By Dan Clements 01/13/2009
On my show today ‘BACK TO BASIC’ a discussion ensued in the chat room about what socialism is. Too many people try to define socialism to their own likes. My listeners know that I define words and ideas from a standard source. If we are talking about the Bible, I use the Bible. If we are talking about the U.S. Constitution, then we go to the founding documents. If we are talking about political ideologies, we need to go to an encyclopedia or dictionary to define these terms.
First let’s define what socialism is. Merriam Webster defines socialism as
1: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
2 a: a system of society or group living in which there is no private property b: a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state
3: a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done.
Ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods is what this country is heading for if we don’t do something now. Most people don’t realize that what president G W Bush and the U.S. congress did in 2008 was a text book example of socialism. Anytime a government involves itself beyond regulation and oversight and injects itself into the day to day operations of the free market, picking winners and losers, it takes a step toward control of the free market and attempts to use social control of production and distribution of goods. This is exactly what is happening in America.
Healthcare was brought up on the show and this is a perfect example of the government attempting to control the distribution of goods and services the healthcare industry has to offer. There is not one example outside of the military, where government intervention into the free market has been a success as most people define success. And if we continue down the path that we are on now, our healthcare system will be no better than any other country that has socialized medicine.
The problem with socialized medicine is that the government first gives healthcare away, and then when the cost gets to high then they need to start rationing healthcare and picking and choosing the winners and losers, literally in life’s lottery!
And the only way the government can give us all healthcare, is to tax ‘WE THE PEOPLE’ so they can have the money to buy the votes of those citizens who think it’s a good idea to live off the backs of others.
If you want healthcare in America, go out, work and either get healthcare as part of your benefit package, or pay for it out of pocket. You say you can’t afford healthcare out of pocket? Then look at your finances and prioritize. Do you need to take that 2-3000 dollar vacation each year? Do you need to trade in your car every year to keep up with the Jones? How often do you eat out? The bottom line is if you really wanted healthcare, you would find a way to get it.
From my point of view, socialism is about control and staying in power. Through socialism, votes are bought by promising to take care of people in their daily lives. Socialism looks at the country as an entity in and of itself. It fails to see a country as a group of individuals.
When you as the government give to the citizens, something they can go and earn on their own, you diminish the whole not only on a national level, but on an individual level because we as a people stop learning from failure. Socialism does not allow failure; it seeks to take failure out of the equation of life. It’s like giving someone the wrong treatment for gangrene, if not treated and taken care of it will kill the whole body not just a limb! If we are not allowed to fail and learn from our failure, we will die as a people, because we will not know how to handle true diversity. Socialism is gangrene to any country and must be removed or the country will die!
We need to get back to the U.S. Constitution and start allowing Americans to fail and learn from that failure. Sometimes this can be hard to let people fail, but without the incentive or possibility of failure, we stagnate as a people and then die as a country!
Dan Clements is a member of the Constitution Party and the host of BACK TO BASIC a Christian/political internet talk show. You can listen to Dan live from 10am-12 noon EST. M-F at www.blogtalkradio.com/dan-clements and www.constitutionalwarrior.com
