There exists within socialism a simple cause and effect relationship: socialism causes misery. The Venezuelan people have experienced this misery for a couple of decades now and they are sick of it.
 
According to a Venezuelan polling firm, Meganalisis, 87.9% of surveyors agreed with the statement: “socialism is the worst and most destructive political ideology to lead the government.” Again, as they’ve been living with this form of government for a couple of decades, they certainly know and understand just how terrible socialism is.
 
What’s more, the people also overwhelmingly believe (89.5%) that the federal legislature, the National Assembly, “should authorize foreign military missions in the country,” according to Breitbart, with another 91.2% saying they “did not believe it was possible for Venezuelans to remove Maduro without foreign military intervention.” 88% also said they weren’t trustful of the nation’s armed forces.
 
That last one makes a lot of sense seeing as the military, at least top officials within it, are still on Maduro’s side and recently launched a campaign against the protesters that resulted in the deaths of five people so far, the youngest of which being a 14-year-old protester. And despite the fact that the country’s interim President Guaido has insisted there would be a military uprising to oust Maduro and that he’s getting members of the military on his side, the Venezuelan armed forces appeared to still be on Maduro’s side, if not at least split between the two.
 
Rush Limbaugh remarked on his radio show last week that the Venezuelan armed forces had no reason to oust Maduro, since they are the ones living comfortably and well. In a sense, he insisted that they had no reason to bite the hand that feeds them. And I only half-way agree.
 
Some of the people in the armed forces probably do think this way. That they are living comfortable lives and afford their own families such comfortable lives, so they have no reason to upset the status quo. However, I imagine there are also those who recognize that they won’t be in the military forever and cannot provide for their family with whatever they receive out of being soldiers forever. Some must be thinking long-term, knowing that those who are not in the military don’t have good lives, so in order for their families to have better lives, the socialist dictator must be ousted.
 
It really all depends on the individual soldier’s morals and mindset. If a soldier is against socialism, he will likely look to help oust Maduro. If a soldier does not much care for his country or his people, apart from his family, he has no reason to betray Maduro.
 
And as I’ve said in the past few weeks: you need the military in order for a coup to be successful. If Guaido does not have the military on his side, and it’s clear he does not have at least a solid majority of it, he will fail. Which is why the people do not trust the armed forces, as they’ve killed some protesters recently and hold hundreds of political prisoners, and it’s why 90% of them wish for a foreign military to come in and oust Maduro.
 
That is especially the case considering that roughly 90 percent (87.9) agree with the statement: “Venezuela has been intervened and controlled by Cuba and Russia.” Maduro’s Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza traveled to Moscow last weekend and said the Maduro regime was thinking about asking Russia for more troops to help against the protesters.
 
What’s more, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that the U.S. potentially sending troops to Venezuela was “catastrophic and unjustified”, suggesting that Russia is “categorically against military intervention. The use of force can only be authorized by the U.N. Security Council, or used in response to aggression by a sovereign state.” Which is a whole lot of caca considering Russia has already sent armed forces into the country, likely illegally.
 
Personally, I’ve gone back and forth on the idea of sending U.S. troops to Venezuela. I see both sides of the argument: this sort of insurrection and foreign meddling has usually led to the country being worse off than before (see Lybia with open slave markets that were not there when Qaddafi was in power), but socialism must be defeated and pushed back at every turn; we have our own problems, particularly at the Southern border, which we must prioritize, plus we should not send our own to die for other people, but at the same time, socialism is a worldwide problem that is also here and causing human suffering, not to mention that not helping Venezuela could likely just create more refugees (actual refugees, though) and have them join more and more caravans as time goes on.
 
I really am not certain, even today, what the best course of action is. I think the right thing to do would be to help the Venezuelans oust Maduro, but that could bring about other problems as well, and we already have enough on our plate having to deal with evil Democrats and Republicans who refuse to allow for a border wall to be built.
 
But in any case, the poll finds that the Venezuelan people are sick and tired of socialism. They overwhelmingly hate Maduro, with less than 5% acknowledging him to be the country’s president, but they are also not great fans of Guaido, who despite the fact that 50% say he’s the legitimate head of the country, those numbers are down and they are not exactly fond of the fact that his party, Popular Will, is a formal member of the Socialist International.
 
Personally, I would also be fairly wary of that fact if it weren’t for the fact that Argentina’s (where I was born) most conservative and best president it ever had, Carlos Menem, ran as a socialist, with socialist policies that he did a complete 180 on, opting instead to reduce the size and scope of the government and denationalizing industries during his administration.
 
If I had to give an explanation as to why Popular Will is part of the Socialist International it is likely because of the election laws set in place in Venezuela. Socialists don’t want non-socialists running for office and would only be okay with another socialist eventually taking their place.
 
Guaido himself has been very vocal about his disdain for socialism and love for capitalism, so I don’t hold it against him that his party is part of the Socialist International.
 
Still, that is yet another example of the people living under socialism being utterly sick and tired of it. They don’t want more socialism and certainly don’t want another socialist to take Maduro’s place. This is the cause and effect relationship of socialism: socialism causes misery. It causes suffering.
 
Margaret Thatcher didn’t say, “the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money” for nothing. Winston Churchill didn’t say, “Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy” and “the inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; The inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries,” for nothing.
 
They knew perfectly well what socialism was and how awful it was without even having to live under socialist rule. People like Trump also understand how awful socialism is. Reagan and JFK were staunchly against socialism/communism in all of its forms.
 
Venezuelans know perfectly well what socialism is and how awful it is because they unfortunately have to live under it. They have electricity on a good day, little to no water, no food, whatever “free” healthcare they have is from the Dark Ages at best and are attacked, harassed and killed if they speak out against such miseries.
 
Foreign journalists are detained and stripped of their equipment if they dare show Maduro the reality that his administration brings to the Venezuelan people. Such journalists should count their blessings that they are not from Venezuela.
 
In this poll, the Venezuelan people make it perfectly clear: socialism sucks. They send out a message to other people not to try it, thinking that it might work for them. It never does. All it does is bring about oppression and suffering. Not all of it is immediate, of course. Venezuelans at least had electricity a year or so ago. But the more socialism is applied in a country, the worse things get. That’s because socialism is utterly nonsensical and does not conform to reality well.
 
The idea of people being equally blessed is heavenly because that is the only place it actually happens. Government is no substitute for God. A socialist country is no substitute for Heaven.
 
Those who live under socialism understand that socialism is utterly terrible. But those who do not live in it don’t have to find that to be the truth the hard way. Socialism should not be tried anywhere as it works nowhere because you cannot have a thriving country with a system of destruction of wealth.
 
Argentina’s best years were when it wasn’t socialistic for like a decade. America’s best years have been when socialist policies were completely fought back against, which thankfully has been the vast majority of America’s history.
 
And even within America, the worst and most rotten places are where socialist policies are faithfully implemented such as California, New York, Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta, etc. It’s honestly funny and sad at the same time when AOC talks about how bad things are in poor areas of New York, not recognizing that that’s what happens after decades of Democrat/socialist rule.
 
There is a reason I say that the only two kinds of people who want and advocate for socialism are ignorant people and evil people. You either have no idea what socialism is or know perfectly well and seek to become part of the government that would have all the power in the country.
 
Of course, sometimes I’m tempted to include a third option: stupid people, those who see what’s happening in Venezuela, refuse to accept that socialism did all of that and continue to advocate for it saying “it’ll be different this time”.
 
In any case, I hope and pray that the people of Venezuela will not have to endure socialism for much longer, whether that means a coup or foreign military ousting Maduro. I also hope and pray that people see what is happening in Venezuela and come to understand that that’s what will happen here if we let socialism win.
 
Deuteronomy 31:6
“Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you.”
 
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Author: Freddie Marinelli.

It is not that often that I write super obvious titles like that. Almost all of you, if not all, would read that title and mentally say: “no duh!” because that might as well say: “Socialism Is Bad”. It’s just that obvious that cities and states artificially (and I’ll get to why I’m specifically using that word in a moment) raising the minimum wage to any rate ends up hurting the very people such raises are supposed to help.
 
But why exactly am I talking about this? Because recently, New York City has seen “the greatest plunge in restaurant jobs in almost 20 years”, which comes as a result of New York’s Fast Food Wage Board making a “recommendation” to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour back in 2015.
 
