Keeping Democracy Alive 2024

Most left-leaning academia like Hedges are left-wing ideologists and hold the belief, that democracy of the free-market system and capitalism is dysfunctional and has no proper competition with reasonable rules, but what are his alternative suggestions for proper completion and reasonable rules that are required under his ideals and theories of spiritual enlightenment for a socialist utopian collective community based on wealth distribution?

On a pragmatic and philosophical ground, the important point is that the pursuit of happiness is on an individual basis, not a collective right, as my dreams are different from yours and someone else’s is completely different from both of ours.

For example, the political holy grail of progressive socialized liberalism and some feminists is that the government should control, and taxpayers should fund childcare, daycare and cradle-to-grave benefits. Others hold the opinion that it is not the children who require liberating from the family but perhaps the mother should be liberated from the child. It is not only the fathers who are supposed to guide their youth but the mothers, fathers and grandparents of their offspring who are directly responsible for the youth of today and their upbringing, not governments or political parties.

The responsibility for sheltering, raising, feeding, and clothing is the direct responsibility of those who decide to conceive or adopt a child. 

Government-run hand-out programs and mass social herding formulas for housing, rent, childcare and unsustainable subsidies or socialism/communism is not the answer as history has shown.

It is however a worldwide failure and has done nothing other than create ghettos of segregated warehouses of poor people living in misery.

For myself, I believe, any fair-minded individual would not dispute the political reality that today the core agenda of progressive domestic social liberalism relates to the support for a welfare state, abortion and the racial identity politics of multiculturalism-based redistribution of wealth through class warfare and the concept of open borders.

An unmanageable national debt aggravated by spending and borrowing for unsustainable entitlements and handouts has both caused and exacerbated the burden of an inequitable system of taxation whereby 10% of the US population pays 80% of all taxes and 43% of Americans account for 20% of paid federal taxes while 47% of the US population pay NO federal taxes?

Thus, the so-called wealthy in the US already pay the brunt of taxes while 47% pay no taxes. In Canada, 33.4% of citizens pay less than $2 in federal taxes. Therefore 66.6% of Canadians are subsidizing 33.4% of the population. A fair share, in Canada and the US, should mean that all citizens pay an equal amount of taxes as opposed to paying NO federal taxes at all.

Any mischief, based on an excessive desire to acquire and possess more than what one needs or even deserves especially for material wealth, did not originate from nor is it limited to that of the Wall Street or Bay Streets of the world. It all began with the greed of Union leaders as well as their members be it auto workers, teachers, hospital workers, government employees, political appointees’ etc. along with politicians; corporations and the shareholders of publicity traded companies. Such firms and organizations also represent companies in the resource development sector for green energy solutions and other special interest groups publicly traded around the globe.

Because of our now excessive and numerous government regulations and attempts to micromanage the free enterprise system through government controls and outright nationalizations of industries or corporations combined with excess wage, benefit and pension demands by all guilty parties’ businesses go to China, India, South America, and other countries around the world to find a less expensive workforce and less government.

Unfortunately, the leaders today, be they politicians or union leaders, seem far more concerned with raising political donations or union dues through new members for their re-elections and play fast and furious with our money for their success and prosperity at the expense of those who actual pay taxes or union dues.

It is not only individuals like Hughes who feel they are entitled to receive handouts from others or the wealthy.

It’s politicians, academia, artists, academics, students, bureaucrats, corporations, unions, special interest groups, it`s your neighbours and those that pay little or no federal income taxes all of whom fanatically believe they are entitled to their entitlements at other people’s expense.

This is not freedom or democracy but a resurgence of progressive totalitarian socialized liberalism. If anything, occupying pressure groups protesting the Wall Streets or Bay Streets of the world or individual achievements and wealth without any pronounced alternatives suggest anarchy. Perhaps as most academics preach, they wish for a return to Fascism, Maoism, Maoism, Communism or 21st-century totalitarian socialism.

History has documented for us all that unexpected power by revolutions throughout the world are prone to arrogance, disrespect, intrusive, and short-lived freedoms for the people at the expense of law and order, liberties and freedoms. For example, the French Revolution, given the benefit of history, "it's difficult to understand why anyone doubts the fascist nature of that revolution. It was totalitarian, terrorist, nationalist, conspiratorial and populist.

And it produced the first modern dictators, Robespierre, and Napoleon. The paranoid Jacobin mentality made the revolutionaries more savage and crueller than the king they replaced. Over fifty thousand people died in the terror of that revolution."

The Russian Revolution and its later day revolutionary leaders were responsible for the deaths of more than 40 MILLION people in the name of that revolution.

The Chinese Revolution under Mao saw over 65 MILLION people killed in the name of that revolution. The Cuban revolution saw close to 50 thousand kicked, tortured, and terrorized and thousands of political prisoners remain in jail for daring to speak up against Castro and his brother.

Unfortunately, today’s elected career politicians and bureaucrats within this new world consist mostly of blame passers who never take responsibility or come to grips with their refusal to stand up and be held accountable.

Money left in the hands of taxpayers is far more productive than putting it in the hands of career politicians, special interest groups and unelected bureaucrats.

Democracy yes, yet anarchy, class warfare and revolutions have been shown to destroy freedom; liberties and countries not build them.