Special to the PRESS
Dear Editor,
There is not going to be any rest for the “weary” Duane A. Rasmussen because I will keep calling out reactionaries as long as they want to voice their opinions. The society, economy, and government that Rasmussen advocates is more than worthy of destruction. Reactionary governments keep dropping off the historical record and are replaced with more progressive ones. The ancient empires were replaced by feudal societies, which were replaced by mercantile ones, which were replaced by capitalistic ones, which were in some cases replaced by societies with socialistic features, which have been replaced by societies with mixed economies. These societies are the most advanced in the modern world and Rasmussen knows this.
Rasmussen brings up that false dichotomy that reactionaries often use to lump communism and fascism together. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of modern history knows that during the twentieth century that communists and fascists fought each other all the time. There are no completely socialist or fascist societies left in the modern world.
I support all the amendments to the Constitution including the first ten. The amendments have done nothing but improve on the original document, which allowed slavery, restricted the vote to white men, and provided for state legislatures to elect senators. The amendments to the Constitution saved it from having to be completely rewritten over a century ago. Let’s use Rasmussen’s own words to snuff out his argument. “We must learn that the human spirit performs best when it is turned loose to seek its own level of competence and reward.” That will never happen unless the “one right,” which Rasmussen opposes, “the right of the government to control us so all will be treated fairly and all share in the contributions to whatever that combined effort takes us.” The important points are that “treated fairly” means equality of opportunity and “share in the contribution of all” is nothing more than collective effort. I am sure that Rasmussen doesn’t do all his repair work or grow his own food. Humankind learned the value of collective effort thousands of years ago.
Rasmussen doesn’t “know the drift” of what went on at the meeting concerning the Laguna Vista Recreation Association’s lease and the proposed Town of Laguna Vista park. Nobody is “giving the government” a darned thing. The Town of Laguna Vista owns every square inch of land that is now occupied by the Laguna Vista Recreation Association. All that is being proposed is that the Town build the park on its own land. Of course reactionaries hate for the government to control anything unless its women’s bodies, permitting the degradation of water and the environment, and anything that benefits the majority of people. Reactionaries only want the government to pass laws that benefit the wealthy.
Rasmussen should read books published in this century such as Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty First Century” Rasmussen would learn that most of the wealth in the world that has been created in the last half century has flowed to the top 1 percent of the population in the world and the figure is skewered even worse when we talk about the USA.
“Ignorance” is not my “club” to beat Rasmussen with. Superior knowledge of economics and political trends are my club. I am a firm believer in a mixed economy with private enterprise having a role like a person under house arrest with an ankle monitor; in other words a vastly diminished role than what it plays in our current economy. I’m not going to get “weary” of this argument because the demographics and political movement in the USA are on my side. Rasmussen is getting ‘weary’ because what he tries to defend is not relevant to today’s world. The ideas that Rasmussen advocates are going to die and rightly so.
Walter Birdwell
Laguna Vista
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