Two Socialists

They were sisters and their parents had grown up during the Depression.  Their parents always said that any working-man that voted for a Republican had rocks in his head.  The girls attended church regularly and had a deep concern for the poor.  During the 1950’s and 60’s the girls followed the “Civil Rights” Movement with rapt attention and were happy when suddenly the “Civil Rights” legislation included women although they never noticed how the “sex” coverage was a last-minute ploy by Southern “Blue Dog” Democrats to kill the Civil Rights Bill (“why they’ll never vote for something that will put women in the Men’s bathrooms, ha-ha-ha”).

The girls married well and one moved to the country and the other to the city.  They both “opposed” the Vietnam War in which neither of their husbands served.  They were ambivalent about abortion when Roe v Wade legalized abortion so they avoided even thinking about it.  They cheered “saving” “Endangered Species” and “Marine Mammals” and were un-phased by the taking of property or the use of environmental and animal resources to abolish the use and management of these species.  They didn’t believe that the growing number of water management and power and transportation projects killed or demolished by all the environmental/animal “rights” lawsuits were significant because after all, America was always coming up with new things. 

During the 1970’s they accepted the notion that “guns were bad” and the 2^nd Amendment was “outdated”.  They looked to all those “Police Chiefs” that said so.  They never noticed the fact that those big city Police Chiefs were APPOINTEES of big city Mayors that got reelected by blaming guns for the violence in the cities that they were reluctant to control and that voters were relieved to find out was not “their” fault but the fault of Messrs. Remington, Ruger, Walther, et al.  The sisters were unable to grasp the fact that while the big city policemen were carrying guns 24/7 ostensibly because they were always “on duty”, the policemen and their unions had demanded that “right” to protect themselves and their families from the very criminals that were ravaging the rest of the community BEFORE the police could get there.

During the 1980’s the girls’ husbands were doing well financially so they began sending money to the gun control organizations.  They noticed all the hoopla about all the “Endangered” “Species”, “subspecies”, “races”, “populations”, “subpopulations”, “distinct populations”, “varieties”, and “distinct population segments” worldwide so they began sending money to environmental groups and thinking how “important” the UN or a world government was if we were to “save the planet” or “stop the flow of guns”.  The gun control organizations and their environmental counterparts began sending the girls literature that was designed to get more donations and to cause donors with “deep pockets” to begin contributing to their silent-partner, the animal “rights” organizations.

The animal “rights” literature denigrated trappers, the management of wild animals, and the use of furs.  Poultry farmers were denigrated as were slaughterhouses.  The rights of individual American horse owners to sell their own horse to be used for dog food or for human consumption in other countries were slated for abolishment as were the rights of gamefowl owners to “fight their chickens” (i.e. hold cockfights where local communities agreed) as their families had for centuries and as men and women have done for millenniums. The dangers of eating meat were equated to the “inhumanity” (interesting word to use in this context) of hunting and fishing.  Mixed in with the occasional article about how Europeans were “abolishing bull fighting” as well as gun ownership and how this was “enlightened” and “modern” were turgid stories and pictures of medical experiments using animals.  The girls talked about this incessantly with their friends and sent more money.  They cheered when they were told that the public schools were telling the kids all about the danger of guns and the absolute necessity of doing “more” about “Endangered Species” and animal “Welfare” (i.e. the euphemism for animal “rights” and or the abolishment of animal “ownership”).

During the 1990’s the girls’ husbands died and left them well off.  They kept up their donating to their “causes” and spreading the “word” about guns and animals and the environment to anyone that would listen.  Then they cheered as a President and US Congress that are arguably the most Socialist-oriented ever to be elected took control of the federal government in 2009.  I say “Socialist” because just like the German “National Socialists” of the 1930’s and early 1940’s they advocate “taking over” all aspects of daily life and private enterprise, taking away all guns, and building lots of “infrastructure” and “providing jobs” to “stimulate” a failing economy.  The only major difference is that those German Socialists made no bones about conquering everyone else too and these American Socialists are apologizing everywhere (Mexico, Russia, et al) and bowing to foreign despots (abandoning Polish missile sites at Russia’s insistence; cooling help to Colombia to curry Chavez, Castro, and Morales; and acquiescing to Iranian nuclear missile development at the expense of Israel and the Mideast).

So the anti-gun Attorney General went about laying the groundwork to void the 2^nd Amendment in spite of his boss’s (the President) insistence that he was “not for gun control”.  The Secretary of State told the Mexican government how “American guns” were the cause of Mexican unrest and the hapless lady with a long record of coddling criminals and illegal aliens and now heading up Homeland “Security” took “Security” personnel from “Security” enforcement and put them to work looking (to no avail) for guns LEAVING the US.  Incidentally these two ladies’ (Secretary’s of State and Homeland “Security”) pandering here was only meant to surreptitiously reinforce the Attorney General and President’s gun control argument for abolishment of the 2^nd Amendment.

The animal “rights”, “environmental”, and gun control Socialists appointed by the President joined their counterpart Socialists in the US Congress, Congressional staffs, and the federal bureaucracy to write and pass laws that seized guns; stopped all workable and affordable energy development; abolished private property, animal ownership, and private enterprise; and gave the federal government control of everything from where homes could be built to what kinds of cars would be allowed, what we ate, and what children could and could not be told.  In short, the sisters watched the death of the American Constitutional Republic and its replacement by a Socialist Oligarchy.

