The political spectrum should be a circle, not a line

Figure 1

People have traditionally looked at ideology on a straight line. It goes something like this (see figure 1).

In the center of the ideological line you have centrist or moderates. You have moderate democrats or moderate republicans. You have the modern media.

To the right of that are establishment republicans, conservatives, libertarians, monarchists, Theocracy, and then fascists. People on the right are considered right wing. Fascists, Nazism, and  Hitler are considered far right. To the left you have establishment democrats, liberals, socialists, and communists. People on the left are considered left wing, with socialists being far left.

Yet this is the wrong way of looking at it, because it makes it look like radical, dictator thugs like Hitler are right wingers. So many times you hear liberals refer to Hitler as a right winger. You hear them talking about guys like Saddam Hussein as a right winger. Many Jewish people say they don't like conservatism because Hitler was a radical right winger, and conservatism is right wing.

If you make diagram the political spectrum as a circle it solves this problem (see figure 2). At some point on these circles everybody meets. At the top of the circle the fringes of both right and left meet, and this is where you Socialists like Stalin and Fascists like Hitler. Mussolini also fits in this area, and so too might Hussein. This is where you have the cook fringe people, the totalitarian dictators who abdicate liberties for the good of the state.

Nazism is an extreme left wing ideology. It is national socialism. His desire was for national healthcare, He wanted to expand government to bring everyone under his control. He was a socialist. He was a radical leftist. This is how he mesmerized people, and got them to support his radical agenda. He told everybody that he was going to solve all their problems. He said he would give them everything for free.

Yet then when they voted for him, the in essence gave up their liberties in exchange. No longer could they make decisions on their own. He, in essence, controlled the people. He then decided to cross over to the other extreme, and took it upon himself to kill Jews. This was fascism, and this was far right. It was Hitler deciding who was fit to live and who wasn't. But it's not really far right, it's a form of government right next to national socialism.

Most people ignore the fact that Hitler's ideology was far left and focus on the fact that he killed Jews, and therefore was far right. But if you diagram the ideological spectrum as a circle, they are one and the same, at the top of the circle. So Hitler cannot be labeled as conservative. He was not far right. He was lunatic.

So many times we listened as liberals called George Bush Hitler-like. This is because they were ignoring the fact he was a far left wing national socialist and were focusing on the fact he was a far right wing fascist. But if you diagram the political spectrum as a circle, you can see that George Bush was not anything close to what Hitler was. Actually, you could probably make the argument that Obama is closer to Hitler than Bush or conservatives.

Ahmadinejad was often described as a conservative, but that's because those doing the describing were looking at a straight line. Once you draw the circle and put it in real perspective, Ahmadinejad is on the lunatic fringe of both sides.

What is Communism?

Americans have traditionally viewed Communism as the antithesis of upward expansion and liberty. Liberals, on the other hand, believe the basic tenets of Communism will work if the right people are put in charge of it with a sufficient amount of money. So what is the reality of Communism?
Let's start with a quote from Chris Cuomo.  His is the son of the former liberal governor of New York, Mario Cuomo.  He traveled with Obama to Cuba as Obama became the first sitting U.S. President to visit Cuba since Calvin Coolidge did it in January of 1928.

Alisyn Cameroto asked Chris: "Hey, Chris, we can't help but notice your culturally appropriate garb that you're wearing. Tell us the history of your shirt."

Mario said: 

"My guayabera? This shirt belonged to my father. It was given to him by Fidel Castro. It marked conversations going on decades ago that were the same as those today. The concern was the freedom of the people. What is the point of this communist regime if it is not to truly make everyone equal, not at the lowest level, not by demoralizing everyone, but lifting everyone up. My father, generations of politicians have been fighting this. So I wear this shirt as a reminder of that."

Obama coddling Raul Castro, a totalitarian, dictator thug.
Castro called for an end to the Embargo,
and Obama asked Congress to end it.
Castro blames poverty in Cuba on the Embargo,
not on the failures of Communism.
We are the only country that doesn't trade with Cuba,
still, our embargo is blamed for their failures.
And liberals believe this stuff. 

