On Nancy Pelosi...

These VIDEOS from a speech Pelosi gave to the United Steel Workers Union on Monday are very telling indeed, on a number of levels. I wanted to talk about this for a bit...

Even more than Obama, I think that Pelosi is a real, believing "socialist" with an agenda for America that is utterly antithetical to the founding principles of this nation. She hasn't ever (to my knowledge) come out and said as much... but her use of terms like "fairness" and "equity" and "disparity in income" are all key terms in the modern socialist lexicon, as can be seen by ANY general search of the phrase online.

Since I can't relate to the processes which brings someone to believe in what she obviously believes in, I'm not at all sure what her justification for this course is. Is it simply a tool to make sure that the largest percentage of the population is dependent on the government as possible, or is it a misguided (to be charitable) and misapplied ideal from her stary-eyed youth? Does she actually believe that the GOVERNMENT is the best judge as to the value of an individual's contribution to society? Does she actually believe that Marx was right, and that the value of a man's (or woman's) labor is something that can be actuated by Federal regulation and assigned the necessary compensation through arbitrary means and measures? Does she not understand that the phrase "That which is not earned, is not valued" has legitimate and substantial meaning in the human experience?

Whatever the reasoning is behind her socialist views of how America should function, nothing can change the facts. Socialism, as a basis for large societies, has never and will never work. It is utterly opposed to the very principles of human nature, primarily those that condition us (as human beings) to want to better the situations and surroundings for ourselves and our offspring. No example of a successful "socialist" system exists in recorded human history, while the principles of a liberal (classic-sense), free market society are seen in the most obvious manner within the storied history of this very nation.

The current Left-ist (politically "liberal" meaning) view that the US and its founding principles and guidelines... the US Constitution, in particular... are flawed or lacking is the single greatest failing in perception that these proponents can give us. The failures that our nation and its founders and past leaders had in living up to the standards and guidelines of the Constitution and the other founding documents is NOT proof of the failings of our system of government, but they are markers and milestones in the history of America's understanding and development as the world's greatest nation (and I mean that in the sense of economically, militarily, socially, and demographically). Our poorest citizens have access (without cost to themselves) to the best health care in the world, they have access to instant global communication through dozens of sources, first-class education, and almost unlimited opportunity to succeed in any career or endeavor they might wish to enter into.

The greatest difference between the poorest of the poor in America and those found anywhere else in the world is that past emphasis here in the US has always been that the onus for improving the situation of the individual was with the individual themselves... not with society as a whole. Charity and assistance in tough times has always come from other individuals or private organizations (primarily speaking, of course... government assistance has been available to the most indigent since 1848, in one form or another). No alternative example of government support or regulation of production/manufacturing or the compensation that goes with it exists in any sort of meaningful way. None whatsoever.

No better example of this exists than the multiple "5 Year Plans" implemented by Lenin and his successors in the former USSR over the entire course of its 70-year history. Socialism was incapable of meeting the demands of its own citizens (let alone exceed those demands, as Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev and Breshnev all promised) time and time again, so what did they do? They reverted to a very limited and highly regulated form of "free market" to allow things like farm and factory production to GROW, until such time as "socialism" could catch up to what the free market systems of the West were doing. This is EXACTLY what the Chinese Communists have done (without the 5 year limit) in their system, to facilitate the growth and (relative) prosperity that they have seen in the last 10 years. What the Chinese have done RIGHT is to figure out how to control and curtail the groundswell of "free thinking" that such freedoms bring with them. Gorbachev was NOT able to contain that groundswell, and the USSR dissolved as a result.

I'm not defending Chinese Communism here... it is just as doomed as the Soviet system, because it cannot deliver the promised "equality" of means and demand any better than the Soviets did. I'm simply saying that they managed to delay the inevitable far better than the Soviets did.

One more thing...

Anyone notice that Pelosi's biggest and most obvious speech in favor of "socialism" was given to the USW union? How telling is that?

When Reagan was elected, the steel industry was in a massive decline due to HUGE tariffs imposed by Japan and South Korea (our biggest export buyers) to protect their own steel production industries. Reagan implemented a 34% tariff of our own on ALL steel and steel-products coming from Japan and the Asian continent. This gave a HUGE kick-start to our own steel industry... until the trade war ended with free-trade agreements between all parties (something Reagan was hugely in favor of all along) and the flooding of American construction sites with cheaper Japanese and Korean steel. Beginning in 1983, the American steel industry began a slide that didn't end until the construction "boom" of the mid 90s, causing economic hardship in some of the country's most productive steel areas (Ohio, Michigan and Minnesota) and going a LONG way to making those states far more inclined to vote Democrat than they had ever previously been.

Is it any wonder that she gave her most "left-leaning" speech yet to those who would remember the GOP's favorite President with the least amount of fondness? Not for me...