A survey from the New York City Alliance, published by the end of 2018, found that “76.50% of full service restaurant respondents reduced employee hours, and 36.30% eliminated jobs in 2018… 75% of limited service restaurant respondents report that they will reduce employee hours, and 53.10% will eliminate jobs in 2019 as a result of mandated wage increases that took effect on December 31, 2018… When the tip wage increased 50% in 2015, and since doubled, annual employment growth dropped from 6.67% to less than 1% as of November 2018.”
 
But wait, there’s more. Back in mid February, economist Mark Perry from the American Enterprise Institute wrote:
 
“December 2018 restaurant jobs were down by almost 3,000 (and by 1.64%) from the previous December, and the 2.5% annual decline in March 2018 was the worst annual decline since the sharp collapse in restaurant jobs following 9/11 in 2001… it usually takes an economic recession to cause year-over-year job losses at NYC’s full-service restaurants, so it’s likely that this is a ‘restaurant recession’ tied to the annual series of minimum wage hikes that brought the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour at the end of last year.”
 
And it’s not just New York City that is getting hurt by these wage hikes. Back in August of 2016, Seattle was in much the same spot when they raised their own minimum wage. The same thing happened to San Francisco, when they raised their minimum wage, leading more and more restaurants to close and workers to subsequently lose their jobs.
 
Altogether, having the government raising the minimum wage is a terrible thing for the people it’s supposed to help.
 
There is no “livable wage” when the effects of artificially raising the minimum wage are that people get reduced work hours, lose their jobs altogether, or entire businesses close down to try and offset costs.
 
Never mind the fact that a minimum wage was never meant to be a “livable” wage. It literally can’t be made into a livable wage, especially by the government!
 
Now, I mentioned earlier that I would explain just what I mean when I talk about artificially raising the minimum wage. I’m really talking strictly in an economics sense.
 
The government forcing a wage increase is an artificial way to have wages increase. And as we can plainly see, it only brings pain to those it affects. Businesses have to reduce employee hours or outright lay people off because they can’t afford to pay their low-skill workers such high wages. If a business hopes to survive, it has to do that sort of thing under such poor economic policies.
 
However, I am not against raising the minimum wage altogether because there is an economically sound way of doing it. It’s what we saw soon after the GOP tax cuts were put into place. Businesses like Walmart, in multiple locations nationwide, were gaining so much money from heavily reducing the corporate tax rates that they decided to raise the minimum wage of their workers to that magic number the Left wants to force on everyone: $15 an hour.
 
This is the economically sound, pro-market, and real way to raise the minimum wage. If a business can afford to pay its employees more, it doesn’t have much reason not to. So the minimum wage worker gets a nifty little raise, the same wage the Left claims to want for people, AND their work hours are not cut, thus letting them make more money than they otherwise would have AND they are most definitely not laid off AND the business they work for can continue growing more and more, allowing its employees to also be paid more and more.
 
If anyone wonders why there is any sort of “pay gap” between the NBA and the WNBA is because the WNBA’s revenue sits at $60 million according to Forbes, while the NBA’s revenue at the end of the 2017/18 season sat at just over $8 BILLION. The NBA shares with its players 50% of their revenue while the WNBA shares only 25% of their revenue because the WNBA makes far less money than the NBA does.
 
What I’m trying to say here is that a business that makes more money is able to pay its employees more money than a business that makes less money. That’s just common sense. It’s logic. The CFO of a huge company like Microsoft, Apple, Intel, etc. will make far more money than the CFO of a smaller business. The same is the case for many of the lower-earning and lower-ranking jobs.
 
So if a business can make more money, it can afford to pay its employees more money as well, and it almost always will do that, lest the employees resign and work for another company that will pay them more money.
 
This is the capitalist and only real good way to raise the minimum wage. The socialist way of raising the minimum wage, in which the government forces companies to pay its low-skill employees more money, is how businesses close and employees are either left with fewer work hours, so they don’t make more money anyway (and that’s the best case scenario) or are outright laid off because the businesses can’t afford to pay such a salary for a job literally anyone can do.
 
The socialist way of raising the minimum wage is what happens in liberal cities like Seattle, New York City, San Francisco and anywhere it’s tried. It’s one of the many reasons socialism doesn’t work. It’s an ideology that requires perfection in order to work.
 
On paper, the idea of raising the minimum wage is not bad. But we don’t live on paper. We live in the real world. And in the real world, real world things like profit margins and offsetting costs have to be factored in. As a result, if a business can’t afford the minimum wage hikes, it simply will reduce its work force, leaving people to not make any more money than they otherwise would at best and completely out of a job at worst.
 
Advocating for having the government raise the minimum wage is completely devoid of information and common sense.
 
Of course, the point of advocating for the government to raise the minimum wage isn’t that people are able to have “liveable” wages, but so that people DON’T HAVE liveable wages and have to rely on the government to pay for things.
 
The point of having the government raise minimum wage is that people DO GET FIRED so they have to rely on the government.
 
When news came out that businesses like Walmart were WILLINGLY raising their minimum wage, Democrats either were completely silent or were outright furious. They don’t actually care about the people and whether or not they have a liveable wage. In fact, they’d rather they would not have a decent wage so that they can fall prey to the government’s crippling social programs.
 
It further goes to show that the Left does not care one little bit about people, particularly those they say they support. They couldn’t care less about anyone other than themselves and their own power, so they advocate for things that will screw the little guy and force him to depend largely or solely on the government.
 
Proverbs 28:1-5
“The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion. When a land transgresses, it has many rulers, but with a man of understanding and knowledge, its stability will long continue. A poor man who oppresses the poor is a beating rain that leaves no food. Those who forsake the law praise the wicked, but those who keep the law strive against them. Evil men do not understand justice, but those who seek the Lord understand it completely.”
 
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Author: Freddie Marinelli.

Some time ago, I wrote an article talking about how insanely hypocritical it was for Democrats and Leftists to say that they are “doing the Lord’s work” or something to that extent when opposing Trump, or simply being their Leftist selves. Well, that also applies to establishment Republicans who for some reason feel as though they can speak for God now.
 
In an interview with CNN, John Kasich said the following:
 
“You know, we have a caravan coming north. We don’t want all those people coming across our border, and there are ways to deal with it. I believe if we could check those who are legitimately in need of asylum, could be vetted before they even get to the border. But you know what? We’re born in America. You know how lucky we are to be born in America and not be born in Guatemala where they would say to your daughter, you know, if you don’t do what we want, we will rape your daughter or we will kill your son if he’s not a drug mule? Now they’re marching north, and you know what? It could easily have been all of us, that we’re in the caravan, that we’re marching north trying to save our families and save our children… If we have been spared… by the grace of God, let us be appreciative, let us count our blessings, and let us reach out to those who have less. And let’s stop putting up walls around ourselves and not understanding the plight, the trouble, and the problems of others. It is not right. And the Lord doesn’t want it…”
 
That is a lot to cover, so let’s go little by little. Overall, I both agree and disagree with what he is saying.
 
People born in the U.S. SHOULD count their blessings for being born in the greatest nation on Earth. And we SHOULD try and help people who need help. In fact, doing so is very much a Christian thing to do.
 
However, there is a difference between helping people and being forced to take care of them.
 
Not to mention that the border wall isn’t meant to drive away immigrants. It’s meant to drive away ILLEGAL immigrants.
 
John Kasich believes that we should “help” these people. The problem comes in the fact that it’s likely dangerous people, like members of MS-13, are part of this caravan. Letting these people in means many, and I mean MANY, dangerous people seeing our compassion and exploiting it, entering the country and hurting Americans.
 
We should not be helping people if that comes at the expense of America and Americans. And we certainly should not be guilt-tripped into helping people who very well could come in to exploit our system at best and harm Americans at worst.
 
Besides, let’s not ignore that we do help people, or at least their countries of origin. We give over $120 million to Honduras alone annually (though that number is bound to come down after this). So our government does try and help other countries.
 
But it shouldn’t fall on us to babysit them. It shouldn’t fall on us to take these people in, particularly in this way, and sacrifice Americans’ livelihoods, jobs, etc. We have to take care of our people first, and that’s not what the Democrats and establishment Republicans seem to want.
 