So, what does this mean? It means that Cuomo has a positive view of Communism. What he said is probably representative of the liberal view of Communism. It makes sense, as liberals often speak glowingly of the Soviet Union system, and opposed Ronald Reagan in his efforts to stop it. They often speak glowingly of Castro, despite the Cuban embargo signed by Democrat John F. Kennedy on Feb. 3, 1962.

Obama even called on Congress to end the Embargo. claiming that normalization "is a long journey." The embargo was intended to be in effect until Cuba reduced its alignment with Communist powers. Obama began the journey to normalize relations a year ago, and he promised not to visit Cuba until freedom and liberty had been was improved on the island. Yet none of these stipulations have been met by Cuba, nor are there any signs that they will be met.

So it appears that liberals must indeed believe that Communism can elevate people up out of poverty, and that Communism is about freedom and liberty. Obama must already believe this about Cuba, otherwise he wouldn't have gone gone to Cuba.

They hold out hope that if only the right people were in charge of it with a sufficient amount of money that it would work.

To understand this you have to understand where liberalism and Communism come from. I described it in my post "What is Fascism?"  Here is a snippet of what I wrote:

"Fascism, commonly known as Marxism, is a form of government whereby the state is worshiped as a religion, and experts in the state make rules that attempt to prevent many of the flaws of men. The police-state then enforces these laws, and the end result is an ideal world or euphoric world where everyone has a job with equal pay, and everyone has health care, and there is world peace. Fascism is a movement that began around the turn of the 20th century, and it grew roots in nearly every western nations. What form it took depended on what country it was formed in."

Early forms of it entailed progressivism in the United States, Communism in the Russian Soviet Union, Socialism in Italy, and Nazism in Germany. Modern versions of it are European Socialism and Liberalism. Modern liberals even refer to themselves as progressives, or as Democratic Socialists.

It makes sense that modern liberals would deny any link to Carl Marx, as Hitler's version of it, and Stalin's version of it, and Mussolini's version of it soured the image of Marxism. It therefore has traditionally been viewed as anti-American, anti-Capitalism, anti-Freedom, and anti-Liberty. It was viewed as a form of government the traps people in poverty and only allows upward expansion for those running the government.

It was viewed as a form of government that forced people to conform to policies established by government. Those who spoke out against it were prosecuted, imprisoned, or even executed. It was a form of government that caused many to want to escape, and to prevent this walls were built, such as the Berlin wall in Germany.

Because they are all of the same ilk, liberals held out hope that Communism was the best hope for sameness, equality, and equality of outcomes. They believed that because Communism was initiated in nations that were not burdened by the U.S. Constitution, and therefore they hoped to see it prosper; held out hope that it would.

They tell kids in schools that it's about individual freedom, economic prosperity. They tell them that everyone will enjoy it, because everyone is doing their best. They sell it as everyone is being the same, with the same opportunities and the same outcomes. They sell it as nobody losing, no competition, and total freedom.  They tell kids that they can do whatever they want and the state will make sure that everybody ends up with a lot.

They tell kids that Communism is how you get to utopia. Utopia is where everybody is happy. It's Heaven on Earth. It's where everybody gets what they want. It's where there is no crime because everybody is happy. It's where there is no terrorism and no wars because everybody is happy.

What kid wouldn't want that?

So the best way to get kids to see Communism for what it truly is is to teach the truth about it. Show them that, once people learn what Communism is, they have to build walls to keep people in. Many people have defected Cuba to the United States, and the reason is because they hate it. People are put in jails and executed for opposing it. So they are forced to conform.

And forcing people to conform means forcing them to abdicate their freedoms and liberties. It means forcing them to give up their Bibles and their rifles. It means forcing them into public schools that are completely run, and completely controlled, by the elite. You cannot be free if you are forced to be the same as everyone else. And you will not be happy. And you will not be rich. And you will definitely not be elevated.

