America is being turned upside down. As it is going, the country will soon be unrecognizable, with personal freedoms limited if not erased and our Christian heritage and principles obliterated. Despite the Leftists proclamations that they are the defenders of democracy, what they are promoting will eliminate democracy, for it destroys its foundation.

No one denies that America has been good for the majority of its citizens, but the Left declares that some have been held down or marginalized by design; therefore, radical change must be brought about for the benefit of those who have been marginalized. It may be wise to ask just who are these for whom the Left would undo America? Maybe we ought to take a look! If we are going to allow the destruction of the nation, I for one would like to know who is supposed to benefit from its destruction, and why destroying my country is the only way to accomplish that mission.

First, let us consider what they mean by “marginalized.” The Left uses the term to engender sympathy and compassion, as though society, or more specifically, traditional Americanism and Capitalism have “conspired” maliciously against them to keep them from enjoying what the majority experiences. The word implies that they are on the edge of society, and not participating in the general activities others enjoy. Though the percentage of Americans who might be termed as “marginalized” is small, they probably number in the millions, and cannot be easily categorized. They are marginalized, obviously, because they cannot or will not participate in society’s “mainstream.” The important question is why? And each one will have his or her own story as to why they do not fit into what one might generally term as “normal.”

Whoever they are, and whatever the reason for their marginalization, we must understand that the Left is using them to bludgeon the rest of society into making radical changes to the country. The issue is not whether one ought to have some sympathy for those who are “marginalized,” for they may well warrant sympathy. The question is what is to be done for them, and maybe more germane, is their situation amenable to outside intervention? Can anything substantive be done to improve their situation? And, at what cost? It should be noted that there have always been, and always will be some people who don’t fit into the majority culture. No society in history has had one hundred percent positive participation of its citizens. The federal government has spent trillions of dollars over the last six decades attempting to correct many of the social issues supposedly responsible for these people’s predicament to no avail. A wise person will look askance at anyone’s suggestion that they now have solutions that will truly fix these societal problems.

When you consider that these people represent an untold number of different problems: a variety of mental illness issues, drug use, broken homes, alcohol, physical and sexual abuse, criminal behavior, and so on, you will understand that trying to solve them is a staggering proposition, and explains why all attempts to date have been largely futile.

To suggest that socialism and communism will so certainly correct America’s inequities as to justify destroying America displays woeful ignorance! Do your homework and see what Communist countries always do with such people. It will bring no comfort to your heart!

Destroying America’s historical cultural norms to make nonconformists comfortable is like allowing anyone who claims to be a doctor practice medicine. These cultural norms did not come into existence arbitrarily, they were rooted in ancient truths, such as the Bible, and practical experience. It has been wisely stated that one should never take down a fence until he knows why it was erected in the first place.

Many years ago, driving with my parents and siblings to a picnic in the Colorado Rockies outside of Denver, a motorcyclist rocketed past us heading for who knows where. He disappeared around a bend, and we thought no more about him. Later, as we ascended toward Denver, we approached the area where that man had passed us to find an ambulance and police securing the site where he had apparently lost control and had flown off the road onto the rocks below. He was not satisfied to live by the “norms” of society and paid with his life!

There is now a concerted effort on the part of the Left to create a cynical sympathy for those who resist or reject biblical, cultural, and societal norms, as if they are being victimized by those norms. Wisdom would say that such standards are designed as guard rails to keep people safe, even alive! As young Americans die by the hundreds of thousands annually due to drug overdoses, suicide, and violence, and millions of others suffer the agony or lingering deaths from STDs, drugs, and the depression resulting from promiscuous sex, the Left makes no effort to hinder the foolish behavior behind it all, but rather encourages it! And worse, they label those who issue warnings against the foolishness as “haters!”

The vicious wolves, ironically regaled as the caring ones, sit in the seats of academia, hold the levers of power in state capitals and in D.C., and flaunt their poison from their perches of Hollywood popularity, and seem to relish the destruction their philosophy promotes.

But make no mistake: they must be judged not by their claims of compassion, but by the fruits of their wicked deeds!

What we are witnessing in Ukraine is not a tragedy, it is an atrocity.  A tragedy is when an innocent person dies in an accident.  What Vladimir Putin is inflicting on the people of Ukraine, and to some extent on his own military personnel and citizens, is an abomination, an unjustified violation of every standard of justice and goodness.  It is an evil that Europe and the world have not witnessed since Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin.

Putin evidently does not mind being compared to Hitler, as he is visibly committing the same types of atrocities against innocent citizens of Ukraine, including children; but it is not so clear whether his associates and generals wish to go down in history as the 21 Century iteration of the Fuhrer. This ought to give them pause.

It is quite difficult to see anything good coming from this war, but we must recall that God still reigns, and for His own reasons allows evil men from time-to-time to manifest to the world how wicked the unchecked human heart is.

If there is any silver lining in this event it may be this: The entire world and especially people in the United States are witnessing the natural result of socialism. Carry BLM, Wokeism, Biden’s and the Democratic Party’s objectives to their logical conclusion and you will find yourself in Mr. Putin’s neighborhood. Every lover of liberty and justice ought to point out in every way possible the relationship between socialism and totalitarianism. It is not an accident that unchecked socialism always results in bondage for the people.

It may be that if enough Americans connect the dots, socialism, despite all protestations to the contrary, will finally be understood for what it is, the horse upon which modern tyrants ride to power.

Do not be fooled!

Socialism, one of history’s worst ideas, has been disproved repeatedly and without exception. Yet it keeps rearing its ugly head—constantly being rebranded as a good idea.

Socialism only benefits the ruling class who implement this form of government theft.

Amazingly, early America had an experiment in socialism. The Pilgrim settlers tried socialism for two years–and it nearly killed them.

In his book, Socialism: The True History from Plato to the Present, William J. Federer quotes the socialistic bylaws imposed on the Pilgrims by those London merchants who funded the creation of their colony.

Under this agreement with these investors, the members of Plymouth Colony agreed to pool all their goods, and all the rewards of their labor, with each person being entitled to an equal share of it. No matter how hard or little you worked, you would get the same.

For our Providence Forum documentary, “The Pilgrims,” we interviewed Leo Martin, the founder of the Jenney Museum (Learning Center) in Plymouth.

Martin told me, “So now the Pilgrims come over here virtually in a socialistic situation, a communal living, where everybody at the plantation worked in the same field, grew their food, then at the end of the season, they simply evenly split with each other what they produced.”

We also interviewed Dennis Prager, founder of PragerU, for this special. He told me, “The Pilgrims did experiment with socialism or communalism, and they realized it didn’t work. It is against human nature. The moment you tell people that the community will take care of you, they work less. It undermines character.”

And that is precisely what happened. Governor William Bradford, the leader of the Pilgrims, who was their governor for about three decades, was also their key chronicler. His book, Of Plymouth Plantation, documents their amazing story, which includes the first Thanksgiving—the 400th anniversary of which we celebrate this month.

Bradford called some of the Pilgrim leaders together to, in our modern parlance, brainstorm on how to increase production of their corn. The conclusion was to abolish this “common stock” stipulation, instead giving each person or family their own land and letting them enjoy the fruits of their labor without being forced to work for others, so “that they might not still thus languish in misery.”

It worked. Abandoning socialism and implementing private land ownership and free enterprise increased production dramatically.

Bradford writes, “This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious…The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.”

Bradford admits that they had fallen for “the vanity of that conceit of Plato’s…as if they were wiser than God.” Plato is credited with being the first to present socialism—holding property in common.

When the Ten Commandments say, “Thou shalt not steal” (which implies private property). God does not add the stipulation, “unless thou art the government.” Socialism is theft by the government, taking by force what one has earned to redistribute it to one who has not earned it.

We give thanks that the Pilgrims learned of the bankruptcy of socialism before it was too late.

Leo Martin says it is a great thing that the Pilgrims abandoned socialism when they did because it helped them become productive and prosperous. Martin notes, “Did you know that today ten percent of the population of the United States are Mayflower descendants? Thirty million people from fifty-one.”

The Pilgrims were so grateful for what God had done for them that they set aside time to thank Him for His many blessings. Thanksgiving is an annual holiday reminding us of our nation’s Christian roots.

But socialism not only undercuts productivity. It undercuts thanksgiving to God.

Jesus said we are to pray to “Our Father which art in heaven.” Socialism teaches in effect, we should pray, “Our Father which art in Washington” as we depend on the government to provide for more and more of our needs.

The Pilgrims were godly people who sacrificed all their comforts so they could worship Jesus in the purity of the Gospel. They were very caring people who sought to fulfill the command to “love thy neighbor as thyself.”

If the Pilgrims found that socialism didn’t work for even them, how can we expect socialism to work for anybody, including those who are just selfish and waiting to get by off of the sweat of their neighbor’s brow? In short, once again, socialism proved to be a bad idea.

Isn’t it time humanity learned this repeated lesson from history once and for all? Socialism never ceases to fail everywhere it is tried.

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.

Academics are fast becoming a thing of the past in public schools.

In their place are behavioral psychology and “social and emotional learning” (SEL) designed not to educate but to transform children’s core values, attitudes, beliefs, and behavior.

Once upon a time, education meant learning how to read, write, do math, and think. It meant learning history and science as well.

That is barely happening now, as government data show.

Perhaps more importantly, once upon a time, school children all over the nation also learned the Ten Commandments—do not murder, do not lie, do not steal, and so on.

They learned the Golden Rule, too: Treat others as you want to be treated.

But those “good old days” are largely gone.

Today, government schools use advanced methods including SEL to instill in children a radical new and oftentimes contradictory “politically correct” value system: radical environmentalism, radical feminism, critical theory, Marxism, social justice, LGBTQ-plus, population control, socialism, hyper-racialism, class struggle, and more.

There’s also an occult connection to it all that would shock most secular observers—not to mention Christians, Muslims, Jews, and adherents of other traditional faiths.

SEL: The Mechanism for Transformation

In public schools across the United States today, from pre-K through 12th grade and beyond, children are being subjected to what is seemingly just the latest educational fad—silly, perhaps, but no more harmful than anything else—at least on the surface.

The education establishment refers to it as “social and emotional learning,” “social-emotional learning,” or just SEL for short. Generally they speak only in vague generalities using soothing language while dealing with the public.

And it’s true, some of what falls under the SEL umbrella is fairly harmless.

But then again, the food pellets that contain rat poison are fairly harmless, too—at least until the poison, which is just a trace component in the pellets, is digested by the intended victim.

Similarly, SEL all seems innocent enough at first glance.

“Social and emotional learning (SEL) is the process through which children and adults understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions,” explains the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), one of the leading outfits promoting SEL.

The way proponents explain it, SEL is simply aimed to help children do well emotionally and succeed.

What could be wrong with that?

Well, CASEL’s website, a review of SEL programs, and educators themselves reveal a great deal more about the agenda. And it’s not pretty.

Political Extremism and Radical Values

Behind the nice public facade lurk swarms of psychologists, psychiatrists, “educators,” and radical leftists hoping to exploit a century of psychological research for the purpose of molding children’s beliefs and “deconstructing” the values parents seek to instill.

“With a growing number of partners, CASEL is creating a more comprehensive approach to education, one that will lead to a more equitable, just, and productive society,” the organization’s website boasts under the headline “SEL as a Lever for Equity,” hitting multiple key buzzwords associated with the far-left “social justice” movement.

In other words, one of the purposes of SEL—as its leading promoters admit—is to reform society.

Among the webinars offered there are “SEL as a Lever for Equity and Social Justice,” and also a lecture on how to use SEL to “support antiracist practices.” Another webinar outlines how to use policy to “dismantle inequities.”

Again, the leftist buzzwords are everywhere. And that isn’t an accident.

Under SEL Competencies, CASEL drops multiple bombshells acknowledging the far-left globalist indoctrination taking place under the guise of “social” and “emotional” learning.

“SEL competencies can be leveraged to develop justice-oriented, global citizens, and nurture inclusive school and district communities,” it states, adding that the programs will involve getting children to “assess power dynamics” and confront “issues of race and class across different settings.”

The children are also expected to “develop an understanding of systemic or structural explanations for different treatment and outcomes.”

In short, they are expected to believe the highly controversial hypothesis that America is awash in “systemic” and “structural” racism, and that only massive government-led social engineering can fix it.

The children are also expected to accept and agree with the artificial divisions being fomented along “race” and “class” lines as part of the now-obvious effort to “divide and conquer” America.

Put simply, this is all blatantly Marxist “critical theory” rhetoric masquerading as “education.”

It’s extremely dangerous.

In Practice, Educators Shine the Light

A review by The Epoch Times of a wide range of SEL programs used across the United States found that all contain similar extremism, along with highly controversial teachings on sex, sexuality, gender, race, racism, class, economic liberty, family, marriage, and more.

Interviews with educators and a review of their writings on the subject were also very revealing.

In short, the real goals of SEL go far beyond “helping” children socially and emotionally. And it isn’t difficult to find that out.

In fact, in practice, SEL is frequently and explicitly used in public schools to instill certain attitudes and values in children that many parents, if not most, would find controversial at the very least.

For example, public-school teachers in Florida, to comply with SEL mandates, were ordered to show a number of videos to their middle school students.

