Conservative News June 2019: No New Entitlements
An update to “Interesting Articles”: Hi all and thanks for reading. I have decided to revamp the “Interesting Articles” section of the site. Instead of analyzing one article in depth each week, I will do short summaries of a few that I find particularly interesting. Let me know if you like the new format, This week’s featured article is “No New Entitlements.”
No New Entitlements:
It is hard to get politicians to agree to do anything together. As seen in recent news, they can’t even agree on whether they deserve a raise or not. But one of the hardest things to do is to get anyone in the America government, Republican or Democrat, to promise to substantially cut spending. Both parties are addicted to deficit spending and can’t seem to step away from it. A major reason for that is that welfare spending has increased so dramatically over recent years. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid costs have ballooned as politicians have been hesitant to cut spending. They don’t want to promise entitlement reform because so much of the population favors socialist welfare policies. Yet, the spending is seemingly never enough. Despite trillions of dollars of spending and huge taxes to “cover”said spending, there is still a retirement crisis on the horizon, as the author of “The Coming Retirement Crisis” wrote about. But still, politicians allow deficit spending on welfare to rise each year.
However, David Simon recommends that they should do just the opposite. Instead of promising to continue to raise spending to unsafe and irresponsible levels to pay for socialist policies, every politician should promise “no new entitlements” and then start to cut welfare spending. His proposed “no new entitlements policy” seems very similar to the “no new taxes” pledge that Americans for tax reform has gotten many politicians to sign over the past few decades. And ATR has done so quite successfully; taxes have been cut substantially when politicians that have signed the pledge are in power. Perhaps the same policy could work with entitlements. To find out, we have to do the impossible and get politicians to agree to “no new entitlements.”
Read “no new entitlements” here: https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2019/07/05/the_pledge_every_politician_should_be_asked_to_make_no_new_entitlements_103808.html
Trump’s Military Parade on the Fourth of July:
Many political pundits were worried about President Donald Trump’s military parade on the fourth of July. They said it was too militaristic. Or would be too expensive. Or best of all, that we couldn’t possibly get armored vehicles into D.C. (which to me seems like a huge problem because it means the Army can’t defend the city. But that’s a problem for another time).
In “Thank you President Trump for Your Military Parade”, Brett Arends made an interesting point about Trump’s military parade and flyover. Since we have paid for all this expensive equipment, such as the terrific F-35 fighter jet, shouldn’t we get to at least see it from time to time? The Founding Fathers never wanted a large standing military, they viewed it as anathema to liberty. But since we have one, we should at least get to see the exquisite pieces of military technology that it bought with our tax dollars. I completely agree with Arends; as I state in my post on “My Political Positions,” I don’t love the idea of a huge military or police force. I don’t think that it fits in with American ideals. But, it exists. So we might as well get to see it occasionally.
Read “Thank you President Trump for Your Military Parade” here: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/thank-you-president-trump-for-your-military-parade-2019-07-03?mod=mw_theo_homepage
What Socialism Meant in China:
This week in the Wall Street Journal (my favorite source of news), there was a heart wrenching tale about what socialism in China meant to author Helen Raleigh’s family. To them, it meant her great grandfather being taken away by Mao’s thugs simply because he was a successful farmer. That injustice was visited upon millions of other farmers in the Soviet Union and Red China who resisted communist collectivization. I liked this article because in writing about her great grandfather’s experience, Raleigh was able to shed light on what I call “The Most Important Lesson of the 20th Century.” That lesson is that socialism and communism can’t be negotiated with. They are responsible for tens of millions of deaths and untold amounts of suffering around the world; socialism kills. What socialism meant in China was that everyone could instantly become of victim of the state. As I describe in “Socialism is suicide and communism is murder,” it could mean the same thing here. We need to take Raleigh’s advice and remember what socialism meant in China.
What socialism meant in China- https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-socialism-meant-for-my-great-grandfather-11562526670
The Democratic Party has Fled the Middle:
It’s now commonly know that the Democratic Party has changed. It has shifted away from pro-American and labor friendly but capitalist policies to outright socialism. As I mentioned in my “the Democratic Party” has changed post, the current Democrats are supporting late-term abortion, open borders, and socialism. They don’t understand socialism and they don’t understand illegal immigration. They definitely wouldn’t agree to a “no new entitlements”pledge. And that radicalness of the Democratic party what this RealClearPolitics article is about.
President Donald Trump might not be perfect. But he has accomplished a whole lot and his mode of thinking is more like the average American’s than his Democrat competitors. In the name of their repugnant socialist ideology they’ve ceded the center to him and author Patrick Buchanan does a great job of pointing that out. As Buchanan points out, some Democrats are polling higher than Trump. But they’ve only been under a media spotlight for a few weeks. President Donald Trump has been for years. His rating are holding steady, or even rising, despite that constant criticism. Democrat ratings are already plummeting. Americans prefer Trump’s policies to socialist policies. Even if they’re not perfect policies, they’re better than gun confiscation and abolishing private property.
By: Gen Z Conservative
Links:
The Coming Retirement Crisis: https://genzconservative.com/the-coming-retirement-crisis/
When it comes to why politicians won’t support “no new entitlements,”it is because they have been robbing Peter to pay Paul: https://genzconservative.com/robbing-peter-to-pay-paul/
Avoid the consequences of a no new retirements policy by learning the importance of saving and investing early: https://genzconservative.com/the-importance-of-investing/
My political positions: https://genzconservative.com/gen-z-conservative-political-positions/
Communism in China in the 20th Century: https://genzconservative.com/the-most-important-lesson-of-the-20th-century/
Socialism is suicide, communism is murder: https://genzconservative.com/socialism-is-suicide-communism-is-murder/
