For the purposes of this post, the timing for Thomas Sowell’s article A dangerous obsession could not have been better.

My family was one of the first to have the old Pong game. From there my fascination with all things electronic took off. Any time my mom or dad threw away something electrical/electronic I would get it out of the trash, take it apart and try to understand how it worked.

“Back in the day” we traded video games by printing out the code, taking it to the computer we wanted to play it on, type the code in and run it. The code was typically about 3-10 pages long depending on the “complexity” of the game. They were adventure word games, nothing more than simple if/then statements in basic.

With this fascination with electronics and computers I was of course, as were most people in the world very familiar with the name IBM. I remember the main frames down in the basement of the bank where my father worked, they were IBM’s. Most of the electronics down there and in most other businesses were manufactured by IBM.

My fascination and familiarity with computers continued through my life but I never understood what happened to IBM. Why, if they were producing the cutting edge in technology did they almost disappear altogether? To the common person there was no clear explanation and it never made sense to me. Last night on my drive home from visiting family, listening to the audio disk version of “The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History” I learned some interesting yet… alarming history. I learned about anti-trust and governmental intrusion and the literal raping of a company who has the intelligence and ambition and integrity to run a business correctly, a company merely striving to be the best.

Although I had no idea I was being taught Marxism at the time, I distinctly remember being taught an important item on the Marxist socialist agenda of anti-monopoly way back in grade school. Up until last night I was still convinced that the controlling of company monopolies was just. The socialist social engineering wing has done an excellent job at brainwashing entire generations of American youth on this subject. There are so many of these insidious sorts of socialist goals that have managed to weasel their way into our society. I am just barely beginning to get a clue.

The entire purpose behind social justice is supposed to be just that, justice. The way in which the socialist progressive/liberals/left implements this “justice” is not only morally wrong, it is yet another black and white indicator of the insane sickness permeating the minds of individuals who subscribe to this sort of thinking.

No moral intelligent human being can comprehensively justify why anyone would ever consider the punishment of individuals or groups of people who capitalize on an opportunity to be the best. No one should ever be punished for this as long as no legitimate laws are being broken, excluding the zany anti-trust laws.

I am struggling to avoid going into too much of the dry particulars of the socialist governmental bullying of IBM, but I would like to direct you to this link for some of that history.

Jesus said, Beware of the Scribes, who like to go around in long robes.

Mark 12:35-44

Some other outstanding articles of interest on this subject:

From The Antitrust "Shakedown" Racket: Abolish the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act by S.M. Oliva (February 6, 2003)

Every Hart-Scott-Rodino "notification" must be accompanied by a filing fee. For mergers valued at less than $100 million, the fee is $45,000; for mergers of more than $500 million, the price is $280,000. The fee is non-refundable, and the monies collected from said fees are what finance the $330-plus million of the FTC and Antitrust Division budgets not financed by direct appropriation.

In other words, the government is forcing businesses to pay for the very antitrust enforcement that is targeted directly against their interests. This is a classic racketeering scheme. A business is forced to pay protection money to a thug who could turn against them at any time. This is not the same thing as paying for police, military, or fire services. Those are necessary protections against threats to individual rights. Here, the government is the threat to individual rights, acting under the arbitrary authority of antitrust.

From Persecution of Microsoft is Immoral by Richard Salsman, CFA (November 13, 2003)

Microsoft is only the latest in a long line of victims of the unjust antitrust laws. From ALCOA in the 1950s to IBM in the 1970s to Wal-Mart in the 1980s, the government's goal has always been the same: prosecute an exceptional firm that is growing rich not through theft or fraud, but through superior production and voluntary trade.

Here are a couple of quotes we should all remember. Both of these quotes are from the wonderfully murderous hero of liberals worldwide Joseph Stalin, the former Russian Prime Minister, Communist leader and Political Dictator.

“If the opposition disarms, well and good. If it refuses to disarm, we shall disarm it ourselves.”

“When we hang the capitalists they will sell us the rope”.

Coming in the following weeks:

· The Ratchet Effect or how governmental control always goes up during a conflict, goes down afterwards, but never goes down to quite to the same level as it was prior to the conflict.

· Calvin Coolidge, hated by liberal historians for outstanding results driven capitalist/conservative small governmental policies and the outstanding resulting economy.

· WWI, President Woodrow Wilson, Insanity, and the great new socialist ideas that make the left feel all warm and fuzzy

~gregmc