Polls indicate that most Americans led by the younger generations have a fuzzy, freakish, friendly feeling toward Socialism, proving that most young Americans are dumb as dirt. Additionally, it proves my generation did not do a good job rearing our own children. A 2019 Gallup poll found that over half of Americans believe some form of Socialism would be good for the country.

While 35 percent of respondents of the Data for Progress tracking poll believe “some form of Socialism is a good thing, a slightly higher percentage (38 percent) believe Socialism would be a bad thing in the United States. The remaining 27 percent of respondents report no opinion.” That is incredible. Only 38 percent see danger in Socialism! The 27 percent with no opinion will follow the money and freebies since they obviously have no moral, philosophical, or political problem with Socialism. However, British Prime Minister Thatcher understood government freebies saying, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” Then, it’s all over.

America, we have a problem.

Socialism kills. Demographer Rudolph Rummel estimated the human toll of twentieth-century Socialism to be “about 61 million in the Soviet Union, 78 million in China, and roughly 200 million worldwide.”

Socialism is the preliminary entrée to totalitarian Communism that advocates the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution by the community as a whole, usually through a centralized government. Socialists are less extreme and promise state control of the economy, bringing greater equality to everyone but don’t admit it will be at the expense of personal liberty.

The end result of democratic Socialism always means a bigger government with attending regulation and control. Since Socialism is a welfare government, it always results in high taxation, as seen in Sweden (53%), Norway (38%), Denmark (55%), etc. Most Socialist nations provide a guaranteed income, at least for the unemployed, free education including college, and free national health care with all its attendant problems. But then, nothing is free.

Since government knows best, they take control of the utilities. While Socialists don’t nationalize private businesses, they use regulations to avoid “exploitation” of the consumers. So, Socialists permit private ownership but seek to redistribute the wealth by forcing successful entrepreneurs to pay for all the “free” stuff.

We are told the collective (government) can do a better and more equitable job of providing the peoples’ needs than free enterprise; however, no one has proved that the government is supposed to do that. Most early Americans believed the government’s responsibility is to mint the money and provide for our safety against any enemy and let us take care of almost everything else.

But the era of big government has been with us for a long time. Politicians learned long ago that most people can be bought with the right goodies: cell phones, free rent, food stamps, free health care, guaranteed job, guaranteed minimum wage, chicken in every pot, etc. When hard times arrive, it is even easier to convince the citizens of the value of Socialism as they begin to think that maybe earlier generations were too hardheaded, stubborn, ignorant, etc.

More Americans support socialist goodies but reject Socialism proving they are idiots. They are playing mind games, thinking Socialism is not so bad if it is not called Socialism. But as Shakespeare said, “A rose by any other name is still a rose.” Americans split on whether we should have a free market economy or one that is government-controlled. They have forgotten that government is the great bungler, not the great leader or fixer.

Whatever the kind or degree of Socialism, it always works the same for the average guy: he pays through the nose. The guy on the street is the loser, while the top Socialist honchos run everything from the top. The plan is for everyone to live at the expense of everyone else, but that doesn’t work. The leaders skim the cream off the top, and you end up with skim milk.

That quickly gets sour.

Socialism is welfare, and welfare is Socialism and Socialism is Communism in amateur disguise. Whatever it is called, it is a totalitarian government with a heel on the neck of Americans. Ayn Rand was right when she declared, “The difference between a welfare state and a totalitarian state is a matter of time.”

But it starts with Socialism.

Russia was known as the “United Soviet Socialist Republic”; Germany was controlled by the “National Socialist German Workers’ Party.” The original Communist Party of Cuba formed in the 1920s but changed its name in 1944 to the “Popular Socialist Party” for political purposes—to confuse the voters.

Don’t be misled; Communists have planned for decades to make America an unfree nation beginning with Socialism then naturally morphing into Communism. Communism is simply the natural extension of Socialism. Whether Socialism or Communism, freedom is lost by the individuals for the “collective good.” The people surrendered everything to get a little. The old saying is true: if your government is big enough to give you everything you want, it is big enough to take everything you have.

Communism was developed by Karl Marx, who turned the various classes in Russia against each other. He taught democracy was the enemy of the working class and workers should unite and overthrow the privileged leaders permitting workers to rule. However, the workers ruled nothing and paid subservience to Communist overlords. That’s how it works.

In overthrowing capitalism, the free enterprise principle is lost. The new economy becomes controlled by the state, and industry is owned and managed by the government rather than by private individuals. Prices and wages are set and enforced by the state, and trade unions are forbidden, and banks are owned by the state. This happened under Marx’s leadership in Russia in the Russian Revolution in 1917 when Lenin and then Stalin also cracked down on individual liberty and removed all forms of democracy. Government bureaucrats even demanded production levels in industry and agriculture, even telling farmers what and how much to plant. Personal advancement was almost impossible. After all, everyone has to be equal—in misery, that is.

It would be highly worthwhile to investigate Stalin’s purposefully induced famine in Ukraine in 1932 and 1933 when about 4 million Ukrainians were starved to death. During this scheduled famine, The New York Times ridiculed the possibility of it, picking up a Pulitzer Prize for articles debunking the famine. Even Liberals demanded the Times return the prize, but they refused.

