Socialism/Communism and our American Way of Life

Socialism/Communism and our American Way of Life

If our country elects one of the increasingly socialist and virulently leftist candidates as president in 2020, we would be heading down the path of, most recently, Venezuela, and historically, many other countries that have failed as a result of adopting socialism/communism as a form of government.  Having been exposed to an overwhelming left-wing point of view taught by leftist professors at many colleges and universities, millennials, and particularly, gen-zers, increasingly think that socialism, with its idealistic altruistic sub-theme, would be an attractive alternative to our current moribund government. Why the “C” word?  To quote Lenin, “The goal of socialism is communism. Vladimir Lenin”

Apparently the poli-sci courses that these people took in their 90’s and 00’s colleges were a little weak on historical perspective, and missed the fact that socialism/communism invariably led to brutal, totalitarian regimes that literally murdered their producers, and ultimately failed.  Apparently missed in these courses was the fact that once socialism has exhausted the niceties of wealth equalization and confiscation, totalitarian force is necessary to complete the process.  “If you’re going to take what I’ve earned, you need a disarmed populace and force of arms to do it.” Total deaths of human beings attributed to socialism/communism in the 20^th century is upwards of 120 million.

An observer of history can already see the seeds of encroaching socialism trending toward totalitarianism in the U.S.  The most egregious signs and symptoms of this can be seen in what we euphemistically call our “cultural war”, but what is really encroaching socialism knocking on our national psyche and way of life.

We see this in attacks on the first amendment in the way free speech that differs from leftist opinions is being forcibly and violently blocked in our streets, meetings and universities.

We see it, particularly in California, with Orwellian “newspeak” redefining words like “felon” to gentler terminology so as not to unduly offend the criminal (or justice involved individual).

We see it in the incessant leftist movements to abrogate our second amendment rights by increasingly restrictive anti-firearms laws that penalize lawful gun owners, but fail to address the real issues of criminal and mentally incompetent gun possession and use.

We see it in the ridiculous extremes that identity politics is taken by identifying and rewarding more and more leftist defined sub-groups of society, rather than advocating for equal rights for all Americans.

We see it in the disregard of the law and civil order in our major cities (and some states), where “sanctuary” is given to criminals and illegal aliens in defiance of federal law.

We see it in the literal anarchy that has overtaken portions of leftist run major cities, where homeless “tent cities” and “sidewalk squatters” have turned once beautiful areas of these cities into rat-infested cesspools with human waste flowing in the streets.

These are but few examples of the existential danger of the democrat-socialist left mores that have changed the democrat party from one of rational opposition, to the party of “resistance”, “obstruction”, and literal destruction of the distinctly American values that made our country exceptional, and the greatest country in the world.

The insidiousness of what I describe is exacerbated by the accompanying din of the vociferous leftist activists, magnified by academia, and a by mainstream media that has quite obviously “gone off the rails” in support of this leftist movement, which on its surface is only vehemently anti-Trump, but which in fact supports all of the above pro socialist/communist principles.

What can we do to stop or slow down this march toward socialism?  Barring some messianic conservative savior dropping from the sky, the immediate answer is “vote for Trump”, because he has been such an iconic oppositionist to all things leftist and socialist.  If only he wouldn’t tweet so much.  If only he edited his “off the cuff”, “in your face”, pronouncements.  If only he paid more attention to actual history and facts.

Wishful thinking!  The Donald is a wealthy, opinionated, real estate developer and contractor from the NYC streets, who extended his brand and brashness to Hollywood, and now to the White House.  We ain’t changing him.  He approaches Angela Merkel and Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un with the same aplomb as his “apprentice” participants.  All we can hope for is that this “bull in a china shop”, (pun intended), doesn’t break too much while he is reestablishing the economic strength of the country.

So we opt for Trump in 2020.  But we also need to decisively take back the house, and keep the senate with a super majority, if possible – not easy tasks in this highly partisan and polarized country, many of whom watch the major networks for news, and are literally exposed to leftist, multimedia propaganda.  Thank goodness for the counter voices on Fox News and affiliates, and publications like the Wall Street Journal, National Review, Reuters and AP (sometimes), and others.

