Government Zero: No Borders, No Language, No Culture (21 page)

This is all the more dangerous because the people destroying your freedom believe they’re right. It’s very hard to accept that the things you have been taught since you were a child are wrong. People living in socialist countries have been taught all their lives that free enterprise is something to be feared, rather than embraced. They have been taught that business owners exploit workers, rather than give them an opportunity to be far more productive than they could be on their own.

People subscribing to bad ideas is not something to be feared in and of itself. That’s one of the rights the First Amendment is designed to protect: to believe and say very stupid things, as long as we do not do harm to others. But when you combine stupid ideas with power, it can be very dangerous. Power
wielded based on stupid ideas
can
do harm to others. It can destroy society, the economy, even an entire nation. Just ask Vladimir Putin, when he’s in the mood to be honest, as he was at Davos in 2009.

Power can come in many forms. Certainly, our crypto-Marxist president is an example of stupid ideas combined with great power. He wields that power directly, as commander in chief of our military and executor of our laws.

Large voting blocs also wield great power, although they wield it indirectly by deciding who holds office. When you deliberately invite tens of millions of people with very bad ideas into your nation and give them a path to citizenship, you are investing them with the power to elect the people who will eventually harm you.

The pope wields a third kind of power: the power to influence ideas. Millions of honest Catholics look to the pope for guidance on how to live a good, Christian life. When he’s guiding people on how to emulate Jesus in their personal lives, he is a tremendous force for good in the world. But when he’s acting as a political operative, he’s just the opposite.

Besides, with all due respect, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

It’s a little like medicine. The United States has the greatest doctors in the world when it comes to diagnosing and treating acute illnesses. That’s what they’re trained to do, and no system trained them better than America’s former free market health-care industry. If you get a serious illness and the most effective treatment is medicine or surgery, there is nowhere on Earth you’re in better hands than with an American medical doctor. At least for now.

However, medical doctors are not experts in nutrition, in
wellness, or in preventing you from getting sick and needing their help. This is something I know a little about. I earned a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in nutritional ethnomedicine.

Medical doctors can tell you exactly what is going on with your body and can suggest medical solutions. But as far as living a healthier life when you’re not sick, they are little more than very intelligent laypeople. When they are giving you the same nutritional or fitness advice as Michelle Obama, you may want to do some research on your own.

The same goes for the pope. He doesn’t hold a degree in economics. He’s never even run a business. On economics, he’s
less qualified
than most Catholics, who at least work in the private sector and understand the realities of the business world. The pope has a few years’ experience as a chemical engineer, a janitor, and a bouncer in a bar. These are all honest professions, but they hardly qualify him to opine on complex economic subjects.

Unfortunately, millions of Catholics believe they have to agree with him on economics, even though he knows less about it than they do. The Church dogma of papal infallibility helps bolster this misconception. Many well-meaning Catholics believe they have to agree with the pope on everything because they’re taught he’s infallible.

Catholics, I have news for you. You don’t have to agree with the pope on economics to be a good Catholic. The Church doesn’t teach that and, in all fairness, even Pope Francis has said this:

The Church defines papal infallibility very narrowly. They only consider him infallible when “in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole Church.”
¹³

On other subjects, his opinion is just that—an opinion. When he tells Catholics to care about the poor and work toward a world with less poverty and suffering, he’s advancing the message of Jesus. When he opines on the best economic system to make that happen, he’s out of his depth.

He was similarly out of his depth when he supported Dear Leader Obama’s overtures toward Cuba. First, he hosted meetings between Raul Castro and President Obama at the Vatican. Then his secretary of state issued a letter applauding “the historic decision taken by the Governments of the United States of America and Cuba to establish diplomatic relations, with the aim of overcoming, in the interest of the citizens of both countries, the difficulties which have marked their recent history.”
¹⁴

Now, there have been arguments made by conservative, free market proponents to establish diplomatic relations and trade with Cuba as a way of showing Cuba’s people the benefits of capitalism and eventually inspiring them to overthrow Castro and the Marxists. But that was not what Lenin’s pope had in mind. He doesn’t see the Castro regime as evil and in need of being overthrown. He considers it at least equal to the American government. He probably believed the regime would treat its people better after he stuck his nose into international relations.

Exactly the opposite happened. Immediately after Obama announced sweeping changes to U.S. policy on Cuba, the communist regime banned a free speech protest in Havana. Not only did the government arrest three dissidents before
the event even started, it cut off calls to the organizer’s cell phone.
¹⁵
Instead of the prison island becoming more liberated or more liberal, it has become more draconian.

Anyone who understands the inherent connection between socialism and authoritarianism would have seen this coming a mile away. But leftists don’t see the connection. They believe socialism provides more freedom, regardless of an entire century’s evidence to the contrary. Democratic politicians regularly praise communist leaders as wise and caring, even as those same leaders murder millions, stifle all dissent to their rule, and otherwise oppress their people.

