AssemblyBoard

So...how does America today compare to the Communist Manifesto of 1848 by Karl Marx?


   Abolition of private property

   Heavy progressive income tax

   Abolition of rights of inheritance (say, a 51% inheritance tax?)

   Confiscation of property rights

   Central Bank

   Government ownership of communication and transportation

   Government ownership of factories and agriculture

   Government control of labor

   Corporate farms, regional planning

   Government control of education.

"It lies in the nature of things that the beginnings are slight, but unless great care is taken, the rates will multiply rapidly and finally will reach a point that no one could have foreseen." - F. Guicciardini (ca. 1538)

"There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose" - J. M. Keynes

"Government, long hostile to other monopolies, suddenly sponsored and promoted widespread labor monopolies, which democracy cannot endure, cannot control without destroying, and perhaps cannot destroy without destroying itself" - Henry C. Simons

"A general state education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another: and as the mold in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body." - John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859.

"And the LORD shall make thee plenteous in goods, in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy ground, in the land which the LORD sware unto thy fathers to give thee." - Deuteronomy 28:11

"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's" - Exodus 20:17

So my neighbor does have property rights.

And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,The daughters of Zelophehad speak right: thou shalt surely give them a possession of an inheritance among their father's brethren; and thou shalt cause the inheritance of their father to pass unto them. And thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel, saying, If a man die, and have no son, then ye shall cause his inheritance to pass unto his daughter. And if he have no daughter, then ye shall give his inheritance unto his brethren. And if he have no brethren, then ye shall give his inheritance unto his father's brethren. And if his father have no brethren, then ye shall give his inheritance unto his kinsman that is next to him of his family, and he shall possess it: and it shall be unto the children of Israel a statute of judgment, as the LORD commanded Moses. - Numbers 27:6-11

Somehow, I can't seem to find the government in this list.

Yet another quote:

"Every effort has been made by the Federal Reserve Board to conceal its power. But the truth is, the Federal Reserve Board has usurped the government of the United States. It controls everything here; and it controls our foreign relations. It makes or breaks governments at will. No man, and no body of men, is more entrenched in power than the arrogant credit monopoly which operates the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks. These evil-doers have robbed this country of more than enough money to pay the national debt. What the National Government has permitted the Federal Reserve Board to steal from the people should now be restored to the people. The people have a valid claim against the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks. If that claim is enforced, Americans will not need to stand in bread lines. Homes will be saved. Families will be kept. What is needed here is a return to the Constitution of the United States. The old struggle that was fought out here in Jackson's day must be fought over again. The Federal Reserve Act should be repealed; and the Federal Reserve Banks - having violated their charters - should be liquidated immediately. Faithless government officers who have violated their oaths of office should be impeached and brought to trial. Unless this is done by us, I predict the American people - outraged, robbed, pillaged, insulted, and betrayed as they are in their own land - will rise in their wrath and send a President here who WILL sweep the money changers from the temple." - Congressman Louis T. McFadden before the House of Representatives, in the midst of the Great Depression, 1932.

After surviving several assassination attempts, congressman McFadden was apparently murdered.

And all the lively saints said...wow.

 ;D