It is incredible how a failed theory—Marxism—continues to make inroads into the hearts and minds of millions of fellow Americans. A new poll out the other week found that for the first time, a majority of Democrats say they prefer socialism over capitalism. FoxBusiness.com (8/12/21) reports:

“A new Fox News poll showed that more Democrats favor socialism over capitalism, in a sharp reversal from just a year and a half ago. The poll…showed that 59% of registered Democratic voters who participated had a positive view of socialism, compared to just 49% who felt that way about capitalism.”

It’s possible in some cases that they are just simply mistaken about definitions—that they think capitalism means greed, whereas socialism means sharing.

No, capitalism means freedom to earn, whereas socialism means the government is free to steal from those who earn.

Everywhere around the world, we see the bitter fruit of Marxism. Everywhere his ideas have been put into practice, death, misery, loss of basic freedoms, and poverty follow. Can anybody name a square inch spot on the planet, anywhere, where Marxism has brought anything good? Certainly not in China, Russia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, etc.

And yet there are millions of Americans who have been brainwashed into thinking that Marxism is good, that it means compassionately sharing with others. No, it effectively means the government stealing from its citizens…for the sake of the ruling class to be enriched.

Here’s an example: Most Cubans live on $44 (U.S.) per month. In contrast, when Fidel Castro died in 2016, his net worth was estimated at $900 million. In America, wealth is created by providing value in voluntary exchanges, and there is no inherent limit on it. But in a Marxist setting like Castro’s Cuba, the government controls the economy, and it’s a zero sum game. Castro’s wealth was at the expense of the Cuban people.

Even Critical Race Theory, which is tearing many school boards apart, is merely repackaged Marxism, enforcing the never-ending Marxist principle of “oppressor” versus “oppressed.”

And all of this gets back to a miserable anti-Christian man in 19th century Germany—Karl Marx. I recently learned from Dr. Paul Kengor something I didn’t know about Marx—his favorite quote. It speaks volumes. Kengor is a bestselling author and a professor of history and political science at Grove City College. I’ve interviewed him many times.

In his latest book, The Devil and Karl Marx, Kengor points out that Marx loved the line that comes from the devil character, Mephistopheles, in Goethe’s Faust:

“Everything that exists deserves to perish.”

Dr. Kengor elaborates:

“Friends said Marx would chant this. He would recite this—‘Everything that exists deserves to perish. Everything that exists deserves to perish.’ This is a philosophy that’s about tearing down, burning the foundation, leveling the house, to where you have Marx standing there in the smoldering embers, saying, ‘Now we are ready to begin.’ So anybody that thinks that this is a philosophy that is just about helping one another or sharing the wealth or redistributing wealth, they do not understand Marx and Marxism.”

And what do we see in our streets today? Destruction, riots, tear it all down. Let’s build a new and supposedly better world.

Ironically, Marx couldn’t even feed his own family. Even when he received a windfall of cash, he selfishly spent it all on himself. Marx couldn’t balance his own checkbook, but he presumed to tell the rest of the world how to run their economies. And everywhere his ideas have been implemented, they’ve driven their economies right into the ground.

Some people may naively assume that you can have socialism without the violence. But that is not the case. As Marx stated: “Socialism cannot be brought into existence without revolution.”

And what has been the results of atheistic communism because of Marx? Kengor writes,

“A legacy of over one hundred million dead, not to mention the robbing of so many basic liberties and incalculable harm to so many souls has been nothing short of diabolical—truly a satanic scourge, a killing machine…It plagues us to this day.” (The Devil and Karl Marx, p. 402).

When there is no God to whom we must give an account, then the state can become god. That was certainly true in the minds of many a totalitarian dictator.

Why has America lasted all these years? For all the problems of America’s founding, the founders said our rights from God. The God factor is the key to America’s enduring success.

In contrast to Marx’s philosophy that everything should perish, Jesus said,

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.”

What a better approach to the world—and with infinitely better results all around the planet.

This article was originally published at JerryNewcombe.com.

Written by Dr. Paul Kengor

My family just visited Chocolate World at Hershey Park in Hershey, Pennsylvania—the so-called “sweetest place on earth.” For those unfamiliar, it’s a giant candy-land. The primary attraction is a tour where visitors ride in self-guided vehicles through an exhibit learning about the history of Hershey’s chocolate.

At the end of the tour stands a Hershey’s employee who hands everyone a complimentary chocolate bar. It’s a highlight. The last several times we’ve done the tour, the boy handing out chocolate has been a kid with Down Syndrome—a job he does without a hitch. It’s an added sweet thing that makes you smile. In fact, everyone smiles. I observe a mom who looks him in the eye and says very deliberately, “Thank you very much.” I generally say something like, “Thank you, sir!”