We especially should not be made to believe that it is our fault that other countries are poorer than us. Socialism is killing Venezuela. It’s also slowly, but surely killing other countries as well. I’ve mentioned in the past that the only time Argentina was prosperous was when it abandoned socialism at least economically, through deregulation and such.
 
We are as rich and plentiful as we are because our capitalist system of government and economics are built to help people be prosperous. Key word “help”. It doesn’t guarantee or make it a right that people be prosperous. You have the right to the PURSUIT of happiness, not a right to given happiness.
 
But let’s focus a bit more on Kasich bringing God into the mix. He claims that God doesn’t want us to surround ourselves in walls. He’s wrong on this as well. You have to keep in mind what the wall is meant to do. Like I said earlier, it’s not meant to keep immigrants out. It’s meant to keep ILLEGAL immigrants out.
 
It’s meant to secure our border and protect our people. It’s a national security issue just as much as an immigration issue. Not to speak for God, but I believe He would want us to be safe. After all, He instructed and led Nehemiah to build a wall too. And Jerusalem currently has a wall that keeps Hamas and other Islamic terrorists out of the promised land (that was promised to the Jews, not Muslims or any other type of Gentile).
 
Why have those walls? To protect the people inside. That’s what Trump’s border wall is meant to do.
 
We are a country that welcomes immigrants. Heck, we ARE a nation of immigrants. But the difference between the immigrants that came from Europe and the ones that are marching to our border is that the world was far different, with far different laws and dangers to be met.
 
Not to mention that the pilgrims set out for America to be free to express their religious beliefs without fear of persecution from the Crown.
 
On the other hand, these illegals are fleeing their crappy countries to enter the country illegally and forcefully, very much like an invading force.
 
A border wall can stop such an invading force, and there is no honest person who should oppose prioritizing the safety of our people.
 
I won’t be too harsh on Kasich here because he is not completely wrong with what he’s saying. He’s wrong about the purpose of wanting a wall. He’s certainly wrong about what he thinks Trump’s intentions are with a wall. But he’s not wrong that we should help people.
 
However, that’s what we’re already doing. Allowing an invading force to enter the country like this will not help those people and certainly will not help us. If we don’t help ourselves, how could we possibly help others?
 
Regarding the caravan itself, I have already written an article surrounding that topic, so there’s not much else for me to say that would be too different from what I said in that article.
 
The larger point I wanted to make here is that Kasich is wrong in believing God doesn’t want a border wall. I won’t claim to know what God does or does not want. I cannot fully understand what God wants because I cannot fully understand Him, being one of His creations with a limited mind. However, I do believe He wants us to be safe from the dangers of this world and a border wall would help towards that end.
 
Not to mention that, in order to help people, they also have to help themselves. The governments of Central America, maybe with some exceptions, are largely central in their power. Meaning that government is everything and they keep expanding it, bringing in more socialism into the mix. We want to help other countries, but those countries also have to do their part in implementing a system where they are not reliant on us for so much.
 
I’m all for helping others. But that help should not be a one-way street. That help should not be rewarded with being invaded by illegals, likely many of whom look to exploit our system all-the-while trashing it and us, and maybe even harming people by raping young girls and/or killing them.
 
America and Americans must always come first. I want to help Americans first. Otherwise, how could we help anyone else?
 
Luke 6:38
“Give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.”
 
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Author: Freddie Marinelli.

Back in August, I wrote an article that detailed the fact that only 25% of Democrats would support abolishing ICE after the illegal immigration debate heated up once again and somehow was hurting Trump to a degree.
 
While I do not necessarily have any news surrounding Democrats’ support of abolishing ICE, I do bring some news surrounding Latino voters’ views on ICE. And they don’t look good for Democrats.
 
A recently released poll by NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Telemundo found that, of 300 interviewees who were registered Latino voters, 36% would be less likely to vote for a candidate who supports abolishing ICE compared to 33% who would be more likely to vote for such a candidate.
 
26% said there was “no difference” either way and 5% said they were “not sure”.
 
Now, the poll doesn’t just focus on this one item. The poll is actually quite extensive, for example:
 

• When asked if they approve or disapprove of Trump’s performance as POTUS, 26% approved while 65% disapproved (this, however, is challenged by a Harvard/Harris poll that had Trump’s approval with Hispanics at 47%, but that poll was taken in late July, early August, but that would be a horrific drop-off for Trump that I do not think is correct, but I digress)

• When asked if they had a positive or negative view of the GOP, 22% held a positive view, 45% held a negative view, while 43% held a positive view of the Democrat Party and 20% held a negative view of the Dems.

 

• When asked if they had a positive or negative view of Obama, 67% held a positive view while only 14% held a negative one.

 
But perhaps most interestingly, though not necessarily shocking:
 

• When asked if they had a positive or negative view of Capitalism, 41% held a positive view, with only 21% holding a negative view.

• When asked if they had a positive or negative view of Socialism, 21% held a positive view while 42% held a negative view.

 
So we really should take everything in this poll with a grain of salt. This is a relatively small sample size, with only 300 registered Latino voters being surveyed.
 
But there are a number of things to take away from all this. Primarily, while the vast majority of Latino voters understand socialism and despise it, they do not recognize it in Democrats… somehow. Despite the fact that they do not like socialism at all, they still seemingly hold a negative view towards Trump and the GOP and would prefer the Democrats to win in November.
 
So what this poll tells me is that there is a severe lack of knowledge out there for Latinos. Now, don’t misunderstand, I’m not saying Latinos are stupid. Ignorance and idiocy are two different things. People can cease being ignorant simply through learning and acquiring knowledge. However, people can’t cease being stupid even with knowledge.
 
It’s clear to me that these Latino voters understand that Capitalism is good and Socialism is evil. They are not stupid. However, they are ignorant if they still prefer Democrats over Trump and the GOP. They do not recognize that the Democrats would only bring about the same kind of Socialism that they despise and some might even had fled from.
 
Regardless, that is a topic for another time. Right now, I want to focus on the fact that even within the same poll that has Latinos adamantly rejecting Trump and the GOP, Latinos also report being less likely to vote for someone who would support abolishing ICE.
 
It’s this sort of inconsistency that leads me to take everything this poll says with a grain of salt, even the things that are positive in my eyes. Latinos prefer Obama over Trump, the Dems over the GOP, all the while supporting Capitalism over Socialism and keeping ICE over abolishing it?
 
Taking aside the fact that this is a poll from an MSM source, this poll does not seem very consistent and might not be entirely credible.
 
However, the fact that the poll shows Latinos favoring ICE and being less likely to vote for a candidate that would support abolishing it speaks volumes, regardless of credibility.
 
I can understand if the poll wanted to skew certain things to make Trump and the GOP look bad and like they are about to get kicked out of Washington. I don’t know how many of the registered Latino voters are Democrats compared to Republicans. But I would be naïve to assume there is no overlap of Democrat voters in an MSM poll. However, I won’t speculate further.
 
All I’m saying is that it is remarkable that, despite many of the other things the poll shows, the voters would prefer ICE stay than be abolished. That goes against many other things the poll indicates and the Democrats claim. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ran, among other things, on the promise of abolishing ICE. Upon her upset victory over Joe Crowley, other Democrats picked up on some of the things she was saying and moved farther Left, also calling on ICE to be abolished.
 
Now, as I said at the beginning of the article, support for abolishing ICE has dropped off massively since Ocasio-Cortez’s victory even within Democrats. So perhaps I should not be so surprised that Latinos tend to have a more favorable view of the agency. But that’s not what has me intrigued. Frankly, it’s not that surprising.
 
For the most part, registered Latino voters are legal immigrants (though I don’t know if there were any illegals who were considered “registered voters” in the poll or actually are “registered voters” as illegal as that is, but I won’t speculate further on that issue… for now). Legal immigrants tend to not have positive views on illegal immigrants.
 
You see, legal immigrants go through the process the right way. They (we, since I am a legal immigrant and now proud U.S. citizen) pay what needs to be paid, wait the amount of time that needs to be waited, sign and complete all the forms that need to be signed and completed, and overall go through the extensive process of attaining legal status to immigrate and become a legal U.S. resident.
 