These included propaganda videos promoting homosexuality, bisexuality, transgenderism, “diversity,” “inclusion,” and more.

Regardless of one’s views on these subjects, countless parents—especially those from faith traditions including Christianity, Islam, or Judaism—would find the effort to obliterate traditional sexual morality and even biological sex in children’s minds to be objectionable.

Numerous other highly controversial political, religious, economic, and worldview positions are treated as “correct” by the forces behind SEL.

More than a few self-styled SEL educators are very open about how they intend to use SEL to brainwash children.

Open Circle Director Kamilah Drummond-Forrester, who supports “social and emotional development for children,” wrote openly at EdSurge.com about weaponizing SEL to indoctrinate children with her hyper-racialist views.

“Teaching [white children] to be aware of their racial identity would allow them to better understand the privileges that accompany that identity,” she wrote, adding that this would help them dismantle the “concept of ‘whiteness.’”

“Social and emotional learning (SEL) has an important role to play in that education.

“One of the core competencies we focus on, as a necessary foundation for the others, is self-awareness. That self-awareness must include race,” she continued, without acknowledging that many parents probably don’t want their children obsessing about “race” or being propagandized by a far-left activist posing as an educator.

In an article for EdTech Magazine on peddling SEL to students amid coronavirus-inspired online learning, writer Adam Stone touts “SEL-oriented teaching materials from the Zinn Education Project.”

Howard Zinn, of course, is the far-left pseudo-historian whose dishonest and politically motivated narratives were most recently debunked by historian Mary Grabar in the book “Debunking Howard Zinn: Exposing the Fake History That Turned a Generation Against America.”

Zinn described himself as “something of a Marxist,” his biographer recounted.

According to EdTech, though, the “SEL-oriented” propaganda from Zinn is supposedly “aimed at nurturing empathy and compassion.”

In the real world, Marxism has everywhere and always nurtured hatred, death, slavery, torture, starvation, shortages, political repression, religious persecution, and other evils.

And yet under the guise of SEL programs and “nurturing empathy and compassion,” millions of children are having their minds poisoned by being force-fed actual Marxist propaganda and fake history.

And perhaps even more alarming, Stone urges educators to use surveillance tools that give “insight into students’ online behaviors—both inside and outside the virtual classroom—to enhance SEL.”

One of the recommended total surveillance tools offers educators “a holistic view of online activity across search engines, social media, email and web apps,” Stone said, adding that an artificial-intelligence engine would perform “real-time assessments” to “flag online behaviors that indicate emotional distress.”

As explained in an earlier segment of this series, Orwellian technology is used to monitor and track “progress” on adjusting children’s attitudes, too. That data is being compiled and saved forever under the label of “emotional intelligence.”

The Big Brother technology is also used to determine whether further “interventions” are needed to coerce the child into holding the desired attitudes, values, and beliefs about the issue in question.

And, as U.S. Department of Education documents make clear, it will also be used to predict “future behavior and interests” of the children.

Educators Speak Out

Of course, educators who have seen through the agenda reject SEL as a massive threat to America’s children.

One of those who spoke out against the SEL abuses taking place in her school, Jennifer McWilliams of Indiana, was even fired for being too vocal about it.

“The thing I find to be the most disturbing about social emotional learning is how well it disguises its true sinister motives,” she told The Epoch Times. “Parents do not understand that SEL psychologically manipulates children to question (and eventually rebuke) any Christian or conservative beliefs that may be taught in the home.”

While parents are led to believe that SEL is like teaching children The Golden Rule, “it is quite the opposite,” McWilliams said.

“Social emotional learning is rooted in progressive, social justice ideology that divides anyone who questions the radical groupthink agenda,” she said. “From my personal experience, not only do parents not understand it but teachers and administrators don’t either.”

SEL also represents the “brainwashing of our children,” McWilliams continued, noting that it trains children to “compromise on everything” with no consideration of what is taught in the home.

“These programs rely on a bombardment of propaganda, conditioning, and role playing to separate children from God and the nuclear family,” she said, saying SEL was the vehicle used to get children to accept as truth the narratives behind Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) and Black Lives Matter (BLM).

The popular SEL program used in McWilliams’s school, Leader in Me, was designed to “shift the culture of the school to influence children’s morals and values based on progressive social justice standards,” she said, adding that it became ubiquitous on campus.

When she began publicly speaking out about it on social media, she was fired for supposedly making the school look bad.

“Parents must speak up and take back control of the influence in their children’s lives. If not, the kids will pay with their freedom,” McWilliams said.

The Occult Origins of SEL

The story behind SEL is even more troubling.

According to a history of SEL by CASEL, the term “social and emotional” originated in a meeting at the Fetzer Institute, a shadowy New Age powerhouse created by wealthy New Age guru and late media baron John Fetzer.

One of the founders of the SEL movement, David Sluyter, served as president and CEO of the organization.

“Our mission is to help build the spiritual foundation for a loving world,” the group states on its website, adding that it is working toward a “transformative sacred story for humanity in the 21st century.”

According to Brian Wilson’s book “John E. Fetzer and the Quest for the New Age,” Fetzer was, among other things, a public and fervent devotee of Alice Bailey, the controversial occultist who founded the Lucifer Publishing Company (now known as the Lucis Trust).

So obsessed was Fetzer with Bailey that he and his people would regularly recite her “Great Invocation,” which she claimed was given to her by spiritual beings known as “ascended masters,” Wilson documents in his book.

The Fetzer Institute didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. CASEL initially suggested it would make somebody available for an interview, but didn’t follow up despite multiple requests.

More than a few other prominent names in education were similarly enamored with Bailey’s bizarre teachings from supposed spiritual entities.

United Nations World Core Curriculum author Robert Muller, for instance, who served as assistant secretary-general of the U.N., said in the teachers’ manual that his U.N.-backed global school curriculum was based on the teachings of Bailey and one of her “ascended masters.”

The values being taught to children under Fetzer-inspired SEL programs feature remarkable similarities to those taught by John Dewey, a man almost universally known among educators as the founding father of America’s “progressive” education system.

Dewey, who was inspired by the Soviet educational system, was a co-author and signer of the Humanist Manifesto, a religious document rejecting God and prescribing collectivism as the cure for society’s ills.

For at least 12 years—more if they go to college—American children are indoctrinated into the collectivist values of Dewey’s religion, which was essentially just warmed-over communism and atheism hiding behind a religious facade.

Interestingly, as early as 1898, Dewey himself expressed an understanding of the need to utilize psychology, a discipline then still in its infancy, if the plan to re-shape Americans through “education” was going to succeed.

Even more interesting, perhaps, is the fact that Bailey, citing her ascended masters, recognized the importance of Dewey’s educational schemes in achieving her goal of a one-world order with a global religion.

“Our problem is to attain the kind of overall synthesis that Marxism and neo-Scholasticism provide for their followers, but to get this by the freely chosen cooperative methods that Dewey advocated,” Bailey wrote in her book “Education in the New Age.”

Funding and People

Even a brief review of the funding and individuals behind SEL also reveals a great deal about the agenda.

On its website, CASEL lists, among other financiers, billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

Gates, who has a friendly relationship with the Chinese Communist Party and its leader, Xi Jinping, put almost $300 million behind the Obama-backed Common Core standards, which formally nationalized and helped globalize America’s education system.

Before that, Gates signed a deal with UNESCO, the subject of part nine in this series, to work on globalizing the world’s education systems.

Also listed among the financiers of CASEL is Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, which CASEL said “provides generous funding to CASEL to support school districts and their capacity to promote social and emotional learning.”

For some background, the recently deceased patriarch of the family, David Rockefeller, wrote in The New York Times in 1973 that “the social experiment in China under Chairman Mao’s leadership is one of the most important and successful in human history.”

Rockefeller also boasted in his autobiography “Memoirs” of “conspiring” with a “secret cabal” of globalists, “against the best interests of the United States,” to build a “One World” political and economic system.

Aside from its financiers, CASEL’s leading super-stars also suggest something is amiss, to put it mildly.

Consider the involvement of radical Stanford educator Linda Darling-Hammond, a board member emeritus of CASEL and known associate of communist terrorist turned educator William Ayers.

Ayers’s Weather Underground group set off bombs across America in cooperation with communist Cuban intelligence. The FBI operative who infiltrated the group’s leadership, Larry Grathwohl, revealed that the organization’s leadership was plotting to exterminate millions of Americans in camps.

Interestingly, Darling-Hammond had an opportunity to test out her educational quackery unimpeded in the Stanford New Schools. The results are now in: In 2010, Stanford New Schools placed in the lowest-achieving 5 percent of schools in California, according to multiple reports.

More than a few other colleagues of Ayers are or were also involved with CASEL and SEL, with his University of Illinois at Chicago being central to the scheme. At least 3 of 13 members listed on CASEL’s website came from that university’s Department of Education and Psychology.

SEL was formally unveiled in the late 1990s. However, the real history behind it goes way back to Lev Vygotsky, a Soviet psychologist who studied how to effectively brainwash children to become good communists.

Vygotsky’s contributions in laying the foundations for SEL are widely acknowledged among practitioners and even in the academic literature (pdf).

Interestingly, Vygotsky was a close colleague of Ivan Pavlov, the Soviet psychologist famous for his behavioral-conditioning experiments on dogs.

Vygotsky had been inspired, in part, by American psychologist and educational researcher E.L. Thorndike, a student of close Dewey-ally and associate James McKeen Cattell of Columbia University.

In fact, Vygotsky wrote the foreword to the Russian translation of Thorndike’s “Principles of Learning Based Upon Psychology” published in Moscow in the mid-1920s.

Thorndike didn’t bother to conceal his views on education: Children should be educated like circus animals, and it should be so arranged that the child will be incapable of not doing what the trainer wants.

Vygotsky, too, had grandiose ideas about how Soviet “education” and “psychology” would be used to fundamentally transform the individual, and ultimately, mankind.

“It is education which should play the central role in the transformation of man this road of conscious social formation of new generations, the basic form to alter the historical human type,” Vygotsky wrote in 1930 in the journal of the All-Union Association of Workers in Science and Technics for the Furthering of the Socialist Edification in the USSR.

“New generations and new forms of their education represent the main route which history will follow whilst creating the new type of man,” he added.

SEL is simply the latest tool of the collectivist education establishment in its fiendish drive to create this “new type of man”—a collectivist man who will mindlessly submit to the tyranny of his overlords, without the intellectual ability to effectively resist.

Conclusion

Today, while most educators and parents have little understanding of what is going on, SEL has become ubiquitous in government schools across the nation.

National Education Association (NEA) Foundation Global Learning Fellow Wendy Turner, a second-grade teacher and self-styled “SEL warrior” quoted in an article on the NEA’s website, explained that SEL is now the top priority for schools.

“SEL is the foundation, the heartbeat of the classroom,” she said. “It’s about connecting everybody and making them feel safe and secure before you get to the academics.”

In a U.S. Department of Education report, a “review” of existing studies called for subjecting “the entire student body” to constant SEL programming “in order to reinforce social and emotional learning not only in the classroom but also on the playground, in the cafeteria, and in hallways.” Parents should also “reinforce” it at home.

But the facts are now clear: The SEL craze is an extreme threat to America’s youth—and to individual liberty.

The scheme isn’t about helping children at all. Instead, it’s about manipulating and conditioning America’s youth to hold the values and beliefs that the education establishment wants to instill.

Unfortunately, those values and beliefs are incompatible with individual liberty, Western civilization, the U.S. Constitution, the nuclear family, religious liberty, and other key values that underpin the United States.

Parents and policymakers must urgently protect the nation’s children from this dangerous threat.

This article was originally published by The Epoch Times, and is one report in a series of articles examining the origins of government education in the United States.

Actress and former model, Sam Sorbo, has been featured in many movies and television shows, including appearances in the popular tv show Hercules, starring her husband, Kevin Sorbo. As a mother of three, Sam has been concerned for some time about the negative influence the American public school system has on the hearts and minds of children.

She has written a book to empower parents entitled: They’re Your Kids: An Inspirational Journal from Self-Doubter to Home School Advocate. Even though Sam had studied Biomedical Engineering at Duke University, she had, like many other parents, believed the popular propaganda that she was not qualified to teach her own children how to read and do math! Over time, Sam became convinced that parents, not the government, know what is best for the education of their own children.

Through her podcast and conference speaking, she reminds parents of the powerful impact of parental involvement in the lives of their children. While speaking at a national rally for prayer and repentance in Washington, D.C. in September 2020, Sam delivered these challenging words:

80% of professing Christian youth surrender their beliefs shortly after graduation. They adopt our STATE religion—belief in government.

Friends, we need to rethink how we define the very word “education.”

Nefarious forces in our Government schools teach children disdain for their parents’ beliefs and disgust for our country, programming them to question their own biology, obey authority, and despise themselves—to believe they are accidents of nature and that survival of the fittest is the law of the land.

This is child abuse.

Looting, rioting and self-destruction are the natural products of Atheism, Hedonism and Abortion. Survival of the Fittest! The ideological anti-God virus that now controls most of our public education institutions is a disease of the mind that no vaccine can ever cure. We declare the conflict of interest of a government that teaches its citizens to worship it, instead of their God.

