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It is important to know and understand the history of Socialism, as America is under siege today by a strong Marxist movement that is actively trying to fundamentally transform America. There is only one problem: Socialism has never worked and has only resulted in inflation, severe poverty, and loss of freedom. The famous Austrian economist, F.A. Hayek, wrote several outstanding books on this subject, including “The Road to Serfdom”, and his last book in 1988, “Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism”, in which he stated: “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”
History has repeatedly proven the accuracy of the above statement. Look at China in the late 1950’s when it embarked on “The Great Leap Forward” to modernize itself under Chairman Mao Tse Tung and the communist party. China was at that time an agrarian society and Mao’s central planners forcefully took away from the masses their private plots of farmland and converted it into an industrial collective country focused on farming and steel manufacturing with backyard furnaces. Unfortunately, Mao and his central planners didn’t know what they were doing—the project was a total failure, and it was estimated some 50 million Chinese peasants died of starvation. In 1966 Mao changed course and embarked on the Cultural Revolution—which sadly also failed resulting in the deaths of millions more of Chinese peasants.
Socialism/Marxism/Communism also did not work in France in the late 1790’s (the French Revolution), nor in the Russian Revolution, Nazi Germany in WWII, the Soviet Union, Cuba, or more recently in Venezuela or Argentina. No matter where you tried it or what name you called it, totalitarianism was always the result.
Yet, the lure of Socialism remains strong. Here we are in 2022 with the global elite in America, Canada, Europe, and Australia planning on saving the world from Climate Change by rushing headfirst to shut down all oil and gas production, coal mines, and even nuclear power plants—so the world will start using clean green energy that could be available sometime in the next 25-50 years. Never mind that the greatest polluter of the globe, China, is still burning coal and buying all the Oil and Gas that Russia (and President Biden) will sell them.
Like Mao, the Global elite and their central planners don’t seem to be worried that we are already running out of diesel fuel—which you must have to plant, harvest, and deliver the crops that feed the people—and gas to heat the homes, cook the food, and run the factories. Why aren’t they worried? Is it “Fatal Conceit”?

Steve Gardes is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and Certified Valuation Analyst (CVA) with over 40 years of public accounting experience.

As the Ukrainian War drags on, some of America’s strongest allies are becoming less than supportive, in spite of strong urging by the Biden Administration. India has failed to offer any help, and the British support is becoming shaky due to their own financial and political problems at home. Italy’s new prime minister had some positive things to say about Vladimir Putin during her recent successful campaign. The strongest allied supporter out of the Europe Union has become France.
France? Are you kidding? Wasn’t it the French, under then-President Jacques Chirac, who strongly opposed invading Iraq? And if you go back to the 1960s, those of us who are a little older will remember French President Charles De Gaulle’s strong opposition to America entering Vietnam. Since we have little to show for the billions spent and the lives lost in both invasions, maybe the French opposition wasn’t all that bad an idea.
However, the French have received little appreciation or even a few good words from American military leaders. Who can forget General Norman Schwarzkopf’s comment that, “Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion.” And then there was General George Patton in World War II who said, “I would rather have a German division in front of me than a French one behind me.”
And boy, have we gotten mad at the lack of French support. In the congressional cafeteria at the nation’s capital, they changed the menu from French fries to freedom fries. That really showed them. And for the record, I don’t remember reading of any politician advocating the probation of French kissing.
I remember a 1995 episode of The Simpsons, where groundskeeper, Willie, is directed to become a French teacher at the local elementary school. “The French?” he hollers, “They’re nothin’ but a bunch of cheese-eating surrender monkeys.”
But that was then. Although we’ve had conflicts and disagreements with the French, if you take a history lesson in Franco-American relations, you will see that when it’s crunch time, we can generally count on them. France has come out strongly in support of America’s tenuous situation in the Middle East, and the U.S. seems eager to let bygones be bygones.
Without the support of the French, America could well have lost the Revolutionary War. Founding Father Thomas Jefferson contemplated joint democratic values while serving as US Ambassador to France living in Paris. Many regard Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America” as the best book written on the unique and exceptional American new form of government, that was later adopted by the French.
Many of us were close to speaking French as our native language. Napoleon’s agreement with Thomas Jefferson and Robert Livingston allowed for the creation of 15 new states, doubling the size of the United States. To give thanks to the French dictator, my home state of Louisiana agreed to hide him at what is now called The Napoleon House in the center of the New Orleans French Quarter. Unfortunately, before he could get to the Crescent City, he was captured and sentenced to exile on the Isle of St. Helena in the Atlantic Ocean.
There is a little Yankee bad taste from Napoleon’s involvement in the Civil War. France was avowed to be neutral, but it was common knowledge that Napoleon III was pulling for South. Oh well!
And don’t come down here in South Louisiana and make any derogatory comments about France. Thanks to die hard Frenchmen, who immigrated first to Canada, and then migrated down the Mississippi as Acadians, the French tradition, language, culture and bon appétit is alive and well, and growing throughout Cajun country. In Abbeville, a small community just south of Lafayette, many of the signs outside retail stores are written in French. Several radio stations play only Cajun music with a daily rendition of the Cajun national anthem Jolie Blond, often played by my old friend, fiddler Doug Kershaw.
If the Good Lord told me I have one more trip to make to another country before I pass on, I would choose Paris, and a ramble through southern France for the food, the ambience, the architecture, the Shakespeare Bookstore, a walk along the Seine. And the pretty girls. Ah, to be 25 again, in 1963, when I spent months in Paris experiencing the special ambiance that is rarely found elsewhere. If you want to relive that Franco jolie vie, take a friend or loved one to see Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris.”
Certainly the French have their own national interests at heart. But they have also made it clear that what America says matters. Over time, there are historical allies and there are strong allies. Right now, France and the U.S. can claim to have both — a solid past, and a present relationship that would seem to be in the best interests of both countries. We in Louisiana certainly hope so.
So pass the French bread. And for breakfast tomorrow, let’s have French toast and French roast coffee with French chicory, Louisiana style. And please, don’t shy away from an occasional French kiss.

