Editor’s note: This commentary is by Tom Licata, a resident of Burlington.

On the founding of our nation’s 245th birthday, it would be nice to set our eyes on the window displaying blue skies. But another window displays storm clouds. Montpelier’s decision to cancel any meaningful Fourth of July recognition — along with our schools and our very own government promoting critical race theory (CRT) and Black Lives Matter (BLM) — tells us all we need to know about these ominous clouds. Both these movements are Marxist in origin, CRT being a derivative of the German Marxist Frankfurt School and member Max Horkheimer’s 1937 essay titled “Traditional and Critical Theory,” and one BLM founder stating on the record that they are trained Marxists.

Tom Licata

Communism’s 45 goals were read into the Congressional Record by Congressman Albert S. Herlong Jr., (D-Florida), in 1963. These goals were gleaned from the testimony given to Congress by scholars and from the writings of current or former communists.

Socialism is seen as the bridge between capitalism and communism. The major difference between socialism and communism is in the method of takeover.

Socialism (and progressivism) believes that it can centralize all control of the individual, land and industry by gradual legislation; communism seeks a violent and final confrontation to achieve its utopian goal of a stateless and classless society.

But make no mistake: all three ideologies desire to seize monolithic control of society. Mussolini termed this the totalitarian society: “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.”

In order to get a better understanding of our storm clouds, let’s exam a few of the 45 communist (and by extension Socialist and Progressive) goals that have been read into our Congressional Record:

1. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
2. Get control of the schools and teachers’ associations. Soften the curriculum.
3. Gain control of all student newspapers.
4. Infiltrate the press.
5. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV and pictures.
6. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and press.
7. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in the media.
8. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, and healthy.”
9. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion.
10. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the grounds that it violates the principal of “separation of church and state.”
11. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate and old-fashioned.
12. Discredit the American founding fathers as selfish aristocrats [and racists].
13. Belittle American culture and discourage the teaching of American history.
14. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
15. Infiltrate and gain control of big business and unions.
16. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as mental health or social problems.
17. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
18. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents.
19. Repeal the Connally Reservation, allowing the World Court jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.

The Ethan Allen Institute’s John McClaughry and Rob Roper recently wrote of the means employed by the state of Vermont to achieve these socialist ends.

Woodrow Wilson, the only president ever to possess a Ph.D., wrote of “separating politics from administration.” Wilson saw politics as dirty and corrupting and saw administration as pure and scientific. “Administration,” and more specifically, centralized bureaucratic boards and agencies operating outside the purview of the legislative body, is clearly Vermont’s means to its socialist ends.

To wit, Mr. McClaughry writes of the Vermont Council on Rural Development’s recently released “The Vermont Proposition” as follows:

Finally, the vision exhibits a glaring disparity between its enthusiasm for ‘democracy,’ and its even greater enthusiasm for creating utterly undemocratic regional administrative bodies directed by an all-powerful State Planning Office that ‘would be responsible for the statewide community and economic development and land use plans on a five year cycle.’ Presumably you could still vote for governor, but that scheme looks to me more like replacing local democracy with a hugely expanded and unaccountable administrative state.

Mr. Roper writes of the recently passed Vermont legislation calling for a major expansion of state-subsidized childcare from birth to 5-year-olds. In a nutshell, it seeks to replace parenting with unionized day care directed by an enlarged centralized state bureaucracy.

Finally, the recently passed Global Warming Solutions Act sets up an unelected and unaccountable Vermont Climate Council to produce edicts which do not have to be voted on by Vermont’s legislators.

Think of a construction scaffold covering a large building, that building representing our democracy or specifically our Constitutional Republic. What they are doing behind that covered scaffold is constructing a “new” regime. That regime is allied far more closely with the 45 communist goals than with the goals outlined in our Declaration of Independence some 245 years ago. God Bless the United States of America … as founded.