defender of the oppressed, and founder of order.” Millions of survivors of communism would agree with Tocqueville and 100 million of victims of communism validate his assessment.

When Hugo Chavez, the former socialist dictator of Venezuela, cracked down on protesters against his regime, George Ciccariello-Maher, then a professor at Drexel University, defended the state violence against its protesting people as “a radically democratic brutality and dictatorship of the wretched of the earth.”

Rand Paul wrote in his book, The Case Against Socialism, “Oh my… ‘egalitarian brutality’… ‘democratic brutality’ - so much for democratic elections restraining the excesses of socialism.” According to Paul, Ciccariello-Maher tweeted infamously, “All I want for Christmas is White Genocide” and doubled down on his outrageous statement with the explanation “when the whites were massacred during the Haitian revolution, that was a good thing.” (p. 13)

The rhetoric of Socialist Democracy promoted by Bernie Sanders and his pupil, AOC, is growing shriller on the socialist-dominated media’s talking points. It is a rhetoric inflated by ignorance and lack of historical knowledge. Sanders calls for a “higher path, a path of compassion, justice, and love.” He calls it democratic socialism. Is this justice delivered by black-clad Antifa thugs with baseball bats?

Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all of God’s children.” Democrats include in this redistribution of wealth scheme every illegal who walks across our borders, to the detriment of our own citizens, their children, and grandchildren.

Call it what you may, what Democrats and their ignorant followers want through democratic socialism is plain redistribution of wealth, stealing from those who earned it and giving it to those who did not, forced global equality through government theft - not just through excessive taxation but also through theft of private property.

Democrat socialists also want the erasure of our borders, the destruction of our sovereignty. The Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 provided the basis of the modern state system and of the concept of territorial sovereignty. The treaty brought an end to endless European wars between different factions and principalities.

As Tocqueville said, “Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom… The subjection of individuals will increase amongst democratic nations, not only in the same proportion as their equality, but in the same proportion as their ignorance.”

Note: If you research Athenian democracy on Wikipedia, you will find 48 different types of democracies – anticipatory, Athenian, authoritarian, cellular, consensus, cosmopolitan, defensive, deliberative, direct, economic, electronic, empowered, ethnic, grassroots, guided, inclusive, industrial, interactive, Jacksonian, liberal, illiberal, liquid, media, multiparty, new, non-partisan, participatory, people’s, pluralist, popular, radical, representative, religious, Buddhist, Christian, Islamic, Jewish, Mormon, sectarian, semi, semi-direct, social, socialist, sovereign, Soviet, substantive, totalitarian, and workplace.

What Is Amazon?

The ever-growing retail supremacy of Amazon has contributed to the closing of 9300 stores in the U.S. in 2019. Has it or is it just a coincidence of a larger problem? Is this behemoth a monopoly as many have argued and it thus must be broken into smaller entities?

"I think we're just in the middle of a major transition in the retail space. Traditional brick and mortar stores for the most part haven't learned how to compete," stated Nathan. Amazon is a major time saver, delivering stuff to customers door instead of using limited time to go shopping.  

People still use some local businesses for certain things and some avoid the national big box stores in favor of Amazon. They like Amazon's lower prices on many things and free delivery to the front door. Return policies are generous and return shipping is almost always free with convenient pre-printed postage paid label. But other online retailers do the same thing.

"Amazon's customer service is amazing and they've given some customers things for free rather than make them return it. So I reward them with my business and I think that's just fine. I'd be foolish not to do it. I understand the concerns that smaller companies are unable to compete but it's a problem that I don't want to be responsible for solving. I usually prefer to buy clothing at brick and mortar stores however because I like to try things on. And I don't have to fight traffic and weather," added Shannah.

Some have argued that Amazon is not a monopoly at all. 

There are two types of monopolies, pure and natural.

A pure monopoly is an industry in which there is only one supplier of a product for which there are no close substitutes and in which it is very difficult or impossible for another firm to coexist. Sources of maintenance of such a monopoly include legal restrictions (U.S. postal service has a monopoly because Congress has given it one; that is not to say that there are not other mail delivery companies but they are much more expensive), patents (most pharmaceutical companies have patents on their drugs so, until the patent expires, they control a specific drug they develop thus they are a monopolist in that sense), control of scarce resource or input (De Beers control the diamond market), deliberately erected entry barriers into the business (start expensive lawsuits on trumped-up charges or spending outrageous amounts on advertising that rivals cannot match), and large sunk costs (airplane producing companies like Boeing in the U.S. and Airbus in Europe).

A natural monopoly is an industry in which advantages of large-scale production make it possible for a single firm to produce the entire output of the market at lower average cost than a number of smaller firms, each producing a smaller quantity.

Which one of these does Amazon fit into? It supplies and ships goods, connecting suppliers with customers in a novel way that does not require huge personal inventories. But it is still a behemoth company that controls a large swath of the market. So, is it a monopoly? Is it becoming one? Will it eventually put out of business ALL the little guys?

Another interesting issue is that a monopolist engages in price discrimination - charging higher prices for the same goods to customers who are less resistant to price increases, or failing to charge higher prices to customers whom it costs more to serve. (one example is national health care)  
Price discrimination can sometimes be damaging to the public interest, but at other times it can be beneficial. Some firms cannot survive without it, and price discrimination may even reduce prices to ALL customers if there are substantial economies of scale. (Amazon is definitely an economy of scale).

More questions to ponder of other products and service providers:

- Is the software industry a natural monopoly?

- Are Facebook, Google, Twitter, YouTube monopolies?

Some have argued that they are and should be broken up, particularly the social platform ones that drive the information highway.

Last but not least, why do we have Anti-trust laws at the Justice Department and are they doing their job?

What will happen to customer choice for goods and delivery charges once Amazon is the only one left delivering goods and the shipping costs skyrocket? As it is now, Amazon hires the postal service for weekend deliveries.

Not withstanding the wide variety of goods provided, stellar service, free returns and rapid deliveries, does Amazon fall under monopoly, monopolistic competition, oligopoly, or perfect competition?