What strikes me about the moment, however, is something much less happy; nonetheless, I think it should be expressed, especially at this time of year, October, when America quietly marks Down Syndrome Awareness Month, and when many religious believers also happen to mark Respect Life Month.

While probably 80-90% of the people passing through that line at Hershey happily accept a chocolate bar from that Down Syndrome child (actually, the number is probably more like 100%), it’s tragic that upwards of 80-90% of women in America who receive a prenatal identification of a Down Syndrome child choose to abort. In Denmark, the rate is 98%. And in Iceland, officials assert that they have almost completely “eliminated” Down Syndrome.

“My understanding is that we have basically eradicated, almost, Down Syndrome from our society,” says Kari Stefansson, a geneticist in Iceland, “that there is hardly ever a child with Down Syndrome in Iceland anymore.”

How so? A magic pill? Surgery in the womb? Chromosomal engineering? No, they’ve done so by so thoroughly identifying Down Syndrome in utero, and creating a culture that embraces abortion, that Down Syndrome children are not born to begin with.

Only one or two Down Syndrome children are born per year in Iceland. Oftentimes, those one or two result from parents having received inaccurate pre-screenings.

“Babies with Down Syndrome are still being born in Iceland,” concedes the head of the nation’s leading Prenatal Diagnosis Unit. “We didn’t find them in our screening.” They’re the lucky ones. The others are aborted.

“We don’t look at abortion as a murder,” shrugs another “health” official in Iceland. “We look at it as a thing we ended. We ended a possible life that may have had a huge complication … preventing suffering for the child and the family.”

Some solution, eh?

But what millions of Down Syndrome children like that boy at Chocolate World show us is that these children are not a thing to be ended. They are lives to be welcomed. And as anyone with a Down Syndrome child will tell you, they are happy. They are, literally, among the happiest people on the planet, bereft of the anxieties and complexities that afflict so many others.

One of my favorite testimonies to such human beings, and how they can bring out the best in us, is a letter that Ronald Reagan received from New York’s Cardinal Terence Cooke, which Reagan shared in a July 1987 talk to pro-life leaders. “I’d like to leave with you a quotation that means a great deal to me,” said Reagan. “These are the words of my friend, the late Terence Cardinal Cooke, of New York. ‘The gift of life, God’s special gift, is no less beautiful when it is accompanied by illness or weakness, hunger or poverty, mental or physical handicaps, loneliness or old age. Indeed, at these times, human life gains extra splendor as it requires our special care, concern, and reverence. It is in and through the weakest of human vessels that the Lord continues to reveal the power of His love.’”

Yes, the gift of life is God’s special gift, and it’s no less beautiful when it involves a Down Syndrome person. Quite the contrary, it’s in caring for such people that human life carries extra splendor and can bring out the best in us. Through these human vessels, we can mirror God’s love for His creatures.

I shared this message from Cooke-Reagan with a former student who is the proud, loving parent of a daughter with Down Syndrome. He smiled and said, “Ah, that’s so true. So true.”

It’s also so counter-cultural in modern Western society, from Iceland to the United States. Here in America, the largest abortion provider is Planned Parenthood, founded by Margaret Sanger, who began her work precisely for purposes of eugenics and “race improvement,” to rid America of what she termed “imbeciles” and “idiots” and “morons.” Sanger insisted that “the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.” In her 1922 book, The Pivot of Civilization, Sanger urged that “every feeble-minded girl or woman of the hereditary type, especially of the moron class, should be segregated during the reproductive period. Otherwise, she is almost certain to bear imbecile children, who in turn are just as certain to breed other defectives.”

For Sanger and many of her disciples, these weakest vessels (her “moron class”) were to be lamented, prevented, eliminated. Iceland is achieving Margaret Sanger’s dream.

Again, this month of October is Down Syndrome Awareness Month, and Respect Life Month. Unlike, say, Pride Month, every June, now unmistakable by the profusion of rainbow flags in every major city, few will see visible reminders of Down Syndrome Awareness Month. The month is not marked by any signature symbols, nor by the Down Syndrome children who were eliminated. Their lives were erased before they were born. We should take pride, however, in those who are here, and we should not fear or halt those yet to be born.

This article was published by The Institute for Faith & Freedom.

In God’s grand design for this world, He masterfully created man and nature, and in such a way that man and each critter would not be alone.

And God admonished Noah, after the flood Genesis 9:

And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.

Children were the natural result of marriage, a blessing from the Lord:

Children are a blessing and a gift from the Lord.

Millennia later, the foundation of society remains the family: one man married to one woman, bearing children within that covenant relationship. That is the recipe for true joy and intrinsic success; a safe and loving setting for man and wife and their offspring.

Moses writes about child rearing in Deuteronomy:

And ye shall teach them your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.