But we have before us now the greatest opportunity for redemption we may ever know in our lifetime! We have the antidote!

Pastors, we call upon you to urge parents to home educate! Cultivate in children a yearning for truth, beauty, goodness, and the moral law, as the Bible prescribes. Parents, encourage your child’s innate curiosity and individual talents. No more Common Core! Teach them civics—the immeasurable value of our nation, conceived by God, the author of our freedom and the author of life itself. May God bless America!

The future of our nation is in the hands of the next generation. Will they be taught the fundamental principles of life, liberty, private property, the second-amendment, freedom of religion, freedom of speech and press? Or will they be indoctrinated into a leftist/progressivist ideology of Cultural Marxism, Critical Race Theory, Intersectionality, revisionist history, socialism, gender dysphoria, relativistic ethics, and much more.

The decision about what they are taught, and by whom, is in your hands as parents. If you are a Christian parent, Sam would encourage you to get your children out of the public school system and give them an exclusively Christian education … before they become the next tragic statistic.

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Videos have been circulating of young bestial thugs—whites and blacks, women and men—shrieking in the faces of al fresco diners, commanding them to raise a fist in solidarity with BLM/Antifa totalitarians. To leftists nothing says freedom quite like coerced performative acts. See for yourself the future of the Democratic Party:

Maybe these young bestial thugs never learned about Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution and the Red Guard composed of young people that Mao used to intimidate, humiliate, and attack his political enemies. The New York Times described the Red Guard’s efforts:

Students who answered Mao’s call for continuing revolution … targeted political enemies for abuse and public humiliation. … Under a campaign to wipe out the “Four Olds”—ideas, customs, culture, habits—they carried out widespread destruction of historical sites and cultural relics.

Or maybe today’s totalitarian culture-destroyers are inspired by the Red Guard, whose salute they mimic.

Before Chairman Mao thought to use easily indoctrinated youth to advance political oppression, the Nazi Regime had mastered the tactic. Here’s an eerily relevant description of the Nazi Party’s exploitation of German youth to advance the pernicious Nazi cause:

Millions of German young people were won over to Nazism in the classroom and through extracurricular activities. In January 1933, the Hitler Youth had approximately 100,000 members, but by the end of the year this figure had increased to more than 2 million. By 1937 membership in the Hitler Youth increased to 5.4 million before it became mandatory in 1939. The German authorities then prohibited or dissolved competing youth organizations.

Education in the Third Reich served to indoctrinate students with the National Socialist world view. Nazi scholars and educators glorified Nordic and other “Aryan” races, while labeling Jews and other so-called inferior peoples as parasitic “bastard races” incapable of creating culture or civilization.

After 1933, the Nazi regime purged the public school system of teachers deemed to be Jews or to be “politically unreliable.” Most educators, however, remained in their posts and joined the National Socialist Teachers League. 97% of all public school teachers, some 300,000 persons, had joined the League by 1936. In fact, teachers joined the Nazi Party in greater numbers than any other profession.

In the classroom and in the Hitler Youth, instruction aimed to produce race-conscious, obedient, self-sacrificing Germans who would be willing to die for Führer and Fatherland. Devotion to Adolf Hitler was a key component of Hitler Youth training. …

Schools played an important role in spreading Nazi ideas to German youth. While censors removed some books from the classroom, German educators introduced new textbooks that taught students love for Hitler, obedience to state authority, militarism, racism, and antisemitism.

Since some Americans—particularly leftists—struggle with analogical thinking, let’s paraphrase that description to make its relevance easily comprehensible:

Millions of American young people were won over to socialism/Critical Race Theory/“LGBTQ” theory/feminist theory in the classroom and through extracurricular activities. By 2020 membership in or support for what became known as the Intersectionality Regime had increased dramatically. Dominant leftist cultural forces had persecuted youth organizations like the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts into reinventing themselves to align with the Intersectionality Regime.

Education in America served to indoctrinate students with the socialist/racialist/feminist/pansexual world view. Race, sexuality, “gender,” and Marxist scholars and educators glorified people of color, homosexuals, opposite-sex impersonators, and Marxists while labeling whites, men, heterosexuals, conservative Christians, and capitalists hateful oppressors and bigots incapable of creating culture or civilization.

The race/“gender”/sexuality/class Intersectionality Regime purged the public school system of teachers deemed to be members of the oppressor classes or to be “politically unreliable.” Most educators, however, remained in their posts and joined the race/“gender”/sexuality/class Intersectionality Regime. In fact, teachers joined the Intersectionality Regime in greater numbers than any other profession.

In the classroom, corporate boardrooms, social media, the arts, the mainstream press, and organizations like BLM™ and Antifa, instruction was aimed to produce race-conscious, class-conscious, man-hating, sexual-deviance-supporting activists who would take the fight to the streets. Devotion to the Intersectionality Regime was a key component of cultural conditioning.

Schools played an important role in spreading Intersectionality ideas to American youth. While censors removed some books from the classroom, educators introduced new textbooks that taught students love for socialism, racism, feminism, homosexuality, the “trans” ideology, and anti-Christianity.

Co-founder of the Toronto chapter of BLM™, Yusra Khogali, once tweeted, “White ppl are recessive genetic defects. this is factual. … black ppl simply through their dominant genes can literally wipe out the white race if we had the power to.” She tweeted, “Please Allah give me the strength to not … kill these … white folks out here today.” In 2015, she tweeted, “whiteness is not humxness. infact, white skin is sub-humxn.”

Kinda, sorta, maybe sounds like a Nazi talking about Jews.

Compulsory performance of the Sieg Heil/Red Guard/Black Panthers/BLM salute is part of the effort to compel freethinkers to pretend to embrace the ideas of slave reparations, systemic racism, and collective guilt, which hold individuals culpable for sins they have never committed.  The notion of collective guilt for the past sins of other individuals is both unbiblical and poisonous.

In a speech delivered in 1988 in Vienna on the 50^th anniversary of the Nazi occupation of his home country of Austria, Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl warned against the dangerous idea of “collective guilt”:

[M]y father … died in Theresienstadt Camp; my brother … did not return from Auschwitz; my mother … was killed in the gas chambers of the same camp; and my first wife[’s] …  young life came to an end in Bergen-Belsen Camp. And yet at the same time I will ask you not to expect to hear from my mouth a single word of hatred. For whom should I hate? I knew only the victims; I do not know the perpetrators—at least, not personally. And I categorically refuse to attribute collective as opposed to personal guilt.

There is no such thing as collective guilt. Believe me, today is not the first occasion on which I have said that. I have been saying it since the day I was liberated from my [fourth and] last concentration camp. It is my conviction that anyone who assigns collective guilt to every Austrian [or German] citizen between the ages of zero and fifty is committing a reprehensible and insane act. Or, to put it in psychiatric terms: it would be reprehensible if it were not insane–and it would be a relapse into the Nazi ideology of collective family guilt [the difficult German word Sippenhaftung here refers to the dangerous Nazi dogma of kin liability, tainted blood(line), or genetic guilt by association]. Let this be said to all those who believe they have the right to expect people to feel guilty or even ashamed of something they did not do or fail to do but something their parents or grandparents had to answer for. …

I’ll tell you I think there are only two ‘races’ of people: those who are decent people, and those who are not. That distinction goes right through every nation, and within nations right through every political party and every other group. Even in the concentration camps here and there we came across more or less decent people who belonged to the SS. And in the same way there were also scoundrels amongst the prisoners.

The decent people are in the minority; they have always been in the minority and, I think, always will be. But the danger lies elsewhere. The danger is to be found in a regime or a system which brings the scoundrels to the top; in other words which puts the reins of power in the hands of the worst representatives of the people. Therein lies the true peril. And no nation … can claim to be immune from such danger. Which is why I presume to say that in principle any country is capable of perpetrating the holocaust.

… In my view there are only two … types of politicians. The first is the politician who believes that the end justifies the means—any means, even terrorist means. The second type is profoundly aware that there are means that can desecrate even the most sacred ends.

[T]he need of the day … is that all men of good will should finally reach their hands out to each other across all the graves and divisions.”

One of my daughters once expressed disappointment that I hadn’t saved any of my clothes from the early 1970’s. I explained that although styles return, they never return in exactly the same form. Same goes for history, which explains why even remembering history doesn’t guarantee we won’t repeat it. Today’s cultural revolution has all the earmarks of past revolutions, and yet too few Americans recognize those earmarks because on the surface this one appears different.

Unless we tear the blinders from our eyes and look clearly at the big picture, the republic as we have known it will be gone in a short time. The children and grandchildren of Millennials will grow up in a world of oppression and depravity the likes of which America has never known but civilizations around the world and throughout history have.

Viktor Frankl points to the solution to evil in our midst:

[P]lease remember one thing: Resistance always requires heroism. And there is only one person of whom anyone has the right to expect heroic acts. And that is oneself.

Listen to this article read by Laurie: 

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/BLMs™-Totalitarian-Youth.mp3

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It’s Simple: Just Invite the Socialist to Talk

Isadore Johnson is a libertarian-leaning student at the University of Connecticut and a member of Young Americans for Liberty. Last fall, he asked Nathan J. Robinson, author of Why You Should Be A Socialist and Editor-in-Chief of the left-wing political journal Current Affairs, if he would answer a series of questions about socialism and capitalism for the university newspaper. Robinson obliged and you can read it all at Q&A With A Conservative Student on Socialism.

It’s rather long, but it’s worth reading carefully because Johnson has given us an excellent model to follow. Most political discussions across ideological divides amount to little more than two people talking past one another–opposing sides pushing their positions but giving little or no thought to the other. By contrast, what Johnson did is exactly the opposite. Seeking first to understand, he invited his ideological opponent to explain his position and elaborate at will.

And elaborate, he did. Following are a few points that came out. The statements in bold are my summations. The quotes aren’t meant to be scare quotes, but to draw out what Robinson said in his own words:

There is no definition of what socialism actually is. But this is not just a matter of socialists having disagreements. Disagreements are part of any political program. It’s that socialists have no objective grounding on which to define a political program. Socialism is primarily based on subjective feelings and desires about how socialists want the world to be, not objective facts about how it really is. Robinson thinks of socialism as a “sense of outrage” he feels when people are exploited or abused, and he said socialists don’t want people to go without their basic needs being met. Yet when he was asked for specifics about how these well-intended desires might be implemented, his answers took the form of “this is not a question with one answer,” “we do not yet know,” and “line-drawing is always hard.”

Socialism is based on feelings. Decent people of all political persuasions agree with his sentiments and understand that policymaking is complex and will often be a work in progress. But the problem of socialists’ inability to define their own program, let alone propose policy to implement it, is not just a matter of a few details to be worked out. The bigger problem is that socialism confuses subjective feelings for objective moral principles. This is a fundamental category mistake.

“Socialist ethics are feelings,” Robinson said. “I think of [socialism] first as a kind of instinctive egalitarian feeling.” He just assumes that his feelings constitute, ipso facto, “the principles of socialism,” and beyond that, the matter is not up for debate. “We’re saying that given that the principles of socialism are clearly sound, we have a question about how best they can be achieved. I think this is the right kind of uncertainty to have. I want the debates in the country to be about how socialist values are best put into practice, not about whether they themselves are good.”

No, this is exactly the wrong kind of uncertainty to have. Not only does he not want to discuss whether his “values” are, in reality, sound or good, he all but admitted that he doesn’t recognize any foundation for morality to begin with. Nor does he care to. This came out when Johnson asked him about rights. “Rights are a complicated question,” he responded. “Where do they come from? Are they simply conventions? Did human rights exist before people recognized them to exist? This gets us into the entire foundation of morality and I can’t begin to go into it here.” Respectfully, if he can’t identify this starting point, the rest of us are right to be wary about where he’s headed. Which leads to our third observation.

The remedies socialism proposes start out vague. Then, to the extent that they get specific, they are alarming. “Socialism means common ownership,” Robinson writes. He said he likes “decommodified things.” Here are some things that he wants “provided for all equally”: food, housing, education (including college), healthcare services, gyms, and swimming pools. These are things that should not be bought and sold. “I prefer a ‘commons’ because markets … are at the very least burdensome.” Before he’s done, he’s all but said he’d like everything to be free. “It’s a much worse experience when everything is commodified. Getting to roam freely without thinking about money is wonderful, which is why I’m in favor of robust commons.”

It’s one thing to say that you’d like everything to be free (wouldn’t we all?). It’s quite another to make that happen. The closest Robinson came to explaining how this might be done is to refer to the ideas of two socialist thinkers. He mentioned Fredrik DeBoer, who suggests “making it so that things aren’t ‘traded,’” and David Schweickart, author of After Capitalism, who argues for a kind of socialism by which “we just alter who owns the stuff.”

Robinson rattled off those two ideas and then blithely went on. But right there, he exposed the only way his “utopian concept” can come about: by altering “who owns” things. Outside of leftwing fog zones, this is known as theft. Food, housing, education, healthcare services–these things are the products of labor, in some cases highly skilled labor. They do not just “exist” somewhere in somebody’s warehouse, waiting to be distributed. They must be cultivated, built, or produced, which requires significant expenditures of input and effort. Socialists often talk about capitalists’ greed, but it is the socialist who wants to reap the rewards of other people’s labor without having to work for them, and to own “the stuff” that used to belong to other people without trading anything for it in return. This is the textbook definition of greed.