Unless we want the socialist “Bathroom Commission” to tell us which toilet to use in the future, we need to get out grass roots efforts to elect republican candidates.  It’s not enough that we elect the big guys.  We need to make sure that our representatives to state and federal offices are anti-socialist republicans.  I suspect that many real “bread and butter” Americans across our great country know the score, and do not want our country to be socialist.  Let’s hope they remember in 2020.

It’s sad that many Americans have taken their political/social affiliations to the level of strong faith, to be believed without debate or discussion, rather than open to rational and intellectual examination and scrutiny.  Forgetting about the vociferous activists and hot-heads who take to the streets or internet memes, virtually any attempt to discuss political issues these days in polite company, is likely to turn acrimonious soon, with one party defending all things Trump and Fox News and rightist principles, and the other side showing what appears to be absolute emotional hatred of Trump and the right, and almost faithful worship of the left and the increasingly socialist side of the democrat party.



Members of the same denomination and church and even the same family become estranged and “unfriend” each other on social media over these political disagreements that border on evangelical religious faith.  So far they have not taken to killing each other as they did in the middle of the nineteenth century over slavery and state’s rights, but the instantaneousness of communications in our internet society makes dissemination of our beliefs and disagreements ubiquitous and literally all-encompassing.  One could cool off when writing a letter with pen and paper, and when reading it at the other end.  Now, we can transmit that angry emotion via social media around the world with a mouse click.



Pithy quotes about socialism



There is nothing in socialism that a little age or a little money will not cure. - Will Durant



Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.

Alexis de Tocqueville



Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery. Winston Churchill



Communism is a way of thinking. Socialism is wimpy communism. When you don't have the courage to become a communist, you become a socialist. Jaggi Vasudev



Socialism states that you owe me something simply because I exist. Capitalism, by contrast, results in a sort of reality-forced altruism: I may not want to help you, I may dislike you, but if I don't give you a product or service you want, I will starve. Voluntary exchange is more moral than forced redistribution. Ben Shapiro



The goal of socialism is communism. Vladimir Lenin



A lie told often enough becomes the truth. Vladimir Lenin



Socialism and Communism are extremely attractive to a superficial observer. It is not until you get into the details, or actually experience it, that it becomes apparent that it does not work.

Thomas Peterffy



All socialism involves slavery. Herbert Spencer



This much I would say: Socialism has failed all over the world. In the eighties, I would hear every day that there is no inflation in the Soviet Union, there is no poverty in the Soviet Union, there is no unemployment in the Soviet Union. And now we find that, due to Socialism, there is no Soviet Union! Subramanian Swamy


In practice, socialism didn't work. But socialism could never have worked because it is based on false premises about human psychology and society, and gross ignorance of human economy. David Horowitz

Ray Gruszecki

August 23, 2019

Israel, the Palestinians, Anti-Semiticism

Israel, the Palestinians, Anti-Semiticism

I am one of few Americans who have lived in the Middle East and are aware of the Palestinian side of the formation of Israel in 1948.  History’s memory, worn down by politics and historical events, barely acknowledges the exodus of some 700,000 Palestinian Arabs, both Christian and Muslim, forcefully displaced from their homes and lands, by the Israeli military and settlers during the formation of Israel as a country.  (The Brits were also complicit).  One could make a comparison to the Book of Joshua in the Old Testament, except that there was no actual blood genocide, just economic confiscation.  Christians comprised about 7% of this Palestinian diaspora.

I lived and worked south of Sidon, Lebanon in the mid 1960’s.  We met many professional level Palestinian Christians and Muslims who were displaced from their land by the formation of Israel. We also saw the abysmal Palestinian refugee camps outside of Beirut and other Lebanese cities.  These were not op-ed pieces in the New York Times.  These were real people whose homes and property were effectively confiscated when Israel was formed.  We socialized with Palestinian refugees and our children went to school with some of them.  I evacuated my family from Beirut in 1967 as a result of the Arab-Israeli 6 Day War.

