You Cannot Embrace Socialism and Still Be American

The following is a guest post from Duane Lester of All American Blogger, where you can find other great articles. Sign up for their free RSS feed so you don’t miss a single post.

What is the spirit of America, and what does it mean to be an “American.” Perhaps I am old fashioned, but I think the American spirit exists in the blood, sweat, and tears of hard work, effort and the desire to achieve on the strength of self, with as little government interference as possible.

It is rugged individualism, yet it is also community. I know that sounds like a contradiction, but I’ll explain it.

An American is an individual. He is responsible for himself, and for his family. He works hard, uses his head and becomes a success, however he defines it. If he finds himself in some rough times, he turns to the community. Family, churches and charities are there to offer support, whether it be food, a place to rest his head, or simple reassurance that this too shall pass. They don’t have to. They want to. And he accepts their charity thankfully and puts it to use. He continues to move forward until he becomes a success. Once a success, he begins to give back to the community.

There was a man whose father was a traveling salesman. The father “expended considerable energy on tricks and schemes to avoid plain hard work.” The son, however, took a job at 16 as an assistant bookkeeper and vowed to give 10% of his wealth to charity upon retiring. His name was John D. Rockefeller and he ended up giving away $550 million.

But no one forced him to help. No one forced him to surrender property to another because a third party thought it was “fair.” That would be unAmerican. Property rights are sacred. Consider the words of one of our Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson:

“To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father’s has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association–’the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.’”

In Jefferson’s mind, it was unacceptable to force you to surrender your property so that another could have it out of “fairness.” He makes it very clear. No one, no man nor agent of government, should take from one to give to another because it is felt that one has too much and another too little, even when faced with a tragedy.

Col. Davey Crockett explains how he was educated on this principle, from a constituent of his who said he would never vote for Crockett again because he voted to give $20,000 to residents in Georgetown who had suffered from a fire. He was told:

In the first place, the government ought to have in the Treasury no more than enough for its legitimate purposes. But that has nothing to do with the question. The power of collecting and disbursing money at pleasure is the most dangerous power that can be entrusted to man, particularly under our system of collecting revenue by a tariff, which reaches every man in the country, no matter how poor he may be, and the poorer he is the more he pays in proportion to his means. What is worse, it presses upon him without his knowledge where the weight centers, for there is not a man in the United States who can ever guess how much he pays to the government. So you see, that while you are contributing to relieve one, you are drawing it from thousands who are even worse off than he. If you had the right to give anything, the amount was simply a matter of discretion with you, and you had as much right to give $20,000,000 as $20,000. If you have the right to give to one, you have the right to give to all; and, as the Constitution neither defines charity nor stipulates the amount, you are at liberty to give to any and everything which you may believe, or profess to believe, is a charity, and to any amount you may think proper. You will very easily perceive what a wide door this would open for fraud and corruption and favoritism, on the one hand, and for robbing the people on the other. No, Colonel, Congress has no right to give charity. Individual members may give as much of their own money as they please, but they have no right to touch a dollar of the public money for that purpose.

We have drifted away from the principles taught to Col Crockett, the principles this country was founded upon.

On this founding principle sits my premise. Socialism does not fit into America in any way, shape or form. Socialism is the government sanctioned genocide of the one minority not protected by liberalism: the individual. There is no individual in the collective. You do not have property, the collective does. You don’t get rewarded for your hard work, you get what the collective thinks you need. You don’t get to achieve, as there can be no one who stands out in the collective.

Winston Churchill said:

…a socialist policy is abhorrent to the British ideas of freedom. Socialism is inseparably interwoven with totalitarianism and the object worship of the state. It will prescribe for every one where they are to work, what they are to work at, where they may go and what they may say.

We have been slowly moving towards socialism. We are not there yet, but we are moving towards it every day. The government taxes people, meaning they seize their property, so that others may get food stamps, rather than going to a church run food bank. They seize property of those without children to ensure that other people’s children are taught according to guidelines established by the government. This is done for the “common good.” Socialists talk about spreading the wealth around because it would be “fair.” America is not about the redistribution of wealth. It is about creating the opportunity for others to create their own wealth.

Everything socialism stands for is the antithesis of what America stands for. And yet we continue to march down the road to serfdom. This should terrify those living in countries where America is the shining city on the hill. Places like Cuba, where people still risk their lives fleeing from socialist rule, in search of an American shore. I remember a story Ronald Reagan told in 1964.

He said:

Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, “We don’t know how lucky we are.” And the Cuban stopped and said, “How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to.” And in that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there’s no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.

The last stand on Earth is being overrun by the slow marching socialist hoards, moving under the banner of fairness. When it eventually falls, where will the downtrodden and persecuted of the world turn to for inspiration and freedom?

The only thing left will be the collective.
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