George W. Bush -- Red Communist?

Recently my husband and I took a long drive: destination, Las Vegas. There we met my sister (it is a halfway point) who took our son for a brief visit. On our way home, in the accompanying silence that comes sans 3-year-old boy, we talked politics, and M., my husband, made a wild statement: George W. Bush is a communist. Now, you have to understand, M. is a Republican who has voted for W., so it wasn’t like I was settling in with Noam Chomsky (who wouldn’t consider the “C” word an insult, anyway) for a nice long talk. No, this is M., former Marine and homeschooler, saying such a wild thing. I loved it. I wanted to make it a headline. Then, when I had calmed down a bit, I said the question that is probably on everyone’s mind. “So how d’you figure that one?” Here it is, the best as I can put it, and for this special post I have turned on my comments just to chronicle the hysteria.

Social security is considered a form of “lite” socialism that is essentially a support for seniors, widows and the disabled in our country. And everyone knows that W. would like to priva— I mean, personalize social security. But what does this actually mean?
Well, it means that citizens could opt out of regular SSI accounts and put their money into personal accounts to invest in private business. Keep in mind, Social Security does not invest in private business; it is a murky system I won’t get into but primarily the money is kept in government bonds. Well, if citizens invested in private business through the government, essentially this means that the government would own parts of private businesses. Yes, the money would eventually go back to the private citizen at retirement, but for the 40+ years in between, the government would be in control of those shares. Moreover, if, as is likely, enough people invested in a company through these shares, it is possible that the government would have controlling interest in that private company.

Chilling, isn’t it? And while many would protest that this is not the aim of those in government, but that the ultimate aim is for people to have more money for retirement (or for Wall Street to have more money for retirement, depending on what side you might be on) the truth is that this would allow government an “in” that might be exploited at a later date (I do not mean to invoke slippery-slide argumentation, but simply to point out a loophole that could be exploited). It also means that, at some point, this could become a serious challenge to the sovereignty of private businesses. The fact is, as long as the government is managing those accounts, it will have control over those businesses. If the government does not manage those accounts but instead says private citizens have complete control over them, well, then we simply have the abolishment of social security payments and “encouragement” for private citizens to start more IRAs or 401Ks. If the government is forcing a private citizen to pay into an account, it is managing that money, one way or another. Which means interference in private businesses and which equals Red Communisim. No more pinko commies, now we have the real thing in our midst.

Just something to think about — the comments are on.