Socialism and its cousin, communism, violate at least 4 of the 10 Commandments:
First, it makes government into god ("You shall have no other gods before Me"). Communist nations in particular often outright ban religion of any kind or at least severely regulate its practice. When the government makes it so that you have to count on them rather than God or family for your needs, your government has asserted itself to be a god over your life.
Second, it's government sanctioned theft ("You shall not steal [secretly, openly, fraudulently, or through carelessness]"). It's theft of your belongings, resources, and labor. If slavery can be thought of as 100% taxation, then Progressive and socialist leaders are raising taxes higher and higher, all the while approaching complete enslavement. Socialist and communist regimes are brutally efficient at collecting all of the resources from those who fall within their sphere of influence. However, they're lousy at the redistribution part.
Third, it encourages and is a manifestation of covetous behavior ("You shall not covet [that is, selfishly desire and attempt to acquire] your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor"). Socialist and communist nations seek to create sameness among their citizens so that everyone has the same things and everyone is on the same level. Any inequality among people is a violation of equity to a socialist and must be corrected, encouraging a sort of "keeping up with the Joneses" mentality that means not to just see what you have to do to keep up with the Joneses, but to make sure they don't get ahead in the first place.
Finally, socialism commits murder or at the very least negligent homicide ("You shall not commit murder (unjustified, deliberate homicide)"). As stated before, despite their efficiency at extracting everything from their citizens, socialism always seems to redistribute with an eye dropper. They always seem to run out of the bare necessities. Just look at the bread lines in Venezuela. Just look at the Holodomor in Ukraine perpetrated by Stalin's USSR. These governments take complete control of their citizens' lives, and so take on the responsibility to make sure the people have what they need to live, but they fail so miserably at it that countless people literally starve to death thanks to the neglect, or perhaps even malicious withholding of the basic necessities of life.
Furthermore, there are millions who are put to death or who simply "disappear" in these countries because the lie of socialism's effectiveness and benevolence is such a lie that it relies on COMPLETE compliance with the lie from everyone. Any discord or disagreement must be met with lethal measures to enforce that compliance. Such things have been seen in Mao's Great Purge, the USSR, and socialist and communist regimes around the world throughout the last century.
After up to 100 million people murdered in the last century alone and millions more under relentless oppression, can we not agree that socialism is indeed evil?
Communism and Socialism are really good for certain people.
Let me list the some of the freedoms and benefits that some enjoy under socialist/communist rule
1. All the wealth you can collect
2. All the comforts you can afford because you’re FILTHY rich—-after all the forced collections
3. You can go anywhere you wish because you and your comrades are at the top
4. You also have TOTAL liberty—again, because you’re at the top or the predator heap
5. You have the best of healthcare because you can afford to fly to the free world where they have the best medial resources or you could just pay the physicians way to your bedside or you can have your OWN personal physicians all at your command !!!
Retro, I could go on and on but communism/socialism is really REALLY GREAT—-IF YOU'RE AT THE TOP or among the top of the dictatorial ruling class!!!
In fact you have more freedoms than most citizens of the free world—-ahem, them don’t have the LEGAL freedom to pick pocket their fellow citizens—obviously a repressive society.
Dave_jj, I couldn’t tell if you were joking or if your were serious.
But let’s assume you are serious.
You say, “word on the street...”
I agree with the picturesque terminology.
Certainly, “word on the street” is adequately descriptive of professors and college kids with skulls full of mush. For sure, the word on the street, professors and college kids share much commonality nowadays
But sadly, education nowadays is all but void of disciplined critical thinking expertise which seems to be an irretrievable bygone especially at Marxist controlled schools.
Dave, in your last paragraph, you tried to bolster up your shinning city on a hill socialist democracy.
You said: "Sweden and the rest of the Nordic countries are LIKE the BEST places to live!!!! They the role models BRUH.
But perhaps you might want to hear some rather recent remarks from the prime minister of Denmark. He said this at a lecture at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government,
“I know that some people in the US associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy.”
