Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Teaching the young about socialism

I have a young daughter. An old friend of mine has 3 young daughters, and here is a little back-and-forth we had on Facebook with respect to the coming rise of the Obamessiah. (Names changed for anonymity.)

He said:
So I come home from work Friday and my daughter, Toni, tells me that they learned about the election and had a mock vote in her class. I asked who they were voting on, and she told me they had 2 choices - McCain and Obama (don't get me started on THAT, right?). I then asked for whom she cast her vote, and naturally, my fear became truth as the answer was "Barack Obama". I told her that we don't want him to win, and why, in simple terms.... and like most Obama supporters, she didn't get it. To add insult to injury, she thought the name was cool and announced it like Michael Buffer about 40 times that afternoon, despite my persistent request for her to "hush". And during trick-or-treating, she announced it more, in front of our conservative friends. Miserable.

Finally, it was time to teach the lesson. Being the older child, she ended up with a lot of candy from those big grabs from the candy pots around the neighborhood. Much more than her little sisters. As we were looking over her bounty, I took two handfuls, tossed them into each of her two younger sisters' respective stashes and said "THIS is what Barack Obama wants to do with your candy!". She gasped and eyes welled with tears. "Not fair, is it, sweetie?". Of course I returned her candy to her and taught her a better saying.... "NOBAMA!"

My response:
I'm serious - have you ever thought about teaching your girls about socialism and big gov't by garnishing their allowance?
Let's say they get $5 a week, or whatever. "Toni, from now on, you're going to help us pay our family taxes. We gotta stick together."
You give her 3 $1 bills and 8 quarters. 2 quarters go into savings, 2 go into the offering plate at church, and then you confiscate 3 of the others. Then in her sight, you take the 3 quarters and say "OK, here's what your quarters will be used for", you throw 1 quarter away, you put 1 in your pocket for useful purposes, and you give the other one to a bum who is passed out drunk on the sidewalk.

A friend of his responded:

Are you REALLY arguing against forced socialism by making your kid tithe??? Little hypocritical don't you think?

To which I responded:

"Making" her tithe? You make it sound like I'm an evil overlord. If you don't "make" your child do all sorts of things, she won't do any of them. You know, toilet train, eat with utensils, take a bath, go to bed, stuff like that I "make" her do. It's called responsible parenting, training, teaching.
I'm a Christian; Christians give to God. That's just straight up. Christians give for provision to the poor. That's not socialism, that's charity. Socialism is when the gov't forces me on pain of death to share my money with bums who don't want to work, and said gov't usually does not distinguish between bums, welfare queens, and actual needy people, whereas I do and my church does.
If you force me to "give", it's not giving, is it? So I'm simultaneously teaching her how to give (and why) and the evil of someone forcing you to give up money you earned to give to someone who refuses to earn for themselves. I also teach her how the gov't usually spends our tax money - trash.

Anyway, I'll grudgingly be casting my worthless vote today, mostly for the sake of local issues and gov'tal positions, since
1) My state consistently and overwhelmingly votes Republican for president, and
2) Even if my one vote were the one vote on which the entire election turned, it would never come to that; either the courts would step in to decide the matter, and/or the losing side would "find" more votes to overturn mine. Like maybe Mickey Mouse's heretofore undiscovered 4th ballot.

8 comments:

Chris (from Oz) said...

I've actually got some commonality with you, with regards to the question of taxation etc. However, in the matter of fairness, I have to ask how much the child was deprived of candy for the purposes of demonstrating the policies of John McCain ? For a kid of course the difference is zero. But even for an adult, you would need to compare the taxation rate of McCain versus the taxation rate of Obama. All it seems happened here is that someone demonstrated to the kid the Obama rate.

What happened when the McCain rate was demonstrated as well?

Don't tell me. You didn't do both...........

If you did, I'd be surprised if the reaction were different.

Carrie said...

Good stuff.

I think that if you taught this to many adult liberals they may change their views also. I'm convinced a large portion of Americans are completely ignorant of the party platforms and if they actually understood, we would have alot less liberal votes.

Rhology said...

Chris,

A fine point.
'Twas my friend who did the candy demonstration, yet I'm sure that his daughter would object a little less if he had taken a McCain-handful from her candy stash. She was, after all, wealthy in candy. 0bama wants to take more, though you're right that it's nothing like 100% more. There's only a small material difference between 0bama and the RINO McCain.

My planned allowance stunt, with the quarters and all that, is more, shall we say, œcumenical - I'll be ripping both Democrats and Republicans, as well as liberals. Not conservatives, though, since conservatives support less taxes, not wasting gov't money, not redistributing to the intentionally indigent, etc.

Rhology said...

Correction - small material difference between 0bama and McCain in questions of tax policy.

Jason Streitfeld said...

I'm a little confused. You seem to be saying that taxation equates to socialism. Is that what you are saying?

Rhology said...

Heavy taxation is a necessary component of socialism. Wouldn't you agree?

Jason Streitfeld said...

Sure, socialism does rely on heavy taxation, but that does not answer my question.

Again, it sounds like you are equating taxation with socialism. Is that the case?

Rhology said...

No. It is a necessary precondition but not a sufficient one.