They say their ideas will lift people, elevate them out of poverty. But there is nothing in socialism, nothing in liberalism, nothing in Communism, nothing in ISIS, nothing in dictatorships, nothing in monarchies, that will elevate people. You cannot be elevated if everyone is the same. In order to be elevated, you need people to be unique, which they are. When people are allowed to be unique, that's where you get ideas from that help to elevate people. You don't get that from sameness.

This system on its face fails because it assumes everyone is the same and can be the same and can be treated the same. It assumes every outcome can be equal. It assumes the every person in a country can be upper middle class.

It fails because everyone is not the same. Every person has different opinions, values, morals. Every person thinks differently. Every person is unique. And for this reason, the utopia that some people believe can be created via socialism can never, has never, will never, work. It's designed to make everyone poor. It's designed to make everyone the same. It's designed to make everyone miserable. It's designed to provide a system whereby the leaders are the only ones who have what they want.

If that's what you consider utopia, then that's what you'll get if you support Communism. The only Utopia can be found in Heaven. Anyone who reads the Bible knows that.

People have to be taught the Communism will not result in upward mobility because it is impossible in the Communist system. The only people who have any chance of bettering their lot in lives are those running government and their friends and family members. This is no better than what 99.9% of governments offered prior to the United States. Most governments prior to the U.S. were totalitarian dictatorship governments where only the ruling class lived well That's exactly the type of system Marxism wants to revert back to.

Communism has never worked.  The U.S.S.R. lasted from 1922 to 1992. That was 70 years. And yet it collapsed because, since everyone made the same amount of money no matter what they did, no one had an incentive to work. There was plenty of food, but no one was willing to pick it, put it in trucks, and ship it to stores. So there were people starving. Because the nation was so economically deprived, it could not keep up with the United States. The U.S.S.R collapsed. Down fell the Berlin Wall.

Communism has been given 50 years to work in Cuba. It has been an abject failure. Communism, Socialism, liberalism, progressivism, whatever you want to call it, never works. Every time it's been tried, every place it's been tried, whatever form it takes, it fails. In fact, if Communism in Cuba works so well, then why are people constantly trying to flee it, often risking their lives for a small chance at liberty? Why are people constantly defecting Cuba for America? Why would anyone want to abandon such a paradise?

Communism, socialism, fascism, progressivism, is based on good intentions, and it keeps getting a free pass even though it never succeeds. Look in the United States where it's been tried. Look at the war on poverty. There are just as many people in poverty today as when it started. Yet it's hailed as a success. Then look at Capitalism. If it's not perfect, if one person falls through the cracks, it's hailed as a failure.

So now you understand why so many people continue to worship Communism. Now you understand why Obama went to Cuba to lend credence to a Communist, totalitarian dictator thug who imprisons and kills people who disagree with his form of governance. That's the modern day Democratic Party.

Further reading

• Rush Limbaugh: Obama lands in Cuba: One small step for man, one giant leap for Marxism
• Newsmax: 10 reasons Cuban Embargo should not be lifted
• ABC News: Here's what happened the last time a U.S. President visited Cuba
• Articulating Ideas: What is liberal fascism?
• Naples Herald: Coast Guard: 9 Cuban migrants die, 18 rescued of Marco Island

Why socialism, liberalism and progressivism always fails

One of the biggests myths that liberals believe is that there's only so much money to go around. They believe that people who make lots of money do so at the expense of others. This explains why rich people are so often referred to as "greedy" and "selfish" and "materialistic" by the left.  And it's so not true.

Now, surely, in some cases it might be true.  But in most cases, just because someone is well off does not make them greedy.

This also explains why the left constantly barrages people who succeed.  They do not like it when companies make profits.  Instead, they believe any money over what is needed to make a living should be spread out among all the other people equally.

This explains why they want taxes for the rich and not for the middle class and poor.  They want to punish those who succeed by taking the money they worked so hard to earn and doling it out to the poor.  In other words, they believe they know how to spend other people's money better than they do.