Furthermore, Corey Iacoco of FEE says this: The Economist magazine describes the Scandinavian countries as “stout free-traders who resist the temptation to intervene even to protect iconic companies.” Perhaps this is why Denmark, Norway, and Sweden rank among the most globalized countries in the entire world. These countries all also rank in the top 10 easiest countries to do business in.
Dave__jj, Scandinavian is rather a role model for a market economy, BRUH. Please help inform your professor!!
Hey David. Thanks for the response and sharing your viewpoint. You raised some interesting points that believers of "Social democracy" will have to face.
I used the picturesque terminology and the quotation marks quite deliberately so I think we might be on the same page. The CAPS were there for their enthusiasm for these beliefs.
That was the gist of the message I rec'd from peers and profs. I get what you mean though bout critical thinking but informing the professor would be a campus sin and fruitless!!
"SO LIKE I was VERY privileged to work on the advisory team for the Finance minister for the China portfolio....Mao was 70% correct. So what can we learned from the China experience and its great economic success? Perhaps "mixed economy" is the way to go. "
Thanks for weighing in, I appreciate the discussion and you bring forward some important points that should be discussed and I'd like to add to that discussion and maybe introduce a couple of new ideas into evidence.
First, it's worth noting that this conversation has strayed a bit from the moral issues of socialism to more of the discussion of its effectiveness. I don't point this out as a criticism or to necessarily reign it back in, but to note that there seems to be little room for dispute of the moral component of the socialism debate.
The mixed economy approach is one I've heard a number of times. With the wisdom of "all things in moderation" ringing in our ears, this would seem like a sensible approach. After all, most of us appreciate the presence of social safety nets for those who fall on hard times or otherwise find their efforts insufficient to stay afloat in the world. However, when we look closer, it becomes apparent that the only way to prevent the kind of evil I described in socialism/communism before is to exercise a free market economy. The slippery slope is real, and steep.
As Christians, we should find any part of socialism repugnant. Marxists have long regarded religion as the "opiate of the people," thus expressing great disdain for religion. As such, Marxist doctrines will never be content to let the church be and always finds itself at odds with Biblical principles and values. The values put into place by the US founding fathers were taken directly from Biblical values shared by those people. As such, capitalism is the Biblical perspective.
Early colonial history nearly saw some of the American colonies wiped out because of an attempt to implement socialist principles. The problem was, as Larry Schweikart notes in his PragerU video, "When everyone's entitled to everything, no one's responsible for anything!" Half the colonists of Jamestown and Plymouth starved to death under this early socialist system. It wasn't until John Smith came and introduced private property to the colonies and told them, "He who won't work, won't eat," that the colonies were saved. When Plymouth's socialist model failed, its governor, William Bradford noted, "By adopting the communal system, we thought we were wiser than God." As I said, socialism violates the first commandment.
When talking about the economic structure, the mixture of private market and socialized market ultimately looks more like the fascist model than anything. Under fascism, there was a private market, but the government called the shots on how it operated. The government made the rules. We know what the outcome of fascism was after an attempted world domination resulting in a massive worldwide conflict and an attempted genocide. And now after 80 years have passed, we have healthcare in the US set up under the same kind of fascist system with the private market controlled completely by government regulation.
After the normal Marxist socialists did not see the "workers of the world unite" revolt overturn the system to establish a socialist utopia, they readjusted their tactics to stimulate their revolt by focusing on national pride because they noticed that socialists of England would fight and die for England, and likewise for Germans, Italians, Americans, etc. So, National Socialism (aka. Fascism) was born. Today, the tactic has shifted again, this time targeting minority groups to try to assemble a majority dream team of minority groups using tactics of identity politics to bring about the revolt and socialist utopia, calling it "Democratic Socialism," a contradiction in terms. New target, same tactics, same outcome.
So my question to democratic socialists would simply be this: how many must suffer this time to convince a generation that socialism is evil?
