Posted on 12/05/2018 5:48:16 AM PST by Hojczyk
Joseph Goebbels wrote in 1925, “It would be better for us to end our existence under Bolshevism than to endure slavery under capitalism.” This Nazi sentiment might be shared by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and his comrade Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. Goebbels added, “I think it is terrible that we and the communists are bashing in each other’s heads.”
When the tragedies of socialist regimes—such as those in Venezuela, the USSR, China, Cuba, and many others—are pointed out to America’s leftists, they hold up Sweden as their socialist role model. But they are absolutely wrong about Sweden.
Johan Norberg points this out in his documentary “Sweden: Lessons for America?” Americans might be surprised to learn that Sweden’s experiment with socialism was a relatively brief flirtation, lasting about 20 years and ending in disillusionment and reform.
Reason magazine reports:
Sweden began rolling back government in the early 1990s, recapturing the entrepreneurial spirit that made it a wealthy country to begin with. High taxation and a generous array of government benefits are still around. But now it’s also a nation of school vouchers, free trade, open immigration, light business regulation, and no minimum wage laws.
School vouchers, light business regulation, and no minimum wage laws are practices deeply offensive to America’s leftists.
Our young people are not the first Americans to admire tyrants and cutthroats. W.E.B. Du Bois, writing in the National Guardian in 1953, said, “Stalin was a great man; few other men of the 20th century approach his stature.” Walter Duranty called Stalin “the greatest living statesman” and “a quiet, unobtrusive man.”
(Excerpt) Read more at dailysignal.com ...
I would say the socialists ignorance of socialism is dangerous.
Once the USSR collapsed we quit talking about it. We now have 1 1/2 generations who are utterly clueless as to its perils.
>> America’s leftists, they hold up Sweden as their socialist role model.
I thought they all hold up Norway as their example. Norway doesn’t have open borders. You have to earn $47,000 a year to immigrate there. They need you to be a productive earner so you can share your wealth with the State.
As Nancy sez, pay your taxes so you can find out what you get...
It seems to me that Socialism may be imposed on a wealthy, successful country, such as (your choice), and appear to succeed for a while. Then it slowly destroys itself and brings down the country it feeds on. Look at Venezuala, Cuba and other once thriving nations,who traveled that road.
Worse, imposition of Socialism on a poor, emerging, struggling country will absolutely prevent that country’s chance of a prosperous future, look at Zimbabwe, and other former colonial nations the emerged as “Socialist” paradises.
Zimbabwe, when Rhodesia fed central Africa, and now is a Socialist disaster. Cuba IMPORTS sugar and Europe begins to flame.
Socialism: freedom is slavery, bondage is preferable.
When those terrible Robber Barons industrialized the United States (and their predecessors before them Britain) they, with the exception of the banker, first made their fortunes by providing goods people felt were desirable at a price they found attractive.
Teddy and other progressives were WRONG: the American people did vote for the industrialists. They voted for them every time they willingly bought their products when their fortunes were growing. They cast many more such “votes” than they ever did for progressives (who, in wanting to replace the Republic with Arbitrary government had to be far less honest in their vote seeking).
Yes, once the “Robber Barons” began competing to see who could be richest they abused their power, but even then their empires were ultimately based on and rooted in voluntary commerce.
They didn’t fill the land with mass graves as socialists did in their rush to industrialize in the 20th. They didn’t cause famines either. Instead they helped the American people to attain a higher and higher standard of living than they had ever known. All through voluntary commerce.
But if you think the mindless to malevolent force of government and its iron fist (ultimately nothing voluntary about it) is the true repository for Trust and guidance for the subjects of their power then I can easily see how you can excuse the overflowing horrors of socialism and shudder at the relative few abuses of the industrialists ... because if you’re a socialist/communist you are deluded and deceived ... I would expect nothing better of you.
In Futurama they have brain slugs which feed upon intelligent minds till the host is a shambling walker, which does little but encourage others that they too need a brain slug of their own.
