Wouldn’t Ziggy Freud have a ball inside Jane Fonda’s head with this one. Jane was never quite sure who her father was; Henry, or Tom Joad. Now she has a chance to be Tom Joad’s mother if she is cast as Ma Joad in a remake of The Grapes of Wrath:
Before moving on let me remind you of Hanoi Jane’s political philosophy:
Those beliefs coming from an average American give new meaning to stupidity. Coming from a mind diseased by a lifetime of Hollywood fantasies is a testament to gullibility.
The Grapes of Wrath
This scene is the heart and soul of the movie:
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7JEYHczRar8]Who Do We Shoot? - YouTube[/ame]
Muley is willing to die for a piece of land he does not own. Put that scene in perspective with this:
That definition is attributed to Karl Marx (1818 – 1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820 – 1895). Presumably Jane Fonda agrees.
Here’s the Socialist dilemma. How can Communists fight for the common man when they want to abolish private property? Answer: They can’t.
Private property is more than owning a farm. Real property includes owning your home. So when Communists abolish private property they must abolish home ownership. They have been doing that very thing with property taxes.
American Communists did a lot to transfer family-owned farms to corporate farms because of the enormous farm subsidies involved. In other words tenant farmer Muley was no different than the people who work on corporate farms today. He worked the land he did not own. Steinbeck’s novel and the movie were about social injustice —— not absolute real property Rights —— as Tom Joad’s dialogue in the video shows:
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zNfpLJV6dw&feature=player_embedded]The Grapes of Wrath - YouTube[/ame]
Clearly, Tom Joad is referring to farmers only. There is not a chance he meant tens of millions of homeowners could grow their own food.
And you can bet your butt that today’s Socialists/Communists don’t want anybody standing up to the government. The IRS scandal proves my point.
Parenthetically, Robin Hood stood up for the common man by stealing from the TAX COLLECTOR. I’d like to hear Tom Joad in the remake give a heartfelt speech suggesting he is going to do the same thing.
Background
I used to believe that the American people would someday take an important step on the evolutionary road to individual liberty; that is to say freedom from oppressive government through limited representative government. I hoped it would happen in my lifetime whatever that advance turned out to be. I now believe that instead of moving forward we are going backwards. If not going in reverse, it is at least fair to say that Americans are so locked into the evil ways of past governments they can’t move forward. The US, and the world, have been advancing technologically since this country was founded, but it has not taken one important step forward in the field of government and private sector intercourse since the Bill of Rights was ratified.
Just look at how communism/socialism is a return to the past through taxation. A look at the basic structure of past governments will clarify that statement; not only concerning America’s ancestral European governments, but all governments going back to the dawn of civilization.
In every country since the beginning of countries, the common man was only permitted to own land under very unusual circumstances. Such occurrences were rare. The landlords owned the land and taxed the tenants they forced to work the land. The governing aristocracy supported the sovereign no matter which title was used: pharaoh, king, emperor, czar, sultan, etc. (Add president to the list if you’re a kill-joy.)
A sovereign is only one person; the landlords are many; so they have always been the primary beneficiaries of taxation. A landlord is defined as anyone who lives on taxes, but is not actually an essential ingredient in necessary government. The most common image of landlords is one of private sector individuals who earn income from apartment rentals. In truth, such landlords are actually functioning as government tax collectors when they pay their commercial taxes after collecting them from their tenants in the first place.
So as not to be thought of as tax collectors, government landlords in bygone societies decided they would like a few titles, too; so they were given lesser titles just to show the world they were not cold-hearted money-grubbers: duke, baron, mandarin, and so on. The guys who sucked up to the boss by actually going out and collecting the taxes by beating the peasants over the head took the rap. Taking the rap didn’t involve jail time; although it should have in most cases.
In the distant past, taking the hit for collecting taxes only meant that you were not a very nice person. Contemporary public trough parasites, without benefit of titles, not only want the government to support them in the time-honored way, they want to be loved as well. (Now that’s carrying chutzpah a little too far for my tastes.)
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels meant to abolish private property through taxation when they first preached their gospel, but the application of their religion has resulted in tax servitude benefitting the very type of person they preached against. Private property Rights still do not exist in absolute form for private sector homeowners, and the landlords are as fat and sassy as ever they were throughout mankind’s history. Nothing has really changed for the better insofar as government goes. There are still tax collectors. Worse still, Socialists are imposing the tax collector’s morality on everyone.
There is still an aristocracy living on taxes, and the private sector working man is still a tenant farmer required to pay the land barons for the privilege of keeping a roof over his head.
Obviously, the creation of absolute private property Rights is the best way for the private sector homeowner to break from the past as well as breaking communism’s back in this country, but I don’t realistically expect to see it happen anytime soon. And in the topsy-turvy world of government, it is Socialists/Communists who still preach class envy to the private sector at every turn, when it is they who should now be identified as the hated tax dollar class. My, my, how the wheel does come around.
Civilized man seems unable to break away from ancient government crimes perpetuated by the same personalty type century after century. There have been struggles against government parasites all through history, but educated men and women never take the step that will permanently arrest the growth and power of government over the very people who are forced to support the tax dollar class. No matter how well-intentioned a government is at birth, the loophole is never closed that allows private property taxation. That failure always leads to government abusing working people. Government abuse is equally destructive to individual liberties when it is administered by a totalitarian jackboot, or enforced by totalitarian tax dollar funded compassion.
The concept of government is eternal, but mortal governments are born, grow old, and finally die because they all live the same way. It is the enduring marriage between brutal oppressors and champions of the people that gives birth to the same old government villainy time after time. It’s difficult to separate the two. It’s easy to see that everyone suffers under both because champions of the people always become jackbooted tyrants, and so we begin again.
