Ben Stein’s Socialist Smackdown

American Spectator ^ | Evan Maguire

[married21]

current pope, who tell us that Socialism and Christianity are close to each other.

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I wonder if he is naively thinking that we can all just be like a monastery or abbey, where there is communal living and caring. However, in an abbey, you can quit. In a communist state, they close the borders, and you can’t opt out. In an abbey, there is a leader, God, who is above the abbot. In a communist country, the state is God, and it is whatever the leaders say it is. Finally, in an abbey, there is productive output, like beer or fruitcake, which goes out into the free market economy. So the abbey participates, like a family or a corporation, in the bigger picture. It doesn’t try to BE the bigger picture.

I think the thing conservatives need to hammer home is that the free market economy does not mean that people will not support each other and care for each other. It means that people will be doing so in accord with their culture and church, with the resources they generate or share voluntarily. Like John Adams said, more or less: this works for a virtuous and religious people, and is wholly unsuited to anyone else.

[Oatka]

One picture worth 1,000 words.