7/22/2011, 2:43 pm
I know that many of you despair and believe that our progressive movement hasn't accomplished much! I write this to lay rest to all such invalid opinions! Read on and you may be surprised. We have made so much progress that you may not be aware of it all, and may have forgotten many important improvements.
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I hope this lays to rest any doubts you had about our glorious cause, Comrades. Please share with us other examples of progress that I have forgotten to mention.
Progressive education
Why can't Johnny read? Because his teacher used progressive techniques to make him a better worker, of course. The "whole word" method has produced many dyslexics who have been taught English as if it were Chinese. Our New Maths, the next better than the previous, have made mathematics an area reserved for a select few troublemakers. Still not convinced? Ask yourself how much you yourself dislike trig and you will realize the breadth of our progress. This is a revolution that John Dewey worked hard to achieve, and many progs followed his inspiring lead. The People thank YOU, John Dewey!Market control
You are already aware of our great success in defeating the Commerce Clause. Our "light bulb" experiment, conducted all over the world, has also been a happy success. Thanks to the new truth of global warming caused by Capitalism we have gained more control of the international market, and hence technology itself, than ever before. Many countries have yielded to our logic about the lightbulb. Already you can't find 100W bulbs in Europa, and soon 60W bulbs will be gone too. The most progressive U.S. state, California, has unselfishly taken the lead here. Unfortunately there are Repubicans in the Senate who have not understood and work to repeal our efforts. We must continue our struggle if we are to establish total control over dangerous technologies like washing machines, computers and backhoes. Remind your neighbors of the idyllic environment our more lucky Comrades in North Korea enjoy. The People thank YOU, Al Gore!~
Obesity
To destroy the most common dangerous overachievers we needed a way to destroy their self-esteem. Our most successful method to date has been to make them fat. Since we can't yet force-feed them we had to find a way to make them voluntarily switch to an unhealthy diet. Thankfully a progressive scientist found the means: eating carbohydrates (sugar, starch, etc) increases insuline production, which increases fat growth and also makes you hungry when your blood sugar comes crashing down to normal levels. He published a compelling report linking fatty foods to heart disease. By then also creating the new truth that eating fat makes you fat, the FDA made new recommendations that replace fat intake with carbohydrates. Take a look around you next time you shop for food. See how many packages say "low fat" or "fat free", and count how many fat people you see. The double benefit of this method is that the downtrodden masses, now fat, are in extra need of Obamacare. The People thank YOU, Ancel Keys!Philosophy
Troublemakers that take it upon themselves to study philosophy present a big problem to our progressive movement. Our best solution has been to create philosophies that teach how the world isn't really here, or that if it is, we can't really know what the world is anyway, so why bother? The method has been a glorious success. Most toiling workers can now accept our new elementary truths much more rapidly than previous generations. The only danger to our complete control of the mind is that rinkydink philosopher Ayn Rand and her counter-revolutionary Objectivism. You are all reminded of our standing orders to immediately mock her in every way possible as soon as she is mentioned. Hopefully this will make those obnoxious Objectivists hesitant to mention her and may rethink their opinion when they hear the wisdom of our taunts. The People thank YOU, Immanuel Kant!The Communist Manifesto
Much of our progress can be found by studying the Communist Manifesto. All progs have of course studied this important text in great detail. I was myself so inspired that I spent a whole week reading it, and when I came out of my room, my wife and children had left me. Now that you have learned of my sacrifice for our cause, I hope you will listen even more carefully. In the Manifesto there are ten social commandments to replace the legacy commandments. Many have been accomplished already! Here is an indication of our great progress:Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes
The wonder of the property tax. We let the Capitalists have a paper where it says they "own" the property, but then we make them pay rent to us! This lets the People benefit from the selfish people who hoard property for themselves, while at the same time, we can use eminent domain to redistribute the property if a necessary need for it should arise.A heavy progressive or graduated income tax
When we first introduced the income tax only 1% of the richest exploiters were made to pay 1% of their loot. This is always the key to the success of our progressive movement, and indeed why it is called progressive. Even if we can't convince the People of the necessity of higher taxes we can at least call on our Central Banks to debase the money. This is the genius of the tax brackets. The initial tax brackets in 1913 ranged from 1% for people making under $20,000 to 7% for people making over $500,000. In 1913 the dollar was approximately a barbaric silver troy ounce, so conversion to today's money is embarrassingly easy. Take the price of silver, almost $40, times the 1913 dollar number. If you in 1913 exploited less than $800,000 per year in today's money, you paid 1% income tax. Even if the tax brackets had been unchanged, today many more people would be in higher tax brackets. The genius prog who invented the tax brackets realized that we care about the percentage, not the number, and that with progressive education we can make everyone forget that inflation puts people in higher tax brackets. Floating abstractions like the dollar are a key part of our success. Any attack on this method, and those like it, can be countered by saying their argument is the silly "slippery-slope" argument. Thank YOU, FDR for redistributing all the gold! Thank YOU, Federal Reserve System for inflation!Abolition of all rights of inheritance