As the sisters aged, they began to question the advice of their parents long ago about voting for Republicans.  This was not in the sense of political parties but in the sense of having supported both Democrats and Republicans over the years that advocated either a fast or slow track to more power to the central government at the direct expense of individual freedoms, States’ Rights, and all those “guarantees” in the Constitution.  They slowly came to understand how their blind faith in their parent’s best (but flawed) advice about federal intervention was hatched by the “heroic” images of the likes of Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt “doing good” in times of stress and how that model (US federal hegemony) grew to be a dragon that consumed all else.  What they came to understand, albeit too late for themselves, was the lesson of history that befell every successful society.  Where despotism is not constantly resisted; despotism will overtake and then destroy that which it rules.

The country sister began to notice neighbors being concerned about wolves in the area.  One night her dog disappeared after she heard wolves and then her dog howling in pain.  About that time the “Critical Habitat” area nearby that she had supported had been placed in the National Forest and then made a “Roadless Area” and recently a “Wilderness”.  This had closed two roads into her home and the third one was no longer well maintained as County revenue had all but disappeared.  When she put up her home for sale, there were no buyers since access was deteriorating and a child had recently been killed by wolves at a nearby school bus stop and what with guns being outlawed, rural residences in such areas were no longer in demand.  Simultaneously, birds at her bird feeders had all but disappeared since the wind turbine farm had been put in North of her home.  Energy prices had gone up and up: electricity bills had soared as “green” sources of power replaced dams and coal and natural gas power plants. Her children and grandchildren visited less and less as gasoline prices soared and fears of wolves as a danger to adults as well as children kept them away.  One night two drunken men broke down her door and beat her and then stole everything of value.  It was two and a half hours before a Deputy answered her phone call for help.  She later found out that not only was the number of County Deputies reduced because of loss of revenue since the federal government bought most of the County: the only other Deputy had been arrested for possession of animal traps (from the days when he trapped) and for telling his sons about cockfighting and how he and his grandparents back to before the Revolutionary War had proudly raised and fought gamefowl for generations.  The Deputy was being charged with felonies and was expected to be sentenced to prison.  The sister had a broken hip from the robbery and was told by the newly Socialized Medicine bureaucrat/doctor that she could not get a replacement because it was too costly for “people over 75”.  The Syrian doctor (that was educated in Islamabad) said that anyway, the only specialist left that does such operations was in Miami and the waiting list was 19 months.  So she abandoned her home (it was eventually seized for failure to pay taxes and then turned over to the federal government through a Nature Conservancy realtor) as a “valuable addition to the “Eastern Foothills Pink-Petalled Primrose Critical Habitat Biome and Native Ecosystem Restoration Project”.  Then she moved in with her urban sister.

Soon after moving in with her sister, she mentioned one evening about how she had read that burgeoning whale and seal populations had all but taken over the ocean fisheries and the spawning salmon streams, how non-“farmed” seafood had all but disappeared while “farmed” seafood prices had soared due to environmental demands and animal “rights” objections to killing methods, and how no one would have believed that possible just a few short years ago.  When she mentioned how that “protection” had all been done initially to save “baby” seals, she noticed her sister start to cry.  The urban sister explained that she had recently found out that her two daughters had aborted 5 children between them.  As her sister gasped, she explained how she never thought that her family would lose grandchildren or nieces and nephews back when they ignored the Roe v Wade decision by the Supreme Court.  Then she explained how her eldest daughter’s infection and death in the hospital had been due to resistant bacteria and the failure of “medical science” to develop new resistant forms since animal experiments had been outlawed.  This led the discussion to the fact that the heating and electricity bills had skyrocketed in the city since they had closed the coal-powered plant and put in mirrors and turbines that only operated sporadically and generated too little power while making power prohibitively expensive to use for cooling or more than one light.  Both sisters bemoaned the lack of visits by their children and grandchildren between the cost of trains, planes, and automobiles.  They laid some of the blame on government-mandated salaries that had greatly reduced the money the kids had to visit anyway.  They shared their fear of medical problems that the Socialized Medicine would no longer cover because of their age and then talked about how crime in the city had skyrocketed since guns had been collected and so many people were moving in from the countryside anymore.  They both talked of how they missed the dog that the wolves had taken and the cat that lived in the apartment with the urban sister until the new animal pet laws made it impossible to keep or own any animals.

As the oldest sister checked the three deadbolts on the door and the younger sister checked the window deadbolts on the two windows they turned toward each other and asked who would have guessed that they would end their lives living like this?  As they shook their heads, the oldest one asked how they ever came to have supported all this Socialism that had replaced the Republic they had grown up in?  Had they grown up to be Socialists?  The youngest one reminded her sister how their parents had always advised them to support the federal government growth and activism they were grateful to FDR for providing during the Depression.  The eldest sister thought a moment and said, “No, we can’t blame them”.  “We should have been more active as adults in protecting the freedoms we had.  We should have fought for everyone’s rights when government destroyed one group after another and no one fought for the traditions and freedoms of others unless it affected them directly. We let government take everything from us with the promise that they would take care of us and we should have known better.  Dad had it right when he used to say, ‘the road to Hell is paved with good intentions’”.

Jim Beers

26 March 2009