Government Zero: No Borders, No Language, No Culture (15 page)

Liberals constantly talk about markets as if there is an inherent conflict between individuals pursuing profits and the “greater good of society.” There isn’t. Just like Spencer Tracy said, entrepreneurs pursuing profits benefit society at the same time. In fact, they benefit society
because
they are pursuing profits.

Entrepreneurs also protect the environment more than will a million government employees with a trillion of your tax dollars. By trying to maximize revenues and minimize costs, they naturally conserve resources. Raw materials cost money. An entrepreneur seeks to get every bit of value possible out of every yard, pound, or fluid ounce of raw materials, because the more value they provide for any given cost, the more profits they make. There is no conflict between profits and the environment.

Let me share one more jewel from this diamond mine of real American culture. After Tracy teaches the judge and the movie audience that capitalism is good for the environment, he asks a question we all should be asking ourselves now:

That’s what Obama and the progressive left want to do: rewrite this land of opportunity stuff. Instead of people feeling inspired by entrepreneurs who made a million bucks with their brains and their hands, they want people to feel aggrieved
and envious. They want them to resent businessmen who offer them jobs and opportunity and revere the government that offers them handouts.

Men weren’t the only heroes during Hollywood’s golden age. Another of my favorites from this period was
Mildred Pierce
, starring Joan Crawford. The main plot is about Mildred Pierce’s devotion to a daughter who is wholly unworthy of it and eventually betrays her mother and commits a murder. But what I love most about this film is the way heroism is portrayed.

When Mildred Pierce’s unfaithful husband leaves her, she doesn’t complain about a war on women or look for a government handout. She starts by baking cakes in her kitchen, which grows into a baking business, which she then grows into a successful chain of restaurants. She wins her own independence through hard work and making the most of the opportunities a free market offers her. She is heroic
because
she is a successful entrepreneur.

She is self-reliant and successful, but there is no implication that she becomes so at the price of her ethics or morality. On the contrary, her sound, moral character is one of the reasons for her success, as it is for most entrepreneurs in the real world.

The film is prescient in one way. The contrast between the faithful, hardworking Mildred Pierce and her snotty, entitled, greedy daughter is a perfect metaphor for the contrast between the greatest generation and the baby boomers. The former defeated two tyrannical empires and built the most prosperous economy in world history. The latter set out to destroy everything their parents built and create an amoral, godless, socialist sewer.

You might be wondering how things could have changed so much in Hollywood. How could the same town that produced
Sands of Iwo Jima
,
Boom Town
, and
Mildred Pierce
become so uniformly leftist? What happened to the opposition party in Hollywood?

You may as well ask why there are so few climate scientists who challenge the global warming hoax in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The answer is the same for both questions. Anyone who dissented was purged, through propaganda and character assassination.

Unless you were born yesterday or have been living under a rock, you probably have some knowledge of what is now called McCarthyism. While most people don’t know all the details, most are aware that for a period during the late 1940s and 1950s, Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin headed the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).

As head of the committee, McCarthy accused many members of the U.S. State Department and other departments within the government of being communist spies or communist sympathizers. He and the HUAC also blacklisted a number of Hollywood movie producers, directors, scriptwriters, and actors because of their alleged communist affiliations.

If you know all of the above, I have news for you. You’ve fallen prey to yet another progressive mind trick. You’ve swallowed another liberal fairy tale hook, line and sinker.

This particular lie isn’t even internally consistent. First,
Senator
Joseph McCarthy couldn’t have had anything to do with a
House
Un-American Activities Committee. McCarthy was never elected to the House of Representatives. He was
a U.S. senator. He chaired the Senate Committee on Government Operations, but the House Un-American Activities Committee had existed for over a decade before McCarthy’s campaign against communism.

More importantly, the HUAC did not blacklist anyone from working in Hollywood. That wasn’t a power any congressional committee had, then or now. The committee had the power to investigate subversive activities that threatened the form of government proscribed in the U.S. Constitution and to bring charges of real crimes, like espionage, when probable cause was established.

The committee subpoenaed various Hollywood figures to appear for questioning. When some of them refused to answer, they were charged with contempt of Congress, a misdemeanor. In response to the charges, the Motion Picture Association of America, a
voluntary association of private individuals
, issued a statement indicating they would no longer employ those people charged with contempt by Congress.

The infamous blacklist was not effected by Senator McCarthy and was only indirectly related to the HUAC. It was really just private individuals within Hollywood exercising what used to be recognized as an inherent, inalienable right: the right to associate or not associate with anyone you pleased. These Hollywood employers did not want the powerful influence of their studios used to promote communism and subvert the U.S. Constitution.

In the years that followed, many more people were blacklisted. I’m sure that some were wrongly accused. Senator McCarthy became a symbol of the supposed witch hunt nature of the investigations, even after Alger Hiss was found guilty of perjury for denying his involvement in Soviet espionage.
McCarthy had some personal foibles, alcoholism possibly being one of them. He was eventually censured by Congress after the same kind of multimedia, total war-style character assassination that liberals have used on so many others who have opposed their agenda.

What the progressive jackals have been successful in erasing from America’s collective memory is the one, most important fact: McCarthy was right. For the most part, his allegations were justified, as were the suspicions of those on the HUAC who subpoenaed the actors and screenwriters.