Socialists have proverbial brain slugs. But their brain slugs aren’t polite, they don’t ask, but instead they use their access to the young to force brain slugs on them.
[Once the USSR collapsed we quit talking about it. We now have 1 1/2 generations who are utterly clueless as to its perils.]
Often thought about this. Sometimes its beneficial to have a glaring example of just how bad the other side is still around and in our faces. We’ve become jaded now.
This plays into the historical ignorance of today’s younger generations.
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Socialism is slavery without the perks.
ping for later
They are programmed to reject reality, reason, and life proper to a rational being, and to worship and submit to big government, and obey the duty for altruistic sacrifice for the benefit of the collective. They do not know that they are miseducated and ignorant, and feel that they are morally superior to the stupid conservative masses.
The part I saw was her going into a Swedish home and interviewing the occupant, a housewife. Her intent was clear. To show her American audience how well these folks lived under socialism.
But she was caught off-guard when she noticed that the house didn't have many "things" in it like consumer-buying American homes do. Not much furniture. Few pictures on the walls. No major appliances. It was like a sparsely furnished, austere apartment. Minimalist lifestyle.
She asked the woman why they didn't have many things in their home. Was it due to their frugal, egalitarian lifestyle in Sweden?
She obviously wasn't expecting the lady's answer because she did a beeline out the door and on to something else in her travelogue.
And what was the Swedish homemaker's answer that so spooked Leftist Oprah?
"We don't have many things because we can't afford them. Our taxes are too high to buy much else besides the household essentials."
Blew Oprah's defense of socialist Sweden right out of the water. It was a classic moment to see.
Look at the prisons in those Scanda countries and they look like upscale private college dorm apartments.
Ignorance of socialism is not a severe problem.
Ignorance of Americanism is very dangerous.
People argue, debate, and even discuss the differences between forms of government. This may be informative but the information is of no real value for free people living under the American constitution.
Regardless of the different aspects and nuisances of the major forms of governments, Socialist, Communist, Fascism, Nazism, and Americanism, they all lack the one thing that makes Americanism unique.
That one thing is that only in Americanism is the government’s primary function, the very reason to exist as a government, to protect rights.
Unless the form of government discussed has the primary function of protecting rights I have no interest in discussing or adopting regardless of its label or how many things it does for me.
Although our modern socialists' promise of greater freedom is genuine and sincere, in recent years observer after observer has been impressed by the unforeseen consequences of socialism, the extraordinary similarity in many respects of the conditions under 'communism' and 'fascism'. As the writer Peter Drucker expressed it in 1939,'the complete collapse of the belief in the attainability of freedom and equality through Marxism has forced Russia to travel the same road toward a totalitarian society of unfreedom and inequality which Germany has been following. Not that communism and fascism are essentially the same. Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion, and it has proved as much an illusion in Russia as in pre-Hitler Germany.’No less significant is the intellectual outlook of the rank and file in the communist and fascist movements in Germany before 1933. The relative ease with which a young communist could be converted into a Nazi or vice versa was well known, best of all to the propagandists of the two parties. The communists and Nazis clashed more frequently with each other than with other parties simply because they competed for the same type of mind and reserved for each other the hatred of the heretic. Their practice showed how closely they are related. To both, the real enemy, the man with whom they had nothing in common, was the liberal of the old type. While to the Nazi the communist and to the communist the Nazi, and to both the socialist, are potential recruits made of the right timber, they both know that there can be no compromise between them and those who really believe in individual freedom.What is promised to us as the Road to Freedom is in fact the Highroad to Servitude. For it is not difficult to see what must be the consequences when democracy embarks upon a course of planning. The goal of the planning will be described by some such vague term as 'the general welfare'. There will be no real agreement as to the ends to be attained, and the effect of the people's agreeing that there must be central planning, without agreeing on the ends, will be rather as if a group of people were to commit themselves to take a journey together without agreeing where they want to go: with the result that they may all have to make a journey which most of them do not want at all.
____________— F A Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (May, 1945 Reader’s Digest Condensed Version)
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