The best instrument for clearing up fog is sunlight. Similarly, the best way to expose the underbelly of socialism is to invite a socialist to explain it in as much detail as you can draw out. He may want to “own” other people’s stuff, but what the smart capitalist will do is make him “own” his own agenda.

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Written by Rod Dreher

Last year, I spoke to a Soviet-born scholar who teaches in an American public university. I’m using a quote from our discussion in my forthcoming (September) book, Live Not By Lies. This morning, she sent me this e-mail, which I reproduce here with her permission:

I know from your blog that the work on your new book is going well and I’m glad because, boy, it’s so needed. I’m observing some disturbing developments on my campus, and we are really not one of those wokester schools for spoiled brats one normally associates with this kind of thing.

This academic year I’ve had an opportunity to work with some early-career academics. These are newly-minted PhDs that are in their first year on the tenure-track. What’s really scary is that they sincerely believe all the woke dogma. Older people – those in their forties, fifties or sixties – might parrot the woke mantras because it’s what everybody in academia does and you have to survive. But the younger generation actually believes it all. Transwomen are women, black students fail calculus because there are no calc profs who “look like them,” ‘whiteness’ is the most oppressive thing in the world, the US is the most evil country in history, anybody who votes Republican is a racist, everybody who goes to church is a bigot but the hijab is deeply liberating. I gently mocked some of this stuff (like we normally do among older academics), and two of the younger academics in the group I supervise actually cried. Because they believe all this so deeply, and I’d even say fanatically, that they couldn’t comprehend why I wasn’t taking it seriously.

The fanatical glimmer in their eyes really scared me.

Back in the USSR in the 1970s and the 1980s nobody believed the dogma. People repeated the ideological mantras for cynical reasons, to get advanced in their careers or get food packages. Many did it to protect their kids. But nobody sincerely believed. That is what ultimately saved us. As soon as the regime weakened a bit, it was doomed because there were no sincere believers any more. Everybody who did take the dogma seriously belonged to the generation of my great-grandparents.

In the US, though, the generation of the fanatical believers is only now growing up and coming into its prime. We’ll have to wait until their grandkids grow up to see a generation that will be so fed up with the dogma that it will embrace freedom of thought and expression. But that’s a long way away in the future.

I’m mentoring a group of young scholars in the Humanities to help them do research, and I’m starting to hate this task. Young scholars almost without exception think that scholarship is entirely about repeating woke slogans completely uncritically. Again, this is different from the USSR where scholars peppered their writing with the slogans but always took great pride in trying to sneak in some real thinking and real analysis behind the required ideological drivel. Every Soviet scholar starting from the 1970s was a dissident at heart because everybody knew that the ideology was rotten.

All of this is sad and very scary. I never thought I’d experience anything worse, anything more intellectually stifling than the USSR of its last two decades of existence. But now I do see something worse.

The book you are writing is very important, and I hope that many people hear your message.

A recent survey has found 70 percent of Millennials say they are likely to vote for a Socialist. The survey conducted by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation also found just one in two have a favorable view of Capitalism.

According to the survey breakdown, 50 percent of Millennials say they are “somewhat likely” and 20 percent say they are “extremely likely” to vote for a socialist candidate, an increase of 10 percent over last year. The good news is 53 percent of Americans overall are hesitant about voting for a “democratic socialist,” which is an increase of 6 percent over 2018.

The Foundation’s executive director attributed the findings to this generation’s lack of educational awareness. “The historical amnesia about the dangers of Communism and Socialism is on full display in this year’s report,” said Marion Smith. “When we don’t educate our youngest generations about the historical truth of 100 million victims murdered at the hands of communist regimes over the past century, we shouldn’t be surprised at their willingness to embrace Marxist ideas.” The survey showed 72 percent of Americans did not know Communism killed more than 100 million people in 100 years.

More than a third of Millennials (36 percent) view Communism favorably, and 22 percent believe “society would be better if all private property was abolished.” Fifteen percent believe the world would be a better place if the Soviet Union still existed.

Despite the latest crackdowns on freedom of speech in China and Hong Kong, just over half of Generation Z (57 percent) and nearly two-thirds of Millennials (62 percent) believe China is a communist country.

The survey reader does wonder about these generation’s interpretations of the concepts of freedom and liberty when discovering just over half (57 percent) of Millennials believe the Declaration of Independence better guarantees freedom and equality over the Communist Manifesto.

Democrat presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is open about his socialist politics as are several other Democrat party members including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY). Both are popular with Millennials and Gen Z as are the socialist programs promoted by the Democratic Party.

The late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said, “The trouble with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” It’s to be determined if the younger American generations will heed that warning or learn the lesson.

View the entire survey results at https://www.victimsofcommunism.org/2019-annual-poll.

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Less than 20 years into the 21^st Century and it seems that many Americans have either forgotten, or simply do not know about, what could arguably be described as the largest worldwide scourge of the 20^th Century.  Roughly 97 million people died in two world wars.  However, more than 100 million people died under the governing system of Communism in what many historians have called the bloodiest century in the history of man.

Each year the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation commissions a poll of Americans to find out what they know about Socialism, Marxism and Communism, the triplets of totalitarianism.

Here is what their newly released 2019 survey has found:

•  The percentage of American Millennials who say that they are likely to vote for a socialist is 70%.   The number who say they are “extremely likely” to vote for a socialist candidate has doubled from 10% in 2018 to 20% in 2019.

• Young people aged 23-38, known as Millennials, and those aged 16-22, known as Generation Z, views of capitalism has taken a big hit with only one-in-two having a favorable view of capitalism.

• Communism is viewed favorably by more than one-in-three Millennials (36%), up 8 points since 2018.

• Marxism has the highest favorability among Millennials at 35%, up 6 points since 2018.

• 7 in 10 Americans do not know that communism has killed over 100 million people.

• Only 57% of Gen Z and 62% of Millennials, compared to 88% of Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation, think that China is a communist country.  (I’d bet that a poll of NBA players and owners is closer to 1%. Most of them seemed to have had no idea that Twitter has been banned by the government of China since 2009.)

• While 80% of Americans say that they trust themselves more than government or community to take care of their own interests, younger generations are 25% less likely to say this.

• Overall, capitalism is still viewed favorably by 61% of all Americans.

• Overall, among all Americans there is more hesitancy to vote for a “democratic socialist” than there was last year.

• Perceptions of communism and Marxism vary widely across generations.

• Only 57% of Millennials, compared to 94% of the Silent Generation think the Declaration of Independence better guarantees freedom and equality over the Communist Manifesto.

• Millennials are the least likely to have studied communism in high school, but they are more likely to have studied it in college.

• Millennials are much more likely to report communism being presented favorably in K-12 and college than are older generations.

• While 83% of Americans say that they know at least a little about socialism, 66% of Americans cannot accurately define socialism.

• Baby Boomer opposition to voting for a democratic socialist has increased by 8 points since 2018.

• Nearly half of Millennials think that the government should provide a job for everyone who wants to work but can’t find a job.

• 37% of Millennials think America is one of the most unequal societies in the world.

• One in four Americans say that Donald Trump is a bigger threat to world peace than figures like Kim Jung-un, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.

This article was originally published by AFA of Indiana.

With a couple dozen Democrat presidential hopefuls vying to see who’s pinker, perhaps it’s time to contrast socialism with something more helpful and permanent:  The Ten Commandments.

Socialism teaches that wealth should be held in common ownership, controlled by the state. Hence, the Democrats’ constant push to have government confiscate ever more income and power.

By contrast, the Bible teaches that God owns all things and that we’re merely stewards of His creation. When we look at each of the Ten Commandments, we see that they’re directly at odds with socialism.

 You shall have no other gods before Me.

Socialism and its offshoots – communism, fascism, democratic socialism and National Socialism (Nazism) – enshrine the state above all other powers.  There is no room for God, which is why socialists are in a permanent war with the church and are bent on creating a faith-free society.

You shall make no idols.

Idols are anything that takes the place of God in the hierarchy of values.  Under socialism, sheer power over one’s fellow man is an idol. Another is building utopias – the unicorns of government because such perfect societies do not exist.

You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.

When socialists take over a culture, it becomes depraved and perverse.  To enforce their new immoral order, socialists openly blaspheme God and particularly Jesus Christ.  Hollywood, which is famously leftist, has taken this road since Christian review boards abandoned their role in the 1960s, opening up films to any and all ways to shock audiences.

Keep the Sabbath day holy.

Sundays are no different from any other day in socialist societies.  In fact, people going to church on a Sunday are identified and often persecuted in places like communist China, where atheism is the official state religion.   Even in our market-based society, materialism – a necessary precept of socialism – has pushed respect for the Sabbath to the margins.

Honor your father and your mother.

Socialism has been at war with marriage and family since the French Revolution in 1789.  Unlike America’s revolutionaries of 1776, the Jacobins sought to wipe out Christianity and establish an all-encompassing government that supplanted the family.  Frederich Engels, co-author with Karl Marx of “The Communist Manifesto,” later wrote about the need to do away with marital fidelity and to assign children to communal rearing. He, Marx and other socialists correctly identified the family as a competing source of authority and a bulwark of the church.  Both stand in the way of collectivist regimes.

You shall not murder.

Many people misread this commandment as a broader order not to kill for any reason, which denies the moral difference between taking innocent human life and executing murderers. Socialists have long promoted abortion – the direct taking of an innocent human life – as a way to “liberate” women and men from parental responsibilities.

You shall not commit adultery.

In the 1960s, Americans became familiar with the term “free love,” but socialists have been promoting it heavily since the early 1800s.  Sex outside marriage, prostitution, pornography and abortion all militate against marriage fidelity.  Socialists deploy euphemisms like “choice” and “sex work” to cover the retreat from Biblical morality.

You shall not steal.

Socialism is grand theft. It uses the state to take earnings from productive people and redistribute it to create dependency and thus political power for those handing it out.  Slavery is 100 percent taxation – when someone else controls the fruits of one’s labor.  Socialist countries first control and then seize private property.  Marx summed up “The Communist Manifesto” in one sentence:  “Abolition of private property.”

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

This is not just about telling lies in a witness situation but also about using lies to advance one’s wellbeing. Socialism is built on a mountain of lies about human nature, which is why it eventually must resort to violence. Marx wrote that “the ends justify the means,” which means you can do or say anything as long as it advances the revolution.

You shall not covet.

Socialism’s main engine is envy, stoking resentment against others who have more, even to the point of using violence to get it.  In Genesis, Cain killed Abel out of envy for Abel achieving God’s favor.  Envy was also on display when Satan promised Adam and Eve that if they defied God, then “ye shall be as gods.”  Coveting divinity got Satan kicked out of Heaven, and it’s what he and his minions continue to peddle in a variety of forms – including pride, envy and socialism.

Of Satan, Jesus said, “When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”

God originated life, natural marriage and love and gave us the Ten Commandments.  It shouldn’t be a mystery as to where the deceptive cake of socialism was baked.

This article was originally published at Townhall.com.

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren wants to become President. If elected, one of her plans is to implement a wealth tax. She said:

We need structural change to get our economy and our democracy back on track – and no billionaire is going to get in my way of fighting for it.[i]

While a wealth tax would bring in revenue, its most important effect might be fast-tracking a complete government takeover of the economy. Merely change some tax rates, some thresholds, and the government taxes everything into its own hands. Behold! The socialist dream of “the people” owning everything.

If we sleep while others work, then this scenario will become our reality. This article will teach you what the stakes are. You’ll learn these things:

• What a wealth tax is, and how it eats away at your wealth and financial security.

• How a wealth tax can be used to rapidly institute an actual socialist economy.

• What is blocking this tax, and the attempts to overcome the block.

• Steps to stop this “structural change” before it is implemented.

What is a wealth tax?

A wealth tax is a tax on what you already own, not on new income. An annual wealth tax means you get to pay it over and over again. Keep this going long enough and all of your wealth is taxed away – the government, bite-by-bite, dispossesses you.

Warren’s plan would create an annual wealth tax of 2% to 3% of everything that rich people own.

All I’m asking for is a little slice from the tippy, tippy top. A slice that would raise — and this is the shocking part, Jim — about $2.75 trillion over the next 10 years.[ii]

What would a wealth tax cover?

• To start, tax your bank accounts, stocks, bonds, and other sorts of financial instruments.

• Then comes taxes on real estate, starting with your house. If you’ve a farm then tax its land and improvements. Even the vacation retreat, or time share, gets taxed. Even though there could be constitutional concerns, wealth tax proposals generally include taxing real estate.

• Certainly, businesses and corporations are going to get taxed. This includes buildings, machine tools, inventory, and even the value of inventions, copyrights, and other intellectual property.

• And finally, tax personal property. Artwork, cars, even your wedding band have taxable value.

Of course, the government doesn’t like people who try to evade the tax man. Senator Warren says so.

So the way that this is written is to say is to say first all of going to tax all your assets wherever located around the globe. So if you were planning to move them to Switzerland or some island, doesn’t make any difference. They are all going to be taxed.[iii]

Why have a wealth tax?

