This must be what it’s like to talk to people who believe earth is flat

By David McElroy · July 24, 2012

Many crazy ideas are popular until they’re proven wrong. People once believed the earth is flat. They believed you’d fall off the edge of the world if you went too far. The sun revolved around the earth, of course. And there were dangerous dragons waiting in far-off lands to greet anyone who dared to go there.

People eventually realized that all of these notions were wrong. Sailors proved that you could sail around the world, thus showing that the world was round and you couldn’t fall off the edge. Astronomers figured out that the earth revolves around the sun. After all of this, everybody with a brain realized that the earth wasn’t flat.

Unfortunately, a few insane or stupid people maintain today that the earth is flat. Ever heard of the Flat Earth Society? It really exists. Here’s the group’s website.

In the late 19th century, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels developed the idea of communism. Although many thinking people rejected the ideas as obviously impossible and contrary to how human nature works, the idea appealed to a lot of desperate people. Starting with the communist takeover of Russia, the idea took over a large part of the globe.

But the idea failed. It didn’t work as promised. Without a market system to supply basic information about how much things were worth and what people wanted, the system fell apart. Central planners couldn’t have enough information and human nature corrupted even the best intentions of the true believers. The Soviet Union collapsed, taking with it the various governments it had controlled and supported.

After realizing that communist economics wouldn’t feed its people, China embarked on a system of installing what’s essentially an authoritarian capitalist system with heavy-handed controls. The place isn’t free, but market forces started working in the late ’70s — and the country has been remade today. It’s still growing rapidly. The few remaining countries that call themselves communists — such as Cuba and North Korea — are economic basket cases.

In other words, communism doesn’t work. It never did and most people have abandoned it. But I ran across something that makes me feel the same way I’d feel if I stumbled into a meeting of the Flat Earth Society. I ran across a website for the Communist Party of Oklahoma. It would be a hilarious satire if the people behind it weren’t so sincere.

The communists in this country today still believe in an economic flat earth. Take a look at this big poster promoting their cause. The headline asks, “What would a communist America look like?” And these are their answers:

Everyone would receive free, comprehensive, universal healthcare.
Housing would be affordable, safe, and available for everyone.
Food would be healthy, free, and freely available.
Everyone would be entitled to a quality education, without cost.
Seniors would retire comfortably in dignity and respect.
Veterans would receive the treatment they deserve for the sacrifices they made for this country.
Workers Rights would be fully protected, and they would receive the full value of their labor.
There would be equal pay and benefits for men and women.
There would be no wealth inequality anymore, and the class system would be abolished.
Everyone would have equal rights and freedoms regardless their orientation.
Women would have full reproductive rights upheld by law.
Everyone would receive equal protection under the law, and an end to racism and racial profiling.

It’s as though someone asked some socialists for a fantasy list to give to Santa Claus. It’s not based on reality. It’s not based on the obvious history of what happens when countries attempt communism. It’s mere delusion, just like people who believe in a flat earth. Or people who believe in Santa Claus.

The Oklahoma communists aren’t just an isolated bunch. The Communist Party of the USA still exists, too. The question is what kind of insane and intellectually blind people can still believe in this failed idea.

When I think about what the Oklahoma communists are promising in their recruiting poster, something strikes me. If you take away the party name and just read the agenda, would you think they’re communists? Or would you just assume it’s a progressive left group that’s pushing a “pure” vision of traditional progressive ideas? Would you assume that maybe they’re just a group of progressive Democrats? I might.

We’re really well down the road toward establishing the things the communists claim they want. It’s been progressively (no pun intended) foisted on us for the last 80 years, starting with FDR’s New Deal. It hasn’t happened quickly, but it’s happened. And the more of that agenda that gets adopted, the more the economy sputters and threatens to fail.

If the economy doesn’t completely collapse first, the coercive statists of this country will achieve the communists’ agenda, at least in theory. In practice, they’ll find that it doesn’t work, just as it didn’t work anywhere else. The political competition in this country is between Communist Lite and Communist Slightly Liter.

They’re achieving communism here — along with the failure that’s sure to follow anyone who tries it. They’re just calling themselves Republicans and Democrats instead. But give them time. It will eventually be obvious that disproven ideas still don’t work when dressed up and called by another name.

Share on Social Networks

If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

Related Posts