All of the above did not turn me against Israel, conceptually and politically.  Israel was still a beacon of freedom in the convoluted Middle East, although its origins were tinged with nineteenth century European thinking, including Marxism.  From Wikipedia, “The economy of Israel was initially primarily democratic socialist and the country dominated by social democratic parties until the 1970s. Since then the Israeli economy has gradually moved to capitalism and a free market economy, partially retaining the social welfare system.”

The kind of anti-Semitic rhetoric being voiced by the two Muslim congresswomen, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, are just a continuation of the virulent anti-Semitism prevalent in much of the Muslim world since the nineteenth century, and particularly since the formation and success of Israel.  Muslim Arab children are taught from birth, in the madrassas and byways of Islam, to hate Jews, hate Israel, hate America as antheses to Muslim and Sharia philosophies.  Some, like Ayaan Hirsi Ali and others, reject this hatred and join the real and rational world.  Others, like Omar and Tlaib, continue to try to spread their bigotry within congress, to the American public and to the world.

Omar and Tlaib and other bigots have first amendment rights like all Americans.  If the democrats fall for and adopt the perverse views of these outliers, in addition to the democrat party’s observable slide toward socialism/communism, they are pounding another nail in the coffin that Trump will bury in the 2020 election process.

Ray Gruszecki

August 20, 2019

GET TRUMP

GET TRUMP

Democrats were devastated in November, 2016, and would not accept that Donald Trump, an outspoken and well-known New York City real estate developer, TV star and non-politician interloper could actually defeat the vaunted Clinton/Obama/democrat political machine and be elected president of the United States.  “Resistance” and obstruction efforts were immediately launched by the defeated leftists, to denigrate and negate Trump’s election win and to polarize the country against Trump.  In fact, this effort turned to street demonstrations and violence in major U.S. cities, ostensibly orchestrated and paid for by such leftist backers as George Soros and his minions.  From this early effort emerged violent street groups such as Antifa, black lives matter and others.  The democrat left’s refusal to accept that Trump was a valid elected president, and their refusal not only to legislate normally, but also to obstruct meaningful governance and to push the limits of the cultural war now raging, has literally thrown the country into political and emotional chaos. Divisiveness and violence are approaching that in the mid nineteenth century over state’s rights and slavery.  Political positions have taken on the mantle of strong, almost  religious faith, rather than being a subject for rational discussion and compromise.

The first legal actions aiming at not only condemnation, but also, impeachment of President Donald Trump, as soon as he was elected, were concerned with conflicts of interest and the emoluments clause of the constitution.  Trump has good lawyers, and these actions were eventually dismissed by an appeals judge. This was an early strike against the leftist “get Trump” crowd. This link refers:  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/10/us/politics/trump-hotel-emoluments-constitution.html

Concomitant with emolument were efforts to subpoena Trump’s tax returns, again aiming at impeachment, and again countered by Trump’s legal advisors.  Another failure to “get Trump”.  There is an action still pending in California initiated by Governor Gavin Newsome to pass a law requiring tax returns from anyone running for president in the primaries of the State of California.  https://www.apnews.com/5f3e937786e6421f81ee62297d48e349

Impeachment of Trump for ill-defined “crimes and misdemeanors was attempted in the congress from the moment Trump was elected.  These efforts never came to fruition, but the anti-Trump mainstream media efforts maintain the noise and exacerbate the divisions that had emerged in the country.  These efforts were rekindled after democrats gained control of the House of Representatives in 2018, along with the speakership and chairmanship of the many House committees. https://impeachdonaldtrumpnow.org/blog/

Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court.  Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee resisted the nomination, as they would with anyone that Trump nominated, but Gorsuch was confirmed since he was replacing Scalia, who was an iconic conservative on the court.

