OPINION:
As a senior member of the so-called “silent generation,” I will no longer be silent.
I’m sick and tired of hearing the following statements of “fact”: “You can take this to the bank.” “The bottom line is … .” “The truth of the matter is … .” I know immediately that whoever utters these phrases is lying.
Furthermore, the Republican Party has become the Democratic Party and the Democratic Party has become the new Socialist Party. With this in mind, I have sided with the Tea Party, even though I’m registered as a Republican.
Why? Because the Tea Party believes in smaller government. In other words, it advocates putting the power back into the states. After all, that’s where the money came from in the first place.
As it is, the federal government is taking the money from the prosperous states and handing it to the less prosperous ones, whether those less-prosperous states earned it or not. This is President Obama’s objective: redistribution.
If socialism is so great, why have socialist countries turned to various forms of capitalism as we are running from it? This doesn’t make sense.
The Tea Party is composed of farmers, teachers, laborers, doctors, clergy, lawyers, small-businessmen and many others — the same types that signed the Declaration of Independence.
When these signers had finished their work, they returned via horseback or carriage to resume their normal lives. They did not expect to be guaranteed lifetime featherbed jobs and pensions.
If the conservatives can’t win the elections of 2014 and 2016, there won’t be another chance — the freeloaders and government dependents will prevail, and we will have reached the promised land of socialism.
I visited both the former Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China in the late 1980s and saw firsthand the legacy of socialism. Has anyone now advocating Mr. Obama’s socialist policies seen them in practice?
RICHARD P. SHINN
Franklin, N.C.
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