A quick definition of Communism is a loss of personal freedom and a massive amount of regulation, repression, and ruin to homes, churches, schools, industry, and society.

It is shocking that American capitalists, to their eternal shame, love commerce more than they loath Communism. The Chamber of Commerce no longer represents freedom, independence, entrepreneurship, but greedy crony capitalism. A good example is their support of flooding the states with uneducated, unsophisticated, and often un-American aliens to work the farms doing work “that Americans won’t do.” What they should say is “that Americans won’t do for starvation wages.”

But, facing starvation, most men will work to survive. That goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden.

When people have an abnormal desire for free stuff, they are on the slippery slope toward Socialism that often ends to Communism. However, it can branch into Fascism as it did in Germany and Italy. Most Fascists hate Communism, but it doesn’t make much difference to the enslaved people whether the heel on their neck is a Communist or Fascist heel.

Both Hitler and Stalin were tyrants who hated each other and killed many millions of innocent people. While both were called Socialists, Hitler hated Communism. Hitler, like his buddy Mussolini, was a Fascist, but, in the end, whether one lived in Russia, Germany, or Italy, he lived under totalitarianism.

The term “fascism” is derived from the word “fasces,” a bundle of rods about five feet in length containing an ax with the blade projecting, carried before Roman magistrates as an emblem of official power. In ancient Rome, the bodyguards of a magistrate carried fasces. It was adopted by Benito Mussolini to symbolize his Fascist movement. For many years, the fasces appeared on the reverse of the U. S. Mercury dime.

I define Fascism as a political philosophy that exalts a nation and often a race above the individual. It stands for a centralized, repressive government headed by a dogmatic, domineering, and dictatorial leader who usually takes control of various government agencies (especially the media) and controls private businesses. Opposition is usually forcibly suppressed, often beginning with labor unions and making strikes illegal.

Numerous wealthy capitalists have no love for freedom, free enterprise, and entrepreneurship since they have already taken advantage of those concepts to make their pile. They become crony capitalists and are not competent or honest enough to see that Socialism steals while Communism kills.

At this time, corporations are openly meeting and coordinating efforts to produce more “progressive” laws and encouraging government control of businesses—and that is clearly Fascism. Mussolini said, “Fascism should rightly be called corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power.” It is impossible to define Fascism to everyone’s satisfaction since it is like nailing jello to the wall.

Bloomberg reported April 11, 2021, on an extraordinary meeting of a group of 100 chief executives and other leaders of major U.S. corporations that “held an hour-long Zoom call on Saturday to discuss ways to push for greater voting access amid new restrictions enacted or pending in Georgia, Texas and other states.” The business leaders decided to promote the progressive agenda especially fighting the GOP’s effort to make voting more responsible. Of course, they use the word restrictive. They want to restrict or limit investment in cities and states that are not cooperative with progressivism. That would seem to make corporations a mirror government.

What a slippery slope!

The point is big business is making a connection with big government, a definite indication of Fascism. Whatever the label, you will have a foot on your face and pay the price if you are a producer. You had better get ready to “share” your hard-earned cash with the losers, and loafers, and the lackeys.

NYC Mayor de Blasio admitted, “I like to say very bluntly, our mission is to redistribute wealth.” He is a known Socialist, but many New Yorkers consider him a Marxist. Whatever, since Democrats have seized control of a once-great nation, de Blasio and Biden are trying to move the wealth from those who have it to those who do not have it.

Hail to the thief!

What’s-her-name Harris is one of the most dangerous politicians to ever press her snout into the public feeding trough. Her incredible statement should shock and anger every American when she says equal outcomes of government programs should be the goal of public policy. That statement makes every Communist in Russia, China, and Cuba stand up and cheer. No sensible person argues that any government program must treat everyone equally, but it is insane, ineffective, and impossible to guarantee equal results. That can’t happen because of the vast differences in people—their ambitions, aptitudes, their abilities; but she demands equal results!

It’s not only young Americans who are dumb as dirt.

Our government cannot refuse certain benefits to individuals because they are female, Hispanic, black, handicapped, uneducated, Muslim, Baptist, etc., since that would be unequal treatment contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment. Neither can any state or federal government promise that participating in a particular college or work program will result in the same income as any other participant.

After all, people have different abilities.

Harris said, “There’s a big difference between equality and equity.” True, but if any government promised definite results, then it would have to treat others unfairly to have the same results for everyone. A government mandate to promote equal results would give the government power to violate individual rights in order to achieve identical social results for all people.

Non-thinking Americans think they can kill the golden goose and still collect golden eggs. If they kill the free enterprise system (the goose), they will destroy the goodies it has produced (the golden eggs). We will end up back in the horse and buggy days, having to pull our own buggy.

And we may end up without a horse or a buggy, with only the buggy whip as a reminder of what we used to have.

(Dr. Don Boys is a former member of the Indiana House of Representatives who ran a large Christian school in Indianapolis and wrote columns for USA Today for 8 years. Boys authored 18 books, the most recent being Muslim Invasion: The Fuse is Burning! The eBook is available here with the printed edition (and other titles) at www.cstnews.com. Follow him on Facebook at Don Boys, Ph.D.; and visit his blog. Send a request to DBoysphd@aol.com for a free subscription to his articles, and click here to support his work with a donation.)