Here we use the the estate tax and the "percentage" trick I mentioned in the previous paragraph. If the rotten bourgeoisie try to cheat and give things to their children before they put down their shovels for good, we have the gift tax. You all understand our right to the excess the dead have stolen from us poor peasants.Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels
This has clearly been so successful that not even I understand this point. Anyone who says otherwise is a Terrorist or is transporting large amounts of cash in their car.Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly
It is easy to understand that this is why every country in the world now has a Central Bank. In the old bad days they used gold as money. I know it sounds absurd. Yes, gold is the very same material our own Lenin wanted to make public toilets from! The world has since realized that it's very difficult to produce more gold as needed to pay for our Great Programs. Before Richard Nixon all money in the world was somehow still tied to this intractable gold material. But thanks to the wonder of broken promises and central banks, all money is now tied to credit, which is much easier to produce. No one but the State has the right to make money. Anyone who forgets this basic fact of nature can ask Bernard von NotHaus what happens when you try to mint gold and silver coins. But sadly it is still fresh in the minds of the toiling masses that gold and silver are precious. We must fight this perception. We must also fight the sinister lie that is the "periodic table".Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state
We supported the monopolization of the telegraph and the telephone. Read any discussion about "natural monopolies" and see AT&T cited as an example. Little do they realize that we supported AT&T with laws that hurted their competitors. One telephone company is easier to control than thousands, as you know. Things are similar today, we have only needed to readjust our position slightly to conform to public opinion that "too big" companies are naturally bad, which is of course true, if we do not control them. Did you realize that roads used to be private? Now everyone knows the fact: that since the profit-motive makes cooperation impossible, every other 100 feet you would have to drive on the left side of the road. We centralized and hampered the railroad. We have people at every airport reminding people that we control the skies as well. The Internet has been an insulting crack in our control so far, as we can only monitor it, not completely control it. But rest assured plans have been made.Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan
Landowners have no respect for the common good, but they are vulnerable because of their selfish greed. Our method has been manyfold. An example is farming: subsidies (carrot) and surprise visits from the FDA (stick) can produce excellent results. More and more farmland is now used to grow corn. Is this due to popular need for more corncobs? Of course not. This demonstrates our control while at the same time it lets us attack the oil companies by flooding the market with underpriced ethanol.Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture
This is progressing wonderfully. The People realize that they can buy everything on cheap credit (thank you for artifically low interest rates, Federal Reserve!). These huge debts will be wonderful inducement for them to work when our plan springs into action. Many think we have "saved" money for their pension, but we have used the percentage/inflation trick here too. Pensioners who calculated 20 years ago that they would have plenty of money to retire on now realize that while the dollar numbers are the same, the dollar value is much lower. So far I've described how we will make debtors and pensioners work. For the bourgeoisie to work we will need hyperinflation. We have tricked them into accepting our notes as money. When it takes a billion dollars to buy a cup of nourishing beet soup, where did all that "money" go? To us, of course. Then they will have to work like everyone else, on farms preferably.Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country
I must admit that my face is red because I'm not aware of how this will be accomplished. And also because I painted my face red this morning.Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc
This is our greatest success, because here it was the Capitalists themselves and their "industrialization" that made child labor unnecessary. It is best when your enemy does your work for you but forgets to claim the glory. Everyone is educated today that it was our progressive ideals that made child labor go away. Everyone knows that those dirty Capitalists would stop at nothing to hire all our children for dangerous work in soot factories if we did not stand in their way. Putting women to work was a great idea, as well, because now they can't stay at home and care for the children. They must send them to school.I hope this lays to rest any doubts you had about our glorious cause, Comrades. Please share with us other examples of progress that I have forgotten to mention.
