When I was a senior in high school in Terre Haute, my economics teacher said one day that every great civilization had been destroyed after about two hundred years, usually rotting from within. At that time, we were nearing, but had not yet reached the two hundred year mark. I was dismayed and alarmed. I didn’t want to see my country, the freest land on earth, implode. It surely couldn’t happen, I thought, and yet today, we are well on the road to the destruction of the America our forefathers fought and died for.
Leftist thinking has been around for decades. Adherents of Karl Marx, of socialism and its cousin communism reared their ugly heads nearly as early in this country as they did in the Soviet Union (Russia for those of you who are not historically aware). But, except for the likes of Eugene V. Debs of Terre Haute who wanted socialism in America and a few celebrities like Charles Lindbergh who became enamored with the Nazi’s whose very name includes the word “socialist,” socialism and communism have always been clearly understood to be everything that is anti-American.
People of my generation, the baby boomers, who were born just after WWII, were regaled with the horrors of socialism in Nazi Germany. We knew of the Holocaust where millions of Jews were slaughtered simply because they were Jews. But we also knew that gypsies, the mentally ill, the crippled, the mentally retarded. . . all who were not useful to the socialist regime shared their fate. We grew up fearing a nuclear war with the communist Soviet Union, whose entire name was The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or U.S.S.R. We teetered for a few days on the brink of annihilation as U.S.S.R. General Secretary Niki Khrushev decided whether or not to run our blockade of Cuba where the Soviets were building nuclear bomb launching sites, all to the backdrop of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro’s incessant clamor that the Soviets should fire nuclear armed missiles into the U.S. from his bases, the sooner the better.
We listened to the stories of relatives of those who were locked behind the iron curtain in East Germany. We heard of their attempts to escape that socialist country by crawling under barbed wire fences while chancing being shot, building hot air balloons in basements to escape in the early hours by air, or even, after the Berlin Wall was built, of spending hours, days, weeks, and months digging tunnels under the very feet of the guards, carefully carrying away dirt in their lunch pails or stuffing it inside their couches and mattresses. We heard of those who were shot for trying to escape the wonderful socialist countries where “everyone was equal but some (as is always the case) were just more equal than others.”
We knew their lives could not be good, for why else would they want to escape? And some information was smuggled out to us: you paid for a car, in full and in cash, and then it was delivered to you . . . ten years later. You waited daily in long lines in order to buy food. Why? Because those who made cars and those who grew food had little incentive to work. There was no reward. No bonus. No advancement. You got the same wages as the guy who worked hard would get, plus slacking off when possible became a way at hitting back at the government that was controlling your life.
Communism and socialism have died in every country in the world except for a very few, and in those it is kept alive only because they have allowed some capitalism to beef up their economies. In Venezuela, where first Chavez and now Maduro, have pretty much obliterated capitalism, what was once the richest country in South and Central America, comfortably living off the proceeds of its vast oil reserves, has become not a country at all, but a starving, desperate group of people controlled by a gang of drug-lord thugs. Even children have been forced into prostitution in order to keep themselves alive.
In Venezuela, socialism is killing the portion of its population that has not been able to flee the country and seek asylum elsewhere. Nazi Germany and Hitler were responsible for around 12 million murders. In the Union Soviet Socialist Republic, Stalin had 30-40 millions of his own people murdered. In communist China, Mao may have murdered upwards of 100 million, starting with those who were educated, the thinkers, the possible leaders.
Socialism kills. It eats its own. It destroys countries. Until finally, the people have had enough and overthrow their rulers and return to capitalism.
But socialists are crafty. They promise free things to people who have little. In Tsarist Russia, the Bolsheviks promised the peasants that they could rule themselves, share the wealth of the Tsar’s family and the other wealthy aristocrats. But in the end, the peasants only exchanged their aristocratic oppressors for the bourgeois oppressors who had led their revolt. Life got no better for them. In fact, it got worse since no one could advance in wealth by working harder and buying their own land or business.
In the U.S. today, most Democratic presidential candidates are falling over each other trying to promise Americans more “free stuff.” Free college, forgiveness of up to $50,000 of college loans, free healthcare, free child care, and a guaranteed salary for every American whether he/she can’t work or just doesn’t want to. They know they can’t fulfill most of the promises, at least not in any way that will really benefit people, but the promises might earn some votes, so they promise away. I remember a guide in communist Czechoslovakia telling once that they had zero unemployment in their country. Everyone had a job. Perhaps. But there were interesting aspects to that. Some of the “employed” spent their days sitting in the public bathrooms, keeping them clean and handing out the single square of toilet paper to each tourist. Others should have been cutting the grass and tearing out the weeds that surrounded the modern Prague University of which they were so proud, or fixing the broken glass in the windows of the campus buildings. But no one was doing that. No one probably wanted to just as no one wanted to plant flowers. Anywhere. The country was as grey and colorless as its people. Until they threw out the communists and returned to capitalism. Then, when we returned, the country was colorful and bright and merchandise overflowed the myriad shops onto the streets. Everyone was smiling and friendly. Prague could have been Paris or London then. Capitalism had saved them at last.
Will the U.S., like every great nation before it, collapse? If it does, it will do so by rotting from the inside, by accepting as real the illusionary dreams of “free stuff” that socialism offers. Income equality is not a good thing. If Bill Gates or Steve Zuckerburg made no more than I do, what would motivate them to create the wonderful things that they have created? Income equality leads to mediocrity since when there is no incentive to excel, few will excel. Some of us are born smarter than others. Some of us are born with the talent to create wonderful paintings. Some of us are born with perfect pitch or the ability to create marvelous music. Some of us are talented writers. Some of us can work miracles with our hands. None of us are the same. Why should we expect to be paid the same amount of money for what we do? It only sounds good if you don’t really think about it. That’s socialism. Only good if you don’t really think about it.
Will Democrats take back complete power in 2020? I hope not. But if they do, we will experience a quick slide into socialism and away, not only from capitalism, but also from the freedoms that 200 years’ worth of Americans fought and died to preserve. And if Democrats then change the Electoral College or create new, Democratic states, that make it impossible for a Republican to ever win again, and pack the Supreme Court to ensure that all decisions go their way whether constitutional or not, the anger that pushed Donald J. Trump into the presidency will continue to boil until the Democrats have gone just a step too far. Then they might want to remember who owns all the guns.