

Video:
Individual liberty anywhere is a threat to the Progressive-Collectivist Cause everywhere.
For socialists, the little people are valued mainly as pawns for expanding government power. That's why the IMF keeps propping up socialist governments like those in Greece and Portugal.(from Robert Knight at onenewsnow.com)
Socialist policies create more poor people, who in turn are supposed to be grateful to those who dole out money extracted from the middle class. And since socialists believe they need to destroy the old society in order to build the new socialist man, traditional sex mores are just some of the rules that get in the way. Social immorality is the fuel for fiscal immorality, as government expands to pick up the pieces.
The poor suffer the most from this uneven arrangement even though the ultimate target of the ruling elites is the middle class. These latter folks embody traditional values that the ruling elites despise: faith, marriage, family, deferred gratification, hard work, gun rights, patriotism. The suckers.America's own socialists are Oscar-quality actors during the run-up to elections, when they pose as advocates for the working middle class. Actually, they are pretty good at this year-round. But a look at Vice President Biden's microscopic charity donations is all it takes to see through the Joe Six-Pack façade.
Ronald Reagan called the Left's embrace of social and class warfare "alien and discredited."
Unions and their fat cat bosses are truly shaking in their boots that their power and money may be coming to an end. Just the other day I heard a news clip that Richard Trumka (president of AFL-CIO) threatened Democrats that they better do more for the unions or they will yank funding.(from iowntheworld.com)
Everyone has heard the stories and knows how unions had a place in our history and were needed, i.e. “Norma Rae.” However, now it seems that the workers need a new organization to protect themselves from their unions.Unions have morphed from being a local organization of workers making sure they were protected and given a living wage to a national company of employees that their only job is union business. This presents a problem relating to conflict of interest – do they do what is best for the workers they represent and who pay their wages or do they keep the money rolling in and look out for themselves? I’m guessing there are some in this situation that are trying to represent the union members. But more union employees – the more as you rise to the boss level – are working only to keep their jobs and the perks and power that come with their positions.
The Treaty of Vereeniging ends the Second Boer War and ensures British control of South Africa (1902)
The Soviet Union signs an agreement with the Peking government, referring to Outer Mongolia as an "integral part of the Republic of China" whose "sovereignty" therein the Soviet Union promises to respect (1924)
b: Graham Wallas (1858), Alois Hudal (1885), Gregor Strasser (1892); d: Walther Funk (1960), Adolf Eichmann (1962), W.A. 'Tony' Boyle (1985)
When the term “liberalism” (from the Latin word liberalis, meaning “pertaining to a free man”) first emerged in the early 1800s, it was founded on an unwavering belief in individual rights, the rule of law, limited government, private property, and laissez faire economics. These would remain the defining characteristics of liberalism throughout the liberal epoch, generally identified as the period from 1815-1914.(from newsrealblog.com)But many who call themselves “liberals” today are in fact leftists – i.e., the very antithesis of liberals. The modern Left – which traces its roots back to a faction of early-19th-century French liberals who proclaimed that capitalism and private property were agents of inevitable moral decay – is animated by a desire to topple the existing capitalist order and to replace it with a socialist regime where the utopian ideal of perfect equality will reign. Disingenuously portraying itself as an agent of enlightened commitment to “liberal” causes, today’s Left in fact rejects each of the liberal ideals enumerated in the preceding paragraph. We can readily observe, for instance, that the modern Left is the stalwart champion of:
By calling themselves “liberals,” leftists have entirely redefined the terms of debate. The media and the general public have largely gone along with this fraudulent self-identification, as evidenced by the fact that few people nowadays draw any distinction between liberalism in its original and authentic sense, and leftism — or socialism posing as “liberalism.”
- group rights and collective identity, rather than of individual rights and responsibilities (e.g., racial preferences, notions of collective guilt and innocence, and a devotion to identity politics generally);
- the circumvention of law rather than the rule of law (as exemplified by the flouting of immigration laws and nondiscrimination laws, and by a preference for judicial activism whereby judges co-opt the powers that rightfully belong to legislators);
- the expansion of government rather than its diminution (favoring ever-escalating taxes to fund a bloated welfare state and a government that oversees — and intervenes in — virtually every aspect of human life); and
- the redistribution of wealth (through punitive taxes and, again, a mushrooming welfare state), rather than its creation through free markets based on private property.
Over the last 20 years, Scabby and his fellow inflatable rodents have become icons in the world of union protests. With their big, beady red and rubber fangs, unions have found Scabby to be a reliable symbol to protest the use of non-union labor on construction projects. As Scabby’s popularity has grown, the inflatable balloons have begun appearing in other types of labor disputes as well. However, Scabby’s mainstay has been (and remains) protesting the use of non-union labor—the rat being the symbol of the non-union worker and his employer.(full story from laborunionreport at redstate.com)Earlier this week, the National Labor Relations Board issued a decision that, while not unexpected given the NLRB’s union extremism, gives unions the unfettered right to display Scabby the Rat and other forms of “banners” (such as a faux coffin and a costumed Grim Reaper) in front of a company with whom the union has a dispute.
More importantly, however, the NLRB’s decision also affirms unions’ ability to use Scabby the Rat in front of a company’s suppliers and customers’ businesses too.
The Paris Commune falls (1871)
In Tel Aviv members of the Japanese Red Army carry out the Lod Airport Massacre, killing 24 people and injuring 78 others (1972)
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989: the 33-foot high "Goddess of Democracy" statue is unveiled by student demonstrators (1989)
b: Mikhail Bakunin (1814), Georg von Küchler (1881); d: Georgi Plekhanov (1918)