Too many people believe government is responsible for improving life in much of the world? If that were true why have so many governments come and gone since the beginning of time? If just one of those governments had gotten it right the people in every country would have imitated it.
Or perhaps too many people are simply afraid to set out on an uncharted course. And so we continue on the same course; even to the point of creating a global government fashioned after all of mankind’s proven failures. A supreme one government world will not commit itself to individual liberties strengthened by absolute private property Rights no matter what global village advocates now say. Governments possess awesome institutional power. That power is inevitably used to enslave in one form or another. That fact alone should warn decent-people away from even more government no matter what promises are being made.
Clarification: My use of decent-people as a compound word should not be taken as a moral judgement. It is simply a way to identify individuals who do not want to control anyone’s life and resources except their own.
Considering the threats of violence the intelligentsia, along with their Communist/Socialist cheerleaders, were spouting in the nineteen-thirties, it’s plain to see why the landlords want to disarm the American private sector now that the shoe is on the other foot. Now, all these years later, Socialist/Communist government promoting corporate-owned farms and excessive taxation became the Shawnee Land & Cattle Company as far as the family farmer and American homeowners are concerned. The fear of poetic justice coming into play should Muley ever figure out who to shoot has Socialists/Communists in a panic.
My solution
Neither tax collector nor trail lawyer nor the courts — and even creditors once the prospective homeowner becomes the deed holder of record —— should have the legal authority to confiscate a primary residence. We now live in the year 2013, so it's time the Constitution protected homeownership from nineteenth century socialism's goal of destroying private property. Every home should be a secure castle surrounded by a constitutional moat.
NOTE: Individual debt will plummet as homeowners payoff their mortgages in order to access the constitutional protection against confiscation that I am suggesting. Every well-respected liberal and conservative economist acknowledges that less personal debt is a good thing for the country. Moneylenders will automatically curtail their usury once they know there is no real estate to confiscate through the courts.
Americans never stopped struggling to hold onto the Rights they were given when this country was founded; so shooting for a new Right for a change will be a unique experience for the private sector citizen. The legislative battle that is sure to take place will at least separate Socialists from decent-people.
I know that property taxes are not federal, yet candidates for federal office sweat bullets at the thought of turning the teachers' unions against them. Why should that be? Property taxes are levied by each state or local community; so anyone running for federal office should not be afraid of the teachers' unions. But they are because local property taxes pay teachers' salaries and fund lucrative pension plans. The members of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the NEA do not want anyone holding federal office they don't approve of. Teachers want federal legislators in office who are indebted to teachers so that state legislators can be overruled should they do anything foolish —— like shutting down the Department of Education.
I well-realize that most rank & file teachers are probably not Socialists, but the political clout of the teaching profession is clearly oriented towards totalitarian government as designed by the social engineers controlling the NEA, the Dept of Education, and the AFT.
Homeownership used to be the American Dream in my youth because it freed families from the clutches of the hated landlord. Property taxes were very low on a single family residence in those days and everyone believed that no matter how tough things became they could always beg, borrow, or steal enough money to keep from being put out in the street by the tax collector. A few even believed they could pull a Scarlett O'Hara and whip up a dress out of some old drapes in order to save the old homestead. (Scarlett would go bare-assed today because they would confiscate the drapes first.)
No one that I knew in my youth ever gave a damn about freedom of the press or religion or speech for that matter. Americans with good sense know that those freedoms mostly benefit the government class and the hierarchies of organized religion anyway.
One does not need the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval to believe in God. Freedom of religion has become a joke because it no longer includes freedom from religion; that is to say freedom from the Socialist religion.
Freedom of the press is meaningless unless you own a printing press.
Constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech implies that you can't speak unless the government gives you permission to do so. Politically correct speech proves that.
It was owning your own home in pre-Socialist America that people understood and cared about. Nowadays slum lords are still at the throats of the poor. In addition, we have the teachers' unions who are the new government landlords to the American homeowner. It is one thing for teachers to organize unions in a private sector, private school, environment, but it is quite another matter for teachers to promote socialism, or any other religious/political philosophy, while feeding at the public trough. The very fact that teachers demand lifetime tenure at the trough speaks volumes in favor of socialism from their point of view.
Teachers' unions are not the only problem. Socialism should be dismantled wherever it has taken root; the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in particular. We have been told for as long as I can remember that if a criminal is not given a fair trial we all lose our Rights, but have you ever seen that same principle applied to timber farmers, mine owners, and ranchers when their property Rights are diminished or taken away by the EPA? If their Rights are taken away, it must follow that my Rights are also lost.
The education system has convinced idiots that the EPA will "save the environment," no small thing even for Socialists, but it is the average American homeowner with a home on a quarter of an acre of land in the burbs who will finish far worse off than a rancher or mine owner or timber farmer before Socialists and the EPA are through abolishing private property.
The same thing that the EPA is doing to property Rights every day happened when the personal income tax was first being sold as a cure-all for society's ills . The public was told that the income tax would nail rich crooks. After Al Capone was nailed, it ended up hammering everyone except crooks. Al Capone was the best poster child that ever posed for the IRS because his conviction on tax fraud made the personal income tax more palatable to the American public.
Socialists/Communists still promote socialism as though it is a revelation from God. They cleverly preach against the private sector individual having any property Rights by disguising their objectives behind legal beards of one kind or another because that pesky Constitution keeps getting in the way, but it is the average American homeowner their hatred is aimed at —— not the robber barons of old.
And isn't it aggravating knowing that contemporary American Fabians thrive when freedoms and real property are available to take away from private sector individuals?
Finally, should Hollywood do a remake of The Grapes of Wrath listen for one sentence that calls for constitutionally protected real property Rights. I guarantee you won’t hear it. Huge Hollywood subsidies rely upon pleasing the very people who would abolish private property.
Last edited:
