I would say the socialists ignorance of socialism is dangerous.
>> 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...
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.
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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.
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)