Fascism, Nazism, and communism are different streams flowing from the same spring — socialism. The communist branch of socialism alone killed far in excess of 100 million people in the last century. Fascists and Nazis added millions more. Why would Americans ever want it here?
Socialism is not just an economic system. It is a way of thinking — a philosophy of life and of government that diminishes the individual in favor of the collective. New York’s new socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, said in his inaugural address, “We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.”
That spells out the danger extremely well. The United States as a nation has traditionally seen society through the lens of the individual — not the other way around. We have been far from perfect in living out this ideal, but it is the philosophical basis of a society that has produced more freedom and prosperity than any other nation in history. We have held that what’s best for individuals will, in the long run, be best for society. Socialism requires a nation to look first to the collective. When that happens, individuals become mere cogs in the machine.
You can dress up the word “individual” by putting “rugged” in front of it, but that’s just semantics. The basic American idea is that the rights of the individual must be protected from the tyranny of the crowd. We have laws protecting society, but they are carefully written and executed to protect individual rights.
In the United States, those who call themselves socialists often point to Sweden as their example. But they have a problem. Sweden is not a socialist country. It has a free market economy with massive companies such as Volvo, IKEA, and Ericsson. Companies own and operate the factories — not the government or “the workers.” They have millionaires and billionaires. The wealthy pay high taxes, but so do members of the middle class. Sweden finances a large welfare system with taxes generated by free enterprise. That is not socialism. Their economy is driven by free enterprise rather than government control of production and distribution. It is not collectivism.
Daniel Di Martino, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, escaped communist Venezuela as a young man. He recently testified before Congress on this topic. “People… think they’re voting for Norway, Sweden, or Denmark,” he said, “when they’re actually voting for Venezuela.”
Oddly enough, some socialists tout Germany’s National Socialist German Workers’ Party during the 1930s and 40s — the Nazis — as an economic success. But to maintain such “success,” Hitler had to confiscate the wealth of individuals, especially people he didn’t like, such as Jews. He also sustained Germany’s economy through the invasion and plunder of other nations.
In the Bible, because of extraordinary circumstances, the community of Christians in Jerusalem held property in common. But keep reading. In the rest of the New Testament, Christians elsewhere raised money to support the poor Christians in Jerusalem. In Jerusalem, they fought over who got what, while depending on the generosity of Christians living in free-market economies for even basic necessities.
Socialism is a formula for misery, poverty, and, ultimately, the rule of an oppressive elite. A well-known antisocialist of the early 20th century, John Basil Barnhill, famously said, “When the people fear the government there is tyranny, when the government fears the people there is liberty.” Do Americans want to be taken care of at mere subsistence levels, or do they want to continue to thrive? Does America want liberty — or does it want death?
