Socialism and a Sneak Preview

In a week's time, my wife and I are going on holiday to the States. We're doing a west coast Route 101 driving holiday -- actually, we're doing a 3500-mile loop starting from San Francisco, to Vegas, up to Salt Lake City, over and up to Seattle, and then down the west coast on Route 101, terminating back at San Francisco. Not nearly as epic as Tom Paine's cross-country US Tour road trip of a lifetime, but for us it'll do nicely.  To be fair, my wife is nearly peeing her pants with excitement.*  I'm pretending to be calm and aloof about the whole thing. Because the handbook for men says you have to be stoic and cool outwardly. Inwardly, you can jump up and down like a schoolgirl who just got her first pony.

(*This is my wife's dream trip -- something she has wanted to do since her early twenties. Twenty years later, with a few modifications to the itinerary at my request (Vegas, for instance), she's doing it. She has graciously allowed me to join her.)

So we're going away for two-and-half weeks, returning back to ol' Blighty in the first week of July. Instead of not blogging during that period, I will schedule some special blog posts for pretty much every day that I'm away. And I want to give you a sneak preview of what is to come. 

First, some background.  Last weekend, when visiting some friends in a nearby town, we stopped in small shop selling antiques and other items.  I went merely eight steps past the threshold and saw a stack of old magazines from the 40s and 50s practically hidden in a cubby-hole at foot level. Idly, whilst my wife nosed about the shop with her friend, I picked up a magazine from the top of the pile and gently thumbed through it.

A curious thing happened. I suddenly wanted these magazines. I'm not a collector of anything. I mean, sure, I've got stuff that I've bought over the years -- primarily musical equipment that I'm simply unable to part with. But old magazines? Collecting things like these never would have occurred to me. Until I began to read them.

And they are awesome. They are, for me, enormously valuable insights to a time well before my years and experiences. I was born in 1971. My knowledge of the 40s and 50s is, at best, limited to old films and music from that time. Sure, I know my history, I know what happened during those years, generally speaking. But as I picked up another magazine, I realised that these magazines were glimpses of a time in Britain when people were not trying to control every aspect of your life. Just the opposite, actually. It was a time for freedom, a time to fight against tyranny and a time to be proud to British. Not only British, but proud to be any of the western nations who believed in freedom and liberty.

All at once I realised that I was both overjoyed and incredibly sad.  So much has changed in such a short period of time.  The freedoms and liberties our families had fought for, won, and enjoyed back then have slipped away because Britain and America have slowly become more socialist and controlling countries -- not that far removed from Germany in the 30s and 40s in my opinion.  Although it is more subtle now than it was then, and it's more gradual, socialism exists in spades in our academic and political institutions. And I cannot help but think:

People never learn from history

I'm not going to write that we are doomed to repeat history. We may be; we may not be.  But the truth is we simply fail to remember history and use it as guidance for the present and future. Probably because we don't know the past personally, or don't remember what it was like since time has a funny way of distorting our memories. Maybe that's how we're designed. I don't know. And I'm not saying that we should all go back to a time when things were "quaint" and "simple." Not at all. What I'm saying is that we need to remember that socialism is and always has been evil -- because it's solely about control. It's about forcing everyone to conform to an impossible ideal; to make everybody behave and think the same. This is entirely against human nature, regardless of how much some people believe it is not. We are all individuals, with different experiences and dreams and hopes and beliefs.  The only way to make everybody the same is to crush those dreams and hopes and beliefs, to transform you into a "citizen" -- an automaton incapable of free thought.  That ... is socialism.  

And all of the public health movement is unabashedly socialist. All of them. They believe they have the right to force you to conform to their beliefs -- even when they don't live by their own beliefs, they still feel that you should do precisely what you're told to do.  Typical hypocrisy for people of that ilk.

But you should never let anyone force you to do something or change you against your will. You should fight such influences with every last ounce of energy you have.  

Most people -- the vast majority of people -- won't fight, however, until they are backed into a corner so far that it's almost impossible to escape the inevitable loss of freedom and liberty.  Because most people expect others to do the fighting for them. That's also human nature. Why risk yourself when others might put themselves at risk first?  So it seems prudent and easier to sit back and wait. That's a mistake. Because when nobody stands up to fight, then it's too late. Then you find yourself forced to fight an uphill battle, and there's an excellent chance that the things you need to use for the fight were taken away or surrendered long before then.

Public Health and our current mainstream press are both the greatest enemies to freedom and liberty in our modern times. I don't say that lightly. I truly believe this to be true. Dictators can be overthrown eventually, but how do you overthrow an insidious, evil, people-control movement from within our own societies? How do you convince the mainstream press to stop propagandising on behalf of the socialists? How do you prevent these people -- who truly believe that they are justified in taking away anything you hold dear in order to save you from yourself -- from infecting our youth with their brand of hateful, socialist ideas?

How indeed?

You tell me. How much longer are we going to tolerate it? When it gets so bad that there is nothing at all left for us to lose? Or will we wake up and remember what happened with the socialist movement 80-something years ago, how it came to be, and why people chose not to act until things had already got out of control? Do we really want to repeat history all over again?

So I want to give you a sneak preview of what's coming whilst I'm away on holiday. I'll start with this:

WHAT WE ARE FIGHTING FOR
Picture Post, 13 July 1940
Click image to enlargify

You can probably see where this will be going.

Remember:  It should always be "Freedom To Do Something" -- never "Freedom From Something."  Socialism falls under the latter category -- and most if not all of you know that the term Nazi is short for National Socialist (or in full: National Socialist German Workers' party).  We all know how well that worked out. Don't we? We don't need socialism -- we don't want socialism. It will cause unnecessary divisions in our societies and already has done so; socialism will cause wars; it will destroy civilisation; it will be the end of freedom, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Public health and our press are attempting this right now by slow degrees of control and propaganda. We have to find a way to stop this socialist movement before it goes too far. Before it's too late to stop it.

[A much higher resolution of the above image can be retrieved here.]