Socialism's Siren Song Endures, but We Can Choose to Tune It Out
Picture a 7-year-old girl living under communism in the 1980s.
Her dad brings her to a local grocery store in the Ukraine, their home, in the old Soviet Union. He tells her to look around at the store and memorize the scene.
This was described to me in a radio interview a few years ago by Marina Medvin, a successful D.C. area attorney and writer for Townhall and Forbes.
She was that little girl.
Marina's father told her, "Make a photograph of this in your mind."
She does.
The walls are bare.
There are some shelves, but the only food item is on a shelf way up top.
It's a jar of pickled, green tomatoes.
They look like they might be spoiled.
Fast forward to a year or two later.
Now the family is in Newark, New Jersey — the first step in their move to America as a new home. Marina Medvin then enters a grocery store and is shocked by all the food and all the variety.
The difference between capitalism and socialism could not be clearer. And yet millions of Americans, including the young, fall prey to the siren song of socialism.
Could the old Soviet Union-type store with its bare shelves be coming soon to New York City?
As we all know, several weeks ago, Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old avowed far left, if not an extremist, won the Democratic primary for New York City mayor.
If his opposing candidates split the opposition vote in November, a socialist, or certainly one whose ideas could be called socialism, could actually become the mayor of the nation’s largest city.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. and Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., support him.
So do many other prominent liberals.
Mamdani scares this writer, and believes he would be bad as mayor for many reasons, but for now let's focus on some aspewcts of socialism.
Many young people today are disenchanted with capitalism.
Socialism seems to have the better branding among the young.
The Cato Institute even points out that one-third of people under 30 support communism. What an indictment on modern education.
Marxism begins with an atheistic premise.
But today we have been so cut off from the premise of America, founded on the idea that our rights come from God, that many disillusioned Americans want to try and give socialism another shot.
Although some modern proponents of socialism might argue that even if it hasn’t worked in other places, it will work this time around — given the right leader: Zohran or Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, or Sen. Sanders.
But haven’t we seen this movie before?
Socialism didn’t work under Lenin, maybe it will work under Stalin, but maybe it will work undfer Khrushchev, or Brezhnev, or . . . ?
Socialism didn’t work under Mao, maybe it will work under Xi Jinping.
Socialism didn’t work in Venezuela under Hugo Chavez, maybe it will work under Nicolas Maduro? And so on it goes . . .
Socialism is often the gateway to communism.
That is, the redistribution of wealth by government force.
As Winston Churchill observed, "Communism is nothing but socialism with a gun at your back."
Maybe it doesn’t work anywhere and never will because it runs contrary to human nature.
Human nature is sinful. And the best form of government recognizes that and therefore separates power, so no individual or small group can amass too much of it.
Why has America historically succeeded in granting us freedom?
It’s because the Founders recognized the realities of human selfishness.
They did everything in their power to limit how much power any one man or group of people might have. Belief in the sinfulness of man can be seen in the Constitution with its strict separation of powers.
Ben Franklin said, "There is scarce a king in a hundred who would not, if he could, follow the example of Pharaoh, get first all the peoples' money, then all their lands and then make them and their children servants forever."
Capitalism does not produce an equal distribution of wealth. No system does. But in the socialist schemes, it is only the rulers that do well, not the people.
The people are forced into breadlines for inferior bread — or pickled, green tomatoes.
For all of its warts and flaws, capitalism produces much greater prosperity for the greatest amount of people.
What does communism produce?
Ultimately, a lot of dead bodies.
One might ask, "Why would God allow all the suffering that the socialists and communists have imposed on this world — not to mention the total loss of religious freedom in such places?" I would answer, "So that we don’t go down that road again."
We pray New Yorkers won't go down that road.
Jerry Newcombe, D.Min., is the executive director of the Providence Forum, an outreach of Coral Ridge Ministries. He has written/co-written 33 books, including "George Washington’s Sacred Fire" (with Providence Forum founder Peter Lillback, Ph.D.) and "What If Jesus Had Never Been Born?" (with D. James Kennedy, Ph.D.). For more information, see: www.crm.tv. Read the Rev. Jerry Newcombe's Reports — More Here.
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