“I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”
I watched about thirty seconds of last night’s Democratic debate. Right after Michael Bloomberg tried, unsuccessfully, to tar and feather Bernie Sanders with the “Vladimir Putin is supporting you” media reports, Elizabeth Warren, ever the opportunist, squeezed into the opening. She didn’t criticize or pillory Bernie. Instead, she made the claim that, while she would be a better President, she and Bernie are still teammates aiming for the same prize – dethroning Donald Trump. It was pandering at its most magnificent. She all but said she was lobbying for a Vice-Presidential nod in a comrade Bernie Sanders for President campaign.
Will it work? I don’t know. Senator Warren is quite clever. She’s as Caucasian as Caucasian can be, but somehow managed hoodwink a prestigious Ivy League school with her claim of Native-American ancestry.
While I only watched that brief snippet, from what I read this morning it appears that the rest of the debate was a real slobberknocker.
I’m sure the campaigns will continue to either delight or exasperate the pundits as things progress.
Beyond the campaigns, however, I’m digging a bit deeper into the nuts and bolts of the political climate in America, particularly the sentiments of the nation’s young. In an April, 2019 Gallup poll, “58% of US residents ages 18 to 34 think “some form of socialism” would be a good thing for the country, while only 37% think it would be a bad thing.” A Harris polls conducted the same month found that “nearly half of the 18- to 44-year-olds surveyed said they would rather live in a socialist country than a capitalist one.”
How can this be? I’m really mystified.
I’m a capitalist at heart today. My reading, with its comparisons between socialist and capitalist systems, and experience have brought me to this place.
I’ve read the works of John Locke, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, and others. While there’s a lot of information between the lines of these men, a few critical ideas of how the opposing systems operate stand out. In his Second Treatise on Government, written in 1689, John Locke maintained that property rights and individual liberty are linked. In a study produced for the Hoover Institution, political scientist Peter Berkowitz condensed Locke’s views this way “The right to property entails control, not subject to the dictates of other human beings, over properly acquired land and objects as well as over oneself, including one’s thoughts, actions, and body. It derives, according to Locke, from “the property every individual has in his own person; this nobody has any right to but himself.” It follows, he argues, that “[t]he labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his.” From that point, Locke argued that governments are needed to ensure, as much as humanly possible, that the intersection of millions of units of individual freedom work cooperatively for the good of the society as a whole. This is where we in America get our idea of a limited government. We have a system that acknowledges that in any society there are, and will be, competing personal and economic interests. Our founders wisely deemed that the governing system of a free people must balance this competing interests. That is one of the primary reasons we have a government system with three distinct branches, each of which has its rights and responsibilities outlined in order to guard against power being concentrated in one person or a cabal. As James Madison put it in Federalist 51, But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. (my emphasis added)
In addition to his “Treatise on Government,” John Locke also wrote extensively about religious liberty and education. The crux of his commentary on these elements of a free society were two-fold – first, that no government had the right to regulate belief and second, that the purpose of education was to be a vehicle in the formation of free men and women.
Even with its excesses and inequities, capitalism does work for everyone. It really does, Socialists claim that it doesn’t work at all. In a recent essay, John C. Goodman, economist and CEO of the Goodman Institute for public Policy Analysis, wrote the following description of what many socialists believe – “Capitalism is sometimes described as institutionalized selfishness, while socialism is often described as institutionalized altruism.”
This is the crux of the socialist system, according to socialists. It’s altruism, plain and simple. But, when you strip away the veneer of altruism, something entirely different emerges. It’s envy and greed far worse than anything capitalists have ever imagined. Early on in his writing, Karl Marx claimed that capitalist systems constantly exploit the working class. The history of mankind, Marx contended, was a constant class struggle, with the bourgeoisie, the capitalists and factory owners, oppressing the workers. What was the solution to the problem? Simple. Government would take over every aspect of a nation’s economy. John Goodman put it this way – “Under socialism, the government does much more than set prices. It determines what will be produced, how it will be produced, where it will be produced and under what circumstances people will be able to consume what is produced.”
When the two systems are compared in terms of morality and ethics, the really significant difference between the two becomes clear. In his 1940 masterwork “Darkness at Noon,” Hungarian author/journalist Arthur Koestler dug deeply into the belly of socialim’s beast and painted a vivid picture of what really undergirds that system. It’s not a pretty picture. At one point in the novel, a former Soviet official named Rubashov has been imprisoned for having abandoned the revolution’s principles. He’s being interrogated by a former friend named Ivanov, who is still loyal to the system. Rubashov is trying to resist the urge to admit guilt and face a show trial, but is having great difficulty. Ivanov is a clever interrogator and finds a way to tell Rubashov that in order for him to be true to his principles he must admit his guilt and see that the socialist way is the only way. It may seem cruel and inhumane, but Ivanov explains it’s the only way for the revolution to succeed. Christianity has failed and the socialist revolution must be pitiless in its tactics so that the aim of heaven on earth will be realized. It’s at this point, Ivanov lays out the differences between Christianity and socialism clearly: “There are only two conecptions of ethics, and they are at opposite poles. One of them is Christian and humane and declares the individual to be sacrosanct, and asserts that the rules of arithmetic are not be applied to human units. The other starts from the basic principle that a collective aim justifies all means, and not only allows, but demands, that the individual should be in every way subordinated and sacrificed to the community – which may dispose of it as an experimentation or a sacrificial lamb.” (page 160)
There you have it. Armed with a utopian instinct, the world’s great socialists claimed all that was needed to fix things was to abolish property rights, turn over control of everything to the government, eliminate religion, crush any dissenting views, and educate the young in the virtues of the socialist state. It’s a tall order and those in the movement’s vanguard must be merciless in their efforts to realize socialism’s goals.
Why, then, are the young so enamored with Bernie and socialism? Deception has placed a dark, dark veil over their minds, eyes, and hearts and Bernie is quite good in the art of deception. He rails constantly about the way billionaire fat cats are stealing from the poor and promises he will make everything right under his socialist umbrella. It’s a really personal call, aimed at the envy that lurks in the heart of every one of us. It’s covetousness elevated to becoming a noble principle. It’s making lusting for what someone else owns a virtue. It’s truth turned on its head and, apparently, it’s working.
The truth is, socialism doesn’t work. It never has. It never will. Bernie can talk glowingly about Denmark and Sweden, but he knows they’re not socialist countries. Then, a breath after extolling the Danes and Swedes for a system they don’t have, he launches in to lavish praise for Stalin and the soviets, Fidel Castro, and Mao, and other bloody tyrants for their contributions in creating utopia on earth.
Experience has taught me that not one whit of what Bernie says bears up under the scrutiny of historical events. If socialism is as utopian as he claims, why are so many fleeing from the liberation the socialists say they’re offering. I served a tour of duty in Vietnam from 1965 to 1966. It was a singularly unpleasant chapter in my life. Ten years after I left, in April, 1975, North Vietnamese tanks swept in to Saigon. In the days after that, thousands of desperate South Vietnamese crowded into flimsy junks and launched themselves into the South China Sea. According to socialist dogma, they should have been celebrating their liberation. Didn’t they know the Vietnamese bourgeoisie had been overthrown and they could now lose their chains of oppression? Apparently not, because they preferred death or a miraculous rescue to a socialist utopia. The same question could have been asked about the masses of East Germans who risked life and limb to escape a soviet utopia.
Socialism brings nothing but misery, repression, and fear. Years ago, Nancy and I hosted a young student from the Republic of Moldova for what eventually became an almost five year stay with us. She’d come to us as part of a State Department program for young students from recently liberated soviet “republics.” I remember her first night with us quite well. She’d had a long, long journey that was complicated by a complete power blackout in New York that left her in a dark hotel for two days, waiting for the power to come back on so she could proceed to Wichita to meet us. When she finally arrived in Wichita, she found that the airline had lost her luggage. She had nothing at all. I wondered as we walked along how she must have felt. Had she left the third world only to come to another version of that same third world or worse? After we made arrangements for the airline to deliver our luggage to our hometown as soon as they found it, we drove 100 miles to Emporia, where we lived. Nancy and I took her to Wal-Mart to get some of the essentials their airline had lost. When Nancy took her to the toothpaste aisle, tears welled up in her eyes. In the former soviet republic where she lived there was no such thing as choice, but in America she now had a myriad of choices. Perhaps you may think that’s a small thing, but you’d be dead wrong. In the soviet utopia there was no such thing as choice. The soviets made sure of that. They ruled every aspect of Moldovan life – every aspect. She adjusted to American life and applied herself diligently to the task at hand. She succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. Today, that young woman is living in California. She’s earned a Masters’ degree in business, has a great job, has gotten married to a remarkable man, and has two of the most stunningly beautiful children I’ve ever seen. How did she get from Moldova to where she is today? She saw an opportunity and took a hold of it. She knew what America, freedom, and a fair chance to succeed were open to her. And she took it.
If you ever get to meet you, feel free to ask her if she feels oppressed by America’s bourgeoisie. You’ll get an earful; I guarantee it.
One last thing before I move on. Bernie claims he’s against the idea of dictators and tyrants. He’d never kowtow to such evil. In this case, he’s deceiving himself. As F.A. Hayek astutely observed in 1944, once property rights are taken, individual liberty, religious freedom, and limited government eventually go with them. It always happens.
But, there’s something else the socialists haven’t counted on. Close to the end of his Hoover Institute essay, Peter Berkowitz hit the nail right on the head with this gem: “Marx wildly underestimated the self-correcting powers of liberal democracies and free markets. He and his legions of followers failed to grasp the capacity of liberal democracies to acknowledge injustice, reform institutions to better serve the public interest, and pass laws that would bring the reality of political and economic life more in line with the promise of individual rights and equal citizenship.”
I’ve now left the most important thing about the defects of socialism till last. The foundations of socialism are built on what Jesus called “sand.” Any system that’s built on envy, greed, or covetousness is doomed to failure. In fact, the only way that socialism has managed to hold power for as long as it has in so many places, is the terror apparatus that inevitably comes with it.
Thankfully, not all of us have succumbed to Bernie’s siren song. There are a lot of us who don’t feel the compulsion to rail at billionaires, fat cats, or the bourgeoisie. We’ve learned, or are learning to be content in whatever state we find ourselves. Some years ago now, Nancy and I took an anniversary trip to eastern Kentucky. It was as delightful as it was instructive. We spent a couple of nights in a tiny community called Rugby, which was founded in 1880 as a utopian community by a man named Thomas Hughes. Hughes was an Englishman who was in the unfortunate position of being a second son, which meant he had no land or title to live on. His solution was a utopia where second sons would live in a soclialist utopia, free from the ills of Victorian England. By 1887 the experiment had collapsed under the weight of lawsuits over land titles and an aversion to hard work.
There was another interesting stop along the way, in a small Mennonite community called Muddy Pond. While I could never say that Rugby was instructive in the right sense of the word, I could say that Muddy Pond was both delightful and instructive. We didn’t spend a huge amount of time there, but it was more than enough to fill my senses and my spirit. Our first stop was a Mennonite outlet store that sold handcrafted quilts, sorghum syrup and pies, clothing, handmade wooden furniture, jams, jellies, and artwork. The folks who ran the store were absolute joys to be around. As we left, I saw a sign that really struck me. In America’s big cities, at Wal-Marts or other large department stores, one often sees a sign that lets potential thieves know that “shoplifters will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.” The Mennonite sign had the same intent, to deter possible thieves, but at its heart it was a far different approach to the big cities, It read, very simply: “The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.”
It was a Mennonite way of saying, “I’m not going to spy on you, but if you are tempted to take something that doesn’t belong to you, you need to know that God himself is watching everything you do. There may be a few people who could steal under those circumstances, but I think there would be very few indeed. I’m also sure that the itchy fingered might also get a gentle reminder from God himself before they give in to the temptation. “Don’t forget to pay for what you just put in your pocket. These good folks have worked hard to provide a good product and they also have families to feed.”
As I left the store I saw a young man sitting on a clump of rocks, watching a horse go around in circles while he held ever so lightly on the horse’s reins. The process was quite simple, maybe even a bit primitive, but it worked. The young man just sat and contemplated as the horse ground out sorghum. I decided to strike up a conversation with him, figuring he was just another Mennonite, perhaps poorly educated, doing something in keeping with his level of ambition and education. I couldn’t have been more wrong. After exchanging a few pleasantries, I discovered that he had actually earned a PhD in English Literature and simply enjoyed working with his horse to produce an exceptional product. I expressed my utter surprise and then asked him why he wasn’t doing something more in keeping with his level of education, like teaching at a prestigious university. He reminded me that Jesus himself, when tempted by the devil to turn stones into bread, answered, “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” He smiled and reminded me that nothing he’d ever learned in English literature could ever top the lesson from that very short Bible verse.
He was so right.
There are practical reasons that socialism is, and always will be, a failed system. First of all, it cannot even produce the good it boasts that it can. It has never produced a utopia. In fact, it has killed millions and millions and added immeasurably to the agony of millions more who have had to suffer in its gulags and re-education camps. Second, it has absolutely nothing to do with liberation. It is all about subjugation, masquerading as liberation. Third, and most important, it is destructive of the human spirit. It is a soul killer from beginning to end. It has no moral underpinning whatsoever.
Where to from here? While I’m sure that Bernie and his followers wouldn’t listen to what I believe is wise advice, I’ll offer it anyway. Read the 73rd Psalm. It was written by a Levitical singer named Asasph during the reign of Israel’s King David about a thousand years before the birth of Jesus. Like Bernie and so many socialists, he railed at the fat cats of his day, he looked around and lamented. He “envied the arrogant and prosperous,” perhaps with good reason. The more he thought about it, the angrier he became. The rich are boastful and proud. They have no burdens; their hearts are callous. They scoff and speak with malice. They’re carefree and their wealth increases. As I survey the American landscape I think I could easily find myself succumbing to the anger and futility. Asaph didn’t stop there. He went on till he could take no more. “In vain have I kept my heart pure; in vain have I washed my hands in innocence,” he laments. It’s only when he hits rock bottom that Asaph’s epiphany comes – “When I tried to understand all this, it was oppressive to me, till I entered the sanctuary of God; then I understood their final destiny.Surely you place them on slippery ground; you cast them down to ruin. How suddenly are they destroyed, completely swept away by terrors!”
Envy and greed are, indeed, slippery ground.
There is an answer in the end. There really is. It’s a matter of faith. The time will come, as the prophet Isaiah said, when “Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain.”
That day is coming and it won’t be ushered in by Bernie Sanders or any other political Svengali. It will be ushered in by God himself. We who wait in faith in hope will one day be citizens of that new Jerusalem, a city whose builder and maker is God himself. Its magnificence dwarfs anything that Bernie Sanders and the socialists could ever conjure up. It will be a city where justice prevails, where love and brotherhood are the watchwords, and eternal joy will be the norm. That day will really come, I know it. Therefore, I have no reason to covet what others may have. I have no reason to be downcast.I have no reason to embrace a false utopia when the real one is coming.
Maranatha!