I had to re-read Sheri Levisay's Voices post on the Young Socialists Club at Roosevelt High School in Sioux Falls. At first, probably because someone made the same asinine comment on this blog a few days ago, I thought she actually believed this:
It’s a little bit too easy to shrug off the objections of some people to the Young Socialists Club at Roosevelt High School. Don’t they know the Cold War is over?
Then, after re-reading it a couple of times, I think she's just repeating for illustrative purposes the asinine comments of some really ignorant people.
For those who don't understand what I'm getting at, someone who makes an associative comment in this context about socialism and the demise of the Soviet Union is making the implication that socialism disappeared with the Soviet Union. Nothing could be further from the truth. Socialism, one of the flavors of Marxism, still thrives throughout the world, despite the demise of it's most virulent form in the Soviet Union.
Socialism, a more benign but still very destructive form of Marxism, is rampant in Europe. I lived in England for three years, so I've seen it up close. A National Health Service that is a pathetic method of delivering health care. The government taxes everything in sight to pay for all it's socialistic programs, including pets, outdoor water spigots on your home, and even TV. Their government owns or is heavily invested in rail (much bigger there than here) and their utilities (electric, oil and gas). Huge segments of the population live in government housing, even in small towns. The number of people they have on welfare (the dole) outnumbered ours by far, even before the Republican welfare reforms of the mid 1990s.
But we have a healthy (or rather, unhealthy) dose of it here in the United States. We have socialized medicine in Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, etc. We have our welfare programs, even though they've been cut back since the 1990s. We have Social Security. We have far too much government regulation and meddling here. The particularly sad thing about what we have here is that it is EXTREMELY rare that it is ever acknowledged or labeled as the socialism it is (it's apostles and the mainstream media realize it wouldn't rest as easy with the American public if we called it what it really is).
I don't give a lot of props to the Argus Leader, but I have to give them to Sheri for pointing out, for the moral equivalency apostles out there, one of the many critical differences between the Soviets and the free republics of the West: we didn't have to lock our people IN.
I also have to give her exceptional props for pointing out the dark truth about communism, along with the mention of the Black Book of Communism which documents the incredible crimes of communism:
The truth is out there, though. THE resource for the crimes against humanity committed in the name of Marxist regimes is “The Black Book of Communism”.
Many people know the number of people killed in Nazi concentration camps (14 million, 6 million of them Jews). But few realize that 100 million have fallen in the name of communism over the years, the largest portion being the 65 million who died in China’s Maoist revolution.
Finally, while I could not be more opposed to socialism and the advancement of that philosophy, I will at least give the Young Socialists Club props for being open and up front about what they believe and advocate. As I said above, most socialists in America avoid the label like the plague and Ebola combined.
I think it's great that the youth of Roosevelt High School will be able to examine socialism in the light of day. I believe that when most of them do, if they're intellectually honest about it's implications and effects, they will realize that socialism is devastating to productivity and the human spirit, and is antithetical to the U.S. Constitution and the American way of life. What they do with it then is up to them.
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