Rockdale Citizen

Many people, for various reasons, are stuck in environments they cannot escape, no matter how destructive these environments might be. This is seen in domestic abuse where the battered wife is unable to escape her destructive husband. It is seen in the drug environment where addiction has such a strong hold it cannot be escaped. The lady whose liver was functioning at only 10 percent said she could not afford needed medicine, but also said, "I'm going to buy my cigarettes; I can't do without them." It is seen in addiction to an environment a person wishes to escape, but the hold of wanting to be with certain people does not let go. The alcoholic said, "I want to quit drinking, but I want to be with my friends and they insist if I am going to be a part of the group, then I have to drink with them or they don't want me there."

We generally don't give a lot of thought to the fact that a way of life can be addictive, even if it is harmful to us. This is why ghetto life is repeated from generation to generation. Those who grow up in this life can see there are better ways to live but are incapable of choosing something different. The lure of family and friends cannot be broken because of strong attachments that will not let them go.

In Washington, we find a majority of politicians are stuck in the wrong environment, one in which they have lived off money taken from the pockets of hard-working American taxpayers, something which is the essence of socialism. They think this is the best way to live and are trying to expand their environment to include more and more people. It is a bad, destructive environment, as made evident by the failure of socialism in the old Soviet Union, and in what is now happening in Greece, Spain, Italy and other European countries. We have already gotten enough of a taste of socialism in the U.S. to know those who espouse it are leading us down a dead-end alley.

We should not have been surprised that our president is leading the charge toward socialism. He has lived off other people's money all his life and thinks this is the best life for all. He is not able to weigh socialism against our constitutional republic because he has never participated in what has made America great. It is a strange world for him, just like the successful environment is a strange world for the ghetto dweller. He has been thrust into an environment he does not understand and in which he cannot function. He can only do as he has done in the past, and he has surrounded with those whose thinking is as limited as is his. What he and his people want to do to this country is wrong.

We need to make ourselves aware of the extent to which socialism has already been forced upon us, but, perhaps more than this, we need to educate ourselves regarding what men in the past have done to impose their will upon people, and what men will do in order to have their way. The picture is not pretty when we value human life. Many in history who have forced their wills upon peoples and nations have done so only after deciding the lives of those who oppose them have no value at all, and can be disposed of. We saw this when socialism came to power in the USSR, in China and in many other countries where destruction was a part of changing peoples and nations.

Life under the Constitution of the United States has offered freedom for individuals to determine what life will be like, nothing currently seen in socialism anywhere. True, a lot of our citizens have been stuck in environments where they have not realized this, and, even though they have seen other people of their ilk join a free life, they have been unable to decide to make their way into a free life. Addiction to a philosophy or way of life can be just as debilitating and destructive as addiction to alcohol or drugs. It can destroy them and the people around them.

We cannot count on politicians currently in Washington finding a way to escape their addiction to socialism, a kind of environment totally alien to life in a constitutionalrepublic. Those who are so addicted to what has proven to be a failed way of life wherever it has been tried must be sent packing, but we must realize they will go kicking and screaming. The environment in Washington must be changed with the November elections, and we voters are the only ones who will make this change.

Roger Bolton lives in Conyers.