Actually, liberals believe that, left to their own devices, that people who succeed are naturally greedy, selfish, and materialistic; that they will naturally put themselves before the state, And, they believe, this is wrong.

This is why they hate capitalism so much, because capitalistic societies create opportunities for the few to benefit off the many, or so they falsely believe.

A perfect example to help me make my point is Dan Price, CEO of Gravity Payments.  He read somewhere that $70,000 was an ideal salary.  If you earn this salary you can have a nice house and car and have plenty of money left over to live a good life.  There's no need to make more than that.

Here's a guy who made over a million a year.  He decided to give himself a huge pay cut to $70,000 a year, and he gave this same salary to all his workers.  In other words, he decided, as so many on the left do, that it's unfair that one person makes millions of dollars while all the people who are the workers make so much less.  So he redistributed the money among all who work for him.

Guess what?  This happened back in April.  Not even four months later he announced that it was an utter failure. He had people who worked for the company for many years, were very loyal to the company, and they were upset that people who were newly hired were making as much as they were. Some of them -- some of his best employees -- quit.  It was a devastating blow to his company.

When you dole out money equally you expect that every person will do an equal amount of work.  In the ideal world, this might happen.  But in the real world this is impossible.  In the real world you are always going to have people say: "I'm going to make $70,000 no matter what I do, so I'm not going to go out of my way to do anything."

Why did this system fail? Because it assumes that everyone is equal.  Dan Price assumed that if everyone else made the same money he did that they would have the same passion that he does.  He believed the liberal myth that equality would bring fairness and happiness.  And he was wrong.

The fallacy here is that if everyone was equal, if everyone made the same amount of money, that everyone would do the same amount of work, and everyone would be equally happy.  This is the euphoria liberals think they can create. This is the biggest myth of liberalism that exists out there.

Sure, in their ideal world everyone is equal.  But in the real world people know that no two people are alike.  We are all unique. We all have our own goals, desires, and ambitions.  Some of us naturally work harder than others.  Some of us are early to work every day, and others are late no matter how hard they try.

Not only that, contrary to what the left tries to force on us, no one wants to be the same as someone else. We all yearn to be individuals; we all yearn to be unique.  Surely I might want to be like my dad, and I might want to be like the CEO running my company, or I might like to emulate one of my better coworkers.  Still, I don't want to be considered the same as everyone else. We all want to be unique.  We all want to be missed when we are gone because no one else can do what we do.

That reminds me of a sign I saw in the nursing report room a while back: "No one notices what you do until you are gone."  This means that when you are no longer here, people realize how valuable you were.  All these years, for instance, they just assumed the storage room miraculously was stocked every day.  Now that you aren't around they see that it was you, all along, who stocked.

When my grandma passed away, the general consensus among us grandkids was that this was a woman who could never be replaced. If you are healthy psychologically, then you are special to the world in this way too. You cannot be replaced.  You are unique, You are an individual.  You don't want to be lumped in with a bunch of slackers, half-baked, half-caring people. You want to be thought of as the cream of the crop, and you can't be if everybody's making 70 grand.

Worded another way, if we all make the same income(a so called fair wage), and we all have the same healthcare, and we all have the same education, and we all have the same everything else, then we are nothing more than sheep.  We are herded by the great big Sheppard who lives in Washington D.C. who goes by the name of Uncle Sam.

The problem with this analogy is people are not sheep.  We all yearn to be unique We all yearn to be special. We all yearn to offer some special gift. We all offer a special gift. If everyone is the same, then we are no longer needed. To assume we are all the same is to assume we are all easily replaceable, and that goes against nature

It is for this reason that liberalism, progressivism, socialism, Lenonism, Marxism... always fails.

There are many people in this world that are so special that they will never be replaced.  This is human nature.  We are not the same, and cannot be treated the same. So any attempt to make us the same assumes that we all produce the same, and that's simply not true. It's human nature. To try to perfect human nature will always lead to chaos.

