A new poll has found that 53% of Democrats have a favorable opinion of Socialism. While I find that astounding, it does explain a lot. And it prompts me to ask, “Who are we now?” That is, who are Americans at this point in our nation’s history?
A humorous aside: More than one informal, “man-on-the-street” poll has found that many young people think that Socialism is “spending time with your friends”(!).
Americans (defined as residents of the United States) have always been multi-ethnic, multi-faith, and multi-class. By that last, I mean economically; America has been host to a wide range poor to rich, but with opportunity born of freedom which allowed the most possible people to be upwardly mobile, resulting in a strong middle class as well as many self-made wealthy. In terms of culture, America is, nominally at least, classless, with no official lines of caste; no nobility and no permanent underclass.
Fiercely independent, Americans have, for most of our history, blazed trails, literally in crossing and taming a continent, but also figuratively in every field of human endeavor. Freedom gave rise to the optimism that we could do anything that needed doing. Our Judeo-Christian heritage taught us that hard work would be rewarded and sloth, would bring ruin and disgrace.
The recent poll, as well as the presidential election last month, represent a turning point in who Americans are. “Socialism” is a word that was for many years feared and hated by the majority of Americans, even though we have been on the slippery slope toward it for literally 100 years, ever since the institution of the income tax in 1913. In the “Fiscal Cliff” debate, President Obama is obsessed with the income tax rate for the highest income earners, but how many Americans know that the Constitution specifically forbids the income tax and that we did not have one at all for the first 137 years of our history?
“How did the Federal Government survive without an income tax?” we have to ask today, because we can’t conceive of all the programs of the government without it. But in the beginning it was the stated belief of the founders that the Federal Government would never make direct payments to individual American citizens! That’s how far we have moved toward Socialism since our founding. Today many, perhaps most, Americans consider the primary function of the Federal Government to administer assistance programs.
Central to the philosophy of Socialism and it’s near relatives (leftism, Progressivism, Fascism, and Communism) is the idea that it is right and proper for the government to take money from people who have earned it and give it to people who didn’t earn it, except to “need” it. “From each according to his ability; To each according to his need” is the Communist creed. But the propriety of redistribution is no longer where the battle is being fought in America. We have conceded that it is proper to redistribute wealth. We just argue about the rates.
Today, with millions on food stamps, dependent on the confiscated income of others for their daily bread, and millions more on one or another government assistance program, no longer are hard work and self reliance seen as the sure track to success and laziness certain to end in ruin. Today, it is becoming more and more evident that those who work hard, innovate and create jobs for others are anachronistic saps whose function is to be sucked dry by those who can’t be inconvenienced to contribute meaningfully to society. Half of the population pay nothing in income tax, because they “need” to keep their money, while those who have studied and worked to become high income earners and job creators are vilified and subjected to ever higher “progressive” tax rates.
The trend that we are on cannot continue, of course. At some point, the “makers” will stop making because it isn’t worth it if they cannot enjoy the fruits of their labor. Then the “takers” will be in a desperate situation. They will have neither the ambition nor the skills and experience to support themselves and they will be desperate. They will cry to their political leaders for help and their response will be to enslave those who know how to produce so that those who have no experience in productivity can continue their lives of idle luxury.
So, what of the future? Despotism is always then end result of Socialism, because those who must live off the productivity of others cannot allow the “others” to remain free.
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