Illegals basically crap all over that.
 
So, when legal immigrants such as myself see what illegals are doing and the preference they receive from the Democrats, we tend to not like that. Now, I do realize the poll shows Latinos prefer Democrats over the GOP, but as I insinuated, that’s relatively questionable right now.
 
When we see a government agency properly enforcing the immigration laws we ourselves were subjected to, we tend to like that. No one should be able to come here through illegal means and those that do should immediately be considered criminals. And don’t tell me that’s harsh. If you break the law, you’re a criminal. If you break immigration law, you’re a criminal. Simple as that.

This is a view that, from what logic and seemingly data from an MSM poll, most legal immigrants share. So what has me surprised is not that registered Latino voters seemingly marginally support ICE. What has me surprised is that the MSM poll would show that.
 
Either way, I would imagine the MSM would focus more on the numbers that help reflect their narrative that a blue wave is incoming and inevitable than to focus on the fact that Latinos would be less likely to support a candidate that wants ICE abolished or the fact that Latinos tend to despise Socialism and prefer Capitalism.
 
But regardless of what the fake news media has to say, they have given me no reason to believe what they say on multiple occasions.
 
John 8:32
“And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
 
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Author: Freddie Marinelli.

I have already written an article detailing the fact that Venezuela is the direction the Left wants to take us, not because they are prosperous, but because those within the government have all the power they want and the people depend on them for everything.
 
However, given that Venezuela is still a socialist country and likely will be for the foreseeable future, the fact that they are failing to deliver the promises the Left makes simply must be covered as an example of what happens when you have actual socialism running the country.
 
According to HotAir.com: “In the capital of Caracas, the Central Venezuelan University hospital (long recognized as one of the leading medical centers in the region) is almost entirely out of water. And so are the rest of the residents of the city, for that matter. That means that doctors can’t scrub up for surgery or even provide a sterile environment. Surgeries are being canceled and patients can’t even be kept hydrated in some cases.”
 
Now, it’s not that the entire country is running out of water. Venezuela enjoys 135 days of rain a year on average. However, the reason for this lack of water is that Caracas sits at an elevation of 2740 ft. so most of their potable water comes in through pipes from lower elevated lands. The problem resides in the fact that, according to HotAir.com, “With nobody left to do the maintenance on their hydraulic systems and no money to buy replacement parts and tools, the system is falling apart.”
 
Combine this lack of water to perform surgery on patients or even keep them hydrated with the fact that Venezuela is also running short on medicine, vaccines and food altogether and you have a recipe for disaster.
 
Which brings me to the main point of this entire article: what good are socialist policies if no one can afford them and they don’t even work when they are implemented?
 
Bernie Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, Fauxcahontas, Low IQ Maxine Waters, and more all want universal healthcare. They all want guaranteed income, even if they don’t come right out and say it, and all want the power Nicolas Maduro currently wields.
 
What good is universal healthcare if we can’t afford to pay for it? And even if we can somehow afford to pay for it (don’t tell me “the government pays for it, not us”. That’s the argument of a legitimate moron), what good is it if the economy is so bad that the government can’t keep it running?
 
What good is it to implement social programs that simply don’t work? It’s certainly not for the benefit of the people. And it’s not like this problem is strictly Venezuela’s. Our own welfare systems are designed not to help lift people out of poverty but help people REMAIN in poverty. Thankfully, under Trump, millions and millions of people are abandoning certain welfare programs because they actually have jobs now, but under a socialist President, like Obama, the main objective of such programs has been to keep people poor and dependent on the programs aka the government.
 
I’ve said this time and time again: capitalism creates wealth, socialism destroys it. Socialism is never for the benefit of the people. It’s a farce whenever the Left attacks the rich and claims to support the poor. It was a farce when Lenin fought the bourgeoisie for the benefit of the proletariat. It’s the proletariat, the underclass, that suffers the most and the bourgeoisie, if they align themselves with those in power, remain the bourgeoisie.
 
Why else do you think people like Bill Gates support Democrats? It’s not like the Democrats have good plans to make the economy stronger. All of their ideas destroy the economy. He supports them because, if Democrats are in power, they will leave him alone. It’s like that one kid who is friends with the school bully and supports him. He’s just doing it so he would be left alone and wouldn’t be victimized by him.
 
Another great example would most likely be Donald Trump. He used to be besties with the Clintons, Al Sharpton, Nancy Pelosi, and all the other people who now demonize him and call him a Nazi. While it could very well be said that at one point he aligned himself more socially liberal, the biggest reason he was friends with these people is so that they would allow him to build in New York, which is filled with Democrats, and in other places.
 
Meanwhile, the regular Joe’s like you and me, and those who are already in the poor end of the spectrum suffer the most under socialism.
 
Socialism has never lifted anyone out of poverty. It’s only made people poorer. You don’t hear stories of people escaping the U.S. for places like Venezuela, Eastern Europe, Russia, etc. People don’t escape capitalism. They escape socialism. You’d think these Democrats would realize that people coming here from socialist countries are ESCAPING socialism, not looking to apply it here.
 
But of course, it’s not about the people, when it comes to Democrats. Fundamentally, the Democrats only care about themselves. They only care about their own power, wealth and well-being.
 
If Bernie Sanders were a true socialist, he would donate his three homes, give up his millions of dollars and live like a socialist: in a box in the streets, being taken care of by the government. He speaks like a socialist but lives like a capitalist. That is what Democrats are doing nowadays. Ocasio-Cortez is the exact same.
 
At the end of the day, the Left around the world does not care if their policies are a detriment to the very people that elected them. As long as they are the ones in power, and as long as the people are dependent on the government, thus giving them more power, they are more than okay. That’s why people like Maduro sit comfortably in their homes watching their countries fall apart.
 
As long as the elite are left unaffected by their own destructive policies, all is well.
 
This is the mentality of a narcissist. The mentality of the Left.
 
Proverbs 29:2
“When the righteous increase, the people rejoice, but when the wicked rule, the people groan.”
 
Author: Freddie Marinelli.

For the most part, I’ve chosen to steer clear off the topic of tariffs and a trade war. However, as I would read story after story relating to a trade war with China, one thing kept coming up in my mind: China would be obliterated by a trade war.
 
Even if the stories I would read would suggest the exact opposite, that the U.S. should not engage in a trade war with the Chi-coms, my instinct would always tell me that China had really no hopes of winning a trade war with us, especially if our economy is booming, which it is.
 
I will return to why exactly I suspected China would lose a trade war momentarily. For now, I wish to share a story with you published on Breitbart News titled: “Tectonic Shift in China: Xi Under Fire as China Realizes it Underestimated U.S. Trade Resolve.”
 
“Chinese President Xi Jinping is facing backlash from within the Communist Party over his hardline stance in the trade dispute with the United States, Reuters reported Thursday,” according to Breitbart.
 
Reuters reported that: “A growing trade war with the United States is causing rifts within China’s Communist Party, with some critics saying that an overly nationalistic Chinese stance may have hardened the U.S. position, according to four sources close to the government.”
 
“President Xi Jinping still has a firm grip on power, but an unusual surge of criticism about economic policy and how the government has handled the trade war has revealed rare cracks in the ruling Communist Party…”
 
“There is a growing feeling within the Chinese government that the outlook for China has ‘become grim’, according to a government policy advisor, following the deterioration in relations between China and the United States over trade. The advisor requested anonymity.”
 
I’m not surprised at all that the advisor requested anonymity. If the Chinese government found out who was saying these things about China and the government, they would imprison that person and possibly even execute them. There is no freedom of speech there. The only things you can say are things favorable to the government.
 
Regardless, let’s continue with the Reuters report: “Those feelings are also shared by other influential voices. ‘Many economists and intellectuals are upset about China’s trade war policies,’ an academic at a Chinese policy think tank told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue. ‘The overarching view is that China’s current stance has been too hard-line and the leadership has clearly misjudged the situation.”
 
The significance of this report cannot be understated. If this is, indeed, the case, then this is massive news! The Chinese communists don’t tend to be split about things like this. They are usually fairly unified. So for these anonymous sources to be saying these things about the Chinese Communist Party, that’s a big deal.
 