Speaking in support of Obama’s Affordable Care Act at a town hall meeting in 2009, Rep. Diane Watson said, “And I want you to know, now, you can think whatever you want to about Fidel Castro, but he was one of the brightest leaders I have ever met.”
¹⁶

That same year, Obama’s communications director, Anita Dunn, had this to say at a high school graduation:

Yes, she praised the same Mao Zedong who intentionally killed tens of millions of his own citizens in political purges and unintentionally killed at least fifteen million more trying to implement his disastrous, Marxist economic policies.
Liberal politicians and media do this all the time. They correctly criticize Hitler for killing six million people, but turn a blind eye toward the killing of tens of millions by socialist dictators.

This is certainly the way Obama looks at communists like Fidel and Raul Castro and is likely the way Pope Francis sees them, too. He may not condone the oppression of the Castro regime, but he can rationalize it away as long as the regime remains committed to the “social justice” of communism.

As I’ve always said, liberalism is a mental disorder. A liberal can completely ignore crimes against humanity by a socialist dictator just because he is a socialist. And liberals will rationalize away horrific crimes committed by someone if that person shares a race or religion with others who are victims of prejudice. If a white man commits a violent crime, they want him prosecuted. If a black man commits the same crime, they want to blame white people for what the criminal did.

That’s
actually true racism. It is judging people not by their actions or character but by their race or religion. I believe everyone should be subject to the same rules, regardless of race or religion. Everyone should enjoy the same rights and privileges and should be held equally accountable for his actions, regardless of race, religion, or sex.

That’s why I wish Lenin’s pope would spend more time condemning the jihadists torturing and beheading Christians instead of attacking free markets and free speech. He couldn’t even bring himself to condemn the horrific murders of the
Charlie Hebdo
employees without making excuses for the murderers:

You read that correctly. The pope actually made excuses for the Islamofascist murderers, just as progressive-socialists like him do at every opportunity. It would have floored me if I didn’t see through this fakir from the beginning. He’s the perfect complement to our Progressive-Islamist president.

Pope Francis says free speech should be limited and one can expect to be answered with violence for saying something insulting. That’s completely ridiculous. The definition of free speech is the right to say controversial, even insulting things without fearing violence, either by the government or individuals.

People don’t have to like what you say or agree with you. They can say insulting things back. The appropriate response is to answer them with reason or ignore them, not break into their offices and gun them down.

Thomas Jefferson actually refuted the pope directly. “The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
¹⁹

Jefferson is saying something we all learned in kindergarten:
Sticks and stones can break my bones but names can never hurt me. He’s talking about government power, rather than violence committed by individuals, but the principle is the same. The reason governments aren’t allowed to infringe upon free speech is because enforcing the law is a violent act. When the police show up to enforce the law, they don’t hand you an invitation. They take you away and use violence if you resist.

The principle behind the First Amendment is that speech itself, regardless of how offensive, cannot justifiably be answered with violence. I didn’t like much of the liberal nonsense
Charlie Hebdo
put out, but I’m free to disagree with them or not listen at all. That’s how freedom works.

Again, this is cultural. I’m not surprised at all by Pope Francis’s view on how speech should be limited. He’s the product of a socialist culture where stifling free speech goes hand in hand with stifling economic freedom. You can’t have free speech in a socialist society. Too many people would start asking each other why they’re working so hard and still getting poorer and poorer.

I know. Your whole life you were told, “Oh, watch out for those right-wingers. Those right-wingers will take away your freedom of speech. Those right-wingers will tell you what art you can produce.” Yes, all those fears were valid, but you were afraid of the wrong people. When you have a damaged optic chiasma, you see everything upside down and backward. It’s not the people who want the government to leave you alone that are the problem. It’s the ones who want it to help you that you should be afraid of.

I know this firsthand. I’m the only member of the American media who is not permitted to enter Britain based on statements I never even made. As I said, facts don’t matter. It wasn’t
right-wingers who banned me but Britain’s wonderful, caring, liberal Labor Party government who did it. These are the great defenders of free speech.

In fairness, Cameron and his phony conservatives haven’t overturned the ban. They’re about as conservative as Hollow Man Boehner.

Don’t forget that the First Amendment doesn’t just protect free speech. It’s also about the separation of church and state. When did the Catholic Church become so brazen as to suddenly step over that important firewall?

I’ll tell you. When the Catholic Church was given billions of dollars by the federal government to help usher in millions and millions of illegal aliens because they need the pews filled with illiterates from Central America. That’s when it happened.

Once the Catholic Church and Baptist Family Services and certain Jewish and Protestant organizations were corrupted by Obama with billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded resettlement programs, the churches, the synagogues, and others became useless as institutions of religion and instead became arms of the community organizer Barack Obama.

So it’s about much more than free speech. It’s about destroying all semblance of civilized society. Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot weren’t the only communists who committed atrocities. All of them did. Look up the 1944 Battle of Meligalas in Greece. Calling it a battle is disingenuous. It wasn’t a battle; it was a massacre.

Communist guerillas rounded up fifty nationalist soldiers and more than a thousand villagers and butchered them to the last
man, woman, and child. That is what the communists did in Greece. That is what communists always do. They have that in common with the maniacs calling themselves the Islamic State.