We know this because of another bit of conveniently forgotten history called the Venona Project. Venona was a counterintelligence program run from 1943 through 1980 that decrypted Soviet intelligence communications.
⁹
From the decrypted messages, U.S. intelligence was able to identify the Rosenbergs, Alger Hiss, Klaus Fuchs, and many others as Soviet spies in regular communication with the KGB. Hollywood producer Stephen Laird, who was also a reporter for
Time
magazine and CBS, was also identified. Hundreds of other people are mentioned in the decrypted messages, many of whom are also justifiably suspected of having been working with the Soviets during this period.

Despite this hard evidence that his allegations of communist infiltration into government, media, and entertainment were generally true, McCarthy remains a poster child for right wing paranoia. Just like a suspect in a crime whose indictment is reported on page one of the newspaper, but whose acquittal is reported on page fifty-seven, or not at all, no one remembers McCarthy’s vindication due to these decoded messages.

So effective was the vilification of McCarthy, the HUAC, and the private individuals who decided not to employ
communists that a complete reversal in Hollywood occurred. It became politically incorrect to voice any opposition to communism at all, just as it is political suicide to express any concern over radical Islam today. “McCarthyism” and “reds under the bed” became in-vogue witticisms to imply paranoia in anyone who expressed a concern about communism, even though many of those concerns were justified.

Today, “Islamophobia” is used in the same way to vilify anyone who might express some concern about a well-equipped army of ninth-century throwbacks who are rapidly conquering territory in the Middle East and establishing a brutal, murderous theocracy. Suggest that this has something to do with Islam itself and you are set upon by the liberal jackals in much the same way McCarthy was all those years ago. But all of their propaganda doesn’t change the truth.

Athletes, musicians, and other entertainers have even more influence on young people than movie stars. Unfortunately, that influence is almost universally bad. When kids aren’t being bombarded with song lyrics and commentary by musicians pushing the leftist worldview, they’re watching their idols in professional sports committing crimes and generally acting like thugs.

In April,
Time
magazine released its list of the “100 Most Influential People.”
¹⁰
Topping the list was a talentless hack married to an exhibitionist wife whose chief claim to fame is an overly large behind. He will be largely remembered himself for rude, inexcusable behavior during two Grammy Awards
ceremonies where he interrupted acceptance speeches to voice his opinion that the winner didn’t deserve the award.

Every boxer, regardless of skin color, goes on and on like Muhammad Ali, apparently unaware Ali did it tongue in cheek to promote his fights. What does it tell nine-, ten-, and eleven-year-old boys who idolize these athletes when they exhibit no humility in victory or grace in defeat?

The bad examples set for our children by athletes and entertainers don’t stop at rudeness or poor sportsmanship. Violent crimes, including murder, sexual assault, and other offenses continue to plague professional sports and entertainment. One NFL player was convicted of murder in April of this year,
¹¹
while another made headlines for viciously assaulting his girlfriend in an elevator.
¹²

Young girls have similarly poor role models. If they learn anything from pop music stars, it’s that dressing and dancing like a stripper is “empowering.” Madonna’s antics a few decades ago seem tame now compared to the virtual pornography of the average music video.

Even parents seem unconcerned when watching preteenage girls performing highly suggestive dance routines. The Internet is flooded with videos of eight- and ten-year-old children mimicking sexual intercourse. I’m not blaming the kids for this. They don’t know any better. It’s a depraved culture that bombards them with sexual images and references in all media.

Picking up right where our current leader will leave off, Hillary Clinton is on the campaign trail inciting class warfare
over income inequality. In a desperate attempt to ward off any possible challenges from even more radical socialists, Clinton actually vowed to “topple the 1 percent” at a press conference earlier this year.

It’s hard to believe Clinton has the nerve to say this, being a government-subsidized member of the 1 percent herself. Her husband is not only the wealthiest former U.S. president alive, but with a net worth of $55 million, he’s among the ten wealthiest of all time.
¹³

Now that we know her and Bill’s charity fund contributes very little to charity compared to what it takes in, it’s even more hypocritical for her to criticize legitimate businesses who provide valuable products to people who know what they’re purchasing when they hand over their money. According to the
New York Post
, the so-called charity “took in more than $140 million in grants and pledges in 2013 but spent just $9 million on direct aid.”
¹⁴

Hillary doesn’t see anything wrong with living lavishly off the public. She believes she’s provided invaluable service that we should all be eternally grateful for. Never mind that most of her service was completely disastrous, like the Arab Spring she engineered as secretary of state and the “reset” of relations with Russia she was supposed to lead.

While Hollywood peddles the “corporations kill people” story line, progressive politicians and media push another whopper: Rich people don’t pay taxes.

Where does the government get the money to provide the services it provides, however incompetently? Liberals don’t ever seem to know the answer to this question. Contrary to what you might read in the
New York Times
, most of the money comes from those evil, greedy, rich people.

The truth is, rich people pay
most
of the taxes in this country. Fifty-five percent of all income taxes are paid by individuals who earn over $200,000 per year. Seventy-eight percent of all income taxes are paid by individuals who earn over $100,000 per year.
¹⁵

Yet, all we hear is “the rich don’t pay their fair share.” Seventy-eight percent seems more than fair, doesn’t it? You would think, when listening to the Marxist in chief or his accidental speechwriter, Elizabeth Warren, that upper-income Americans are somehow finagling out of paying any taxes at all. That’s all part of the progressive narrative, along with phony American history and moronic economic theories.

It’s part of their all-out attack on American culture, specifically in this case the Protestant work ethic and the deeply held beliefs in private property, free enterprise, and self-reliance. These have all been bedrock American principles since the Pilgrims rejected socialistic principles in the 1620s.