Even an article from the South China Morning Post suggests that China should concede defeat to Trump in this trade war. To quote Xu Yimiao, the writer of the article: “Beijing’s strategy of a tit-for-tat retaliation over tariffs has clearly failed. In fact, this strategy escalated the conflict…”
 
But how can this be? I thought China was supposed to kick our butts in a trade war. That’s what the Left and the fake news media were saying, after all.
 
Well, it’s really no surprise that the Left would say that we would lose a trade war with China. The Left sees China as a utopia. As such, they believe China’s centralized economy is superior to a capitalist market economy. Even U.S. Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) claimed last month that China held an advantage over the U.S. in a trade war, and engaging further in this trade war would be “stupid”.
 
According to Breitbart, “Views such as Schatz’s were common during the Cold War, when many prominent economists and political scientists argued that the Soviet Union’s totalitarian society could prevail over the U.S. Earlier in the last century, some had made similar arguments based on the perceived strength of Nazi Germany compared to the U.S.”
 
Which brings me to the reason I suspected China would lose a trade war. What do China, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany have in common? They would use socialistic policies to run every aspect of the government and people’s lives, including the economy. And what happened to two of those nations? They are no longer around… well, not as they used to be.
 
The reason I suspected China would lose a trade war is because capitalism always defeats communism in economics. Communism would be considered an economic joke if it weren’t so dangerous.
 
You see, there’s a very clear difference between capitalism and communism/socialism. I’ve even said this before in the past: capitalism creates wealth; communism destroys it.
 
Capitalism is the enterprise of building more and more wealth through freedom. Communism is the enterprise of spreading wealth around so much that it’s too thinly spread, and the enterprise of making it incredibly difficult to accumulate any sort of wealth. It’s the enterprise of spending other people’s money until there is no more money to be spent.
 
Under capitalism, wealth belongs to the people. Under communism, the people belong to the government.
 
I have often talked about China and how they are ranked #2 in world GDP (#3 if you count the E.U.). But you really have to think about why they are in that place.
 
Well, it’s most likely a combination of having the world’s biggest population (1.379 billion since 2016), so there’s a lot of people to give money to the government, as well as exploitation of what makes the GDP grow. For example, government spending grows the GDP. Part of the reason Obama’s GDP managed to grow around 2% is because he would spend a lot of money and drive our debt sky-high. But while the GDP was “growing”, the economy was stagnating, with high unemployment levels, more people going into welfare, etc.
 
China is doing much the same thing. They build luxurious ghost cities that no one can afford to move into and use so that the GDP artificially grows to an extent.
 
Now, I won’t claim to know the intricacies of Chines economics. I doubt vast amounts of spending and having the world’s largest population are the sole reasons for that GDP ranking, but they are significant parts of it. (The other part might be that they use relatively capitalistic economic policies to avoid completely crashing the economy and sinking the country).
 
What I’m getting at is that no communist country can withstand any sort of economic war with a capitalistic country, by definition. Engaging in trade wars with the U.S. will only accelerate China’s ultimate demise at the hands of their own communistic system.
 
And this becomes even more true if the U.S. is going through an economic boom, which it is. This, I believe, is part of the reason Trump is imposing and enforcing tariffs on foreign countries. Another part of it is the fact that other countries have been taking advantage of the U.S. because the Establishment believes the U.S. became powerful and wealthy because it somehow stole from other nations and felt that foreign governments taking advantage of us was a form of justice. Trump was having none of that nonsense and decided to embark on making fair trade deals by using the same tactics as the other nations.
 
But this really would not be suggested for Trump to do if the economy weren’t booming. With a booming economy, we can afford to engage in trade wars to make better trade deals in the future.
 
A booming U.S. economy combined with the simple fact of life that communism sucks at trade wars, and you can see why I always believed China would be destroyed in a trade war.
 
And seemingly, people within the Chinese Communist Party are beginning to realize this.
 
Proverbs 22:16
“Whoever oppresses the poor to increase his own wealth, or gives to the rich, will only come to poverty.”
 
Author: Freddie Marinelli.

In recent time, tech giants in Apple, YouTube and Facebook have all decided that Alex Jones’ InfoWars could no longer express themselves in their platforms. Naturally, this has created backlash and brought to the forefront the larger issue of what the First Amendment should and should not protect (I am aware that InfoWars’ First Amendment rights were technically not violated since the First Amendment protects people from the government, not companies).
 
So, Campus Reform decided to head to Columbia University to ask Millennials if they could even name all five freedoms protected under the First Amendment (speech, religion, press, assembly and petition). This is largely based on a recent Freedom Forum Institute survey that says 40% of people surveyed could not list any of the five freedoms protected by the First Amendment, and 36% could name only one.
 
Campus Reform offered $20 to any person who could successfully name all five First Amendment freedoms (video below). Not a single one of them got the money, unfortunately. Actually, many could hardly come up with a single freedom, while most could come up with 1 or 2 and only a handful could come up with three.
 
One of them even confused the Second Amendment with the First and thought the First Amendment protected people’s right to bear arms. I am both surprised and not so surprised at this. I am surprised because earlier this year, there has been a lot of talk about gun violence and the 2nd Amendment, so you would think just about everyone was aware enough of what the 2nd Amendment guaranteed and not confuse it with another Amendment. On the other hand, I am not so surprised because these are Millennials attending an Ivy League school where knowledge and truth go to die and are replaced with narrative and falsehood.
 
Now, Campus Reform also asked what should and should not be protected by the First Amendment. The answers from these Millennials were the precise ones you would expect: you don’t have the right to offend people and make them feel uncomfortable.
 
Now, before the liberal readers shout: “So you think we should be able to offend people and make them feel uncomfortable?!” This is not such a simple matter that bodes down to a yes or no answer here.
 
In short, here’s what the First Amendment guarantees: your right to speak your mind, your right to express and practice any religion, your right to print anything you want and share it with others, your right to peacefully assemble to express a unified thought and your right to petition for things such as holding rallies, parades, etc. These are all freedoms that shall not be infringed by the government. Meaning that the First Amendment protects us from being prosecuted by the government in any way.
 
However, there are logical limitations to this. For example, you have no right to threaten someone’s life or the life of their family. Doing so logically results in police investigation and possible prosecution. THAT is simply common sense, because a crime is involved. Threatening to kill someone is in and of itself a crime. However, what is not common sense is taking away someone else’s freedom of speech simply because you don’t like what they’re saying or disagree to any amount.
 
On the outset, I think most people would agree, even liberals. The problem arises when people look to do that by saying it’s offensive to express such a thought. The problem arises when you redefine what it means to use offensive language. For example, if I call a black man the N-word, that is understandably offensive. Do I have the right to do it? Yes. IS it right to do it? No. Should I have the right to do it? I certainly believe limiting free speech based entirely on offense is wrong. Does that mean, then, that I would do it? Of course not. I’m not a Democrat, after all.
 
So the overall problem exists with what constitutes offensive language. Me writing these articles, calling out the Left’s hypocrisy, proclaiming my love of Christ, praising the Lord and noting the significant achievements of the Trump administration should not constitute offensive language to any degree, and it does not. However, there are those who disagree.
 
Earlier, I mentioned Alex Jones and InfoWars as a whole. I have watched Alex Jones in the past and I can say that I do not necessarily agree with everything he says and the way he says it. He usually is fairly paranoid about everything and seems to be quite the conspiracy theorist. However, if you’re going to shut down people for being paranoid or throwing out conspiracy theories, then why is the entirety of the Mainstream Media still allowed to operate? Why is Rosie O’Donnell allowed to claim Trump’s rallies are fake and the people there are paid to be there (which is honestly stupid, given the size of the rallies and the fact that if they were paid, that would mean a whole lot of money to pay each of them)?
 
Alex Jones was not shut down for floating conspiracy theories but for saying things that Facebook, Apple and YouTube disagree with. It’s the same reason YouTube has cracked down on pro-gun channels that help people learn how to safely operate guns. They disagree with what Jones was saying and felt compelled to shut him down, but using their vague “terms of service” as an excuse.
 
