Posted on 09/24/2018 8:11:32 AM PDT by rktman
Socialism is the most discredited ideology in the history of political thought. That’s assuming you don’t count cannibalism as an ideology.
During the last century, socialist ideologues killed, tortured and starved innocent people on a heretofore unimaginable scale.
R.J. Rummel estimates that almost 170 million people were killed in the 20th century by their own governments. These were not deaths in war. They were the victims of genocide. The vast majority were killed by socialist governments, including the national socialists (Nazis) in Germany.
If socialism means anything it means a rejection of the Jeffersonian idea that you have a right to pursue your own happiness. Socialists believe you have no such right. Instead, you have an obligation to live for others. As a practical matter, that means you have an obligation to live for the state.
Why would anyone believe that? And why are so many Democrats now donning the “socialist” label. In a recent poll more Democrats were positive about socialism (57 percent) than about capitalism (47 percent).
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
NON print:
https://townhall.com/columnists/johncgoodman/2018/09/23/why-is-anyone-a-socialist-n2521856
Because
1) Gibmedat
2) Buy votes from people who want 1)
3) Don’t apply to me and MY stuff
Done and done!
Greed, envy, power, control.
“Why is Anyone a Socialist?”
To get wealth and power.
I recently read someone that wrote that Socialism is like Axe Body Spray. It doesn’t work, but there are always gullible 20-somethings willing to buy into it. I wish I could credit whoever wrote it because it’s the perfect analogy.
There are two types of people who embrace socialism/communism:
1. Those who want others people’s stuff ( wealth redistro, equal everything and a need to satisfy personal emotional failure to succeed in their own right).
2. People who want to control everyone else, and use their position to not be subject to the same rules and status as everyone else.
Oh, BTW, there is little difference between the latter point in any and all centralized state concepts, there will always be those who think and act like they are special by virtue of their position, still it is based on point 1- OPM, other people’s money.
Capitalism - The rich become powerful
Socialism - The powerful become rich
Socialism is just a present manifestation of certain psychological/personality traits found in many people.
its various forms will always be with us.
Peaceniks always crack me up. Despite their best efforts, sooner or later someone comes along and takes control because THEY want to be in charge. Human nature.
Socialism, and the idea of a centrally controlled society, is very attractive to the kind of people who assume THEY will be doing the controlling, rather than being among the controlled.
It’s why the “Tech Masters of the Universe” are leftists. They see themselves as shaping society.
They THINK they’re getting free stuff.
They drank ALLLLL the kool aid!
Socialism is the Gospel of Envy. There is a reason Envy is one of the seven deadly sins. The desire to get back at people who have more than you and take what is theirs to punish them appeals to people. You get free things and you get to get back at whatever group it is that you have been convinced has held you back. Timeless formula, works all the time.
The kind of person who rises to the top in Socialism, is the kind of person who is very, very good at the backstabbing kind of office politics. Meanwhile, capitalism tends to require that you be good at getting useful things accomplished.
This is one reason why academics love socialism.
The basic psychology may be similar, but the people who want the one aren't always the same as the people who want the other.
You need to be much more frustrated and angry to want go whole hog.
And yet, they are the most ardent supporters of abortion.
There's a cognitive disconnect here.
This sums up Clinton and Trump.
Clinton had no accomplishments and was not good at anything -- but she was a fearsome bully who would walk over anyone's corpse to get to the top.
Trump is a billionaire real estate guy from NYC. Getting useful things accomplished? Yeah, he knows how to do that. I often observe that the real estate guy does politics far better than any of the professional politicians who have been in DC for decades. Trump actually knows how to get things done.
Greed.
People fall for it every time and socialism brings the same crap. Food shortages, purging, re-education camps, misery...
But it sells to the young because on the surface it seems
fair to people who haven’t worked for anything in their lives -(the young) and old people who screwed up everything in their lives and want what others have. To both those groups it will be hell.
And who wins? The thugs who tell the lies and seduce the weak and corrupt and young... they become the monsters who have it all.
The truly bizarre aspect of socialism is that it is wholly based in Christianity, or rather, a *parody* of Christianity, where there is no God (atheist), and “mankind”, or the “elites” of mankind are elevated to the position of God.
So take the King James Bible, particularly the Old Testament, delete every reference to God and replace them with “man” in many variations, and you have socialism.
Of course socialists changed many of the labels in the Bible, such as replacing the Garden of Eden with the State of Nature, and were quite free about changing the *purposes* of The Bible.
For example, because people “ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”, and were thus expelled from Eden, the socialists postulate that if people *give up* on the knowledge of good and evil, and become amoral like animals, they can return to Eden, and again “be one with nature.”
Of course, this is all crapola, but with this as foundation, a hundred different iterations of socialism erupt like boils. It is why our world today is haunted with things like extremist environmentalism, an utter disdain for real education, perversity in every imaginable form, etc., all promulgated by socialists.
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