Thank a veteran today

As is often the case of parents and their children, my late father and I were regularly at odds, especially when I was young and thought I knew everything. One thing that was never an issue, though, was his service to our country. My father was proud to be a Navy veteran, serving in the Pacific theatre during World War II, and I was proud of him being a member of "the Greatest Generation."

Today is Veterans Day, also known as Remembrance Day in Great Britian. If you see a veteran today, thank him or her for their service. Without these fine people we - and a number of people throughout the world - wouldn't enjoy the freedoms we have.

Some thoughts on socialism

From the October 27, 2008 Wall Street Journal's Letters to the Editor:

"So all of a sudden everybody has discovered that Senator Obama, with his comment to Joe the Plumber, plans to "...spread the wealth around." We should all be worried.

Months ago, Senator Obama and the Democratic members of the House and Senate indicated they would tax the "windfall profits" of the oil industries. Allow me to translate.

We will confiscate and steal the profits that belong to the shareholders (italics mine) of the oil companies and distribute them to people who have never risked a single cent or invested in those companies, just because it is "fair."

Everybody cheers, not realizing that some of those profits belong to the pension plans of police, firemen, teachers, city, county and state employees, retired people, and thousands of 401(K)s. I suspect even some of those plumber and pipefitters unions have money invested in those companies.

I came from Cuba. I have seen this movie before, and I know how it ends. I have heard the same lines, spoken by different actors, the Castro brothers in my case and more recently by Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. With all his refined education and eloquence, Mr. Obama is just another socialist who thinks that our American-trained socialists will make socialism work here, while all those others around the world have failed. We are so much smarter here."

Luis Vicens
Pembroke Pines, Florida

The age-old argument by socialists and communists is that their preferred methods of government are perfect, they just haven't had the "right people" in place to make them work. If I remember my Poli Sci 101, Karl Marx predicted the downfall of capitalism would be followed by socialism, which would be a transitional period between capitalism and communism. The Communist Manifesto, as I recall, was published in the mid-19th century, which gives us, what, roughly 150 years of waiting for the "right people" to be successful? Think about this: the clinical definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results.

I'm not going to lie and say that I'm not fearful for what may be ahead for America during the next four, possibly eight, years. Despite my feelings about our President-elect, I will do my best to be supportive of him. I'm hopeful a number of good things will come out of an Obama administration; certainly Senator Obama's election should make some much needed inroads to better race relations in our country, and the election of a black President will hopefully go a long way toward showing the rest of the world that we aren't a nation of close-minded bigots. However, I would take someone in France thinking I was a close-minded bigot over living in a socialist country any day.

"Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it." - Dr. Thomas Sowell