While the First Amendment does not protect you from companies, it is entirely bogus and ridiculous that he would be shut down for saying things these corporations disagreed with. And before you bring up the NFL and anthem protests, know that these are different occasions. The players have the Constitutional right to kneel to the flag that gives them that right, but the NFL did not implement their new policy to crack down on protests altogether. They just don’t want people kneeling during the anthem on other people’s dime. The players can protest all they want, but they should do it differently and during a different time when they don’t look to be disrespecting the flag and the country. I think if they really did not want to mean disrespect, they would find a different way to protest and say the same things, but without being disrespectful.
 
Regardless, that’s a different matter entirely that I believe has been talked about enough and only comes down to what has been summarized in the prior paragraph.
 
Returning to the overall argument of what constitutes offensive language and what should and should not be limited by the First Amendment, I think it’s pretty clear what it says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
 
Meaning that the government cannot and should not keep people from expressing their beliefs, even if those beliefs are seen as offensive (legitimately or illegitimately offensive) or if they make people uncomfortable.
 
The college Millennials all expressed similar beliefs that the First Amendment should not be able to protect people from offending others or making them feel uncomfortable. Of course, this led Cabot Phillips (the interviewer from Campus Reform) to ask the question: “who gets to determine what is offensive?”
 
That question is really what trips people up, naturally. Who can honestly proclaim to be the sole moral judge in this world? Only God has such a power. Only God can honestly proclaim to be the epitome of morality, given that morality comes from Him.
 
No person here on Earth can honestly make such a proclamation. Of course, the Nazis, fascists, communists and socialists all make and have made that proclamation as often as they breathe, but they cannot make that proclamation honestly. These are the same people who will claim to be feminists while simultaneously abusing women on the sidelines. The same people who claim to be pro-choice so long as that choice is killing your baby. Aside from that, and even including that, you really have no choice. No choice in what religion to practice unless it’s anything other than Christianity and maybe even Judaism. No choice in what political candidate to support and what political ideas to stand by if that candidate and/or ideology is apart from Leftism.
 
The Left cannot be allowed to be the moral arbiter of society. If it comes to that, morality is completely dead.
 
If left up to the Left, every thought that is remotely different from the groupthink would be eliminated. These people envy the Iranian regime, the North Korean dictatorship, the Chinese communists. They envied Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, fascist Italy. They want people to only have access to one voice: theirs. To have access to only the information they provide and nothing else.
 
Our Forefathers knew exactly what tyranny looks and feels like. They knew exactly what the nature of Man is. They knew that they had to set up a system that puts restrictions on the government, not the people.
 
And before you feel any sort of grief over the fact that there was no possible way our Forefathers could have predicted these tyrannical companies doing what they feared government would do, let me put your mind at ease. Capitalism is truly a glorious thing. Not only does it help people prosper, but it naturally protects people.
 
What I mean is that we should not come up with a legislative answer to these tech giants shutting people down. It would be wrong and it would go against everything we believe in. Instead, let’s use the capitalist system we have in place.
 
A company’s first priority is the consumer/customer. If the consumer is unhappy, they leave for a competitor. That’s the nature of business. Now, I fully understand that there is no real competitor to Facebook, YouTube and all these other tech giants… yet. The nature of capitalism, combined with the fact that enough people are pissed off at these tech giants for their censorship, will lead to new companies rising and flourishing that will serve as real competitors. It’s a business inevitability.
 
If you are skeptical, just think about Uber or Lyft. Sure, they are not in the same business, but they are in a business that we thought only the government could control: the ride-sharing business. Just a decade ago, the thought of people using anything other than cabs or buses if they had no access to their own personal vehicles was hard to imagine. Now, you have Uber and Lyft competing with the government regulated cab and bus systems.
 
That’s the nature of capitalism at work. Just because it’s hard to imagine a new company rising and flourishing despite of the tech giants of Facebook and Google does not necessarily mean that they will not rise. Facebook itself was essentially what I described when it first began to be a social media website apart from online dating. It had to compete with MySpace, didn’t it?
 
So capitalism is the answer to these tech giants’ exploits. And yes, that even includes Apple. Yes, it’s nearly impossible to compete with Apple’s products, but it’s far easier to compete with their services, which is the reason they are even being talked about right now. If their podcast service won’t allow for speech they disagree with, someone else will come up with a podcast service that is actually tolerant of other people’s beliefs.
 
Now, this article is getting plenty long already, so I think it’s best to wrap things up here. The larger point I want to make is that the First Amendment should not be regulated apart from the earlier example of threatening someone, regulation which is already in place. The fact that 40% of people could not come up with a single First Amendment right both worries me about the future and allows me to set my sights in our current education system.
 
I mean seriously, this sort of thing should be covered in the 1st grade, for crying out loud! There is no excuse for anyone to not know what the First Amendment guarantees.
 
John 16:33
“I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”
 
Author: Freddie Marinelli.

In the age of Ocasio-Cortez seemingly being the face of the Democrat Party, established Party members are being left behind and if they do not do something soon, they will lose their Party and it will ultimately disappear, as I have said in pervious articles.
 
Here is where Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) comes in. Speaking to the New England Council during an event used to launch national campaigns, Warren said: “I am a capitalist to my bones.”
 
This is interesting because we have been seeing a trend toward open admittance of socialism in the Democrat Party. For one of its members, particularly Warren of all people, who is as far from capitalist as Bernie Sanders, is truly interesting.
 
Now, chances are that she will walk these comments back soon enough, but the fact remains that she is trying to position herself as at least more center-Left, ala Bill Clinton, than full-fledged Left. And this could be in response to the mere fact that people are walking away from the Democrat Party because they can no longer recognize it.
 
Do not misunderstand, she is as socialist as she ever was, but at least she is trying to put the mask back on. The problem is that, once the monster is revealed behind the mask, putting the mask back on does not matter at all.
 
In recent time, we’ve seen only escalation from the Democrat Party, not de-escalation. With people like Maxine Waters encouraging violence against Trump staffers and, subsequently, Trump supporters, people’s image of the Democrat Party has been deteriorating. Every time they call for either the impeachment of Donald Trump for the tiniest of things that trigger them, the American People see the Democrat Party as the socialist monsters that they are. And only now, after nearly TWO years of Trump’s presidency, are we seeing some form of course-correction from the Left.
 
Make no mistake, it’s not that Warren actually wants to go back center-Left. It’s that she may want the Democrat Party, or at least herself, to APPEAR center-Left. Deception has been their greatest weapon against Republicans, but they have abandoned it trying to match Trump’s “extremism”. But before Trump came along, the Democrats were happy to appear centrist while applying socialist policies.
 
Actually, that’s not entirely true. Bernie Sanders came out as an open socialist before Trump became President. And Obama accelerated the Party’s shift farther to the Left. But even still, people like Hillary Clinton were not quite ready to oust themselves as socialists, since socialism still has a negative connotation with most people.
 
But the rise of Bernie’s popularity and the emergence of Trump as a “hard-Right” President, they felt compelled to unmask themselves and openly admit to their socialist ideologies (not necessarily all of them, but enough to make socialism the Party’s main ideology).
 
However, despite their attempt at fighting strong capitalism with open socialism, Trump has not only remained popular with his base but has also GAINED popularity with approval numbers hitting the high 40s and low 50s on a good day.
 
Not only has he become more and more popular, but he’s also succeeded in many, MANY things he wanted to accomplish in his agenda. And it’s only been A YEAR AND A HALF!
 
Every attempt made against Trump has ultimately backfired on them and made them less popular. Sure, they’ve won a few elections here and there, most notably in Alabama, but their commitment to going completely bananas is and will backfire on them massively, particularly in a big election like the Midterms.
 
The threatening “Blue Wave” the Left had been touting at the beginning of the year has all but dissipated, even after arguing against Trump’s Helsinki meeting. And even with Ocasio-Cortez’s success over the incumbent Democrat Joe Crowley, there is not much hope for the Left in the midterms. The turnout was pretty small for the fact that Ocasio-Cortez is the socialist leader for the Democrat Party now.
 
Now, I know what you’re going to say. “It was just a primary election. They don’t usually get that much turnout.” I would agree with you if it weren’t for the fact that Ocasio-Cortez is a very open socialist in NEW YORK! If socialism is the Party’s future and people like Ocasio-Cortez are its future, you would think more people in her district would have been more excited to vote for her. According to the New York Post, of the 214,750 registered Democrat voters in Ocasio-Cortez’s district, only 27,744 voted. Ocasio-Cortez won by 4,000 votes.
 
