It is always worth repeating what Socialism always leads to: poverty for all except for the ruling class - the anointed ones that know better than anyone how everyone should live. The need to make the case for Capitalism is now more urgent since Obama and his minions and our worthless "cave-in"congress are bringing us to the brink of a proven failure: the anti-freedom system of government that is Socialism. Below is a former Soviet Union citizen, now living in America crying out to us to not allow this descent into socialist slavery. I call it slavery because we will all be working for the government NOT for ourselves. Americans are CAPITALISTS - We are nurtured at the feet of our forefathers who fought to the death against tyranny and oppression. But socialism is much worse than what George Washington fought against - because socialism is a cancer that eats at individualism, the pursuit of happiness, and ends up destroying your liberty completely.
In the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, I was taught to believe individual pursuits are selfish and sacrificing for the collective good is noble.
In kindergarten we sang songs about Lenin, the leader of the Socialist Revolution. In school we learned about the beautiful socialist system, where everybody is equal and everything is fair…
... God-based religion was suppressed and replaced with cultlike adoration for political figures.
The government-assigned salary of the proletariat (blue-collar worker) was 30%-50% higher then any professional. Without incentive to improve their life, professionals drank themselves to oblivion. They — engineers, lawyers, doctors, teachers — earned a government-determined salary that barely covered the necessities, mainly food.
Raising children was a hardship. It took four to six adults (parents and grandparents) to support a child. The usual size of the postwar family was one or two children. Every woman had the right to have an abortion and most of them did, often without anesthesia.
…In the USSR, economic equality was achieved by redistributing wealth, ensuring that everyone remained poor, with the exception of those doing the redistributing. Only the ruling class of communist leaders had access to special stores, medicine and accommodations that could compare to those in the West.
The rest of the citizenry had to deal with permanent shortages of food and other necessities, and had access to free but inferior, unsanitary and low-tech medical care. The egalitarian utopia of equality, achieved by the sacrifice of individual self-interest for the collective good, led to corruption, black markets, anger and envy. READ AT IBD
2 comments:
As an AMERICAN, I have to say, posts such as this one make me very angry.
I ask your readers to consider this basic logical tenant: unwavering adherence to any black and white philosophy will almost always yield BAD solutions. Because human intelligence and the scope of our understanding so limited. This was the failing of black and white communism. Just look around America and you'll see the failings of black and white corporatism.
It's an outrageous logical fallacy to compare small steps toward pragmatic government oversight to the bizarre economic policy of the USSR. What we're talking about is on a level that's minuscule when compared to Western Europe. And FYI, European middle class is doing just fine, unlike the ultracorporatist US, far more "Socialistic" nations like Germany, have better trade balances, manufacturing and have weathered the economic crisis better.
And it's an outrageous and rage-inducing fallacy to compare our modern corporatist economy to the more local-based, small-business-based, community-based economy Adam Smith and our founding fathers would have recognized as CAPITALISM. Look around. Anyone who reads this has to know this is true. The world has changed and it's time to acknowledge that. There are more people. There are new technologies. There is a refinement in engineering, especially social engineering which did not exist back then. Back then, it was unnecessary and oppressive for governments to make laws forbidding arms. But today, EVERYONE recognizes the necessity of the GOVERNMENT regulating who can have weapons of mass destruction. While I believe in the right to own a gun, I admit a pragmatic NEED for the government to keep me from owning a bomb that could blow up 3 city blocks. And just as there is a pragmatic NEED for that socialism, there are other needs inherent in the modern world, with its powerful media and corporations with virtually unlimited economic might.
But the most infuriating thing is the language you use. You ATTACK me and label me, try to steel my patriotism from me, say I'm unamerican--how dare you? For simply not sharing your LEAP OF FAITH with you, your illogical mandate to value an unprovable IDEA over the necessities of the REAL world.
Just understand, there are many of us that are ANGRY over your sort of dishonest tactics.
Oh, and it's outrageous that you'd steal my CONSERVATIVISM from me.
I, not you, am the conservative, in the Edmund Burke tradition of our grandfathers. The conservativism that values traditional knowledge, balance, the wisdom encoded in our traditional institutions and advocates for careful consideration before SLOWLY changing those institutions.
I'm angry that new NeoLiberals have hijacked our party, who argue instead for a rapid and radical change to a BRAVE NEW WORLD of corporatized EVERYTHING based on magical economics.
I hope more conservative like me start speaking up against the religiously neo-liberals.
It's time to bring REAL conservativism back.
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