Why a wealth tax? Its proponents don’t fully reveal their hand. Senator Warren touts a national day-care system, saying:

That’s money we need so that every kid in this country has a decent child care opportunity, has an opportunity for pre-K, has an opportunity for a decent school.[iv]

But national child care is merely political cover. Her progressive friends have more ambitious plans for wealth tax money, implementing a “universal basic income.” At his campaign site, presidential candidate Andrew Yang provides a decent definition of the term.

Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a form of social security that guarantees a certain amount of money to every citizen within a given governed population, without having to pass a test or fulfill a work requirement.[v]

Every U.S. citizen over the age of 18 would receive $1,000 a month, regardless of income or employment status, free and clear. No jumping through hoops. Yes, this means you and everyone you know would receive a check for $1,000 a month every month starting in January 2021.[vi]

That is, the government becomes everybody’s parent, providing each of us enough to get by. It pays if you work and if you don’t work. This is underscored by Kelsey Piper, writing for Vox:

“That is, instead of people working poorly paid jobs they hate, they’d feel able to work jobs that might be similarly poorly paid but which they love — founding a company, opening a restaurant, managing a community theater, making art, running kids’ programs. That’s a way UBI could avoid affecting the labor supply at all, while making the world a better place.”[vii]

That $12,000 per year figure is merely a starting point. Soon someone will notice that this is less than a “living wage,”[viii] and the cry will be for its equivalency, $30,000 per year or more.

Note that this money isn’t poverty relief. Everyone is supposed to get it, because it is meant to be the fulfillment of the second part of the socialist pledge,

“… to each according to his needs.”[ix]

Soon enough, this becomes your only income as what you have, and what you can get, is taxed away. That will fulfill the first part of the pledge,

“from each according to his ability.”[x]

When a wealth tax is combined with a universal basic income you easily get a socialist economy. The government takes all of the fruit of your labors. All you have left is the government-supplied, but guaranteed, income.

The power to tax is the power to destroy

Through a wealth tax, Senator Warren only wants “a little slice from the tippy, tippy top.” That little slice will surely, and rapidly, drain its victim dry. Do some simple math, where you are the target.

• 2% annual wealth tax: One-half of your wealth taxed away in 30 years.

• 3% annual wealth tax: One-half of your wealth taxed away in 22 years.

• 7% annual wealth tax: One-half of your wealth taxed away in 10 years.

• 12% annual wealth tax: One-half of your wealth taxed away in 5 years.

Although U.S. Senator Warren is thinking 2%, others hope for more. Thomas Piketty is the progressives’ favorite economist, because he has schemes for pauperizing the wealthy. He has an opinion about how stiff a wealth tax should be:

We are not going to wait until Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg reach the age of 90 before they begin to pay taxes. With the 3 percent annual rate proposed by Warren, a static estate worth $100 billion would return to the community in 30 years. This is a good beginning but, given the average rate of progression of the highest financial assets, the aim should undoubtedly be higher (5 to 10 percent or more).[xi]

That is, the government should eat these estates, these holdings (“return to the community”) in maybe a decade. This would be a vigorous implementation of the old socialist cry.

In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.[xii]

Before your children have grown up their college fund, your retirement money, and your bank accounts will have been devoured by the government. It gets still worse, for at some point you’ll find that you no longer have ready cash to pay these taxes. You’ll have to sell things, even your home, to pay up.[xiii]

Don’t think that only the very rich will be targeted by a wealth tax. All the money obtained from them will be consumed by expanded social programs. Once the rich are fully drained more victims will be needed. The wealth tax rules will get changed to include the “merely wealthy,” and then the “middle class.” This wealth tax is coming for all of us. It will tax away all of your wealth, not merely that of some wealthy person you never knew.

A wealth tax is a legal implementation of envy. Our envy will give us socialism, and in turn that will consume us. Quoting the great economist Ludwig von Mises:

More and more the policy of taxation evolves into a policy of confiscation. The aim on which it concentrates is to tax out of existence every kind of fortune and income from property, in which process property invested in trade and industry, in shares and in bonds, is generally treated more ruthlessly than property in land. . .

Nothing is more calculated to make a demagogue popular than a constantly reiterated demand for heavy taxation on the rich. Capital levies and high income taxes on larger incomes are extraordinarily popular with the masses, who do not have to pay them. . .

The destructionist policy of taxation culminates in capital levies. Property is expropriated and then consumed. Capital is transformed into goods for use and consumption. The effect of all this should be plain to see. Yet the whole popular theory of taxation today leads to the same result.[xiv]

What does Bible say?

A wealth tax would have the government take money from our richest people, all in the name of “income inequality.” The Bible has a word for that: envy.[xv] We want the government to act on our behalf, steal money from the rich in the name of “the people,” and give it to others. Each of us who supports a wealth tax are guilty of a mix of envy, covetousness, and encouraging lawbreakers (i.e., the government’s tax agents).

But isn’t income inequality itself a sin, and something that the government should address? According to the Bible, no and no. The Bible expects that some people will be rich, even wildly so, and that others will be poor. God rewarded Abraham with so much wealth that Abraham needed what amounts to an army to take care of it (Genesis 14:14). And Jesus used income inequality approvingly in the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30). To read more on capitalism and monetary rewards, see the article Is Capitalism Immoral?[xvi]

The government is Gods’ minister of righteousness (Romans 13:1-4). This commission shows that it is answerable to God for its actions (Luke 12:42-48; 1 Corinthians 4:2). Stealing through a wealth tax isn’t right, and even if instructed to do so by popular vote.

The money obtained from a wealth tax is meant to implement a socialist economy. Socialism changes how society works. It breaks our morals, our families, and what we’re allowed to say or do. A socialist government not only moves the boundary stones (Deuteronomy 19:14; Proverbs 22:28), it throws them far into the sea. It is like the sin of Jeroboam, where he changed the peoples’ worship (1 Kings 12:26-33).

By every Biblical measure, a wealth tax is a license to steal, pressed into being by envious voters, so that the government may destroy our traditions, our freedoms, and our right to worship. A triple threat.

Wealth tax is currently blocked

A federal wealth tax would be a boon for starting a socialist economy. But it can’t become law because the Constitution forbids it. Or does it? The answer depends on whether we have an “originalist” or “activist” U.S. Supreme Court.

The fate of a wealth tax depends on what the U.S. Constitution means by “direct tax.” This phrase appears only twice in the U.S. Constitution, in Article I:

• Within Section 2: Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.[xvii]

• Within Section 9: No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.[xviii]

Over time, the Court has come up with definitions for “direct tax.” Its first meaning was supplied through the 1796 case Hylton v United States. In it the Court had to decide if a federal tax on carriages was constitutional. Having no established meaning for “direct tax,” the Court invented one.

“The boundary, [between direct and indirect taxes] then,” he argued, “must be fixed by a species of arbitration, and ought to be such as will involve neither absurdity nor inconvenience.” Then followed HAMILTON’S distinction: “The following are presumed to be the only direct taxes: capitation or poll taxes; taxes on lands and buildings; general assessments, whether on the whole property of individuals, or on their whole real or personal estate. All else must of necessity be considered as indirect taxes.”

The court accepted HAMILTON’S reasoning and the three judges who delivered opinions took the stand that only taxes which could be apportioned should be considered direct.[xix]

The Court ruled that the carriage tax was constitutional, and that it was an indirect tax. Property couldn’t be taxed, but some income could.

Then came the 1895 case Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co. In it the Court had to decide if a federal tax on state and municipal bonds was constitutional. In its ruling the Court knocked down the tax, while redefining “direct tax” as follows:

[Chief Justice Fuller] then says that a tax upon the income derived from real estate is a tax upon real estate, because as Lord Coke says, “What is the land but the profits thereof ?” And therefore that the tax upon income derived from rents and real estate is a tax upon land, and that a tax upon land is a “direct tax ” within the meaning of the Constitution, and unconstitutional because not apportioned.[xx]

Property still couldn’t be taxed, and income derived from it also couldn’t be taxed. Subsequent events, like the adoption of the Sixteenth Amendment (income tax), have diluted the effects of the Pollock decision. However, its version of “direct tax” still holds in the legal community. The Pollock interpretation of direct taxes would likely prevent a wealth tax that targets stocks, bonds, and real estate.

Many scholars would like the Court to return to the Hylton version of “direct tax.” Other scholars, like Walter Dellinger, want the Court to go even further.

Devising a progressive tax system that effectively taxes the wealthy is notoriously difficult, but whether a wealth tax is part of that system should depend upon the policy choices of democratically elected representatives, not faulty constitutional understandings.[xxi]

That is, he wants the Court to rubber-stamp whatever Congress devises. That is effectively a “living Constitution,”[xxii] one that accepts whatever tyranny Congress may devise. Such a U.S. Constitution is worthless, as is the Court that implements it.

Senator Warren has many advisors intent on assuring her that this wealth tax is constitutional.[xxiii] Yet many of these scholars, such as Dellinger and Bruce Ackerman,[xxiv] also campaign for expensive social programs like a universal basic income. Does their opinion come from their social advocacy, or is it the other way around? They are conflicted witnesses, and their judgment on constitutional matters can’t be trusted. We really don’t know how good their advice is on this matter.

How would the U.S. Supreme Court rule on a wealth tax, and on the critical phrase “direct tax?” Since its precedents are disputed, there will be pressure to decide based on political goals. Pray for judges to resist political pressures to be activist, and instead to rule impartially (Leviticus 19:15).

What can we do?

Everybody can do something. Some have more time, or skills, and can contribute more keeping this wealth tax evil far from us.

Repent of envy. There are no grounds to take money from the rich simply because they have a lot of stuff. We understand that rich people are responsible to God for how they use their wealth. For example, they ought to be generous and wise. But that is a problem between them and their Maker, and doesn’t include Uncle Sam.

Everybody has time for prayer. We need God to have mercy on us, and his Church. We need peace from government persecution and from harassment by libertines and progressives (Genesis 19:4-11). We must be the righteousness that is a model for society (Matthew 5:14-16), the yeast of change that permeates society (Luke 13:20-21), so we bring the nations into obedience to Him.

Try a little light reading. There are summary articles to help you navigate through this issue.

• Learn about the disaster called socialism. The article To Know Socialism is to Hate It[xxv] will teach you what socialist leaders want to do to our economy, or families, and our right to worship. You may not want socialism, but socialism wants you. The less we all like socialism, the less we all want a wealth tax to empower it.

• Learn why capitalism is OK by God. The article Is Capitalism Immoral?[xxvi] will show you that God accepts capitalism, and that being even extremely wealthy isn’t a sin. Having money isn’t the issue, but rather being righteous and merciful in our dealings.

Get politically involved. If you have free time to affect the campaign season, here are activist things to do.

• Research the legislators and candidates. Does your legislator support, even advocate, a wealth tax? Do they agree with those who do? What you want is someone who is virulently opposed to a wealth tax. We don’t need more lukewarm, pleasing everybody legislators. Our opponents treat this tax like war, as the most important of issues. There is no room for compromise.

After you have done your research, spread it around. Get your friends, even your church, equally alarmed about this tax. Tell them who the good guys, and bad guys, really are.

• Keep after the legislators and candidates. Lobby your legislators to support you on this. Show them this article, and others, so they are informed and can’t say they never knew. Be a squeaky wheel, until they acknowledge with you that a wealth tax is a really bad idea, a non-negotiable issue.

• Go after the fellow travelers. A campaign has accompanying PR flacks, and maybe even scholars who wrote letters of support. These people also need to be pestered, so that their support of “the evil wealth tax” is considered a detriment, not a benefit. This creates the perception that a wealth tax isn’t an advantage, but rather a millstone about their candidate’s neck.

• Always label a wealth tax with pejoratives. It isn’t just a “wealth tax.” It is “legalized envy,” “license to steal,” “enabling socialism.” Where possible, use phrases like “socialist wealth tax,” or “envy tax,” or “socialist takeover tax.” After all, those who really want the tax are either misinformed and envious, or malicious and socialist. What they would do isn’t nice, so why play nice with words?

In our day, going before the U.S. Supreme Court has become a gamble. Because the Court is political, we don’t know if it will rule by law or by politics. It is best if a wealth tax law were never passed, and the Court not tempted to do the wrong thing. If it ever were ruled constitutional then we’d never really be rid of it. Things will go much better for us if a wealth tax is never tried.

Footnotes

[i] DeCosta-Klipa, Nik, Elizabeth Warren is clashing with billionaires over her wealth tax plan. But would it be constitutional?, Boston Magazine, January 29, 2019, https://www.boston.com/news/politics/2019/01/29/elizabeth-warren-wealth-tax-constitution

[ii] Axelrod, Tal, Warren: Billionaires should ‘stop being freeloaders’, The Hill, January 31, 2019, https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/427967-warren-billionaires-should-stop-being-freeloaders

[iii] Schwartz, Ian, Warren on Wealth Tax: Assets Worldwide Will Be Taxed With A “Very High Rate of Monitoring, Auditing”, Real Clear Politics, January 25, 2019, https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/01/25/warren_on_wealth_tax_assets_worldwide_will_be_taxed_with_a_very_high_rate_of_monitoring_auditing.html

[iv] Axelrod, Tal, Warren: Billionaires should ‘stop being freeloaders’, The Hill, January 31, 2019

[v] What is Universal Basic Income, Andrew Yang Campaign web site, https://www.yang2020.com/what-is-ubi/

[vi] Ibid.