Only 13% of registered Democrats in the district turned out to vote. In another Democrat race, only 9% of registered Democrats turned out to vote. In contrast, a GOP primary in the 11th Congressional District turned out 18% of the vote. Again, THIS IS NEW YORK!
 
People were not that excited for Ocasio-Cortez as a candidate in her PRIMARY! Of course, I fully expect more people to vote for her in the general election. That’s only logical. But there doesn’t seem to be too much excitement for her anyway. Let’s not forget that she seems to be like Hillary Clinton in that the more she speaks, the dumber she sounds, if her comments on Israel “invading” Palestine and low unemployment numbers being due to people having two jobs is anything to go by.
 
Since this is the direction the Democrat Party seems to be going, people like Elizabeth Warren might just be smart enough to realize that such open socialist ideologies that will destroy the fabric of society might not be such a good idea. And so, she claims to be a capitalist, despite knowing full well that she is anything but.
 
However, with such a claim comes backlash from her own supporters, with some on Twitter claiming to abandon their support for Warren after such comments (which is why I believe she will try to walk them back).
 
She has been one of the most socialist Senators in Congress for a long time, so she will never receive support from Right-leaning Independents and Republicans. These claims will now cause a rift between her and her base, which is full of mind-numbed socialists all the same. The result? An unpopular Senator who has no one to support her anymore except a few centrist Democrats who somehow might believe her claims.
 
But this is just talking about Warren. What about the rest of the Democrat Party? Well, I believe we are seeing a silent civil war. The young open socialists challenging the old establishment Democrats who know how to survive in politics. Again, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are smart enough to survive calls of stepping down. They will fight back against people like Ocasio-Cortez if they feel threatened by her, and I believe they do. Even Bernie Sanders, who seemingly has embraced the establishment since his endorsement of Clinton might be willing to fight back, given his willingness to not abolish ICE (don’t misunderstand, he simply wants to reform it, not protect it) and his doubling down on it.
 
At this point, I think some of the establishment Democrats are beginning to realize that in order to help their Party survive, they cannot allow such wild calls for full-fledged socialism. As I said, make no mistake. That is precisely what they want, but they do not feel they can accomplish that just yet. They want socialism but can’t afford to call it that quite yet, at least not a lot.
 
That is, in my mind, at least one explanation for Warren’s claims. Despite the fact that it’d be easier to prove she’s a Native American than a capitalist, the reasoning behind such a claim might be to help the Party survive, at least until Trump is out of the picture.
 
Sometime in the near future, I expect the Party to go full-fledged openly socialist. But the Democrat Establishment is set in their ways and does not want to be replaced. They ensured that in the DNC primaries. They might ensure it here. The biggest and most significant difference is that Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is no longer the head of the DNC. Keith Ellison, the man PROMOTING Ocasio-Cortez, is.
 
This is why I believe it might be a toss-up between the Party trying to centralize themselves at least in speech and the Party committing to its eventual self-destruction.
 
Where do I, as a Christian, conservative and Trump supporter, stand? I’m not quite sure. I’m conflicted about all of this. On the one hand, I want to see the Democrat Party completely implode, but on the other, such a thing could lead to a one-party system of government. Even if that party is the GOP, I would not want a one-party system.
 
Of course, nothing is ever quite so simple. There would be a lot of factors and variables in place that would have to be calculated to fully know whether the Democrat Party would completely collapse if they went full-on socialist. In my understanding, there are not enough people in America to want socialism, which is why I doubt they would ultimately win big elections, but I could be wrong.
 
And in my understanding, even if they were to win elections and run the country, they would be so destructive that no one would ever want another socialist in power ever again, or at least for a few generations.
 
I don’t say that the things socialist want would destroy the fabric of society for no reason. I have said multiple times and explained it thoroughly that the things they want would ultimately destroy society. They can’t realistically implement everything they want, but even what they can implement would cause havoc.
 
The implementation of complete socialism would ultimately destroy society and the Democrat Party. And don’t tell me China is doing fine or even great because they have communism. Even they don’t implement complete communism. If they did, they would sink and bankrupt themselves within a decade.
 
Now, as a Christian, I hope and pray that the Democrat Party sheds their socialist tendencies in favor of free market capitalism. Of course, I do not think the Lord will have them do that, but one can only hope.

Matthew 5:44
“But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
 
Author: Freddie Marinelli.

Prior to this 4th of July, former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino appeared on Fox & Friends, where he stated very true and undeniable words: “Socialism is a disaster. The only people who support Socialism are people who don’t know what it is or people who want to win elections.”
 
This prompted pseudo-celebrity Sarah Silverman to retort, saying: “Forgive me but you are daft. Socialist democrats are for socialized programs within our democracy. Like, education & healthcare available 4 all, making sure all kids have the same opportunities… U don’t like socialized programs? Do you like the police dept? The fire department?”
 
Thanks for proving his point, Sarah. You’re a real trooper.
 
Seriously, though, how dumb is that? Ok, one thing I apparently feel must be mentioned: America is not a socialist country. By her definition, socialist countries are the ones that have education, healthcare, police, fire protection and everything a government provides.
 
Well, I guess my education diplomas are null and void, since we don’t have education here, in a non-socialist country. I guess if I get hurt, there are no hospitals around me because a non-socialist country doesn’t have healthcare. If my house is burning down, I should probably try to take care of that myself, since there is no fire department in a non-socialist country.
 
Oh, and Black Lives Matter, you guys can go home now. If there is no police department, there is no police brutality. NFL players, you guys can stand for the flag again.
 
Apparently, socialism is the only form of government out there. If there is no socialism, there is no government and thus, no government-controlled agencies and programs such as police, fire, etc.
 
You really have to wonder if these people ever actually think before they speak or write anything online.
 
Sarah, if you want a Google definition of socialism, here it is: a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.
 
In other words, it’s a governmental system in which the community (government) gets to decide just about every aspect of someone’s life. They control how things are made, how they are to be distributed, and how they are to be exchanged. In other words, under a socialist rule, an iPhone would be made by the government to be distributed to whomever the government wants and the government gets to decide what to charge for it.
 
Now, a socialist might believe that example to be a good thing. The problem is that nothing is ever quite black and white. Nothing is ever quite so simple with the government. And realistically speaking, the government can’t afford to give everyone new iPhones once they come out without risking economic collapse.
 
That’s why Mark Zuckerberg’s idea of the government giving everyone a set income, even if they do nothing at all, is unrealistic and dangerous. If you can live by doing nothing, what incentive does anyone have to do anything? The reason capitalism is so great is because it gives people a constant incentive to work hard. Because if they don’t, they’ll fall behind and suffer for it. If there is a safety net such as guaranteed government-issued income, no one has to do anything for money.
 
Sure, maybe some things would still be made, such as art, t.v. shows and such, but that’s only because there are people who are passionate about those things. A socialist government would then decide whether or not the artist can publish his art. But how many people can say they are passionate about building houses and buildings? Not designing them, but building them. How many can say they are passionate about plumbing? About delivering food? About driving people around? About maintaining power plants, water treatment plants and other basic utilities to supply cities? About trash collecting? About mowing lawns?
 
Take away any incentive to do these basic things, and modern society is severely affected. If I can get paid around the same amount of money for doing nothing as I would for doing menial labor or something I’m not passionate about, I’d rather do nothing.
 
Which also brings up another point: if no one is doing anything and everyone is dependent on the government, an economic collapse is inevitable and it would lead to chaos. The government runs on tax-payer dollars. If just about everyone relies on the government, including for an income, that system is unsustainable and the government runs out of money. If the government runs out of money, the people run out of money. And don’t tell me the government can just keep printing money. That creates hyperinflation that would eventually make that currency utterly worthless, meaning you still run into the same problem where the government and the people don’t have money.
 
Such a system leads to chaos. It’s unsustainable by any realistic measure. That’s why I scratch my head at those on the Left who know what socialism really is and leads to. For those people, they know socialism isn’t sustainable. Even without implementing that horrible “fixed-income” idea, socialism relies heavily on other people’s money. If the government grows and grows, that means higher and higher taxes to pay for the bigger government. Eventually, the people are left with such little money that they can’t sustain their livelihoods and have to downgrade. Eventually, they will not be able to give the government much or any money and the big government pops like a balloon because they can’t afford to keep the government so big.
 