Peace and Justice
Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the South and on websites worldwide.

Here is why I believe there may be something to at least some of the ghost stories that we hear at this time of year.
In 1998, photographer Pete Piazza and I spent weeks driving all across south Louisiana, gathering material and taking photographs for the book Our Acadiana. We stopped one afternoon at Albania Plantation, on Highway 182 midway between New Iberia and Jeanerette, to see what we could find out about its history.
It was up for sale at the time and nobody was living there except a caretaker who told me the story of the place. He said it was getting a good bit of attention from potential buyers, but that the deals seemed to fall apart at the last minute.
“The problem,” he said, “is that six or seven ghosts live here, and they seem to be really picky about who they want to live with.”
He said it half in jest, and I took it that way ─ until Pete walked up and said, “We’ve got to get out of here.”
Pete, who knew nothing about my conversation with the caretaker, was a burly guy who would wade fearlessly into a riot to get a good picture. Nothing should have bothered him at this pretty plantation home on this tranquil afternoon. But when I looked up at him, he was as white as, well, a ghost.
“We’ve got to leave, now,” he said, with real urgency in his voice.
“What’s going on?” I asked when we were safely back in his truck and heading down the long driveway.
“I was taking pictures of the house and something very cold came up behind me and wouldn’t let me take any more,” he said. “It wanted me to leave.”
It was hard to be skeptical when you realized who was talking and heard the tone of his voice. Nonetheless, I’d all but forgotten about the incident by the time the designers went to work putting the book together months later.
We had little say-so in the design of the book. That was the domain of the layout artists. They had several hundred photos to pick from, and none of them knew anything about Albania and its ghosts.
That’s why it knocked us for a loop when we saw the cover design. They’d picked one of the few shots of Albania that Pete had been able to take and, further, had overlaid it with a faint, ghost-like, image of the statue of Evangeline.
I couldn’t help but believe that the combination of the Albania picture and a ghostly image had to be more than a random choice. I don’t know what that extra something was, but I think more than coincidence brought the combination of those two images to the eyes and imaginations of the designers.
I became even more convinced of that when they told me that they’d used nearly 200 pictures in the book, some of them overlaid just as the cover was, but that the cover image of the house was the only one that kept crashing their computers ─ until they “protected it” with the ghostly image.
You can believe what you will, but I still get a little tingle up the spine when I look at that book cover and think about how it came to be. There’s no other word to describe its creation but “spooky.”
You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.

May 4, 1935 ~ October 29, 2022

ABBEVILLE — Funeral services will be held at 10:00 AM on Wednesday, November 2, 2022 at Vincent Funeral Home - Abbeville honoring the life of Raymond George Suire, 87, who died Saturday, October 29, 2022 at SAGE Specialty Hospital. He will be laid to rest at St. Paul Cemetery with Deacon William "Billy" Vincent officiating the services. Serving as pallbearers will be Windell Nunez, Andrew Page, Ryan Gary, Jason Paul Suire, Randy Gary and Jude Suire.
He is survived by his wife, Rose Mills Suire; two daughters, Joanna S. Williamson and Jody S. Janise and her husband, Murray; two sons, Jude Suire and his wife, Deanna, and Jason Paul Suire; grandchildren, Ashley S. Page and her husband Andrew, Haley Williamson, Jacob Gray and Joshua Gray; great-grandchildren, Kason Page, Hollyn White, Vegas Janise and Skyler Janise; sister, Beverly S. Gary; and brother, Thomas Suire and his wife, Virginia.
He was preceded in death by his parents, Ernest Suire and the former Anna Ebella Gaspard.
The family requests that visiting hours be observed at Vincent Funeral Home - Abbeville, 209 S. St. Charles St., on Tuesday, November 1, 2022 from 2:00 PM until 9:00 PM with a rosary being prayed at 6:30 PM; Wednesday, November 2, 2022 from 8:00 AM until time of services.
Condolences may be sent to the family at www.vincentfuneralhome.net.
All funeral arrangements are being conducted by Vincent Funeral Home of Abbeville, (337) 893-4661.