The next anti-Trump effort came after he fired FBI Director James Comey in May, 2017 for leaking confidential information and failing to take action against Hilary Clinton and other democrats who allegedly committed crimes.  All we heard about for weeks was about Trump’s “illegal” firing of a recalcitrant employee.  This later led to a special prosecutor being chosen by the Justice Department to investigate collusion with Russia by the Trump campaign in 2016. (More later)

Soon after this came the Stormy Daniels affair.  The allegation was that Trump had an affair in the past with this porn star, and paid her hush money to keep it quiet with a non-disclosure agreement.  The claim was that this hush money was paid illegally from campaign funds.  All that was heard on CNN, MSNBC, and read in the New York Times and Washington Post and the mainstream media in general, for months, was “Stormy Daniels, Stormy Daniels, Stormy Daniels” and the certainty that this would bring down Trump.  Daniel’s suit against Trump in California to revoke the non-disclosure agreement was thrown out by a judge.  Her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, after a brief stint as a mainstream media darling, was completely discredited and arrested for committing fraud.  Still another attempt to “get Trump” fizzled out. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/07/us/politics/trump-stormy-daniels-lawsuit-dismissed.html

Then came the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to replace Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. Kavanaugh was reputedly conservative, while Kennedy was traditionally the “swing” voter on the court, who many times was in the liberal camp.  It would take a tome to describe the unscrupulous efforts by the leftists on the Senate Judiciary Committee, in congress and in the media, to destroy Judge Kavanaugh and his family, and to keep him off of the Supreme Court.  This included accusations of lurid and egregious behavior on Judge Kavanaugh’s part while a student 25 years ago, false and obviously almost comic false witnesses slandering Kavanaugh, street violence to punctuate the left’s displeasure with the nomination, congressional offices and members of congress accosted in their homes and in restaurants and weeks of turmoil caused by activist leftists violently demonstrating against a good and decent judge of the law.  The leftists failed again to “get Trump”, and Judge Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to SCOTUS by a partisan senate, but not after subjecting the country to a lurid and inexcusable period of social upheaval.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brett_Kavanaugh_Supreme_Court_nomination

Changes in the law by congress are necessary to address the convoluted issues of border security and illegal immigration.  Congress has not been willing to discharge their constitutional duties in this regard.  President Trump’s efforts using executive powers to address the situation have been met with derision and obstruction by the leftist democrats and “never-Trumpers”.  Separation of children and “families” at the border, which are normal criminal processing practice, were represented as “cruelly putting children in cages”.  Separation of children at the border started and was much more prevalent under the Obama administration’s border activity.  Pictures, purporting to show children kept in cages by Trump's policies, and widely disseminated by the mainstream media, were actually dated from the Obama administration.  Leftist activists, represented by obsolete Hollywood personalities and “flavor of the day” politicians visited the border and heaped invective on Trump and his administration, forgetting that Trump was trying to assuage a situation that existed under Bush, Obama and other prior administrations.

Trump’s efforts to fund a “wall” along parts of the southern border, to curtail illegal immigration, were rebuffed by the democrat led congress, so Trump used his executive powers to divert funds from the Defense budget for the purpose.  This precipitated a “balance of powers” dispute.  The Supreme Court ultimately found in favor of Trump’s diversion of funds.  Another example of anti-Trump action failing.  
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/26/us/politics/supreme-court-border-wall-trump.html

The Ninth Circuit Court affirmed the Trump administration’s policy of sending certain migrants back to Mexico pending immigration court hearings in the U.S., after an Obama appointed lower court ruled against the practice.   Another “win” for the Trump forces.  https://www.lawfareblog.com/asylum-update-trumps-remain-mexico-policy-can-continue-ninth-circuit-rules

While all of the above negative activity was proceeding against him, Trump continued what appears to be positive governance, albeit interspersed with ‘direct to the people” tweets, which sometimes were downright stark and inflammatory.  Tweets notwithstanding, Trump’s revoking of many of Obama’s regulatory orders, his support of the energy industry and his generally positive attitude toward business resulted to a much stronger economy than that during the Obama years.  Internationally, Trump flexed America’s muscles, and basically said “no more sucker and patsy for Europe, Russia and China.”  He talked down the North Korean dictator, withdrew from agreements inimical to the U.S., and imposed strong sanctions on North Korea, Iran and Russia.  His speeches in Saudi Arabia and Poland were masterful.

There were increasingly vociferous wails against Trump and his “in your face” policies and diplomacy.  American, European and international leftist elitists increased their hatred of Trump with a passion for his unapologetic, businesslike pragmatism in government and his outspokenness.