In such a case, unsustainability is the least of people’s problems. In such a system, the government gets so big and powerful that tyranny and corruption are certain. Such power corrupts all human beings. This is why we conservatives keep saying socialism is a disaster. Not only is it unsustainable, but it’s also wildly dangerous for the citizens of the socialist country. Just look at Venezuela for proof that what I say is true.
 
Socialism’s worst enemy isn’t Capitalism. It’s Socialism. It’s self-destructive. It’s oppressive, even for the people who support it.
 
Ronald Reagan said it exactly right: “Socialism only works in two places: Heaven where they don’t need it and Hell where they already have it.”
 
The reason he’s so right is because he takes into account the imperfections and mortalities of humanity. In Heaven, people already have all they need: God. They need nothing else, for He provides everything they need. In Hell, Satan’s reign is pretty much unending (until God throws him into the pit of fire and sulfur, at least). It’s sustainable there because Satan doesn’t need money or anything from the people he rules over.
 
Outside of Heaven, where there is no imperfection, and thus, no corruption, and Hell, where Satan rules without the need of anyone else, Socialism doesn’t work. It relies too heavily on the kind-hearted nature of one singular figure, or an entire government structure. Man isn’t naturally good; he is naturally evil. Socialism relies on the goodness of its leaders. But when its leaders are rotten and evil, everyone suffers.
 
And this is without taking into account the unsustainability of it all. Even in the case of a massive government led by entirely good people, the fact remains that a big government relies on tax-payer money. Eventually, as I mentioned earlier, people run out of money. If people run out of money, the government runs out of money. If the government runs out of money, chaos ensues.
 
Good or evil, big government does not work; it’s not sustainable.
 
Now, I’ve said what I felt was necessary. Returning to Silverman, she is the precise kind of person Bongino talks about: someone who doesn’t honestly understand what Socialism is. And unfortunately, there are many people out there who are on the same boat. They say ignorance is bliss. But those people forget to mention that ignorance eventually leads to sorrow. That bliss is short-lived. The people who advocate for socialism don’t understand that what they want is not sustainable and has led to the deaths of hundreds of millions of people in recent history. Socialism is dangerous and they are unaware of that fact. Eventually, if they get what they want, they will face the truth. The truth always comes out eventually.
 
But it is for that reason that we do what we do. We inform people and teach them so that they do not have to learn what we tell them the hard way. We can only hope they will listen and learn.
 
Colossians 3:16
“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”
 
Author: Freddie Marinelli.

It’s really no secret that Communist China does its absolute best to destroy any and all religion in the nation. You can often read news stories (outside of MSM, mostly) about Chinese paramilitary groups raiding and even destroying churches. You can read stories about China denouncing the Dalai Lama and calling him a “separatist” among other things. You can read stories about China banning burqas and other symbols of Islam in the Xinjiang region, as well as forcing shops in the region to sell alcohol and cigarettes to “weaken” religion. Religion is simply not something the Chinese government is fond of.
 
And the Left is not too different.
 
I suppose the biggest difference between the two is that, while the Chinese don’t like Islam, the Left is pretty much in love with it (even if Islam destroys Leftism, which is something that would likely happen but the Left doesn’t believe could). But the two have one specific idea in mind: replace God with the government.
 
In fact, China has essentially said as much. The Chinese government urged Christians in an impoverished part of southeast China to replace posters of Jesus with posters of President Xi Jinping “as part of a local government poverty-relief programme that seeks to ‘transform believers in religion into believers in the party,’” according to the South China Morning Post.
 
That is literally replacing God with the government in people’s lives. And that is precisely what the Left wants to do. They want Christians, particularly, to replace anything that has to do with Christ with whatever has to do with the government. Whether it’s replacing a poster of Christ with a poster of, say, Obama (despite him not being officially in the government anymore), or replacing whatever else with government propaganda.
 
The Left looks at China and is envious of them. They think we should be more like them. That our government would be more efficient if we imitated them. That the American people would be better off if we were more like China.
 
Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. China is ranked number 2 in world GDP (three, if you count the European Union), with roughly $11 trillion US dollars to their name. The United States ranks number 1 in world GDP with roughly $18 trillion. China, a communist country, is a poorer nation by a noticeable gap. Who would’ve thought?
But here’s the thing, even though they are communist, they don’t employ fully communist economic systems. If they did, they would bankrupt themselves in short time.
 
Back in 2015, Forbes published an article focusing on the deregulation of their market (not a lot). Of course, it also offers the solution of further deregulating interest rates and savings rates for the most part, but it does mention China’s decisions to deregulate to some extent.
 
And back in 2017, Reuters wrote about rising stocks in the Chinese market over financial deregulation.
 
So China has slowly but surely been deregulating certain economic areas in order to be a bit more prosperous. They are literally employing more capitalistic ideology in order to keep their country from completely going belly up.
 
It’s also what Lenin had to do in order to keep the Soviet Union afloat (for its time). According to Dinesh D’Souza in his book “The Big Lie”, “As a dedicated Marxist and communist, Lenin had pledged to outlaw capitalism throughout the Soviet Union, and he did. But the Soviet economy went into a nosedive, and in the early 1920s, by his own acknowledgment, Lenin embraced capitalist measures to solve the problem. He allowed private property, including private farms; he allowed businesses and farmers to keep some of their earnings; he even encouraged foreign businesses to invest in the Soviet Union. Lenin did not see his New Economic Policy as betraying communism but as stabilizing the economy as well as his political hold on the country so that he could truly institutionalize communism.”
 
The literal founder of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was forced to employ capitalistic measures to avoid totally bankrupting the Soviet Union.
 
Now, while China and the Soviet Union are almost entirely similar, I say that the Left wants to turn this country into China because the Soviet Union has more of a negative connotation. Despite some lunatic liberals’ ambition of establishing “full-on communism” in the U.S., many people in America still dislike the Soviet Union and don’t think we should follow them. After all, they didn’t even last to their centennial as a nation, so why follow? China, on the other hand, hasn’t dissolved yet in its communism. Don’t get me wrong, they likely won’t last to the turn of the century, but they are currently the largest Communist country on Earth.
 
Sure, North Korea is a notable example as well, but the Left has been relatively careful of not trying to say we should be more like North Korea (even if they do say they'd rather have Kim Jong-un as POTUS instead of Trump *ahem* Chelsea Handler *ahem*). And while they would also love to rule America the same way Kim Jong-un rules - everything belongs to the state - they make sure not to make it sound as though that's what they want. Compared to North Korea, China seems more sensible if you're a liberal. Of course, both are terrible options.
 
And if these Communists and Leftists had an ounce of grey matter within their skulls, they would realize that establishing full-on communism as Marx theorized is impossible. Not even the most notable communist country in world history could survive on full-on communism.
 
And the Chinese know this as well.
 
Still, while Communism does not make any sort of economic sense, it still is heavily implemented by the Chinese in other areas, most notably in the way people live their lives.
 
Even if the Left acknowledges that communism is horrible for the economy, they would still want to implement it here, particularly if it means ruling people’s lives. Earlier, I mentioned China banning religious symbols. That, obviously, is part of communism, the kind that the Left really wants.
 
Why? Because throughout human history, we have seen case after case of man trying to be like God. They either want to replace God with themselves or try to actually BE God. People like Nebuchadnezzar, Caesar, Alexander the Great, even Adam and Eve all sought to be like God or effectively replace God in people’s hearts and minds.
 
Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Xi Jinping all have sought or seek the same. Even if they denounce God and claim to not believe in Him, they all effectively sought to replace Him. It’s a strange brand of Atheism: claiming you do not believe in God, all-the-while seeking to replace Him in people’s minds and hearts as though He were some existing threat. If they truly did not believe God was real, they would have no quarrel with trying to replace Him, who does not exist in their minds. Why replace something if it doesn’t exist?
 
This is what the Left, all over the world, wants to do. Regardless of how little sense it makes or how impossible it actually is, they will seek to do it.
 
Romans 3:23
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
 
Author: Freddie Marinelli.