the Evil Ideology of the Left That Just Won’t Die
In Greek mythology, the Sirens were diabolical creatures who lured nearby sailors to their deaths with their enchanting music and singing. Likewise, socialism is the diabolical political ideology that lures young people in with false promises of solidarity, security, and free stuff. After the fall of the Soviet Union, it seemed the threat of socialism would disappear for at least one generation. No such luck. I was part of the last generation that was taught to cower under our desks in case of nuclear war. After Ronald Reagan gave the Evil Empire the coup de grace it so richly deserved, the West let down their guard and assumed the scourge was vanquished forever, relegated to the ash heap of history where it belonged. But the rise of Bernie Sanders and AOC in the Democratic party have proven socialism once again sells with the younger generation. But why? Why do we have to keep fighting the same battle over and over again? Isn’t a century of failures and 100 million corpses enough to settle the debate once and for all?
Back in the day, Bernie Sanders is exactly the kind of guy you would expect to be a socialist. A crusty old crank, enamored with radical theories and flowery ideals, who has never worked at a real job or produced a thing of value in his whole life. So how does a crazy looking old white guy spouting failed 19th century political philosophies become a hero to young people and the face of a major political party?
The trouble with our Liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s that they know so much that just isn’t so.
– Ronald Reagan
The best explanation I can come up with is ignorance. The hard left has totally dominated academia for at least a generation. These Ivory Tower imbeciles have a vested interest in distorting and obfuscating the history of socialism. Students are taught that socialism is just about being nice and taking care of each other. That it means sharing the wealth and living as one big happy family. But they never learn the actual history of socialism, the gory details of it’s implementation, and it’s perfect track record of failure. Most are clueless about Stalin’s Holodomor, Mao’s Great Leap Forward, and the killing fields of Cambodia. The image of Che Guevara makes for a cool T-shirt, even if you are oblivious to the terror the real-world man inflicted. A generation of teaching kids to be activists and spout opinions before learning basic facts and critical thinking skills has led to a population easy to lead by the nose.
Besides not understanding socialism, many young people don’t even understand wealth. They seem to think of it is something America just has. Or even worse, as something the government can create and give to it’s citizens. The US GDP is a big pie that just magically appears, and the only question is how to divide it up most fairly.
The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples’ money.
– Margaret Thatcher
Of course, material wealth is not a static thing. America is a very wealthy county for one, and only one, reason. We create a lot of it. It has nothing to do with slavery, or colonialism, or exploiting the working class, or any of the other nefarious reasons the left uses to explain American prosperity. We have a lot of wealth because we produce a lot of wealth. Period. Free market capitalism has made the United States the wealthiest country the planet has ever seen. And while we produce a lot of material wealth, we also consume a lot. The designer clothes, fancy vehicles, electronic gadgets, gourmet restaurant meals, air conditioning, big screen TVs, min-mansions, etc., etc., are all part of the wealth in America. Wealth that is continually produced and consumed. And if we stop producing wealth, we will very quickly have much less of it. If you don’t have at least a basic understanding of wealth and where it comes from, it is hard to maintain.
The media is another institution in America that just can’t shake it’s love affair with socialism. The New York Times made a particularly cringe-worthy attempt to revive socialism. Their risible Red Century series claimed that socialism was a boon for feminism, environmentalism, and even better sex lives. Apparently the Old Gray Lady is still Red when you scratch the surface, even a century after Walter Durante was white-washing the Soviet Union. Their asinine 1619 Project teaches young Americans to hate their own country. To see it as a system of oppression and racial supremacy, instead of the beacon of freedom it truly is. They use the critical theory of Marcuse as a cudgel to break down faith in liberty and free enterprise, because they know it is the only way their dream of an all-powerful central government run by technocrats can ever come to be.