[vii] Piper, Kelsey, The important questions about universal basic income haven’t been answered yet, Vox, February 13, 2019, https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/2/13/18220838/universal-basic-income-ubi-nber-study

[viii] Amadeo, Kimberly, Living Wage and How It Compares to the Minimum Wage, The Balance, March 12, 2019, https://www.thebalance.com/living-wage-3305771

[ix] Marx, Karl, Critique of the Gotha Programme, Chapter 1, 1875, found online at  https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm

[x] Ibid.

[xi] Piketty, Thomas, A tax on wealth is long overdue, Boston Globe, February 11, 2019, https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2019/02/11/tax-wealth-long-overdue/AULwxlT7ZGu4uuB7dkpXTJ/story.html

[xii] Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick, Manifesto of the Communist Party, Chapter II. Proletarians and Communists, Marx/Engels Selected Works, Vol. One, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1969, pp. 98-137, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm

[xiii] In one scenario an owner sells stocks to satisfy a 3% wealth tax on them. Because of income taxes, and capital gains taxes, due on the stock sale a total of 20% of the stock must be sold to satisfy that 3% tax.

See the article by Adler, Hank, 70 Percent Income Tax, 3 Percent Wealth Tax, Townhall, January 28, 2019, https://townhall.com/columnists/hankadler/2019/01/28/70-percent-income-tax-3-percent-wealth-tax-n2540324.

[xiv] Hayward, Steven, Taxation, or Confiscation?, Power Line Blog, March 12, 2019, https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/03/taxation-or-confiscation.php

The link quoted Ludwig von Mises, Socialism, Part V, Chapter II (The Methods of Destructionism), Section 7 (Taxation), 1951.

[xv] What does the Bible say about envy?, Got Questions, https://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-envy.html

[xvi] Perry, Oliver, Is Capitalism Immoral?, Illinois Family Institute, November 30, 2018, https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/faith/is-capitalism-immoral/

[xvii] https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/articles/article-i

[xviii] Ibid.

[xix] Riddle, J. H., The Supreme Court’s Theory of a Direct Tax, Michigan Law Review, Vol. 15, No. 7 (May, 1917), pp. 566-578, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1275429.pdf

[xx] Jones, Francis, Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan and Trust Company, Harvard Law Review, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Oct. 25, 1895), pp. 198-211, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1321669.pdf

[xxi] Johnsen, Dawn, and Dellinger, Walter, The Constitutionality of a National Wealth Tax, Indiana Law Journal, Volume 93, Issue 1, Article 8, Page 111, https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=11279&context=ilj

For an opposing view see:

Jensen, Erik, Taxation and the Constitution: How to Read the Direct-Tax Clauses, Scholarly Commons Faculty Publications School of Law Case-Western Reserve University 2006, https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1526&context=faculty_publications

[xxii] Leef, George, How The Ruinous “Living Constitution” Idea Took Root, Forbes, July 15, 2014, https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeleef/2014/07/15/how-the-ruinous-living-constitution-idea-took-root/#10804cb46784

[xxiii] https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Constitutionality%20Letters.pdf

[xxiv] Sunstein, Cass, Cash and Citizenship (a review of The Stakeholder Society by Bruce Ackerman and Anne Alstott), The New Republic, May 23, 1999, https://newrepublic.com/article/62855/cash-and-citizenship

[xxv] Perry, Oliver, To Know Socialism is to Hate It, Illinois Family Institute, February 13, 2019, https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/uncategorized/to-know-socialism-is-to-hate-it/

[xxvi] Perry, Oliver, Is Capitalism Immoral?, Illinois Family Institute, November 30, 2018, https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/faith/is-capitalism-immoral/

Why Socialism is bad for Christians, bad for America

We keep saying that socialism is bad, but our message isn’t being believed. Maybe we don’t fully believe it ourselves. So let’s dig deeper and understand just how bad, and how anti-Christian, socialism really is.

This article examines how American society changes when socialists get to run things. You’ll see, quoting the socialists themselves, how:

• Everyone is made paupers, on purpose.

• Society is reorganized, where children become wards of the state and families, even marriages, are discouraged.

• Christian worship and behavior get driven out of society. Those who persist can even be sent to sanitariums.

Once you’re alert to what socialism does to a society, you can begin to protect your community, your family, and yourself from the designs of these politicians and activists.

Dial it up to 11: look at fully-implemented socialist programs. Don’t think that socialist-leaning politicians are satisfied with the few initiatives they promote in their political campaigns. Once they get into power they tend to hire radical bureaucrats and aides, people who do the real work of implementing both announced and hidden socialist schemes. Think of the politician as the nose of the camel, poking into the tent.

This is why it is both fair and reasonable to associate any socialist-leaning politician or activist with the full socialist agenda. And this is why this article looks at the full effects of socialist policies on America.

As far as communist activists versus socialist ones, there is no practical difference between them. Both sides get their theories from Karl Marx. The communists are just emphasizing the supposed socialist endgame, evoking some future utopia.

Socialism in three minutes

To frame a discussion of socialism we need a definition. According to one dictionary, socialism is:

1.) a theory or system of social organization in which the means of production and distribution of goods are owned and controlled collectively or by the government.

2.) (in Marxist theory) the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principles.[i]

This definition has these implications.

Individuals may not own any productive property. A socialist society will take over (that is, “steal”) farms, mines, factories, warehouses, and other things in the name of “the people.” But what about personal property? Will your house, or your jewelry, remain yours? That’s hard to say. Considering that socialist activists can’t even agree if you are allowed to own a bicycle, expect chaos to occur.[ii]

The government is the de-facto owner of practically everything. We all can’t visit that nice beach getaway at the same time. Nor can more than 100 million adults be bothered with the details of thousands of factories. This means that “the people” really means “the government.” It alone will own and manage all of these properties. You can already guess how well that will go.

Under socialism, the State puts itself in the place of God and says, “The earth is the State’s, and all it contains, the world, and those who dwell in it.”[iii]

The intent is to transform human character. Socialists don’t want control because of a mere power trip. They think that this actually improves the human condition, that individuals owning things is the root of all evils. Removing property ownership from us will somehow automatically transform us into a freely giving, naturally sharing, people.[iv] Society will be free from crime and strife, and there will be no need for police, army, legislators or bureaucrats.[v]

This goal of transforming humanity exposes the religious nature of socialism.[vi] It also helps explain why these activists are so devoted to their cause.

Socialism: Give me this day my daily bread

We already know that having private property is good with God.[vii] But socialists don’t care what God says. They aim to have everyone utterly dependent on the government, with all devoted to the common good. This is much like being utterly defeated by an invading army, except that we will voluntarily open the fortress gates and let them in.

Socialism must take away everything. The socialist state’s signature belief is simple, courtesy of Karl Marx:

In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.[viii]

A socialist government will certainly dispossess, that is “steal,” factories, farms, transportation systems, distribution networks, mines, warehouses, and much more from their current owners. These would theoretically be owned by “the people,” but everybody knows that the government becomes the true owner and manager.

They say that you can keep your personal property, but why believe them? It isn’t like they have morals against theft. If your house looks useful for a group home, or somebody else happens to need a bike at this moment,[ix] then why not take them away?

You will live from hand to mouth. Karl Marx describes the goal of socialist economic planning:

“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”[x]

Each of us must apply ourselves for the common good. The children won’t be exempt from this work, according to modern activists:

“Furthermore, in communist society children will be given the freedom to work from a young age.” [xi]

In return we’re promised that the benevolent government will meet our needs. Understand, though, that they are the ones that decide what we need and get.

God help you if the government thinks your region needs to be taught a lesson. Stalin taught a lesson to the Ukrainians in 1933 and starved about 7,000,000 people.[xii] China is spying on its own people, creating a computerized “social ranking” that determines if individuals can acquire needed things.[xiii] History has a habit of repeating itself.

Welcome to slavery. If the government owns and controls everything, and you have nothing, then you’re completely dependent on its good will. Socialists would merely say that you’re a good citizen, a diligent supporter of the new socialist state. However, there are other words for this condition. From Herbert Spencer, a 19^th century “jack of all trades” intellectual:

Suppose that for a company we substitute the community; does it make any difference to the slave if the time he has to work for others is as great, and the time left for himself is as small, as before?

The essential question is—How much is he compelled to labour for other benefit than his own, and how much can he labour for his own benefit? The degree of his slavery varies according to the ratio between that which he is forced to yield up and that which he is allowed to retain; and it matters not whether his master is a single person or a society. If, without option, he has to labour for the society, and receives from the general stock such portion as the society awards him, he becomes a slave to the society.[xiv]

Socialism wastes away the spirit. When taken to its logical conclusion, the socialist state develops what amounts to a royal caste, which gets to run and enjoy the material largesse. The rest of us are working drones, without property or means of escape from our slavery. Some interesting, perhaps unexpected, things develop from this.

• The raison d’être of a socialist state is to overproduce everything for the people to luxuriate in. But that bounty will be hard to come by. First, socialists will never be as competent about running an economy as all of us are now collectively doing. Second, people will be a lot less productive when they can’t see the reward of hard work. Why work harder when there isn’t a commensurate reward for it?

• This listless work force will be paired with less innovation. Without a spur for being creative, technology will stagnate.

• Because it took away everything, the government becomes the only charity and relief-giver. Nobody else has anything to share. The futility of caring, but not being able to help, will result in callous, uncompassionate nation.

Socialism: The family is obsolete

According to socialists, taking our property isn’t enough. We must become an entirely different country, with new values and ideals. This is revealed in the words of Alexandra Kollontai, a champion of Marxist feminism and leader in family issues for Lenin’s Russia.

There is no escaping the fact: the old type of family has had its day. The family is withering away not because it is being forcibly destroyed by the state, but because the family is ceasing to be a necessity. The state does not need the family, because the domestic economy is no longer profitable: the family distracts the worker from more useful and productive labour. The members of the family do not need the family either, because the task of bringing up the children which was formerly theirs is passing more and more into the hands of the collective. In place of the old relationship between men and women, a new one is developing: a union of affection and comradeship, a union of two equal members of communist society, both of them free, both of them independent and both of them workers.[xv]

Why worry about what a Soviet functionary said a century ago? Because with socialism there is really nothing new. Neither does anything become obsolete. What has been tried before will come around again. Think of it as a warning from history. Her words summarize these intentions.

Break the bonds between parent and child. According to Kollontai,

The worker-mother must learn not to differentiate between yours and mine; she must remember that there are only our children, the children of Russia’s communist workers.[xvi]

Defying our natural attachment to our children (Isaiah 49:15), parents are to be aloof towards them. A mother must birth the child, but must also then be willing to turn it over to state care. According to modern American socialists,

From a young age children will be given the choice to leave the family home and live in social homes, or on their own, with their food and home being guaranteed for free. In communism, children will be allowed to do anything which does not harm themselves or others; and they will be free to do more risky things from a much younger age than they are now, as soon as they demonstrate they have the rational capacity to take decisions. No arbitrary restrictions, indoctrination nor censorship would take place.[xvii]

In short, the parents will be robbed of the affection, and even of contact with, their own children. Their children will hardly know them.

Those aren’t your children any more. Revisiting what Kollontai wrote,

The worker-mother must learn not to differentiate between yours and mine; she must remember that there are only our children, the children of Russia’s communist workers.[xviii]

The state doesn’t want the parents to be in the child raising process. The parents procreate, but the government provides the food, the clothes, the shelter, and the child’s education. The state will accommodate those “those parents who desire to participate in the education of their children,”[xix] but can you guess who will win out if the parents and state differ on what the child is learning.

The family must go because it resists the state. According to Kollontai, once the parents no longer provide for the child, nor teach the child, why is there a family at all?

What responsibilities are left to the parents, when they no longer have to take charge of upbringing and education?… The state does not need the family, because the domestic economy is no longer profitable: the family distracts the worker from more useful and productive labour.[xx]

The state’s problem with families is how they are loyal to themselves. Their youth learn to question the world around them according to their parents’ shaping. According to socialist activists, this is a major crime against humanity.

Today, the main backwards role the family plays is the oppression of children, who are subjected to a tyranny of the parents and denied the basic rights which should belong to every human, most importantly the right of free development of the personality.[xxi]

In the parents’ place, the state will impose a uniform shaping of personality. It prefers clones raised in a values factory.

A committed marital relationship isn’t needed. According to Kollontai, the bond between husband and wife must also change. Repeating her earlier quote:

The members of the family do not need the family either, because the task of bringing up the children which was formerly theirs is passing more and more into the hands of the collective. In place of the old relationship between men and women, a new one is developing: a union of affection and comradeship, a union of two equal members of communist society, both of them free, both of them independent and both of them workers.[xxii]

Relationships are encouraged, but committed ones are not.