And thou shalt write them upon the door posts of thine house, and upon thy gates:

That your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children, in the land which the Lord sware unto your fathers to give them, as the days of heaven upon the earth.

The Apostle Paul pens in Ephesians more instruction for parents and children:

Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right.

Honour thy father and mother; which is the first commandment with promise;

That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.

And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

So the formula was set: a man and wife should have children and raise them steeped in love and love of God’s word, and children were to respect and honor their parents. Sons and daughters first learn of a father’s love from their dad. Sons learn how to love a future wife as they watch their father tenderly cherish their mother. Daughters learn how a good husband treats his spouse as they watch their father esteem their mother second only to God Himself.

When people stray from this setting, this “best” recipe for flourishing within the family, the repercussions are stunning.

Dr. Paul Kengor has written a tremendous book, Takedown: From Communists to Progressives, How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage. On pages 4 and 5:

A mess of marriage, of course, means a mess of the family. And as families fall apart, so does society. Research has confirmed time and time again that the best situation for a child is a two-parent home with a mother and father, which should always be the goal of any culture of polity.  Sociologists know this; their own studies show it. Common sense and experience show us. Children who grow up with the presence of a mother and father are less likely to be poor, to end up in prison, or to get addicted to drugs.

Also, they are generally healthier, stronger and more successful. The most common denominator among men in prisons is not racial or ethnic background, not income or class distinction, not high school or college diploma, but whether or not they grew up with a father in the home.

In a speech for Father’s Day 2008, Senator Barack Obama was emphatic in championing fatherhood: “We know the statistics — that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison. They are more likely to have behavioral problems, or run away from home, or become teenage parents themselves. And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it. . . Of all the rocks upon which we build our lives. . . family is the most important. And we are called to recognize and honor how critical every father is to that foundation.”

Dr. Alan Keyes remarked in an interview with World Magazine decades ago:

People like to ascribe disintegration of the family to poverty and joblessness — that’s all a lie. Black folks were poor and they didn’t have access to jobs and there was a rigid system of discrimination. Yet, after the Civil War they put families back together and sustained then at high rates: 75 to 80% of all children being raised in two-parent households, all the way through the 60’s.

What happened in the 60’s?

The sexual revolution combined with Johnson’s Great Society and the expansion of welfare which rewarded childbearing out of wedlock. Add to that the explosion of no-fault divorce and very rapidly God’s design was shattered.

It should come as no surprise then, when studies bear out the bad consequences of casting aside God’s perfect design of two parents, man and wife, raising children.

One such recent study was written up at Family Studies, “Parental Divorce Can Have a Lasting Effect on Children’s Health.”  Author Anna Sutherland notes:

Sociologists Jason Thomas of Penn State and Robin Högnäs of the University of Louisville used longitudinal data on almost 15,000 adults born in 1958 in England, Scotland, and Wales to explore how the timing of parents’ divorce affects people’s health later in life. Their findings, published in Longitudinal and Life Course Studies, suggest that experiencing parental divorce before the age of seven has a greater long-term effect on health than experiencing the same thing later in childhood.

Thomas and Högnäs discovered that parental divorce in childhood was positively associated with worse self-reported health at age 50, “but the estimates are significantly different from zero only…during the youngest age interval” (birth to age seven). Parental divorce in this period was also linked to lower physical functioning and to the number of health problems reported at age 50, though results for the latter were not statistically significant.

Socioeconomic status and health behaviors—smoking in particular—emerged as the most important factors, with emotional/behavioral problems coming in third. In other words, it appears that early parental divorce puts people at a slightly greater risk of poor health at age 50 primarily because it leads to a decline in families’ socioeconomic status, an elevated risk of behavioral problems in late childhood, and an increased propensity to smoke in adulthood.

All too often flippant modern advice suggests that children are resilient and divorce will have no lasting impact as long as there remain some ties with the mother and father, that a divorced family is only different in setting and geography.

But as with most of life, we learn that God’s design was best all along.

The Creator envisioned a safe place, a loving place, for children to be reared, for values to be caught. When done right, a marriage and family impacts generations with blessing.

When those biblical precepts are cast aside, people are impacted and lives mucked up, and children bear out this lesson as the living victims of divorce.

Worldview Conference with Dr. Wayne Grudem
We are very excited about our second annual Worldview Conference featuring world-renowned theologian Dr. Wayne Grudem on Saturday, February 20, 2016 in Barrington.

Click HERE to register today!

In the morning sessions, Dr. Grudem will speak on how biblical values provide the only effective solution to world poverty and about the moral advantages of a free-market economic system. In the afternoon, Dr. Grudem will address why Christians—and especially pastors—should influence government for good as well as tackle the moral and spiritual issues in the 2016 election.

We look forward to this worldview-training and pray it will be a blessing to you.

Click HERE for a flyer.