Through education and the media, the American left has done in a generation what the communists couldn’t do in a century. They have turned our youth against the system that has generated the most powerful and prosperous country in the history of the planet, while granting it’s citizens unprecedented individual liberty. How else can one hope to explain Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lamenting she has never known American prosperity because she had to eat Ramen noodles in college? The truth is AOC, and young people like her, have never known anything but prosperity. The US economy is so robust, citizen’s tend to take it for granted. Prosperity is considered a given to them, and the only question is how to best distribute the wealth.
There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism—by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide.
– Ayn Rand
So what is so bad about socialism anyways? Why worry if young people are enamored by it? For starters, it flat out doesn’t work. From the Soviet Union, to Cuba, to Vietnam, to Korea, to Venezuela, socialism always results in poverty and tyranny. Point this out, and the apologists will protest those countries weren’t really socialist. True socialism hasn’t been tried, they insist. They are of course right, and there is a good reason for that. “True” socialism, as they define it, can’t exist in the real world. It is completely incompatible with human nature. All people are to a greater or lesser extent, selfish. Selfish with their time, their money, and their material possessions. People will bust their butts at 2nd jobs to put their own children through college. Precious few would do the same for some unknown stranger. They will work 70 hour weeks to get their small business off the ground they have dreamed of owning for years. They will generally do the bare minimum to advance some nebulous benefit like “the greater good.” Work your ass off in the United States, and there is no limit to what you can achieve. Americans can rise as high as their talent and ambition will take them. Work your ass off in a socialist country, and all you get out of it is a life of hardship and an early grave. Because socialism doesn’t reward hard work and achievement, it invariably leads to shortages of material goods. The things that somebody has to work to produce and actually make life better for all of us.
You can vote your way into socialism but you need to shoot your way out of it.
– Larry Lambert
So did all the 20th century revolutionaries set out to create authoritarian hell holes instead of Utopian communes? Of course not. But shortages lead to misery, anger, and unrest in the population. Notions of solidarity and equality don’t mean much when you are starving and there is nothing to eat. When the socialist dream gives way to reality, the only way to hold the whole thing together is by raw force. Authoritarianism isn’t an aberration when it comes to socialism. It is an inevitable result.
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
– Winston Churchill
The Marxist critique of capitalism is that is exploits the working class to enrich the capitalists. In fact, a common misconception about free market capitalism is that is rewards screwing people over and causes us to treat each other poorly. Just the opposite is true. One of the brilliant features of capitalism is that it takes a human weakness — namely, greed — and uses it to incentivize a social benefit — namely, providing goods and services to others. As someone who has worked in the corporate world, I can assure you the last thing a company wants to do is screw over it’s loyal customers. Know who doesn’t mind screwing you over? The government. Because you’ve got nowhere else to go. And if you do try to opt out, they can compel you to participate with their plans by force. Don’t believe me? Try not paying your taxes and see what happens. Last time I checked, Ford can’t send armed agents to my house if I refuse to buy an F150.
Capitalism is the worst economic system… except for all the others.
– usually mistakenly attributed to Winston Churchill
But what if the scarcity problem could be overcome? Socialism would still be inherently evil. Socialism makes the Citizen a slave to the State. The one defining principle of the US founding was the liberty of the individual citizen. The Founders made the divine right of the individual to pursue happiness as he sees fit the central principle behind the US Constitution. And that liberty is the very source of American Exceptionalism. But individual liberty is incompatible with socialism. Socialism is based on the idea of the State determining what is best for the “greater good”, and the citizens (subjects) dutifully complying. Individual choice takes a back seat to the the collective needs as determined by government technocrats.
The useful idiots, the leftists who are idealistically believing in the beauty of the Soviet socialist or Communist or whatever system, when they get disillusioned, they become the worst enemies.
– Yuri Bezmenov
To defeat socialism, we need to educate the younger generation about the true nature and history of socialism. Those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it. And the poverty, misery, oppression, and bloodshed of the 20th century is a history we definitely do not want to repeat.