Why Not SocialIsm?

These days, with the Democrat Party openly advocating massive transformation of the American economy, social structure and “cradle to grave” safety net programs, there seems to be a growing level of acceptance of these policies. To be sure, the whole of America is not convinced, but there is significant and growing support.

Younger people seem to be especially attracted to this idea of socialism, and why not? We should all be social, right? We have social media, and mainstream media supports it.  We help the poor, the handicapped and the disadvantaged, right? Shouldn’t we help everyone? Some even go so far as to claim that Jesus Christ was a socialist because he gave to the poor and healed everyone. However, this claim about Jesus is neither biblically nor historically accurate.

We have terms like justice and social justice, equality and equity. It is almost impossible to even talk about things these days because so many of our words have newly assigned meanings, even equivalence where none exists. We no longer have the fine distinctions of similar words that would make it possible to distinguish important concepts. This manipulation of words and language is deliberate and diabolical.

So why not socialism? It seems friendly. Its professed desires are noble and attractive. The Democratic Socialists in America, spearheaded by Bernie Sanders, love to talk about the Scandinavian countries and their apparent success. Their “social safety net” is strong and vibrant. If they can do it, why can’t we?

Since Scandinavia is their working model for Democratic Socialism let’s just take a look at Scandinavia. All three countries are predominately Caucasian, are in near arctic climates, are either parliamentary monarchies [they have a King] or republic. They are also very small countries and all three have capitalist economies. They also have gigantic tax structures and all of them are now looking at how they can pare down their social programs.

At the most recent count, the United States of America has a population of 333,204,303, not including the current surge across our border and refugees from war torn countries. 

Sweden has a population of 10,402,070 and is comparable to states like Georgia, North Carolina and Michigan. Finland has a population of 5,536,146 and Norway has 5,391,369 and each comparable to states like to Wisconsin, Colorado and Minnesota. 

If you lumped Sweden, Finland and Norway together the population would be the same as Florida. The point is that Scandinavia is very different from America and the comparison is deliberately deceptive. It also exposes the general lack of knowledge of world geography and economics in the American education system.

We have all seen the aggressive, almost militant manner that the Democratic [Socialist] Party has been since the last election. They have a razor thin trifecta in government which has been no impediment to their frantic and urgent plans to pass into law a system that will replace our republic overnight with a governmental system that is alien to our culture and heritage.

Obvious questions arise at times like this. Did the people vote for this? Do the people want The Green New Deal? Do Americans want socialism? Do the people want to tax the rich and give to the poor? To be sure, some Americans want all of this, but I would argue that the majority of Americans do not want this.

This brings us to the simple truth that as human beings, that we have only two ways of interacting with each other: persuasion or force. 

Persuasion starts from the point of view that individuals have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This makes all interaction voluntary, and to the extent that people decide to interact with others, it is accomplished by mutual agreement. Steven Covey describes this level of voluntary interaction as “win-win”. To understand why this is so desirable and so powerful, you have to acknowledge that free will is baked into our very nature as humans. Being free is a manifestation of that basic human characteristic. This is so much so that people who love freedom are willing to live under the most difficult circumstances rather than be the comfortable slaves of a dominant power.

As to force, there is no concern with the desires of others. Force achieves its ends by dominating and overpowering the other, sometimes with injury or even death. The slimy arguments of the likes of Bernie Sanders are not different from the snake oil salesmen of the frontier. Covey calls this “win-lose” and calls for the Master or Slave in every scenario. 

So, as we gaze into the abyss on this issue, the question is “what does it take to implement socialism?” The short answer is force and since the majority of America has not agreed to this new system, it is only the iron fist of our current government and all of its agencies that is now exploiting their opportunity. To quote Rahm Emanuel “You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”

 So why not socialism? It is antithetical to our founding principles, it denies our free will, it robs us of our individuality and makes slaves of all who fall victim to tyranny. As dire as the current circumstances seem though, I continue to be an incurable optimist. Free people will not long tolerate the abuse of government. Americans threw off the most powerful empire in the world in the 1700’s and there are plenty left who know and understand what the current stakes are.