The democrat leftists were finally going to “get Trump”!  From May, 2017 to March, 2019, the Mueller special prosecutor investigation was in full force.  Several Trump associates, General Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen and others were tried and sentenced for “process crimes”.  It would only be a matter of time until Trump was frog-marched, in an orange jump suit, out of the white house, and into a holding cell.  So the hatred-filled left thought, and the mainstream media and internet waves were filled with these dire “criminal Trump” allegations.  The talking heads on CNN, MSNBC and pundits in the New York Times and Washington Post outdid themselves predicting just how incriminating the final Mueller report would be.

What another disappointment!  Quel dommage!  The Mueller team, comprising 13 democrats and several unaffiliated lawyers, found no collusion between the Trump 2016 presidential campaign and the Russians, and found no chargeable crime of obstruction of justice.  However, the Mueller report waffled and said it “could not exonerate Trump”, and this latter obfuscated and confused the issue for the public.  Of course, exoneration is not in the purview of a purely investigative body like the Mueller team.  It required a real Attorney General to clarify this issue, and William Barr did this accurately and expeditiously.

This was not enough for Nadler, Schiff and other leftist democrats.  They had to haul Robert Mueller, now a private citizen, before their committees and before the country to provide TV coverage of his report.  Clearly Mueller was not up to the task and it quickly became evident that he was not an active participant in its production.  He was just a figurehead whose good name appeared on the report that was actually produced by his 13+ democrat minions.  His answers over eight hours of questioning were ill-informed, halting and frankly, embarrassing.  The vaunted Mueller was an aged and tired old man, and not the answer to the democrat’s quest to impeach Trump.  Another major loss and disappointment for the democrats.  https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/7/24/20708503/robert-mueller-testimony-winners-losers

Committee chairs like Nadler, Schiff, Cummings, Maxine Waters, and newcomers like AOC, Omar, Tlaib and others, still have not given up on the push to impeach Trump for alleged “crimes and misdemeanors”, and because they hate him so vehemently.  Also, the democrats are no longer the rational party of opposition.  They are now increasingly socialist democrats as somewhat naively led by Ocasio-Cortez and the radical leftists, and who follow the tenets of Marx, Saul Alinsky and other revolutionary radicals. 

After all of the continuing impediments against Trump and his administration, the current crisis manufactured by the left reverts back to the culture war raging in the country, and threatening to tear the country apart.  The latest accusations against Trump and the bulk of American, normal middle of the road people of the country relates to “RACISM”.  Trump is an equal opportunity “criticizer”, and he has recently criticized “the squad” of young, democrat congresswomen, who happen to be of color and ethnicity, and also Elijah Cummings the corrupt, (but black), congressman from Baltimore.  Trump has also, and many times criticized corrupt “lily-white” politicians and others, (most recently Anthony Scaramucci), but this falls on deaf media ears because very little “color” is involved.  So all we hear these days is RACISM, RACISM, RACISM, just like RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA, and STORMY, STORMY, STORMY, and on and on and on.  In nearly ever instance, Trump either prevails directly or through the legal system, notwithstanding the left’s sharpened pikes against him.

Presumably the “RACISM” issue will run its course and news cycle until the next anti-Trump item surfaces, and the mainstream media takes up a new chant, perhaps guns, or some other burning political/social issue.

Ray Gruszecki

August 12, 2019

The Conservative Mind

The Conservative Mind

I just finished reading Russel Kirk’s “The Conservative Mind, From Burke to Eliot”, which was Kirk’s “magnum opus” about the evolvement and metamorphosis of conservative thought throughout history.  He really starts with Aristotle, but chooses Edmund Burke as the definitive beginning of contemporary conservative thought. 

Kirk’s book explores how modern conservatism is related to the classic liberalism of America’s founding fathers, and how the nuances imposed by such thinkers as Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Jeremy Bentham and many others affected the evolution of conservative thought.  The impact of the thinking of 18^th and 19^th century American figures such as John and John Quincy Adams (and their progeny Henry and Brooks Adams), Alexander Hamilton, John Calhoun, John Randolph, James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Russell Lowell and Daniel Webster are also highlighted, as are  foreign notables who have had an impact on the continuing evolvement and growth of conservative philosophy, such John Stuart Mill, Alexis de Tocqueville, Auguste Comte, Benjamin Disraeli and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, among others.

