Every day in America, about 11,000 people celebrate their 18th birthday.
That means that, every day in America, about 11,000 people reach voting age.
An oft-quoted adage notes,
If you’re not a socialist before you’re twenty-five, you have no heart; if you are a socialist after twenty-five, you have no brain.
Many political observers and lovers of liberty lament that socialism in its various forms continues to persist, despite it having been tried in every conceivable form and set of circumstances, and despite it having tallied a body count so horrifically enormous as to beggar the imagination. The reason for this persistence is encapsulated in the second sentence of this essay.
Every day in America, about 11,000 fresh fools enter the voting population. Certainly, not all of them will have fallen prey to the evil beast socialism, but the aforementioned adage, backed up by the long history of socialistic roots among the young (i.e. the college and university crowd), shows us why socialism hasn’t suffered the long-overdue death it so richly deserves.
Educating socialistic idiocy out of the heads of the young is a forever task. The widely-attributed observation,
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty
affirms that sad truth.
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I don’t think that you can say that socialism has been tried “in every conceivable form.” Our own country is a form of socialism, more like a hybrid of socialism, capitalism, and democracy. It has certainly moved towards socialism in the last 100 years or so. And yet, somehow, we have become the most prosperous nation in history. Pure socialism has failed miserably, no doubt, but the millions of deaths seem to result from dictatorships. Someone once said that if we indeed have the best system, then it should become apparent over time. Yet, certain branches of our government have engaged in coups, rigged elections, and all manner of dirty tricks against other governments. Most of these governments were socialist in nature. At the least it makes me wonder what it is they fear. Don’t try to tell me it is their concern for the citizens of these countries.
Don’t confuse correlation with causation. Our nation’s prosperity is *despite* its socialistic elements, not because of them or in conjunction with them. Prosperity is the result of freedom i.e. capitalism. The products of our socialistic elements are deep debt, massively underfunded liabilities that dwarf that deep debt, enormous waste, enormous inefficiency, major infringements on rights, and an ever-growing public sector that is dragging everything down.
Now who’s confusing correlation with causation. You’ve made a list of modern problems and made the leap to causation. And, you put deep debt at the top of your list, when debt is more a feature of capitalism.
I write of government debt, not debt in general, and you should know/recognize that. In capitalism, debt is a tool, a means of improving return on investment. Government doesn’t invest. It borrows when it wants to spend more than it has collected.
Beyond that, though, I can easily show causality for the socialistic ills. Social Security was built as a Ponzi pay-as-you-go system from the get-go. Countless government programs that simply don’t work (one of my favorites is Head Start, which the government’s own analyses show as completely ineffectual) get *more* money every year, money that has to be borrowed. Medicare loses more in 2 months to waste and fraud than the entire health insurance industry earns in profits in a year.
Even *successful* nations that are quasi-socialist garner those successes from the capitalistic side of their functioning. The Scandinavian nations are a classic example. When more free-market, they posted good growth and productivity. As they grew more socialistic, they lagged. Now, they’re re-introducing free market reforms, and recovering slowly.
This is so well said!
Not only is Socialism one of the prime culprits DIRECTLY causing premature death — higher, in fact, up on the list in the past century than all the wars of that century… combined — but when you add in the fact that those wars mostly had Socialism as a prime cause, the deadliness of Socialism is shown to be far worse.
Let’s not forget also that Socialism doesn’t ONLY kill people. Yes, it’s killed somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 million people over the past 120 years, but it’s also IMPOVERISHED billions.
And, in the developed western world, it’s the principal cause of the inability of those countries to eradicate poverty and hunger completely.
Socialism — or paying the poor to stay poor — does exactly as it’s intended to do: Keep poor people poor, and keep Socialists — of “Democrats” — in power, as they’re the ones paying the poor to stay poor.
The Socialist aspects of the American, and other western, economies SHOULD be called: “Prosperity’s Speed Bump.” Or “Progress’s Speed Bump.” Or both.
It SHOULD be easy to see this. It’s a simple truth: In history, there has not been ONE successful society that has embraced Socialism as a guiding principle of its governing ideology. Not one.
The next rhetorical question, therefore, OUGHT to be easy: “Why on EARTH would you EVER consider introducing that into YOUR country’s economy?!?”
Easy answer: You wouldn’t.
This is so well said!
Not only is Socialism one of the prime culprits DIRECTLY causing premature death — higher, in fact, up on the list in the past century than all the wars of that century… combined — but when you add in the fact that those wars mostly had Socialism as a prime cause, the deadliness of Socialism is shown to be far worse.
Let’s not forget also that Socialism doesn’t ONLY kill people. Yes, it’s killed somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 million people over the past 120 years, but it’s also IMPOVERISHED billions.
And, in the developed western world, it’s the principal cause of the inability of those countries to eradicate poverty and hunger completely.
Socialism — or paying the poor to stay poor — does exactly as it’s intended to do: Keep poor people poor, and keep Socialists — of “Democrats” — in power, as they’re the ones paying the poor to stay poor.
The Socialist aspects of the American, and other western, economies SHOULD be called: “Prosperity’s Speed Bump.” Or “Progress’s Speed Bump.” Or both.
It SHOULD be easy to see this. It’s a simple truth: In history, there has not been ONE successful society that has embraced Socialism as a guiding principle of its governing ideology. Not one.
The next rhetorical question, therefore, OUGHT to be easy: “Why on EARTH would you EVER consider introducing that into YOUR country’s economy?!?”
Easy answer: You wouldn’t.