1. Why now, with a great economy – and Venezuela as the classic example of how to kill a country with socialism – are so many buying in to Yellow-Brick-Road economics? The unemployment rate, job creation, and price of energy point to a bright future. The last time Americans were turned on by socialism was during the Great Depression, with 25% unemployment and Hoovervilles dotting the landscape. Then there’s Venezuela, once one of the most prosperous countries in Latin America, where there are periodic blackouts in what was a major oil-producing state. A March 12th story in The New York Post reported, “Desperate Venezuelans were forced to turn to filthy sewage drains and polluted rivers as the country’s nearly weeklong power outage left many without water.” And this is when Millennials and most Democrats say they favor socialism over free enterprise. Bottom line: It’s about power and plunder, not fairness and compassion.

2. Socialism is based on a profound ignorance of the laws of economics. Karl Marx, who spent most of his life writing in the library of the British Museum, refused to set foot in a factory – fearing it would shatter his illusions. At the ripe old age of 29, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is like a babe wandering around a grown-ups world – where people work and pay taxes. Her last job was bartending at a Manhattan saloon. If you asked her how a corporation works, she’d begin babbling about the “1%” and the Israeli “occupation.” For socialists, ignorance is an impenetrable shield.

3. Socialism makes a few rich and many very poor. Hugo Chavez, the socialist ruler of Venezuela before the current socialist ruler of Venezuela, used to say it’s “bad” to be rich – which is why the policies of he and Maduro have produced so many desperately poor people. Chavez’s favorite daughter, Maria Gabriela Chavez, is worth an estimated $4.2 billion – doubtless acquired through canny investments. In the USSR, there was the “new class,” which grew fat on the misery of the proletariat. Socialism is a way for non-producers to strike it rich.

4. Socialism is fueled by envy. In the socialist melodrama, there’s always a villain – a role currently assumed by the Democrats favorite scapegoat the proverbial 1%. “Why should they have so much more than you,” socialists ask? Well, perhaps they work harder than you, take risks you’re unwilling to take. Maybe they’re smarter or more creative. Yes, they’re ultra-rich SOBs – ultra-rich SOBs who produce wealth and innovations and jobs. When we help the Bernies of the world to pull them down, we pull down ourselves with them.

5. Where has socialism ever worked? Taiwan versus China (before it adopted market reforms)? East Germany versus West Germany? North versus South Korea? No, no, no, say Bernie and Bitchy. We mean democratic socialism, what they have in the UK and Scandinavia. Britain almost sank under the dead weight of post-World War II socialism, before Margaret Magnus began cutting and privatizing. Scandinavian socialism is more myth than reality. Take Sweden. Guided by conservative governments, by 1970, Sweden had the world’s 4th highest per capita income. Then the socialists came in, raising taxes, piling on regulations, and spending like drunken Vikings. By 1990, Sweden’s per capita income had plummeted to 14th worldwide. Since 1997, ministries that propose new spending have to offset it with cuts in existing programs. In 2007, the nation reduced unemployment payments. In the preceding decade, power and transportation sectors were deregulated. The highest corporate tax rate was cut from 28% to 22% (scheduled to go to 20.4% by 2021). Today, Sweden is richer than all major EU countries. Some socialism.

6. Socialism consistently fails, domestically as well as internationally. In America, the failure of socialism extends to almost everything the government touches, except the military, including the U.S. Postal Service, public education, VA hospitals and public housing. U.S. District Court Judge William Pauley III wrote in an opinion last year that public housing in New York City (the People’s Republic of de Blasio) was “Somewhat reminiscent of the biblical plagues of Egypt, these conditions include toxic lead paint, asthma-inducing mold, lack of heat, frequent elevator outages, and vermin infestation.” The city’s housing authority has “whitewashed these deficiencies for years,” the judge charged. In the Big Apple, the house that socialism built rests on mold, toxicity and vermin infestation.

7. Laying the groundwork for socialism. The left is on course to bankrupt the nation, import swarms of mendicants, raise debt from student loans to unsupportable levels, and repeal the Industrial Revolution with the Green New Deal. They intend to build their socialist utopia on the ruins of what’s left of a free-market economy. As Tucker Carlson points out on FOX News, student-loan debt stands at $1.5 trillion, more than the GDP of Spain or Sweden. In the past 13 years, the average indebtedness per graduate increased from $20,000 to $37,000. For two million Americans, it’s more than $100,000. Academia has gone on a spending spree, encouraged by federal subsidies. (Between 1997 and today, the number of administrators on college campuses has more than doubled.) Now, proponents of socialism threaten to solve the problem government created by nationalizing student loans. Works for them.

