Now that the Dirty Dems are openly pushing socialism, it’s a good time to address the most misused word in the dictionary:  right.  It’s a word that’s pretty much synonymous with entitlement.  The subtle difference between the two is that right has a much stronger moral connotation to it than entitlement.  It’s very official sounding, as though it were handed down from on high, while an entitlement suggests victimization, which connotes weakness.

That said, to those millions of Americans who are seriously thinking about boarding the Socialist Express:  Other than life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, there is no such thing as an absolute right or absolute entitlement.  True rights are those given to us by our Creator.  All other rights are created in the minds of collectivist dreamers and scoundrel politicians.

In other words, the Founders did not create the idea that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are fundamental human rights.  They simply reaffirmed what is axiomatic to anyone who believes in the sanctity of natural law.

Sadly, many people actually believe in the idea of artificially created rights, and even though such “rights” also have been around since the founding, until relatively recently they did not pose much of a problem. That all changed, however, when FDR introduced Americans to the welfare state, and artificial rights have been gaining traction at an accelerating rate ever since.  Further, now that Democrats have pulled off their masks and are openly promoting victimhood as the underlying philosophy of the land, the shocking idea of manmade rights has achieved a respectable enough status to be seriously debated in the public square.

A federally mandated $15 per hour minimum wage, free college tuition, a guaranteed minimum income, reparations for descendants of African-American slaves, Medicare for all, and every other zany component of the Green New Deal are all on the table and being vigorously discussed by elitists.  And the boss of all this, by her own proclamation, is a 29-year-old former bartender who is economically illiterate!  Make that completely illiterate.

Though I’m always hesitant to give the perennially shiftless Barack Obama any undo credit, I have to admit that his clumsy attempt to “fundamentally transform the United States of America” has led directly to millions of heretofore sleepwalking citizens wondering if the transformation he was referring to is the kind of country they really want for their children and grandchildren.

It’s important to point out, however, that it’s not just the Dirty Dems who are touting socialism.  Sure, Republicans like to obsess about reforming entitlements, but who among them has been courageous enough to talk openly about taking away people’s artificially created rights?  Make no mistake about it, the third rail of politics is very scary to the Washington establishment.

Since artificially created rights are just that — artificial — the only way to implement them is through government’s never-fail trump card:  force.  Delusions aside, government is nothing more than a criminal organization held together by the threat of brute force — and actual force, if that becomes necessary.

Political power does, indeed, grow from the barrel of a gun.  Millions of Americans delude themselves about this reality, but the cold, hard fact is that government can do anything it damn well pleases to you, your family, and your property through the threat of force — and, when necessary, the actual use of force.  If you doubt it, I would suggest you check with Roger Stone or Paul Manafort.

Sadly, most people tend to ignore what government’s essentially unrestricted use of force means in real terms.  Their normalcy bias tells them that we have checks and balances in place via our three branches of government, thus a Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Castro, or Maduro could never happen in today’s America.

Alas, they are hopelessly naïve.  Whether it’s Waco, Ruby Ridge, taxation, the silencing of free speech, or the regulation of consenting-adult activities, government force is always the trump card.  Government doesn’t need to be morally, or even legally, correct.  All it needs to be is ruthless, and it has never shied away from meeting that challenge.

Conservatives love to fret that we’re on a path to becoming a European-style social welfare state, but that’s hardly news.  We’ve been on a social-welfare path for decades.  To the credit of Americans, however, they have demonstrated that they have the ability to overcome the momentum of the Socialist Express, though it has become increasingly difficult to combat the Radical Left’s rhetoric about such abstracts such as “social justice” and “fairness.”

In truth, of course, implementation of the Democratic agenda has nothing to do with fairness, but everything to do with government force.  After all, if the rich aren’t willing to give poor people a “fair shot,” the government has no choice but to use force to bring about fairness, right?  It’s an alluring con that never fails to convince millions of low-information, low-IQ voters who are overcome by envy that they need government’s help to “level the playing field.”

If the statists in Washington really wanted to bring about fairness, the fairest thing they could do would be to allow people to opt out of any government programs and regulations — including taxes — in which they do not wish to participate.  Unfortunately, government takes that option off the table and instead embraces the role of being the number-one aggressor against the natural rights of a supposedly free people.

The bottom line to all this is that artificially created rights implemented through government force constitute a violation of natural law, a violation that leads ultimately to tyranny.  Worst of all, those who do not believe such a thing to be possible in the United States of America are sure to be caught unprepared.  Do not allow yourself to be included in this group of wishful thinkers.

Wake up, America!