One of the most enduring creations of the English language is the Declaration of Independence, posted on July 4, 1776. It is a polemic masterpiece justifying revolution. “A candid world” is informed that the “political bands” uniting America and England are “dissolved” due to a “history of repeated injuries and usurpations” that were evidence of “an absolute tyranny.” The great legacy of the American Revolution is the recognition of rights: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Protection of these rights is the essence and purpose of American government. At least it should be.
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Liberty is embodied in the First Amendment of the Constitution which ensures freedom of religion, speech, and the press, peaceful assembly, and the right of the people to petition their government to voice their grievances. Americans are free to acquire and disseminate knowledge, establish facts, and develop ideas so they may freely pursue the life they choose.
This stands in contrast to the socialist movement, which can trace its roots to the French Revolution. The motto of France, “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité” (liberty, equality, fraternity), exhibits a similar sentiment, but the concept of fraternity, or brotherhood, doesn’t exist in the Declaration. There is significant tension between the competing ideas. American government was established to protect individual liberty, not the brotherhood of man.
Socialism is a complex construct. Karl Marx and a litany of disciples and acolytes devoted countless hours to propagate millions of pages of confusing propositions, instructions, manifestos, plans, and propaganda to support a theory that has meant many things to many people. The foundation, which is to say the shifting sand, of Marxism is the theories of dialectical materialism and historical materialism. The simplified premise is that human history is the result of the struggles of people obtaining and consuming material. History is an evolutionary progression of primitive communism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, socialism, all culminating in utopian communism. Marx predicted that humanity’s struggles would cease when society operated according to his communist credo: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”
From time to time, there is confusion regarding the words socialism and communism. Communism is associated with the dictators of Soviet Russia or China, whereas socialism is perceived as a kinder socioeconomic scheme. Don’t be fooled. Socialism and communism are different sides of the same coin. According to Marx, communism is the utopian conclusion of the human struggle for material. It has never been achieved. Nations that branded themselves as communist, like the Soviet Union, China, and numerous other socialist experiments, are examples of the failures of socialism.
For those who consider China a successful communist state, consider for a moment its sordid history. Chairman Mao envisioned China as an agrarian society. China, like Soviet Russia, collectivized agriculture, with the predictable result of famine and the starvation of at least forty-five million people. Mao, like Stalin, insisted on purity of thought and unleashed the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) to ensure that his policies were accepted. Anyone who objected was “rehabilitated” or murdered. The path to communism is stained with blood, imprisonment, and misery.
China changed direction in 1982 under Deng Xiaoping. China had emerged from its revolution as a feudal state determined to make the “great leap forward” to communist utopia, only to achieve failure and the death of millions of its citizens. To alleviate these failures, Deng injected capitalism into China’s economy by offering cheap labor for Western capital. Private property was allowed, huge apartment buildings were constructed, factories were assembled, and modern industrial process were delivered to the country by Western manufacturers. The result has been the success that only capitalism can provide, masked with the purity of thought that socialism demands. The Chinese people are better off financially but are denied the blessings of liberty.
American politicians have supported creeping socialism for decades. Former senator Phil Gram wrote in The Myth of Income Equality, “the average nonretired household in the bottom quintile receive more than $41,000 in government transfer payments, while employers cannot find people willing to work in their eleven million vacant jobs.” Both political parties have participated in the creep, but Democrats revel in it.
For decades, Democrat politicians have affirmed the purity of their motives by growing the welfare state. Today, one third of the population receives government assistance. Democrats want to increase taxes so the welfare state can be expanded, while the government estimates that it loses at least $500 billion each year from waste, fraud, and abuse. American government is a vast expanse of inefficiency that socialists want to incorporate to manage the entire economy. What could possibly go wrong?
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As communism and socialism are two sides of the same coin so too are the Democrat Party and Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Candidates supported by the DSA are running as Democrats all over the country at all levels of government. If elected, their goals are clear. The DSA will
put workers in charge of the government through a new democratic constitution … based on proportional representation in a single federal legislature. With powerful labor unions and social movements organizing in every city and town, we hope to build a socialist society where people come before profit, basic needs are guaranteed, the largest corporations are put under public ownership and democratic control, peace around the world is secured, and workers around the world join together in common struggle to construct socialism worldwide.
The Democrat party is a conduit the DSA is using to hijack the government, write a new constitution, and lead America to an international communist utopia. These are the same promises that Marx, Lenin, and Mao made. Believe that the DSA and the Democrat party they have coopted are different at your own risk.
Despite its frailties and foibles, capitalism is an expression of an individual’s liberty to pursue wealth. There are unethical capitalists who will take advantage of people to maximize profits just as there are socialists that will starve millions with their policies while they murder millions more to assure the population they control adheres to the purity of thought they require.
Socialists will usurp the people’s individual liberty and deliver it to a mob that will confiscate property, implement a socialist economy, and purify collective thought, ensuring that Americans march lockstep with the rest of the world into communism. Liberty and the pursuit of the American dream will fade into the mist of myth and legend. The monuments to the Founding Fathers will be destroyed by the mob and replaced with monuments to the heroes of international communism. The Constitution and Declaration of Independence will be relegated to the ash heap of history.
Zohran Mamdani evokes the empty promises of socialism: “So let us speak now … about what this new age will deliver … an agenda that will freeze the rents for more than 2 million rent-stabilized tenants, make buses fast and free, and deliver universal childcare across our city.”
Mamdani’s “new age” sounds harmless. But to achieve the socialist new age, Americans must relinquish their individual liberty and their ability to engage in pursuits that benefit them personally. The socialist mob will control and direct your thoughts, activities, and ambitions to benefit the brotherhood of man.
Workers of the world, unite. Surrender your personal liberty. Shut up and obey!
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Image: Praveenp via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped).