Imagine this: you’re driving along, and you get pulled over by the police, who proceed to arrest you and charge you for a crime you know you didn’t commit. You get yourself a great attorney to present the case to the jury about why you are not guilty of the crime in which you were charged. You have plenty of evidence to prove very clearly that you’re innocent. But imagine you get to the courtroom and only the prosecuting attorney is allowed to present their case, and your defense attorney is not allowed to present your case – the jury, based on only one side of the evidence, quickly finds you guilty, even though you know you’re not. You know that if the jury could just hear the other side, your side, the defense attorney giving the reasons and evidence for why it wasn’t you that committed the crime in question, they would have to conclude, based on the preponderance of the evidence, that it wasn’t you, and declare you not guilty.
It makes sense that it would be better to have both points of view presented so that you can weigh the arguments for both sides, and based on that, come to a more accurate conclusion. If you only hear one side of view, you’ll probably think that side is correct, until you hear the other point of view, and come to a more accurate conclusion.
The people of North Korea hear propaganda all day and every day about their leader, Kim Jung Un, about how “great and wonderful” he supposedly is. It’s no wonder they have such a high reverence for him that it’s almost like he is a god of a religion. Now ask yourself this: do you think the North Korean people would love their leader, Kim Jung Un, so much, if they ever heard about all the atrocities and killings and oppression that can be traced back to him? If they understood how poor they are in comparison to the citizens of other countries that aren’t oppressed by him, would they love him so much? Most likely not. It’s very important to look at both points of view concerning something in order to make an accurate and honest assessment.
This is the way it is with socialism. Many of the people who support socialism only hear arguments in support of it, so they would naturally agree with it because that’s all they hear, so they wouldn’t know otherwise. But, if they took the time to see and hear the opposing arguments, to look at the history of socialism in action and its outcomes, to see how it affects the motivation and incentives to produce things of wealth compared to capitalism’s motivations and incentives, they would quickly realize that it isn’t the right way for society to go. In fact, if they approached the subject from an objective standpoint, they would have to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that socialism doesn’t actually work, and never has.
That’s what this article series is about. I’m going to try to give you information that you need to make a more accurate and informed opinion concerning the socialism vs. capitalism debate. As a person of reason, I am one of those people that have concluded beyond a reasonable doubt that socialism doesn’t work as planned and so I don’t support it. And, as a person who does care about the well-being of others, I’ve concluded that socialism reduces people’s well-being, so I don’t support it.
For those of you reading this today who vilify us, and think we’re evil because we don’t support socialism, I want you to keep something in mind: If we thought it worked, we’d be all over it like an American is with his or her local NFL football team, or like a dog with its rawhide bone. But, based on the evidence, many of us have concluded that it just doesn’t work. So please don’t vilify us and hate us, because our opposition is based on reason, not something blind and ideological like you think it is. My hope is that you will objectively look at this evidence and weigh it with your other reasons and come to the same conclusions about socialism as we do.
We have more than a century of data – we don’t have to approach the subject ignorantly.
Many of you people who support socialism treat it as if it’s an idea that has never been tried, and that “we just need to try it.” Or, you cherry-pick some small amount of data that seems to work in your favor while ignoring the mountain of evidence that makes it very clear that it doesn’t work as suggested. Or you have the idea that, “Yes, it’s never worked before, but that’s just because it wasn’t set up right! If we set it up right, I just know it will work this time!” (That’s the mindset of Nathan J. Robinson in his book Why You Should be a Socialist) Or, you look at Scandinavian-style democratic socialism and believe that it’s an example of socialism that’s successful, and want to copy that approach here in the United States, even though, in reality, even that approach failed in that it almost destroyed those countries’ economies, except for the fact that they caught it at the “last minute” and introduced conservative reforms that lowered taxes and reduced size of government, which helped their countries get back on track.
For those who claim that “we just need to try it,” the truth of the matter is that the twentieth century has been chock-full of many, many different socialist experiments utilizing every different kind of socialism in which you can imagine. We’ve had totalitarian communist-style socialism. We’ve had national socialism, also known as fascism (although the Nazi’s never referred to themselves as fascist, but only national socialist). We’ve had European and Scandinavian-style democratic socialism. We’ve had Yugoslavian-style market socialism. And we have everything in between. That means that we have more than a century of data and information on this subject, and based on that data we can determine matter-of-factly whether it worked in those “experiments” or not (which it didn’t).
In fact, even before the twentieth century, we’ve had several examples of socialism that were tried and subsequently failed. For example, in the nineteenth century, we had the Utopia, Ohio and New Harmony, Indiana experiments, which failed. And did you know that two of the earliest European colonies, in what would later become the United States, were experiments in socialism when they first began? Think about that – we have tried-and-failed socialist experiments in North America that date back more than 400 years!
In other words, we don’t have to approach the subject of socialism as if there’s no data; we can look at all this historical information and use it rather than starting from scratch. We can learn from others’ mistakes and gain valuable knowledge from them rather repeating the same mistakes.
If we learn from the mistakes and successes of others, rather than repeating those same mistakes, when it comes to applying socialism to our society, this presents a really big problem: there has never been a successful socialist experiment – they’ve all damaged and worsened the nations, or communities, that have tried them. This even includes European-style and Scandinavian-style democratic socialism – even that type of socialism left the countries that tried them worse-off than before they went down the socialist path. Widespread prosperity was replaced with widespread destitution.
With this in mind, I want you to go down and read the articles in this article series that deal with socialism, and why conservatives believe very strongly that it doesn’t work. We don’t oppose socialism because we don’t care about people, but because we do care about people, and look at socialism as something that hurts people.
If you need to, re-read the articles. Let us in the opposition explain to you why capitalism is not the guilty party, but socialism is. Capitalism is in fact innocent on all charges. And keep reading these articles until you let it all sink in, deep inside that intelligent mind of yours, that socialism doesn’t work.
