The only beneficiaries of socialism are power-seekers, those who seek to rule others.
Before anyone rushes to challenge these statements, here are a few relevant quotes from reliable experts handed down through the ages:
Reliable Experts on Socialism
Plutarch, 46-120 AD:
The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.
William Bradford, Governor of Plymouth Colony,1621: Socialism came to America with the Mayflower in 1620. After a winter of starvation under the philosophy of share and share alike, the pilgrims resorted to capitalism with each colonist benefiting from the fruits of their own labor in order to promote a more bountiful harvest before facing their next winter. The First Thanksgiving can, and should be viewed as a celebration of the triumph of capitalism over socialism.
Benjamin Franklin, July 4, 1776:
"A republic if you can keep it....When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic."
John Adams, most influential member of the Continental Congress, Second President:
"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."
Thomas Jefferson, Third President:
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them [around the banks], will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."
James Madison, the acknowledged father of the Constitution, Fourth President, 1792:
"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."
Congressman Davy Crockett, Alamo hero, 1830 in the House of Representatives:
"Mr. Speaker, I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the sufferings of the living, as any man in this House. But we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for a part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right to so appropriate a dollar of the public money."
Frederick Bastiat, The Law 1850:
"It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder."
Franklin Pierce, 14th President 1854:
"[I must question] the constitutionality and propriety of the Federal Government assuming to enter into a novel and vast field of legislation, namely, that of providing for the care and support of all those … who by any form of calamity become fit objects of public philanthropy ... I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for making the Federal Government the great almoner of public charity throughout the United States. To do so would, in my judgment, be contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution and subversive of the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded."
Grover Cleveland, 22nd President 1887:
"I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit."
Governor of New York, Franklin D. Roosevelt 1930:
"As a matter of fact and law, the governing rights of the States are all of those which have not been surrendered to the National Government by the Constitution or its amendments. Wisely or unwisely, people know that under the Eighteenth Amendment Congress has been given the right to legislate on this particular subject (prohibition), but this is not the case in the matter of a great number of other vital problems of government, such as the conduct of public utilities, of banks, of insurance, of business, of agriculture, of education, of social welfare and of a dozen other important features. In these, Washington must not be encouraged to interfere."
Mark Twain:
"The mania for giving the Government power to meddle with the private affairs of cities or citizens is likely to cause endless trouble, through the rivalry of schools and creeds that are anxious to obtain official recognition, and there is great danger that our people will lose our independence of thought and action which is the cause of much of our greatness, and sink into the helplessness of the Frenchman or German who expects his government to feed him when hungry, clothe him when naked, to prescribe when his child may be born and when he may die, and, in time, to regulate every act of humanity from the cradle to the tomb, including the manner in which he may seek future admission to paradise."
Ludwig von Mises, Economist, 1931
"Capitalism has raised the standard of life among the masses to a level which our ancestors could not have imagined. Interventionism and efforts to introduce Socialism have been working now for some decades to shatter the foundations of the world economic system. We stand on the brink of a precipice which threatens to engulf our civilization. Whether civilized humanity will perish forever or whether the catastrophe will be averted at the eleventh hour and the only possible way of salvation retraced—by which we mean the rebuilding of a society based on the unreserved recognition of private property in the means of production—is a question which concerns the generation destined to act in the coming decades, for it is the ideas behind their actions that will decide it....Our whole civilization rests on the fact that men have always succeeded in beating off the attack of the re-distributors.... If we wish to save the world from barbarism we have to conquer Socialism...."
Frederick von Hayek, 1974 Nobel Laureate in Economics:
"When it becomes dominated by a collectivist creed, democracy will inevitably destroy itself."
Lenin:
"While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State."
Nikita Khrushchev:
"We can't expect the American People to jump from Capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving them small doses of Socialism, until they awaken one day to find that they have Communism."
Every time the socialism experiment is retried, the justification for repeating it is always the same. The only reason socialism failed before was because of defective leadership. The theory is always the same, with the right leadership and administration, socialism will work this time. Repeating the same experiment, each time expecting a different outcome, is irrational. Five thousand years of history and four hundred years to compare with capitalism should be enough.
Lest there be any doubt, it is worth repeating: there is no rational, moral or ethical basis for socialism, there is no economic basis for socialism, and there is no Constitutional basis for socialism. Socialism is the economic and societal equivalent of cancer. Professional politicians are the only cause, the sole means of spread and the only beneficiaries.
Krugman may be the easiest target to tar and feather, but Freepers and Americans need to begin recognizing that Democrats are socialists. And socialism is anti-freedom and therefore anti-American. Allowing these people to hide behind the terminology of "liberal" allows them to conceal or hide the fact that Democrats are lying to everybody, themselves included, when they claim to believe in freedom and they are lying when they claim to be freedom-loving Americans. The reality could not be further from the truth.
I'm stunned that FDR said that. Based on what he did during his Presidency, I question whether he believed any of the above.