And that's exactly what happened at Gravity Payments after Dan Price decided to give everyone who worked for the company the same wage of $70,000.  Because there are so many different levels of talent and ability, the system set in place never had a chance. It was socialism pure and simple. Everyone was treated the same. Nobody was considered more important than anyone else. They are interchangeable. When one person retires or quits or dies, another can simply fit in to fill the empty pair of shoes, or so the

Marxist assumes.  Such a system is doomed to fail no matter how many times it is tried.Sure it might sound good and make you feel good, but it never works. It has never worked.

The main problem with socialism is best summed up by Rush Limbaugh:

The main policy or main flaw with socialism side from run out of somebody else's money at some point is that we're not the same and we are not equal. There is no such thing as fairness. Fairness is always arbitrary depending on who has the power to define it, and there certainly is no equality. There's equality of opportunity, equality of chance, equality before the law, but these people talk about equality in terms of outcomes, and there's no such thing.

You put a system of socialism in place where you have equality of outcome, and you're always gonna have some renegades, some entrepreneurs who are gonna say, "Screw this," and they're gonna bust out, and they're gonna do what they do, and they're not going to be shackled by silly rules like this. And then you have, on the other end of it, people who are gonna say, "I'm gonna get 70 grand a year, man, and I don't have to do anything special? I just have to show up?" and that's all they're gonna do. Because slackers are everywhere.

If you're not going to be compensated or rewarded for merit-based behavior, then there's no reason to be concerned about merit-based behavior. So that goes out the window, too.

Why did Dan Price's system fail? Because it was pure, unadulterated socialism. Call it liberalism or progressivism or whatever you want, it has failed every single time it has been tried. Yet because it smells good and sounds good, the best and brightest among us will continue to fall for it.

Further reading:

• Articulating Ideas: Idealism versus Realism
• Articulating Ideas: What is Fascism?
• Washington Times: Dan Price, Seattle CEO Who Set Company Minimum Wage at $70K, Now Struggles to Make Ends Meet
• Hot Air: CEO Who Raised Workers’ Minimum Pay to $70K Hits Predictable Problems
• National Review: It Turns Out That Equality Can Feel a Lot Like Unfairness
• Rush Limbaugh: CEO Who Made $70K His Company's Minimum Wage Admits It's a Disaster

Myth Buster: All rich people, corporations, nations are greedy

Quite often my liberal friends say things like, "Donald Trump is greedy," "It's a rich, greedy corporation." They refer to any rich person as greedy, not just Trump.  Any corporation that makes money is greedy, such as, "Greedy pharmaceuticals" set their prices too high. I think It's frustrating to me when they say stuff like this, but I think I understand why they do: it's based on a fallacy.

It almost seems as if liberals hate success, as they are often trying to punish people who succeed. They falsely believe, that left to their own devices, people will not give to charity; they will not help the poor. I attempted to allay this myth in my post, "Pope Francis Wrong About Capitalism."  Capitalism creates opportunities, and people under capitalistic societies donate more to charity than people under any other form of government.

I think the big misconception, the big fallacy of progressives, is that they believe there is only so much money in the world, and if one person, or one corporation, becomes wealthy, that this comes at the expense of everyone else, especially the poor.  In other words, if one person makes a million dollars, this is a million dollars that will not help the poor; in fact, it hurts the poor.  That's why they refer to rich people like Donald Trump as greedy and selfish.

The truth is that there is plenty of money to go around so that everyone can get rich.  This what Trump is saying when he says, "I'm rich, and I will make you rich too."  There is no shortage of money in the world. Rather than trashing people like Trump who succeed, we ought to put them up on a pedestal with an inscription under saying, "You can be like Trump: You can get rich too."

That's the whole point of American exceptionalism.  It's not that we are better than other nations, it's that, before American, 90% of people lived in poverty. America -- more specifically: American Exceptionalism -- has made it so that anyone can rise up to be as rich as kings or queens or totalitarian leaders. This was never possible before America.

