Why Do Socialists Distort Reality
By Thomas D. Segel (07/19/08)
Harlingen, Texas, July 18, 2008: Many years ago while living in Japan, I noticed an unusual number of university students were among those who made up the crowds at socialist demonstrations. I asked a professor at the University of Tokyo, Dr. Shiraishi, about this observation and found his reply quite interesting. He told me that college students in Japan were quite poor. The long hours of study made it next to impossible for them to obtain extra work to increase their meager monetary allowances.
He said that just about all of his entering and second year students claimed to be socialists. First of all, the socialists paid them to be part of public demonstrations. Also, the students thought it was a very good idea to have a share of everything, since they had nothing at the time. “The interesting thing”, said this educator, “is by the time these students were ready to graduate, most of them were already selected for employment and quite possibly a lifetime position with a good company, plus abundant fringe benefits. You couldn’t find a socialist in the crowd.”
So, the socialist of Japan had distorted the reality of their appeal and strength by hiring poor college students to fill up very small ranks. Once these same students came to realize where their future would prosper, nobody was interested in the “all-for-one, one-for all” mantra they had been chanting.
It seems the socialists of America use the same ploy. They make appeals of equality and sharing the bounty of the nation to those who rank among the poor and disenchanted of our society. When you have very little, it is nice to think you may be given a slice of someone else’s pie. There is nothing wrong with having such belief, but the leadership and the elite of that clan should at least be honest in what they present to the public.
Not too long ago I wrote a commentary about Congresswoman Maxine Waters and her verbal slip where she uttered the word “socialize” and then tried to cover up her rant to the oil companies by saying the government should take over and “run” their businesses. Note the change of term…run, instead of socialize.
Those who study the inner workings of the Democratic Party know they are primarily a socialist political organization. The Democrats try to fool their public by keeping the word “socialism” out of all conversation. Instead they claim to be “liberal”, and if that word starts smelling too bad, they are “progressive”.
Now comes a different kind of distortion. It comes in the form of just plain disinformation. It was in a Community Forum piece written by R. Gary Dean of Omaha, Nebraska in the Valley Morning Star. He said, “Now that Mr. Segel has turned over Maxine’s ‘rock’ and found socialism lurking below, perhaps we should take a good look at what else was found.
“One way to compare democratic counties to socialist countries is to take a good look at the results of each. Starting with the United Nations Development Index – currently accepted as a good measure of the standard of living – we find that eight of the top ten countries are socialist.” He continues saying there is a question as to Switzerland, which is ranked seventh and if that country were included, nine out of the top ten are socialist. He also points out the United States is ranked #12. The interesting thing is, he fails to name those top ten countries, which he claims are socialist and are happy, peaceful and live better than Americans. Well, I am happy to give you that information.
Ranked by the UN, as #1 is Iceland, which is a multi-party parliamentary form of government…not socialist. At #2 is Norway, which is a monarchy, with parliamentary representatives. There are some experts who consider it a socialist form of government. The third ranked country by the UN is Australia, which is a federative constitutional monarchy under a parliamentary democracy…not socialist.
The country ranked #4 is Canada. It has the formal title of Her Majesty’s Government in Canada and is a federation… not socialist. At #5 is Ireland and #6 Sweden, who are both parliamentary democracies. Switzerland at #7 (the questioned socialist country by Mr. Dean) is a direct democracy. None are socialist.
Japan is ranked #8 and is a Constitutional Monarchy, as is #9, the Netherlands. France is #10 and is considered a presidential democracy and #11 Finland is a democratic republic. None are considered socialist.
The UN and Mr. Dean rank the United States as #12 on the Human Development Index. In the latest edition of that list, published on November 27, 2007 this is how the top dozen countries were ranked, based upon a comparative measure of life expectancy, literacy, education, and worldwide standards of living. It is the standard means for measuring well-being, child welfare and is used to measure whether a country is developed, developing, or under developed. It is also used to measure the impact of economic policy on the quality of life. Using its own formula #1 Iceland has a Human Development Index of .968, while #12, the United States has a HDI of.951 or a variance of .017, which is not a great span in the numbers game.
Another way to measure quality of life is by the immigrant population. Just how many people have tried to take advantage of the quality of life offered by a particular country? The United States, according to our UN experts, has 38,355,000 legal immigrants. We also have another estimated 12 million illegal immigrants all-trying for a slice of the American pie. Our #1 ranked Iceland has a total of 23,000 immigrants. The United States leads the world in accepting immigrants, while Iceland is listed as #154 on the UN Population List.
To make sure everyone has complete information on this topic, the top ten socialist countries Mr. Dean is so proud of are Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela, China, Vietnam, Syria, Belarus, Laos, Zambia and Turkmenistan. The highest ranking of these socialist countries on the UN index is Cuba at #51 with all the remainder declining in the index to Zambia at #165.
Those who still have questions on socialist distortions should contact Mr. Dean, wherever he is.
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