Socialism Exposed

"The American people will not knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism, they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened." --Norman Thomas

Norman Thomas was the socialist candidate for president during FDR's term; one could assume that he dropped out of the race because it became apparent that FDR would do a thorough job on his own of incorporating socialism into our government. JK I'm sure Norman would have liked to have a go at it as well.

This is an excellent video of an interview with acclaimed economist Thomas Sowell. It delves into what is currently happening to our economic system in America and the dangers that lie therein.

Socialism for the Rich, by Thomas Sowell, also does an excellent job of breaking down the faulty logic that leftists use when tacking a benevolent sounding title onto their dangerous ideologies.

This is the definition of socialism according to the dictionary:

so⋅cial⋅ism  
–noun
1. a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.
2. procedure or practice in accordance with this theory.
3. (in Marxist theory) the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principles.

In a perfect world, where every individual was perfectly unselfish, socialism might have a chance at success. However, we all know that such a utopian society does not, and will never exist. In the name of benevolance and fairness, individuals and groups of people in government will manipulate and abuse the power that a socialist system gives them and waste exorbitant ammounts of money on accomplishing their own political agendas, and not only that, but the lazy and incompetant individuals in society will abuse the system. In the end the rich will be poorer, the middle class will be poor, and the poor will be destitute. History has proved this over and over again.

This is also a good illustration of what happens when the pleasant sounding logic of socialism is allowed to play out:

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before but had once failed an entire class.

That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.
After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B.

The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.

As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.

The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.
The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

Could not be any simpler than that.

I believe that we should use history as a tool in order to study socialist ideologies, its creators, and the consequences of building a society around such a system. Once we have come to a conclusion about its benefit or lack thereof to society, we need to call it what it is, a failed and dangerous system, so that future generations do not make the same mistakes.

Socialism is slowly making its way into America's society and government, and the deterioration of countries where that ideology has already been integrated is very apparent. Take Canada's health care for example; there are countless stories and examples of the incredibly inefficient and wasteful and self-destructive situations that Socialism has created in Canada and other socialist countries around the world.

In an article titled, "Canadian Health Care is Free and First Class if you Can Wait," by Beth Duff-Brown, she says:

"Americans who flock to Canada for cheap flu shots often come away impressed at the free and first-class medical care available to Canadians, rich or poor. But tell that to hospital administrators constantly having to cut staff for lack of funds, or to the mother whose teenager was advised she would have to wait up to three years for surgery to repair a torn knee ligament.

'It's like somebody's telling you that you can buy this car, and you've paid for the car, but you can't have it right now,' said Jane Pelton. Rather than leave daughter Emily in pain and a knee brace, the Ottawa family opted to pay $3,300 for arthroscopic surgery at a private clinic in Vancouver, with no help from the government.

'Every day we're paying for health care, yet when we go to access it, it's just not there,' said Pelton."

It is such a sad state of affairs in our society when things as simple as history or current events, which should be such obvious tools to use, are completely ignored. Yet, I suppose that in a society where revisionist history is one the latest, most hip fads, and the most dangerous and harmful ideologies are allowed to parade around freely behind the shield of tolerance and diversity, it should not surprise us that the opposite of the truth is often taught in our schools and universities.