8. Socialism’s cheerleaders – the academic/media axis. The media made Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, creating a legend out of a ditz who defeated a 10-term incumbent – a middle-aged white-guy hack who didn’t know he was in a race till it was too late – in one of the most heavily Democratic congressional districts in the country. Every time a Democrat presidential hopeful proposes another socialist program, media mutts salivate like Pavlov’s dogs. Academia is even worse. In a 2017 survey covered by U.S. News and World Report (based on responses from 8,688 full-time professors at 51 of the 60 top-ranked liberal arts colleges), there were 10 registered Democrats for every one Republican. From lectures, to assigned reading, to speakers, most college campuses resemble the Communist International, except they’re to the left of Stalin.

9. Anti-Semitism isn’t an aberration; it’s central to socialism. Some on the left professed to be shocked when Sanders and AOC rushed to the defense of Rep. Ilhan Omar, after her anti-Semitic Tweets. But the movement has always been anti-Semitic. Socialists were quick to pick up on anti-Jewish stereotypes – Jews care only for money; Jews are lackies of business interests; There’s a Jewish conspiracy to dominate humanity. In his 1844 essay (“On the Jewish Question”) Marx wrote: “What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money.” This was a meme picked up a century later by Germany’s National Socialists. The late Hugo Chavez had a paranoid belief in Jewish conspiracies. In 2005, he referred to Jews as “the descendants of the same ones who crucified Christ,” who had “taken possession of all the wealth of the world.” From this perspective, the Hitler-Stalin Pact made perfect sense.

10. Millennials (Generation Dumb) and Socialism. As we’re regularly reminded, socialism’s greatest appeal is for the young, Millennials (ages 22 to 27) in particular. According to a recent survey, more favor socialism than capitalism (43% to 32%). This stands to reason, given their profound ignorance of U.S. History and economics. In a YouGov survey by the Foundation for Liberty and American Greatness, only 35% of Millennials knew which presidents were shown on Mount Rushmore (compared to 71% of Boomers). Only 11% of the former knew which rights are guaranteed by the First Amendment. And it doesn’t get any better for the next generation. The same survey showed that over half of today’s high schoolers believe Obama was more important to America than George Washington. They’re probably right. How can winning the War for Independence and leading the United States through its first quarter century of existence compare with Obama Care and subsidizing Iran’s nuclear program.

You could call the foregoing socialism simplified, for the really simple. Those who want to avoid the cataclysm need to keep reminding our fellow citizens that socialism isn’t just bad economics, it’s evil, part of the death march of progress.

Re #10 above:

Been going on for several decades now, under the guidance of "progressives" (regressives).

The following "Lesson" from a Co-Editor of "Our Ageless Constitution" contrasts the Founders' Ideas of Liberty" which the Founders intended should be taught to rising generations, with the Counterfeit Ideas being promoted in the so-called "public schools" of America for decades.

IDEAS OF LIBERTY:

(from America’s Founders and Presidents)

“The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.” (Jefferson - 1774)

“Statesmen may plan and speculate for Liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone which can establish the principles upon which Freedom can securely stand.” (John Adams - 1775)

“The Sacred Rights of Mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the Hand of the Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.” (Alexander Hamilton)

“Without God, there could be no American form of government, nor an American way of life. Recognition of the Supreme Being is the first and the most basic expression of Americanism. Thus the founding fathers saw it, and thus, with God’s help, it will continue to be.” (Dwight Eisenhower)

“The same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe, the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.” (John F. Kennedy - 1961 Inaugural)

“…it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly implore His protection and favor….”(George Washington)

“Now the virtue which had been infused into the Constitution…and was to give it…the stability and duration to which it was destined, was no other than…those abstract principles…proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence—namely, the self-evident truths of the…unalienable rights of man…the…sovereignty of the people, always subordinate to a rule of right and wrong, and always responsible to the Supreme Ruler of the universe for the rightful exercise of that sovereign…power.” (John Quincy Adams, on the occasion of The Jubilee of the Constitution - 1839)

"Today, across our nation, we see consequences of decades of gross neglect and outright censorship of the Founders’ ideas from textbooks and from our public discourse. We have allowed counterfeit ideas to dominate the public square, and the Founders’ principles have been crowded out. Unwittingly, many teachers and other unknowing officials have participated in the agenda of an unelected mind-controlling elite whose tyrannical actions have robbed generations of Americans from reading or studying the ideas that made America free. Like termites, they have eroded our foundations as effectively as if they had burned the books. Yet, not once have they been willing to call it by its rightful name—censorship. Once, in America, stifling ideas about the Creator and Creator-endowed liberty was considered unthinkable. . . .

