This is a response to a Dec. 7 letter to the editor, “Is America a socialist country?”
Now maybe certain laws or programs are socialistic, but we are not socialist nation … not yet anyway.
Socialism, according to Webster’s, is “Any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods. Or, a system of society or group living in which there is no private property.”
Attempts to destroy our private-property rights in society are in part the cause of our current economic malaise.
But you cannot pretend to be free and have civil rights without economic rights.
To quote Leon Trotsky, a leading socialist and revolutionary: “In a country where the sole employer is the state, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.”
Trotsky just told you all you need to know about socialism, but Margaret Thatcher also said: “The problem with socialism is that eventually, you run out of other people’s money [to spend].”
Any so-called third way between socialism and capitalism leads to fascism, aka crony capitalism that the Occupy movement claims to oppose.
It’s no accident President Obama is the largest recipient of Wall Street campaign money or that Obama is the head of union campaign contributions that bought us the taxpayer-enhanced auto-company bailout.
Or how about the recently disclosed $7.7 trillion – yes, trillions — of loans made by the Federal Reserve?
Not even Congress was even aware of how much or who got the loot, err loans. How can Congress re-regulate the financial industry with the Dodd-Frank Bill when even they don’t know?
It’s long past the time for grown-up leadership to return to Washington and remove government from autopilot, and to make hard, painful choices to save the republic.
Time grows short.
Bruno DiStefano
Medford Lakes
