against socialism, terrorism and other forms of cruel oppression.
Let us thank those who fight and keep our nation safe and help other nations do likewise.
We are proud of our troops:
10 Reasons to Protest…Against the Protesters
As an aging and diminishing crowd of leftist protesters gathers at Fort Benning over this November 20-21 weekend, it is worthwhile to consider why they protest.
They claim their protest is against the “crimes” of the graduates of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (formerly called the School of the Americas) and demand its closure. They sustain that the school itself graduates criminals. It is, in their words, a “school of assassins.”
However, the evidence does not support their claims. On the contrary, the overwhelming majority of the graduates have committed no crimes. If the school’s purpose is, as the left says, to produce criminals, it has definitely failed in its mission.
That is not to say that the school does not have graduates who later committed horrible crimes. However, no one can seriously hold Georgetown University, for example, responsible for the crimes of its graduates. Such an absurd claim would hold any school to an impossible standard.
Moreover, the curriculum of the course is open for all to inspect. The U.S. Army has opened its books and classrooms to any observers who wish to inspect them. If the crimes of assassination are actually now being taught, it is part of a secret agenda of which all, even the protesters, are not privy.
Our attention should turn to the pacifist protesters and their ideology.
The annual SOA Watch protest at Fort Benning resembles a class reunion. Indeed, small bands of radical leftist students join aged Sixties protesters who come to this socialist Woodstock as if in pilgrimage. Among the scattered fringes of the religious, political, environmental and cultural Left that use the event as a platform, we find ideas that range from drug legalization to abortion and even women’s ordination.
Excommunicated Maryknoll Father Roy Bourgeois leads this gathering which has no hidden agenda. This reunion of socialists, Liberation Theology advocates and anarchists openly and proudly proclaim a socialist program. They come to the defense of socialist regimes now reigning in Latin America including Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia.
Yet no one denounces socialism—a veritable school of assassins. Guerrilla groups in Latin America, like Colombia’s FARC, still cling to subversive Marxist ideas, causing violence and bloodshed. There is Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela exporting his Bolivarian socialist revolution across Latin America. Communist Cuba still holds its suffering people in abject poverty and suppresses their human rights.
No protester denounces these assassins who as a matter of policy, not exception, pursue their open socialist agenda. On the contrary, at the protest, many of these, including the ubiquitous terrorist Che Guevara, are hailed as heroes. They turn a blind eye to a ruthless enemy who breaks all rules and conventions, as Marxists have always done. They would deny defenseless populations the training and tools needed to defend themselves against this cruel enemy.
Thus, it is opportune that we outline ten reasons why we must strongly reject socialism. We give ten reasons why we must protest the protesters.
1. Socialism and Communism Are the Same Ideology
Communism is but an extreme form of socialism. From the ideological standpoint, there is no substantial difference between the two. In fact, the communist Soviet Union called itself the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922-1991) and communist China, Cuba and Vietnam define themselves as socialist nations.
2. Socialism Violates Personal Freedom
Socialism seeks to eliminate “injustice” by transferring rights and responsibilities from individuals and families to the State. In the process, socialism actually creates injustice. It destroys true liberty: the freedom to decide all matters that lie within our own competence and to follow the course shown by our reason, within the laws of morality, including the dictates of justice and charity.
3. Socialism Violates Human Nature
Socialism is anti-natural. It destroys personal initiative – a fruit of our intellect and free will – and replaces it with State control. It tends to totalitarianism, with its government and police repression, wherever it is implemented.
4. Socialism Violates Private Property
Socialism calls for “redistributing the wealth” by taking from the “rich” to give to the poor. It imposes taxes that punish those who have been able to take greater advantage of their productive talents, capacity to work or thrift. It uses taxation to promote economic and social egalitarianism, a goal that will be fully achieved, according to The Communist Manifesto, with the “abolition of private property.”
5. Socialism Opposes Traditional Marriage
Socialism sees no moral reason for people to restrict sex to marriage, that is, to an indissoluble union between a man and a woman. Furthermore, socialism undermines private property, which Friedrich Engels, founder of modern socialism and communism along with Karl Marx, saw as the foundation of traditional marriage.
6. Socialism Opposes Parental Rights in Education
Socialism has the State, and not parents, control the education of children. Almost from birth, children are to be handed over to public institutions, where they will be taught what the State wants, regardless of parental views. Evolution must be taught. School prayer must be forbidden.
7. Socialism Promotes Class Struggle
One of the main tenets of socialism is the concept of class struggle. Socialists do not foster class harmony but promote agitation by taking advantage of existing conflicts to favor their agenda. They pit the poor against the rich; employees against employers; children against parents; students against teachers; wives against husbands; laity against clergy; and soldiers against officers.
8. Socialism Promotes Atheism
Belief in God, who unlike us is infinite, omnipotent and omniscient, clashes head-on with the principle of absolute equality. Socialism therefore rejects the spiritual, claiming that only matter exists. God, the soul, and the next life are illusions according to socialism. According to Karl Marx, religion is “the opium of the people.” Lenin said: “Religion is opium for the people. Religion is a sort of spiritual booze in which the slaves of capital drown their human image, their demand for a life more or less worthy of man.”
9. Socialism Promotes Relativism
Socialism rejects absolute or revealed truths that establish moral standards of conduct that apply to everyone, everywhere, and always. It claims everything evolves, including right and wrong, good and evil. Socialism has no place for the Ten Commandments, either in private or in the public square.
10. Socialism Scorns Honor
The principle of absolute equality among all is the fundamental assumption of socialism. It sees any inequality as unjust in itself. As a consequence, it does not foster respect for those who rightly excel, including our military heroes who selflessly put their lives on the line and deserve our homage.
Saint Michael medal from TFP members.
We need to fight against socialism more than ever. Now as in the past, it is the American soldier, whose only mission is to heroically stand on the frontline against socialism, terrorism and other forms of cruel oppression, who merits our admiration.
The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) calls upon the public to thank these heroes. Let us thank those who fight and keep our nation safe and help other nations do likewise.
May God protect America and the world from socialism.
November 19, 2010
The American TFP