Instead of the conjugal slavery of the past, communist society offers women and men a free union which is strong in the comradeship which inspired it. Once the conditions of labour have been transformed and the material security of the working women has increased, and once marriage such as the church used to perform it – this so-called indissoluble marriage which was at bottom merely a fraud – has given place to the free and honest union of men and women who are lovers and comrades, prostitution will disappear. This evil, which is a stain on humanity and the scourge of hungry working women, has its roots in commodity production and the institution of private property. Once these economic forms are superseded, the trade in women will automatically disappear. The women of the working class, therefore, need not worry over the fact that the family is doomed to disappear. They should, on the contrary, welcome the dawn of a new society which will liberate women from domestic servitude, lighten the burden of motherhood and finally put an end to the terrible curse of prostitution.[xxiii]

To clarify, the man and woman are to be free to create, and dissolve, relationships as their emotions and desires take them. Don’t let the possibility of children slow you down, for the state is there to cover for you. From Frederick Engels, one of Marx’s buddies:

In any case, therefore, the position of men will be very much altered. But the position of women, of all women, also undergoes significant change. With the transfer of the means of production into common ownership, the single family ceases to be the economic unit of society. Private housekeeping is transformed into a social industry. The care and education of the children becomes a public affair; society looks after all children alike, whether they are legitimate or not. This removes all the anxiety about the “consequences,” which today is the most essential social – moral as well as economic – factor that prevents a girl from giving herself completely to the man she loves. Will not that suffice to bring about the gradual growth of unconstrained sexual intercourse and with it a more tolerant public opinion in regard to a maiden’s honor and a woman’s shame? And, finally, have we not seen that in the modern world monogamy and prostitution are indeed contradictions, but inseparable contradictions, poles of the same state of society? Can prostitution disappear without dragging monogamy with it into the abyss?

Here a new element comes into play, an element which, at the time when monogamy was developing, existed at most in germ: individual sex-love.[xxiv]

In short, sex without consequences, the so-called “free love.” Soviet Russia had a bout with that.

As soon as the communists took power in 1917 in Russia, they began to systematically enact policies that followed the doctrines of Karl Marx. Their dream of a materialistic utopia could be attained “only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions,” as Marx had written in the “Communist Manifesto.” That included not only confiscating “means of production,” like factories and land, but also disintegrating the institution of the family. Communists saw commitment to family as an obstacle to people’s devotion to the pursuit of their utopia. Instead, people were to live in “free unions,” mating at will. [xxv]

The idea caught on too well, and the Soviets rapidly backtracked.

To reverse a society-wide disaster, by 1936 the Soviet Union abandoned the “free love” ideology and returned to pro-family policies, outlawing abortion, requiring substantial fees for a divorce, imposing higher penalties for abandoning a family, and encouraging women to have more children.

“The idea that the state would assume the functions of the family was abandoned,” Goldman wrote.[xxvi]

Socialism creates a selfish, shallow, mean-spirited society. People don’t raise children to get rich. With love they pour youth and fortune into their children, in hopes of them becoming wise, diligent, and compassionate adults.

However, the new socialist world will have none of that. As is their want, the state knows best, and how can mere untrained people be trusted to raise a baby? For example, the state of Oregon wants to come between the parents and the child:

If Oregon Governor Kate Brown has her way, the Beaver State will become the first to require universal home visits for newborn children in the care of their own parents…. While it’s not clear whether either of these programs would be mandatory, the use of the term “universal” suggests that they would. It’s frightening to think about what would happen to parents who refuse such visits.[xxvii]

If the socialists get to fulfill their plans, what are some consequences?

• Parents are taught to not have children, or not care about them if they “make a mistake.” The state orphanage will raise them. This option, and encouraging this option, reinforces selfishness.

• Young adults will stay lazy and careless. Many people don’t learn of diligence and hard work until they find themselves responsible to provide for those in a household.

• There isn’t a place to learn love, intimacy, compassion or commitment. If you’re having relationship difficulties, it is easy to run away. There isn’t a venue for character building. There also isn’t a way to build loyalty, a giving love. There is no need for honesty, and certainly no reason to be a hero.

• There will be even fewer children than now. If it is hard to birth children, and care for them through their infancy, and then soon enough the state grabs them, then what is the payoff? Why bother with the pain in the first place?

• The few children that there are will grow up hard-boiled. There will be nobody to comfort them about hurts or the unexpected. They’ll learn society’s rules from the gangs. They will be aloof. From what wellspring will come love or compassion?

Socialism: God can’t be dead, because He never existed at all

Socialists have the chutzpah to insist that the America you know, its institutions and values, must be completely overturned. They’ve reassured themselves that this a good thing because there is no God to tell them otherwise. They believe in Materialism, which is “…the belief that nothing exists apart from the material world (i.e. physical matter like the brain).”[xxviii] This claim, that there is nothing spiritual, and nothing intelligent, that could have created things, denies that any God exists.

A socialist government will have to deal with Christians as enemies, because we’d be condemning their policies from God’s word. It will want to shut us down. Early in his activist career, Vladimir Lenin lectured his fellow socialists on how socialists should treat religion.

So far as the party of the socialist proletariat is concerned, religion is not a private affair. Our Party is an association of class-conscious, advanced fighters for the emancipation of the working class. Such an association cannot and must not be indifferent to lack of class-consciousness, ignorance or obscurantism in the shape of religious beliefs. We demand complete disestablishment of the Church so as to be able to combat the religious fog with purely ideological and solely ideological weapons, by means of our press and by word of mouth. But we founded our association, the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, precisely for such a struggle against every religious bamboozling of the workers. And to us the ideological struggle is not a private affair, but the affair of the whole Party, of the whole proletariat.[xxix]

That is, while the government can claim be religiously neutral, socialist activists will care about you, your religious practices and attitudes, and make your life difficult until you get with the socialist program.

Believers to be called mentally ill. If there can be no God, then people who persist with religious beliefs are obviously mentally ill, living in a fantasy world. The technique of “psychiatric incarceration” was frequently used against dissidents by Soviet Russia, because you must be literally crazy to oppose the state.[xxx] Already people in America assert that religion is an illness,[xxxi] so how long before Christians are spirited away for “treatment?”

Public scorn and persecution for believers. People who demonstrate religious behavior will be noticed and punished for it. It’s even happening today, before your very eyes.

• Karen Pence, wife of the Vice President, is supposed to not support a Christian school because it offends someone.[xxxii] She should lose her Secret Service protection.[xxxiii] More to the point, religious people should stay out of politics.[xxxiv]

• Jack Phillips, cake designer, must give up his religious rights in order to make a living.[xxxv]

• A Ford employee gets fired for not toeing the line with the transgender movement.[xxxvi]

• A pizza parlor closes because of internet outrage over how they might handle catering to a “gay wedding.”[xxxvii]

The government doesn’t have to directly come for you. Rather, it can pretend to be officially neutral, all the while letting the “Party” do the dirty work (see Lenin’s quote, above).[xxxviii]

No soup for naughty people. Remember that Chinese social rating plan?[xxxix] It comes for you, too. Not attending enough socialist classes? Praying at meals? Being turned in by your children for talking about Jesus at home? Soon you’re known in the computers as a malcontent and can’t buy food, or transportation, as you might need.

Socialists are the generation that knew not God (Judges 2:10). The socialist leaders know of the Bible, but they won’t read it or obey it. They won’t let others know of it. They are condemned just as Jesus condemned the Pharisees (Matthew 23:13). They lead the land into great difficulties.

• As in the time of Josiah (2 Kings 22:8-13), the people won’t know what the word is, nor what the Bible is. Nobody will know the revealed concepts of right and wrong.

• Society will know no restraints on lust, self-centeredness selfishness and hard-heartedness. Without God there aren’t internal checks on behavior, and no character-building virtues. Everybody just looks out for Number One.

• No regard for life, other than as a resource to be used and disposed of.[xl] Likewise, no concept worth sweating for, crying over, even being a hero for.

One can only hope that such a society is so self-destructive that it quickly does so, that something better can rise in its place.

Your freedom: defend it now, before you lose it

We’ve seen some of what socialists intend to do to us:

• Society reduced to pauperism.

• Everyone on the government dole for food, clothing, housing.

• Family life broken, and the government directly interacting with children.

• Destruction of religious life, and religious rights.

• Creating a uncompassionate, sullen, ignorant generation.

The columnist Stella Morabito aptly sums this up this dismal condition.

So it goes: Socialism, when left to its own devices, irresistibly moves towards authoritarianism and totalitarianism.

As with all bait-and-switch scams, socialism promises you the world. That’s the only way it can get any traction before it delivers you to a virtual prison. It forces compliance and dependency in every aspect of life—housing, employment, medicine, mobility, education, even your creativity.

Oh, sure lots of clueless Che T-shirt-wearing kids will talk real savvy about it while they’re free. But once it’s got them for real, it will permeate their daily life both in body and mind. In this very respect, slavery is a very fitting description of socialism. All of socialism’s promises— equality, social justice, blah, blah, blah—amount to nothing but bait.

If you don’t believe me, ask yourself this: What could be more oppressive than living under a system run by a tiny clique of power-mongers who exert control over you through a morbidly obese machinery of bureaucrats? What could be more claustrophobic than having some apparatchik from that bloated bureaucracy telling you where you may live, what you are allowed to study, where you can travel, what you can express in art or writing, whether you may receive medicine for your illness, what you may eat, what you can say, and even to whom you may speak?[xli]

The bright spot here is that the socialists aren’t now in control. Not yet. There is still opportunity to set things right. Samuel Adams, from 1771, spoke encouragement to a different conflict. Yet, his words are timely today.

The liberties of our Country, the freedom of our civil constitution are worth defending at all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks.

We have receiv’d them as a fair Inheritance from our worthy Ancestors: They purchas’d them for us with toil and danger and expence of treasure and blood; and transmitted them to us with care and diligence.

It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle; or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.

Of the latter we are in most danger at present: Let us therefore be aware of it. Let us contemplate our forefathers and posterity; and resolve to maintain the rights bequeath’d to us from the former, for the sake of the latter.[xlii]

— Instead of sitting down satisfied with the efforts we have already made, which is the wish of our enemies, the necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude, and perseverance.

Let us remember that “if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom.” It is a very serious consideration, which should deeply impress our minds, that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of the event.

What is this defense we must take up? To preserve the republic, because a fully-developed socialism replaces our republic with a dictatorship. It’s true – ask anyone who lived through the years of Soviet Russia. And how do you, Mr. & Mrs. Average, accomplish such a feat? If we each do a few simple tasks, socialism has no place to run, and no way to keep a foothold in America.

First: Stop asking the government to give you something for free. Ronald Reagan said:

The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.[xliii]

Government services are never free. Taxpayers pay a lot for them, usually more than if they were done by private contractors. And as for the “free” part, when government becomes the purveyor you pay plenty.

• You lose freedom of choice. When the government gets involved it muscles private providers out of the business. Obamacare, with its “you can keep your doctor” is a prominent example.[xliv]

• You get a planned social change. Government policies always favor the political and philosophical plans of its promoters. For example, Obamacare is intentionally a first step to a government single-payer health plan. You know, the rationed health care system that England and Canada are cursed with.[xlv]

You spent your childhood looking to grow up and start your own household, your own family. Are you to now accept socialism and become a child again, this time to an uncompassionate government father? No, plan on supporting yourself, and supporting your family. The “free” government services just plain cost too much.

Second: Learn to recognize the socialist lie. Learning all about socialism is a tedious task. Their writers are long-winded, and they repeat each other. Fortunately, you don’t need to immerse yourself in their sins. At a minimum, just remember this easy phrase: there is no such thing as a free lunch. This is key to discerning all sorts of socialist enticements. Let’s try it out.

• Everyone is entitled to health care.[xlvi] At some point, everyone needs health care services. And it is true that many people sometimes need care they can’t pay for, at least not right away. But inability to pay can be handled, and was handled, through built-in charity and existing health care insurance programs. Yet the government insists that they can provide all health care, to everyone, at no cost to you.Looking at this from the “no free lunch” viewpoint, when the government gets involved private parties must bow out. Health care gets more expensive, and yet less available. And without the spur of competition, and profits, health care research also dries up. The end result is rationed, low quality, medical care, with very few medical advances.

• Free college education.[xlvii] If a young person could attend college for free then they could get into life without having a shadow of tuition debt hanging over them. This is supposed to be a good thing for society.Let’s apply the “no free lunch” test to this. If the students don’t have to pay, then why should they pay attention to coursework? We’d get a lot of youth celebrating a taxpayer-funded Spring Break celebration for four years. Public colleges would get fat on guaranteed money. Private colleges would suffer from government-funded competition. And we’d still be sending our youth to guaranteed indoctrination. Finally, college diplomas will be as common as participation trophies, and be worth as much.

• Guaranteed minimum income.[xlviii] If someone knew that they’d have a certain minimum income per year, no matter what they did, then their lives would have stability. Paid for by the taxpayers, of course.The “no free lunch” analysis says that this is merely a giant welfare program, an expansion of the dole. People will be paid even more and need do nothing to get it. It is also the starting point for implementing a “guaranteed maximum income,” otherwise known as “to each according to his needs.”[xlix]

• Socialism means plenty for all.[l] The cry is “let’s put the socialists in charge and show those capitalists how production is really done!” The “no free lunch” test notes that this claim is strictly advertising, never proven. We’re asked to accept “a pig in a poke,” promises of never-realized government efficiency, while surrendering our property and our liberty. This is a very high cost for obtaining a few “free” goods.