"The ideas of liberty must be passed on from generation to generation if liberty is to survive. These ideas, when they are allowed to be examined freely, will prevail, because their appeal is to reason and to the love for liberty that is deep in the human heart. John Adams warned: “The people of America now have the best opportunity and the greatest trust in their hands, that Providence ever committed to so small a number…if they betray their trust, their guilt will merit even greater punishment than other nations have suffered, and the indignation of Heaven.”

COUNTERFEIT IDEAS:

(from some of those whose views have dominated national educational policy)

“The idea of God is the keystone of a perverted society. The true root of liberty, equality and culture is atheism.” (Karl Marx)

Our thinking is enlightened “in the degree in which we cease to depend upon belief in the supernatural.” (John Dewey, father of ‘progressive education’ and 1st President of American Humanist Society)

“…democracy is a human faith and movement, unencumbered by supernatural preconceptions.” (John Childs, a protégé of John Dewey at Columbia)

“…the majority of our youth still hold the values of their parents, and if we do not alter this pattern, if we do not resocialize ourselves to accept change, our society may decay.” (John Goodlad, 1971 Report to President, Schooling for the Future)

“As in 1933, humanists still believe that traditional theism, especially a faith in the prayer-hearing God, who is assumed to love and care for persons, to hear and understand their prayers, and be able to do something about them, is an unproved and outmoded faith.” (Humanist Manifesto II, 1973)

“…the most important factor moving us toward a secular society has been the educational factor. Our schools may not teach Johnny to read properly, but the fact that Johnny is in school until he is sixteen tends to lead toward elimination of religious superstition.” (Paul Blanshard, The Humanist, March-April, 1976)

“It [the Nat’l. Education Association’s publication list] includes the delegitimizing of all authority save that of the state, the degradation of traditional morality and the encouragement of citizens in general and children in particular to despise the rules and customs that make their society a functional democracy. The NEA is drifting into exceedingly dangerous waters, and probably carrying more than a few teachers and pupils with it.” (Chester E. Finn, Jr., Ass’t. Sec. Of Education & Prof. Of Education & Public Policy, Vanderbilt Univ., 1982)

--------------

“Now, my countrymen, if you have been taught doctrines which conflict with the great landmarks of the Declaration of Independence…let me entreat you to come back. Return to the fountains whose waters spring close to the blood of the Revolution.” (Abraham Lincoln)

SOCIALISM
You have 2 cows.
The State forces you to give one to your neighbor, shoots the neighbor and forces you
to milk them both, giving all milk back to the state.
The State gives you a cup of sour milk.

MARXISM
You have two cows.
The government takes both and shoots you.

COMMUNISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and gives you nothing.
They shoot your family and put you in a gulag.

DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both, promises more free cows, lets you vote and gives you sour milk.

FASCISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and sells you some milk.

NAZISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and shoots your wife and kids.

ANARCHISM
You have 2 cows.
The State shoots the cows, you and your family.

CRONY CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
The State takes both, milks, slaughters them, and makes a tidy profit from the sale
of choice meat cuts and fresh milk.
You get some lousy hamburger and a jar of sour milk.

BUREAUCRATISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both, shoots one, hires a sub-contractor to milk the other, and then throws the milk away.

GUAMISM
You have two cows.
You never milk them, they just eat the grass, so you don’t have to mow the lawn.
You live on welfare and get food stamps, so you don’t need the milk. (H/T Fai Mao)

LBJ GREAT SOCIETISM
You have two cows.
The president realizes that neighbor wants their own cow, slaughters
your calf every year preventing you from having a cow to sell.
The president takes the slaughtered cow and turns it into hamburger,
has a cook-out so neighbor stops trying to own a cow themselves.
The neighbor spends next 50 years going to presidents cook out and
never gets his own cow. (H/T PCPOET7)

LAISSEZ-FAIRE CAPITALISM
You have two cows. So what? (H/T Celtic Conservative)

TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull.
Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows.
You sell them and retire on the income.

CONTEMPORARY WALL STREETISM
You have two cows.
You sell one, bundle the other with a goat, a mule,
and two dry cows.
You pile into the derivatives market, buy a Gulfstream
and when it all comes down around your ears...
You go to the government for a bailout.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

IDEAS OF LIBERTY:

COUNTERFEIT IDEAS:

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