There are three types of people who favor socialism as a means of governance. First, there are the entitled underachievers who would use the power of the state to provide for their needs through confiscation and redistribution, rather than become self-reliant through their own resourcefulness and hard work. The second group are arrogant tyrants, who want to order the lives of others because they crave power. The third group are the idiot intellectuals in search of some Utopia where government programs can solve all of humanity‘s problems, if only we continue to sacrifice more of our individual freedoms and income. This last group have utterly failed to understand the human spirit and what makes it thrive. To which of these groups of people do you want to entrust your governance?
Let’s look at each of these more closely, and contrast them with what is transpiring in our nation today.
The have-nots in this country are demanding that the government provide for them what they will not provide for themselves through their own God-given capabilities. According to the Bible, man is created to work and be productive. God has blessed us with intellect to overcome complex problems, He has given us a measure of the same creativity and ingenuity that He exhibited when He brought forth all the marvels of the universe we see around us. He has also established that honest labor is an honorable thing.
When men set their minds and hands to accomplish something, whether it be space travel or widget making on an assembly line, they are fulfilling their created destiny. There is a feeling of great personal accomplishment and independence when you can support yourself and your family without depending on someone else. God created us as independent and self-determined, not robotic, automatons. Our Founders acknowledged this birthright in the Declaration of Independence. We even have the freedom to believe or not believe in God. As with all freedoms there are consequences to our choices, but we still have the choice.
That same self-determination is an enemy of the socialist state, because those who seek to rise above and excel on their own are a threat to the systemic dependence essential to sustain socialism. This is the fatal flaw of socialism. It runs contrary to the created human spirit, and therefore must crush or punish that spirit into submission to ‘the greater good’. Goods and services are never delivered more efficiently by government than by enterprising private companies, because there is no incentive for government to excel.
When the have-nots accrue enough power to punish the achievers and producers by confiscating the fruits of their industriousness, the entire economy begins to die, and society with it. What incentive do the makers have to continue producing, if their rewards are going to be punished with confiscation? This past year, the “takers” of government largesse for the first time outnumbered the “makers”, those who create jobs and make the economy thrive. We are in for bad times.
The second group of socialist promoters are the tyrants. A certain percentage of the population in any civilization will always feel superior to the rest, and look upon them with contempt or false compassion. These ego-maniacal despots come in all sizes and colors, but the one thing they all possess is the desire to order the lives of others.
As socialists, they “love” the concept of humanity but hate individuals. Their view is that the State is superior to all, and therefore must be sustained and empowered at the expense of individual freedoms. They use the force of the State to impose their will on the people they are “serving”, through income confiscation (taxation), regulation and even incarceration and execution. Citizens must sacrifice personal freedoms, their income and self-determination to the increasing power of the State. In exchange, they receive forced dependence on the State for everything they had been providing for themselves. In other words, they trade freedom for bondage.
An example of this abuse of force is the current situation where Hobby Lobby, a Christian-owned, national store chain is being penalized $1.3million dollars a day for every day they refuse to offer employees health insurance that includes abortifacients, as required by Obama‘s health care plan. As Christians, they are morally opposed to abortion and willing to stand against the power of the federal government on principle. The President will have his way, because he knows what’s best for everyone. He will probably put Hobby Lobby out of business, and add the thousands of lost jobs to his roll of dependent minions of the State.
One other earmark of socialist tyrants is that they consider themselves the elite class, and normally don’t subjugate themselves to the same regulations and dehumanizing they foist on everybody else. Mr. Obama, who has never held a job in the private sector, will retire from the presidency to a $13.5 million-dollar home in Hawaii, financially secure and protected for the rest of his life. Can you say the same?
Lastly, we have the idiot intellectuals. This is the swing group, because they make socialism possible by embracing it as a great idea. They have bought the lie that socialism can really work to the benefit of all mankind, if only done right. History has proven repeatedly that it can’t, but their intellectual arrogance has blinded them to the truth. The lazy complacency of the socialist literati to acquiesce to a fatally-flawed system, run by tyrants and fueled by the braying of human parasites using class warfare to avoid productive work, creates the perfect storm that is our current culture.
Recently I met an extremely affable gentleman from Denmark, one of the European socialist countries. He sang the praises of socialism up and down, how the roads were well-maintained and everything ran so well and efficiently under government supervision, contrasting it to the “inferior” way we allow private enterprise to do so much in this country. As he concluded his glowing benediction of his nation’s superior system, he said “Of course, they take 70% of your income in taxes …”.
Anyone who wants to take 70% of my hard-earned income is a robber, whether they use their own gun or the government’s to do it. Anyone who wants to control 70% of my life is a tyrant, to be resisted and vanquished, by violence if necessary. The Founding Fathers agreed, and took up arms to prove it. The sad truth is that if the American Revolution needed to happen today, there wouldn’t be enough self-determined patriots to rise to the challenge.