People like Trump are a rare breed who sacrifice all to succeed.  Trump had to sacrifice years and money on educating himself, and he had to take great risks to succeed.  In fact, he was so focussed on succeeding that he risked his first marriage to Ivana. I don't mean to ramp up Trump here, I'm just trying to give an example of how getting rich is not bad.  Trump got rich by creating hundreds if not thousands of jobs. As Trump rose to the top he took many people with him.

That's the whole purpose of unfettered capitalism or capitalism.  Some call it supply side economics.  As Jack Kemp used to say, "A rising tide lifts all ships."  During the 1980s, when regulations and taxes were cut, people of every class rose to a higher class. In fact, when regulations, taxes, and government programs were cut in the 1920s, there was no unemployment (it was 2%, while most economists consider 4.5% no unemployment as there will always be people between jobs).

It's not only just individuals and corporations that are greedy, it's America. There are literally people, even within our own country, who think this is unfair; it's unfair that Americans are so rich, because they get rich at the expense of every other nation. They think we are the reason other nations are poor because we absorb all the money in the world.  They think it's not fair that we have all the wealth and no one else does.

What they fail to see is that 99.9% of the world was poor prior to America. Before America, there was no place in the world you could go to be free; there was no place in the world where you could worship what are religion you wanted; there was no place in the world you could go to take an idea you had and prosper.

Again, what they should do is put America on a pedestal and teach rulers of other nations how to accomplish what America has accomplished. Instead of saying Americans are greedy, they ought to ask: What made America so great? What made Americans so prosperous? Why does everyone want to go to America? How can I do that for my country?

Let me word this another way. People who really care for the poor, for the little guy, should want the little guy to have an improved life: more contentment, more happiness, more stuff.  If this is true, then they should want to emulate the United States. You certainly wouldn't want to tear it down.  If you truly cared about the poor, you would create a nation just like the United States.  You wouldn't teach them that America is selfish and greedy and rich at the expense of everyone else.

America is about freedom, liberty, and prosperity.  So if you want people to succeed, you should teach American principles, not deride them. Because before America there was no prosperity. The people who teach that America is rich and greedy try to make things fair by punishing and penalizing people at the top. Then when those people are gone, there are no jobs. This is substituted for government checks, which will disappear when the U.S. is gone. Then everyone will be equally poor. That is the utopia they seek -- fairness, equality of poverty.

It doesn't make sense. Why try to destroy the one beacon of hope, the one shining city on a hill, where every person has an equal opportunity to succeed.  Why destroy that by telling people that those people are greedy in their materialism? Why, if you truly love the poor and want to help them, wouldn't you teach them how to get it too? Why not teach your people how to prosper?

You have a special place, you want it to stay special, you better learn how it got special. Otherwise, you are going to have people want to destroy it, and you won't have a reason to stop them. Or, if someone were to come into our nation (as progressives have) and try to tear it down one piece at a time, and you didn't know why it was great in the first place, you might just stand by and let it happen.  In fact, you might even be willing to give up your liberties for the cause. You might be convinced to do just that.

And that's what's wrong with our country today, is our schools are not teaching the answers to these questions, so kids are growing up in the most prosperous nation in the history of the world, and yet they think it has always been this way. They think people were always free. They don't understand that 99.9% of people lived under totalitarian dictatorships or monarchies before the U.S. came about, and that freedom had to be fought for. They aren't taught this, so they don't feel the need to protect and defend it against the onslaught of liberalism.

That's why they can so easily be taught that anyone who succeeds in life is greedy and selfish; that anyone who gets rich does so at the expense of the poor; that capitalism breeds poverty. When the truth is that everyone was poor before the Unisted States, and capitalism creates prosperity not poverty.

Anyway, America is special, and to keep it special we must know how we got to where we are.  Once we know that, it will be easy to see how capitalism creates jobs; capitalism creates prosperity.  Capitalism makes life better for the poor, not worse.  If you really, truly love the poor, then you will tell them that they can have it too if they want.  And that's why Trump says, "I am rich, and I want to make you rich too."