Once you “learn the lingo,” you hear phrases like “community organizing,” “responsible corporations,”[li] and “social justice” and become alert to activists nearby, even if they happen to be wearing three-piece suits.

Third: Discover those politicians or activists that would take away your freedom, and shun them. Many politicians, like Senator Bernie Sanders, are openly socialist. Others hide their socialism, or are unaware their support for it, but still are willing to support an expanded government at the right opportunity. The problem is to discover these bad guys before they get into high-level positions.

It is important to identify these bad guys early. Once they’re in power, they attract aides who think like them, or worse, and install bureaucrats that share their goals. They get to begin implementing their socialist ways before you become aware of their real politics.

• Get personal. Research their social media, their degrees, their school yearbooks, their friends. If they boast of their Marxist creds, or “like” socialist celebrities and organizations, then you know their thinking and what they’ll favor in the future.

• Get in their faces. Haunt their town halls and campaign meetings. Repeat their words back to them, that the attendees learn the candidate’s true leanings. Make the other attendees feel uncomfortable to be associated with the candidate and his, or her, views. Why shouldn’t they be shamed for promoting our eventual enslaving? Who knows? Maybe they’re unaware of what socialism really means, and are willing to change.

The fight you’re in – the socialists have always been fighting it, generally unopposed – is known for a long time. Yet they win only when we don’t defend ourselves. Margaret Thatcher, who led Great Britain out of a great deal of socialist bondage, has this to say about liberty.

“Perhaps I can summarise it best by saying this—Nations that have pursued equality, like the Iron Curtain countries, I think have finished up with neither equality, nor liberty. Nations, which like us, in the past have pursued liberty, as a fundamental objective, extending it to all, have finished up with liberty, human dignity, and far fewer inequalities than other people.”

“[L]iberty is fundamental. Liberty, human dignity, a higher standard of living is fundamental. And, steadily, I think, people are beginning to realise that you don’t have those things unless you have a pretty large private enterprise sector. Any Iron Curtain country has neither liberty, nor a very high standard of living. The two things go, economic and political freedom, go together. I’ve been right in the forefront of saying that, here, in the States, and it’s very interesting to me now, to see a number of articles from people who are taking up the same theme. They are disturbed that Socialism is reducing liberty and freedom for ordinary people, and that’s really what matters.”[lii]

Footnotes

[i] socialism (n.d.), Random House Kernerman Webster’s College Dictionary, 2010, https://www.thefreedictionary.com/socialism

[ii] https://libcom.org/forums/theory/there-any-private-property-under-socialismcommunism-22022012

[iii] McDurmon, Joel, God versus Socialism, The American Vision, April 24, 2015, https://americanvision.org/6459/god-versus-socialism/

A concise arraignment and judgment of socialism from God’s point of view.

[iv] Fairman, Glenn, Socialism as Religion, American Thinker, November 22, 2012, https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2012/11/socialism_as_religion.html

[v] “Criminal activity will be almost nonexistent since the catalysts for anti-social activity—injustice and inequality—will no longer exist.”, from https://www.allaboutworldview.org/marxist-law.htm

[vi] Perry, Oliver, Socialism is Also a Religion, Illinois Family Institute, September 21, 2018, https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/uncategorized/socialism-is-also-a-religion/

[vii] Perry, Oliver, Patriarchy, Gender Roles and Marxism: An Educational Campaign to Destroy the Family, Illinois Family Institute, December 12, 2017, https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/marriage/patriarchy-gender-roles-marxism-educational-campaign-destroy-family/

[viii] Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick, Manifesto of the Communist Party, Chapter II. Proletarians and Communists, Marx/Engels Selected Works, Vol. One, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1969, pp. 98-137, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm

[ix] https://libcom.org/forums/theory/there-any-private-property-under-socialismcommunism-22022012

[x] Marx, Karl, Critique of the Gotha Programme, Chapter 1, 1875, found online at  https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm

[xi] Meghany, The communist abolition of the family, Destroy Capitalism Now!, March 26, 2017, https://destroycapitalismnow.wordpress.com/2017/03/26/abolish-the-family/

[xii] Genocide in the 20th Century: Stalin’s Forced Famine 1932-1933, The History Place, 2000, http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/stalin.htm

[xiii] Information Warfare: 1984 Becomes Real In 2024, Strategy Page, January 20, 2019, https://strategypage.com/htmw/htiw/articles/20190120.aspx

[xiv] Spencer, Herbert, The Man versus the State, with Six Essays on Government, Society and Freedom (LF ed.) [1884], found at Online Library of Liberty, https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/spencer-the-man-versus-the-state-with-six-essays-on-government-society-and-freedom-lf-ed

[xv] Kollontai, Alexandra, Communism and the Family, published in The Worker, 1920, collected in Selected Writings of Alexandra Kollontai, Allison & Busby, 1977, found at https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1920/communism-family.htm

[xvi] Ibid.

[xvii] Meghany, The communist abolition of the family, Destroy Capitalism Now!

[xviii] Kollontai, Alexandra, Communism and the Family

[xix] Ibid.

[xx] Ibid.

[xxi] Meghany, The communist abolition of the family, Destroy Capitalism Now!

[xxii] Kollontai, Alexandra, Communism and the Family

[xxiii] Ibid.

[xxiv] Engels, Frederick, Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State, II. The Family, 4. The Monogamous Family, Marx/Engels Selected Works, Volume Three, October 1884, found at https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch02d.htm

[xxv] Svab, Petr, The Failed Soviet Experiment With ‘Free Love’, https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-failed-communist-experiment-with-free-love_2242535.html

[xxvi] Ibid.

[xxvii] Bolyard, Paula, Oregon Could Become the First State to Require In-Home Surveillance of Newborn Babies, PJ Media, January 15, 2019, https://pjmedia.com/trending/oregon-could-be-the-first-state-to-require-in-home-surveillance-of-newborn-babies/

[xxviii] McLeod, Saul, Mind Body Debate, 2007, found online at https://www.simplypsychology.org/mindbodydebate.html

[xxix] Lenin, V.I., Socialism and Religion, given December 3, 1905, from Lenin Collected Works, Volume 10, pp 83-87, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, found online at https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/dec/03.htm

[xxx] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatry_in_the_Soviet_Union

[xxxi] Cooper-White, Religion & Mental Health: New Study Links Belief In ‘Punitive God’ To Emotional Problems, Huffington Post, August 15, 2014, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/24/religion-mental-health-angry-god-brain_n_3097025.html

[xxxii] Haag, Matthew, Karen Pence Is Teaching at Christian School That Bars L.G.B.T. Students and Teachers, New York Times, January 16, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/16/us/politics/karen-pence-school-lgbt-ban.html

[xxxiii] Brest, Mike, CNN’S JOHN KING QUESTIONS IF KAREN PENCE DESERVES SECRET SERVICE PROTECTION, Daily Caller, January 18, 2019, https://dailycaller.com/2019/01/18/cnn-john-king-karen-pence-christian/

[xxxiv] Beeson, Katie, The Preacher’s Role, U.S. News and World Report, August 25, 2017, https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2017-08-25/religious-leaders-should-stay-out-of-politics

[xxxv] Farris, Michael, Colorado’s continued campaign against Jack Phillips, Denver Post, August 19, 2018, https://www.denverpost.com/2018/08/19/colorados-against-masterpiece-cakeshop-jack-phillips/

[xxxvi] O’Neil, Tyler, Employee at Ford Office Fired After Disagreeing With Transgender Post, PJ Media, January 8, 2019, https://pjmedia.com/trending/engineer-at-ford-plant-fired-after-disagreeing-with-transgender-post/

[xxxvii] Buckley, Madeline, Threat tied to RFRA prompt Indiana pizzeria to close its doors, Indy Star, April 2, 2015, https://www.indystar.com/story/news/2015/04/02/threats-tied-rfra-prompt-indiana-pizzeria-close-doors/70847230/

[xxxviii] Lenin, V.I., Socialism and Religion

[xxxix] Information Warfare: 1984 Becomes Real In 2024, Strategy Page

[xl] Shaw, Adam, Virginia Gov. Northam faces backlash for comments on 3rd-trimester abortion bill: ‘Morally repugnant’, Fox News, January 30, 2019, https://www.foxnews.com/politics/va-gov-faces-backlash-for-comments-on-controversial-third-trimester-abortion-bill

[xli] Morabito, Stella, A Vote for Socialism Is A Vote For State Run Slavery, The Federalist, October 29, 2018, http://thefederalist.com/2018/10/29/vote-socialism-vote-state-run-slavery/

[xlii] Straub, Steve, Samuel Adams, The Liberties of Our Country Are Worth Defending, The Federalist Papers, July 3, 2012, https://thefederalistpapers.org/founders/samuel-adams/samuel-adams-the-liberties-of-our-country-are-worth-defending

[xliii] Reagan, Ronald, quote found online at https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/ronald_reagan_128358

[xliv] Bier, Jeryl, Obamacare Website No Longer Addresses ‘You Can Keep Your Doctor’, Weekly Standard, August 24, 2016, https://www.weeklystandard.com/jeryl-bier/obamacare-website-no-longer-addresses-you-can-keep-your-doctor

[xlv] Malcolm, Candace, The Pitfalls of Single-Payer Health Care: Canada’s Cautionary Tale, National Review, April 13, 2017, https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/04/canada-single-payer-health-care-system-failures-cautionary-tale/

[xlvi] Sanders, Senator Bernie, Health Care Is a Right, Not a Privilege, Huffington Post, July 9, 2009, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-bernie-sanders/health-care-is-a-right-no_b_212770.html

[xlvii] Norton, Vince, Why Free College is a Bad Idea, Norton|Norris Inc., March 16, 2018, https://nortonnorris.com/free-college-bad-idea/

[xlviii] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-california-income/california-city-fights-poverty-with-guaranteed-income-idUSKCN1J015D?mod=article_inline

[xlix] Marx, Karl, Critique of the Gotha Programme, Chapter 1, 1875

[l] Pankhurst, Sylvia, Socialism, Workers’ Dreadnought, July 28, 1923, found online at https://www.marxists.org/archive/pankhurst-sylvia/1923/socialism.htm

[li] Teivainen, Teivo, Milton Friedman’s Argument about Socialist Implications of Corporate Social Responsibility, March 9, 2013, https://teivo.net/2013/03/09/friedman/

[lii] Thatcher, Margaret, TV Interview for Thames TV This Week, Margaret Thatcher Foundation, February 5, 1976, http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=102953

Americans today are less likely to define socialism as government ownership of the means of  production and more likely to describe it in relation to equality or government benefits and social services, according to a new Gallup poll conducted in September.

Only seventeen percent of Americans in 2018 define socialism as government ownership of the means of production compared to twice that number in 1949 when Gallup first surveyed Americans on the term. According to Gallup News, the latest survey shows how the term has broadened in recent years. Six percent in 2018 even described socialism as “talking to people, being social, social media, getting along with people.” Close to a quarter of Americans offered no opinion, though that number was 36 percent in 1949.

A Gallup News story notes:

Socialism has re-entered the public discourse over the past several years, in part due to the high profile candidacy of socialist Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary, as well as the surprise victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America organization, in the Democratic primary in New York’s 14^th Congressional District. According to a news report from Axios, over 40 socialists have won in primary elections this year, and the membership of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has grown from 7,000 members to 50,000 since 2016.

Republicans are much more likely to view socialism as government control of the means of production than are Democrats and more likely to describe socialism in negative ways, according to the September Gallup survey.

In an earlier survey conducted in late July and early August, Gallup found that 57 percent of Democrats have a positive view of socialism while only 47 percent have a positive view of capitalism, a greater difference than seen in three previous measures going back to 2010. The survey in the summer did not define socialism and capitalism but simply asked respondents if they had a favorable or negative view. Republicans, by contrast, have remained significantly more supportive of capitalism. The survey also found that fewer than half of Americans aged 18-29 view capitalism positively, marking a 12-point decline in just two years and down from 68 percent of young adults viewing capitalism positively in 2010.

Progressive Christians are becoming more openly tolerant and even enthusiastic about socialism, but other Christians are pushing back against it. In 2016, Christian writer Julie Roys wrote a blog post stating her views on why socialism isn’t Christian. Roys wrote:

To socialists, all that really exists is the material world. In fact, Karl Marx, the father of socialism/communism, invented the notion of dialectical materialism – the belief that matter contains a creative power within itself. This enabled Marx to eliminate the need for a creator, essentially erasing the existence of anything non-material. To socialists, suffering is caused by the unequal distribution of stuff – and salvation is achieved by the re-distribution of stuff. There’s no acknowledgment of spiritual issues.

There’s just an assumption that if everyone is given equal stuff, all the problems in society will somehow dissolve. This worldview contradicts Christianity, which affirms the existence of both a material and a non-material world – and teaches that mankind’s greatest problems are spiritual. The Bible says the cause of suffering is sin and salvation is found in the cross of Christ, which liberates us from sin. Because of sin, though, there will always be inequalities in wealth.

Roys said the Bible presents material gain, including aid, as being linked to character and responsibility. She cited verses such as 2 Thessalonians 3:10, which says, “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat” and 1 Timothy 5:10, which says widows receiving aid should be known for doing good deeds.

Roys also said socialism promotes envy and class warfare and the destruction of the family to enable greater state power.