DISTURBING TRENDS
By Bonnie M. Parsley
According to the 2019 poll taken by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, 70% of Millennials would likely vote for a socialist. The same poll showed that support for capitalism has declined among this group in just the past year. This is terrifying. This alarming statistic shows the total failure of our schools and universities to educate students on the reality of socialism/communism/collectivism.
As we approach Thanksgiving, polls such as this makes us wonder how many young people understand and are grateful for the great gift of freedom that our Constitution guarantees. The ignorance of our young people can only be surpassed by professors and teachers who have failed to teach about the millions murdered under Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and others.
How is it that we have reached a point where candidates running for president are openly calling for socialism? As those of us, who lived during the cold war, watch these candidates with their supporters cheering them on, we are horrified. They run their campaigns on giving out free college, free health care, and a guaranteed minimum income. They call for fairness and equality. They believe in the redistribution of wealth. Supporters of these ideas do not understand that freedom will be sacrificed if they win.
Anyone who has studied the history of socialism and its inability to bring economic security to a nation has learned that its record is one of extreme poverty for the masses while giving unlimited power to the government. Tyranny has been, and must be, the result. When governments have used the idea of equalizing economic outcomes in order to gain power, they are selling an idea that is anti-freedom and anti-human nature. People are not made to be robots. They are individuals with differing work ethics, different talents, and intelligence levels.
The Democrat Party has apparently not learned this history. In recent years they have moved so far to the left that they have become the Socialist Party in America. Our educational institutions have failed to impart the knowledge that sustain a free society. Americans have grown so apathetic, that we are losing our freedom. Many Americans have been so conditioned by “feel good rhetoric” and utopian idealism that they do not understand what is happening to the foundation of freedom that made our country the most prosperous nation on the planet. As our foundation of individual liberty, personal property, and free enterprise crumbles, our prosperity dwindles. As we become less prosperous, we become more vulnerable to outside threats.
In addition to the foundation, there are three things that have contributed to the success of the United States: imagination, invention, and competition. Since our founding, man has been free to reap the rewards of his hard work. It’s what spurred Edison, the Wright Brothers, and more recently, Steve Jobs, to create something that has never been imagined before. America has produced untold thousands of inventors and innovators that have added to our prosperity and our leadership in the world.
How many socialist countries have contributed as much to science, and invention as the United States? The one thing that socialist countries are known for is their military might. Soviet Russia took great pride in their military parades where they displayed their mighty weapons and enormous armies. You see the same displays in other socialist/communist countries. Other countries, who operate on a one party basis like Iran, Pakistan, and China repress freedom of thought. This leads to stagnation and spiritual death. A nation cannot progress when the government controls the people and stifles individual success and reward.
America needs to wake up. We are heading over the cliff to a quagmire of socialist doctrine. If we continue down this road it will mean the end of the American Spirit. We will be like so many nations before us–lost in an ideology that doesn’t work. An ideology that stifles imagination, punishes success, and drowns the will to succeed.
As we approach Thanksgiving, let us renew faith in our founding principles and be thankful for the freedoms we have enjoyed in this country for over two hundred years.. The freedom to express our individual talents and God given gifts has made us a nation to be admired. The world looks to America as an example of what can be accomplished when citizens are free. We must live up to our ideals and remain a beacon of hope for the entire world.
(Parts of this article have been excerpted from my book, Restoring American Exceptionalism.)
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