Kirk continues into the 20^th century with Irving Babbitt, Paul Elmer More, George Santayana, Thomas Stearns Eliot and Rudyard Kipling.  William H. Buckley, George Will and more recent conservative figures are not included, since Kirk’s book was written in 1953.

Overall, Kirk crystalized for me the historical origins and continuing evolution of conservative philosophy and politics.  People will ask “if you are a conservative, what are you conserving?”  The answer is not some nostalgic or euphoric past that does not exist anymore. Conservatives acknowledge the wisdom, knowledge, experience, ethics and morals that were developed in the past as a starting point for living life and operating in the present.  Not in some rigid or inflexible adherence to the past, but as a starting point.  Conservatives believe that not only this “politically correct”, instant gratification generation is capable of erudite and politically acceptable thoughts and actions.  Conservatives don’t indiscriminately tear down what civilization created in the name of some ill-defined “progressivism”.  They build on the beneficial features of what came before to create an even better world, and a better starting point for those that come after us.

Ray Gruszecki

August 6, 2019

Another Tragic Weekend – El Paso and Dayton

Another Tragic Weekend – El Paso and Dayton

Another tragic weekend with over 30 dead from mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio.  And more rhetoric and platitudes by the vociferous few, who blame the implement, rather than the deranged individual who perpetrated the crimes.  As if the hammer or the sword, or the knife, or the SUV, or the bus or the firearm acted on its own to kill and maim.

And the same heart-felt, but empty, demonstrations of sympathy for the dead and wounded.  Prayers and flowers and teddy bears and candle-light ceremonies assuage our own anger and frustrations about these senseless killings, and adjectives like “senseless”, “horrific” and “abominable” are cast about with very little of substance being accomplished.  The democrats trot out their old, shop-worn, “assault weapon” (as if that defined anything), ban legislation; and the republicans hide behind the Second Amendment.

The resultant and current villains and “whipping boys” after these two almost simultaneous mass shootings are “white nationalist terrorists”, as if appending “white nationalist” to “terrorists” defines the whole issue of mass shootings in the U.S.  Singling out one group, no matter how intolerant and prone to violence, does not accomplish much.  As a result of media focus, white supremacists are just the “flavor of the day”, just as the guns that are responsible for those deaths.

That is not to say that this virulent, intolerant, xenophobic white supremacist movement should be given a pass.  They should be identified, prosecuted as the law allows and prevented from spreading their hatred more widely.  They have First Amendment rights, like all of us, but that should not prevent identifying them and stopping them, before they commit violent crimes, passing appropriate laws if necessary.

Terrorism of any brand needs to be addressed.  Antifa is also a terrorist organization composed of hateful, intolerant leftist radicals who pursue their extreme agenda through aggressive violence.  Any groups that use violence as a political tool should be identified and curtailed, - again, as allowed by the First Amendment and the law.

But more endemic to these mass shootings than neo-Nazis or Antifa, are the unaffiliated loners that sit in their parents’ basements in front of high-speed internet, and play violent combat games, while reading and disseminating hate-filled screeds and memes.  Their next step is to go out and buy (or steal) a ubiquitous and readily available firearm like an AR-15 or an AK-47, or some other weapon, and go to a crowded mall and commit real-life violence.

After this weekend and as usual, there will be the same calls relating to “gun control”, mainly by leftists who sense a progressive or socialist talking point, and who have very little knowledge about the reality of firearms, other than the charged emotions caused by mass shooting incidents such as El Paso and Dayton.  They prattle about “assault weapons”, a contrived and meaningless term, firearms registration and confiscation, and other empty leftist political positions.  There are about 320 million people in the U.S., and the same number, or slightly more firearms.  The rights of possession and use of firearms for sport, hunting and self-protection is embedded in our constitution.  Please see my extensive blog on types of firearms and their use. Here.

Another favorite target of our well-meaning reformers trying to get at the causes of our national propensity for violence is “mental health”.  And again, any such efforts at identifying and diminishing potential violence by these means is welcome.  Of course we have to keep in mind the deinstitutionalization that took place in the latter half of the twentieth century that effectively released millions of prior mental patients back to society with instructions to take the appropriate psycho-active medication to stay “balanced”.  The large homeless population in this country indicates that some of these patients and their progeny have not stayed “balanced”.  How many of the radical loners described above are in this category?

One can posit a sociological solution, both to the asocial and disenfranchised loner and the homeless individual living on the street.  That is for our society in general, to return to the values that foster stability, well-being and a spiritually enabled life.  These include family, respect for law and authority, integrity, positive altruism and a return to religion, rather than away from it.   These are conservative values, and antithetical to the continuing secularist movement away from our God-given values and heritage.  Leftists will call these values “racist”, as they do all things these days with which they don’t agree.  But they are not “racist”.  They embody our American values (whether our origins are Indigenous, European, Black, Muslim, Asian or from some other place or ethnic group).  If we all acknowledged what our truly American values are, and tried to live accordingly, we might just have less violence and upset in our society.

Ray Gruszecki

August 5, 2019

Cutting the cord

Cutting the cord

I have blogged extensively about the history, legality and ethics of copying entertainment content, starting with wire recorders in the 1930’s, and tracking through to the present day.  This link refers.  http://raygruszecki.blogspot.com/2016/03/copying-of-entertainment-content.html


There is more and more dialogue about cutting the cord and getting rid of high priced and unreliable TV service.  Dish TV has not carried HBO channels since November, 2018 because of a pricing dispute.  Direct TV dropped Albany NY channel 13 and other CBS channels around the country because of a similar dispute.  And consumers are paying over $200 per month for full boat Dish TV and Direct TV packages, only to see favorite programming suddenly unavailable.  Similar disputes and high prices abound with various cable companies.


Many people have dropped their high-priced services gone to streaming TV over the Internet, now that fast speed internet is generally available in the country.  This was pioneered by Netflix and Amazon Prime TV, and now includes Hulu, Vudu, Sling, Fubo, Philo, Youtube and several other streaming services that charge $10-$15 per month for their services and provide a lot of entertainment for that price.


There’s another whole world of IPTV streaming services that are becoming more and more mainstream.  These are foreign based IPTV streaming services that literally open up the world of low-cost TV streaming over the internet.  These services accumulate TV signals from all over the world, including all of the American and British programming, put it out on the internet and charge a fraction of what the big commercial providers charge.  These IPTV services include, but do not feature, all of the premium American and English channels, (HBO, Showtime, Sky, etc).

Some of us have known about IPTV for years, and have subscribed to what I considered “experimental” services like IPTV4less, RapidIPTV, etc. With these services, there is no, or very rudimentary guide and DVR capability, and reception and customer service is not always reliable.  These “experimental IPTV services cost $60-$80 per year, and offer thousands of world-wide channels (including all of the “premium” channels), video-on-demand, etc.


  There are now more robust IPTV services, like IPguys, Helix and others that apparently offer guides and DVR type service, and charge upwards of $150 per year.  They seem to be a re-brand of earlier experimental IPTV services.  I don’t know how well their offered EPG’s and recording capability works.


Receiving IPTV is pretty straightforward.  A set top box is required, and there is a plethora of various types available.  The erstwhile Mag254 box with D-link wireless adapter has been replaced with the Mag324 with wireless embedded, for about $75 on Amazon.  The STB is connected to power, to an HDMI port on the TV, and to the internet.  Two USB ports are available, and presumably can be used on the Mag324 to save content.


After payment, an IPTV provider will recognize and authorize the set top box using the Mac address of the box.  That’s all there is to it.  The world’s TV programming is available, for a mere pittance compared to what providers like Dish and Direct TV, and the cable companies charge.  It’s a little raw, and I still consider the IPTV services “experimental”, but for $75 for the Mag STB, and $60-80 for a year’s subscription, there are not 200-300 channels available.  There are literally 5000 channels available.



Ray Gruszecki
August 3, 2019