Every farmer, and most country people, know the insidious problem posed by rodents. The most common of these pesky rodents are, of course, mice and rats. And, because their nature is to hide and invade by night, they create a need for more devious means of eradication than mere trapping. The solution is to feed them a poison they won’t fear eating, so others will also ingest it and die.

Blood thinners are, by far, the most commonly used for this purpose. They usually require multiple feedings and do their work over a period of several days, allowing others to be comfortable with the environment and taking the bait for themselves. It all works very well, but how? Over a period of time, the blood is rendered unburdened by what it was meant to do. The platelets and other coagulants are similarly unburdened by their original purpose and the rodent dies without knowing why or what hit it.

To unburden someone or something of what “has been” is to unburden it from the lessons learned or the discoveries made that cumulatively create what we might call knowledge or wisdom. To “re-imagine” something is to reject it as it is, and find a replacement which may very well be inferior. But the current group of people who make up the Biden-Harris administration find “what has been” America, a burden. They look at the United States as a blank canvas as one may roller-paint the Mona Lisa with ceiling white and start over.

The political philosophies of Engels, Marx, and Hegel are the rat poison of a country. Call it by whatever form it takes (Marxian Socialism, Bolshevism, Communism, Socialism, Fascism, Nazism, etc.), because built into each iteration are the same characteristics of the blood thinners of rat poison; that is, it is palatable at first, drawing you back again and again for more, taking you out in pieces without your knowing why, or what hit you. It unburdens you from the wonderment that was created by others and leaves you to re-imagine what lies in front of you like a whitewashed Da Vinci.

Capitalism

The problem we have with capitalism isn’t what it is, it’s the title of what we now call it. By calling it capitalism, it is taken to be an alternative “-ism.” It is not an ism. In fact, it isn’t anything. The word, most likely traced back to about 1855 or so, is simply a word for referring to what people do to make money, and nothing more. From the Oxford English Dictionary:

The first use of the English word ‘capitalism’ can be found in William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel The Newcomes (1855, vol. 2: p. 45), where it seemed to refer to money-making activities and not an economic system.

There really isn’t a system we can reliably call capitalism. So, what is it? It is very simply the activity of people who have freely exchanged something of value to another for something of value to themselves. For example, if I have a knack for making arrows but can’t grow a stalk of corn to save my life, I might exchange my arrows for corn that someone else grew, and who is in need of reliable arrows for hunting. I may even make a bunch of arrows and keep them in storage to use as the need to trade comes up with others.

Today, we still trade things for things, or time for time, or job for job, or any combination of those and other things. We refer to it as trade or bartering. To accumulate a lot of what someone wants is a way of creating the ability to trade more and thereby have more. In most civilized societies, we accumulate money as a common exchange so we can increase the number of things for which we can barter. But, it’s still a trade of what I have for what you want, and vice versa.

Such trade is determined of value to the people in that exchange. For example, if I want you to mow my lawn for whatever reason, you may agree but you will want something in exchange. The most common, but not the only currency of exchange, is money. So, I want you to mow my lawn (time, work, output, or a job if you prefer) and I have nothing you would want from me, therefore we would agree to an amount of money which you can then use for what you do want from someone else. That is commonly called free trade; that is, you work for me mowing the lawn, and I work for you fixing toasters (or whatever I do for work) but handing you dollars as the currency. It’s called “free-trade” because we are free to determine all the elements of that exchange.

Socialism

Socialism, on the other hand, is an “-ism.” It is artificially created by others to superimpose onto a culture or society rules of engagement making our “trading” not free, but regulated according to some scheme. Like the rat poison, it seems palatable at first as it is usually packaged with the wrappings and trappings of fairness and equality (or worse, equity) as determined by that scheme as interpreted by a handful of Master Minds. Some examples of those who have interpreted and played master would be most famously: Vladimir Lenin, Mao Tse Tung, Ho Chi Minh, and North Korea’s Kim Il-Sung.

Inherent in this system is that all must participate. You must take only according to your need as determined by these “Master Minds,” and give according to your ability, again according to them. In the U.S., powerful Democrats believe they know what your ability to give is, as well as what you need, so they want to tax (take from) you what they think is equitable, and give it to those who they think have unmet needs. If you do not participate (i.e. pay whatever level of taxation they deem fit for you) you are deprived of your liberty or possessions by being imprisoned and/or having your possessions seized. This is deemed fair, as in “you’re paying your fair share.”

This unburdens us from the lessons learned by our founders, and centuries of testing their ideas across many countries and cultures. This allows the “Master Minds” to roller paint our history with white paint and makes our country a new canvas to be painted with whatever picture they envision it to be. It unburdens them from the lessons of history and allows them to see us, not as we are or what we want to be, but as they see we can be—if coerced and cudgeled enough.

To unburden us from what has been would be to make America a world in constant renewal, a kind of “Groundhog’s Day” world that never ends. But that isn’t what they mean when they say “unburdened by what has been.” What they mean is to unburden themselves from the limits and confines of the Constitution and to burden us instead with their dream of a New Utopia right here and right now. To make us become their version of John Lennon’s Imagine:

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too

…

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one.

These words are the rat poison of our world; no borders, no God, nothing to kill or die for, and the world will be as one. But whose one? Whose world would it be as one? It sounds so palatable, so fair, so equitable. But what it is is poison. It poisons your freedom to think and act as you choose to think and act. It poisons your motivation to create or do whatever it takes to achieve your dreams, whatever they may be, for to do so would be inequitable. We don’t all “start at the same place” so your dreams may put you in a different place from another, thus requiring these Master Minds to take from you, the “privileged,” the fruits of your labors, and give it to others. It unburdens you from being charitable because they have already taken from you to give to others. It deprives you of being anything more than another brick in their edifice, all theirs and designed by them. They would deprive you of the burden of deciding what to do, where to live, what to drive, what to eat, or even what to drink. All the while they get to sit atop Mt. Olympus clinking their glasses as they toast each other for the wonderment they’ve created for us, their ant farm on Earth.

What “has been” is not a burden to Americans, not real Americans. What “has been” is a gift that is renewable each and every day. A gift of freedom to fail and the freedom to succeed, for without the freedom to fail, there is no such thing as success. No. The burden is on those who wish to impose their will and vision for that which “has been” has stood the test of time and remains that light which both starkly shows the flaws of their design, and continues to make us “that shining city upon a hill.”

Image: Free image, Pixabay license.