Whichever Way The Wind Blows

This morning, when I was checking the Town of Rochester website, I was greeted by a new feature: local weather from a website known as the Weather Underground. Now, I know that the Weather Underground website has nothing to do with the older radical organization by the same name, but it struck me as ironic that our Town would choose this specific weather service rather than one by, say, AccuWeather or The Weather Channel's website. Are they trying to tell us something intentionally? Or was this perhaps a sort of Freudian slip, whereby the Town leadership's collective unconscious is straining to shout the true nature of their beliefs to the rest of us?

The Weather Underground (also known as the Weathermen) was, in many ways, like the radical extreme leftist groups we are confronted by today. You know the ones. They consist of people who have nothing better to do than concoct stories about the war, the climate and the 20o0 Presidential Election. They are both vocal and rude, insulting and belittling all who disagree with them. We see them protesting the war and handing out leaflets which contain false information in order to make their point.

The Weather Underground, however, went beyond simply handing out false propaganda. They openly labeled themselves a "revolutionary organization of communist women and men..." According to Wikipedia, they carried out campaigns of "bombings, jailbreaks, and riots" in order to "achieve the revolutionary overthrow of the Government of the United States (and of capitalism as a whole)."

Our Town Government, although far less radical in its methods, appears to have similar goals. They openly attack our Constitutional right to enjoy ownership of our own property. They want to discourage any real business from taking root in the Town of Rochester. One of their supporters openly declared at one Public Hearing (and I'm paraphrasing here, but over a hundred people heard this declaration) that not every Town needs to have a business and employment base, that people can live here and work elsewhere.

However you try to justify it, that's socialism.

However you try to explain it away, socialism has been proven to be a failure and a fraud.

At one point, roughly half of the world's population lived under socialist regimes of one sort or another. Socialism reigned supreme in nations in every corner of the globe: from the imperialist bloc dominated by the Soviet Union in Europe, to satellite nations in Central America, Asia and Africa (Nicaragua, Cuba, Vietnam, Mozambique, etc.), from the semi-independent Communist state of Yugoslavia to the agrarian Maoist-Socialist mammoth that China became to Cambodia where a civil war between two communist proxy factions developed into Pol Pot's killing fields.

You know what? No nation ever became wealthy under socialism. Not one was ever able to provide jobs or economic development. None were able to operate under even a semblance of freedom. Every one of them was based on theft of that which belonged to others and on the mass murder of their own citizens to keep them in line.

That is the legacy of socialism and that is exactly the system which the current regime is attempting to ram down our throats. Where Lenin blamed the ills of society on the Bourgeousie, the Rochester Socialist cadre blames them on Republicans and Conservatives. Where Mao promoted transferring property ownership to collectives owned by the State, the Accord/Kerhonkson Hammer and Sickle Society wants to transfer our rights to determine what is to be done on our property to a municipal collective. Where Marx and Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto, our local anti-capitalists wrote a Comprehensive Plan. Where Stalin sent citizens to Gulags for speaking their minds, our Town Government exiles dissidents from participation in Town Committees and public life.

A watershed moment is coming in the Town of Rochester. We have a little over seven months to effect our own, local climate change. Do you know in which direction the wind is blowing?