Sunday, June 28, 2015

Socialism is us

RHOADS: SINCLAIR PROPHECY COMES TRUE

By Mark Rhoads - Sinclair 2
In 1951, socialist author Upton Sinclair wrote: "The American People will take Socialism, but they won't take the label. I certainly proved it. Running on the Socialist ticket I got 60,000 votes (for governor), and running on the slogan to 'End Poverty in California' I got 879,000. I think we simply have to recognize the fact that our enemies have succeeded in spreading the Big Lie . There is no use attacking it by a front attack, it is much better to out-flank them."
 But Sinclair was wrong in thinking the word "socialist" itself would never become popular in America.  It is now a very popular word openly embraced by millions of Democratic primary voters.  This week a Bloomberg poll shows that 44 percent of Iowa Democratic caucus voters favor Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders as their first or second choice for President in 2016 to 68 percent for Hillary Clinton.
Too many conservative writers wallowed in a colossal blunder at the end of Ronald Reagan's administration by pretending that conservatives had gained the final victory over collectivist ideas with the fall of the Warsaw Pact in Europe and what what author Francis Fukuyama unfortunately if not foolishly called the "end of history" when the ideas of personal and economic freedom were triumphant all over the world and socialism was discredited.
But no matter how many socialist ideas fail badly over time, they keep coming back like crabgrass because they have emotional appeal and the advocates of socialism are in denial about the associated cost in money and loss of personal freedom that socialist schemes always demand.  Like Obamacare, they become extremely hard to reverse or even amend because once a large group of people depend on such programs they really no longer care about losing their freedom.
Socialism wins because its advocates are able to manufacture a fake moral high ground to stand on and appear to the untrained ear to have more articulate arguments.  Their allies dominate the knowledge sector of the economy such as entertainment, news media, private foundations, and higher education establishments.  They also had that dominance in 1980 when Reagan was elected president but he was able to articulate the case for the failure of socialism in a common-sense and friendly manner. In the 1980s, Conservative activists concentrated on election campaigns because that was one of the few opportunities for victories.  But socialists (who brand themselves as "progressives") wisely continued to concentrate on higher education to indoctrinate new generations in all the many superstitions of left-wing idealism.  Conservatives made a few attempts to infiltrate the Academy but are still hugely outnumbered. Even worse is the fact that far too many politicians who call themselves "conservatives" are really just dull-witted career Republican office holders who are so inarticulate on the ideas of freedom because they have never really educated themselves about the founders and the Constitution in the first place.
None of this means that the final triumph belongs to socialism any more than it belonged to conservatives in 1988.  But it does i think mean that conservatives have to be much more aggressive in demanding that those who use the label conservative really know what they are talking about.  Ask every candidate for office at every level what they think the purpose of government is.  If they say "expanding personal freedom under rule of law" then they are likely genuine conservatives.  But if they turn to mush and say something vague like "helping people" or "restoring greatness to America" they are probably thoughtless buffoons who just want to run for office for its own sake and their personal ambition rather than protecting your freedom under the Constitution.  

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous6/29/2015

    What socialism? Self-supporting with surplus funds funneled to the U.S. general fund social security?

    Billionaire Donald Trump supports social security. Commie.

    ReplyDelete