Why’s it so hard to get rid of socialism? Consider the history of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
The Seventh-day Adventist Church formed out of the movement known today as the Millerites. In 1831, a Baptist convert, William Miller, was asked by a Baptist to preach in their church and began to preach that the Second Advent of Jesus would occur somewhere between March 1843 and March 1844, based on his interpretation of Daniel 8:14. A following gathered around Miller that included many from the Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian and Christian Connection churches. In the summer of 1844, some of Miller’s followers promoted the date of October 22. They linked the cleansing of the sanctuary of Daniel 8:14 with the Jewish Day of Atonement, believed to be October 22 that year. By 1844, over 100,000 people were anticipating what Miller had called the “Blessed Hope”. On October 22 many of the believers were up late into the night watching, waiting for Christ to return and found themselves bitterly disappointed when both sunset and midnight passed with their expectations unfulfilled. This event later became known as the Great Disappointment … After the disappointment of October 22 many of Miller’s followers were left upset and disillusioned. Most ceased to believe in the imminent return of Jesus. Some believed the date was incorrect. A few believed that the date was right but the event expected was wrong. This latter group developed into the Seventh-day Adventist Church. [Source: Here]
Notice the key here: “The Great Disappointment” followed by … a doubling down on faith.
Socialism has likewise been full of disappointments, many of them more obvious and self-refuting than those experienced by Adventists.
Communism came to a spectacular and climactic crash with the fall of the Soviet Union, the ultimate Communist state, in 1991.
In today’s remaining Communist states, most notably North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela, starvation, material deprivation and intellectual/speech strangulation are facts of daily life, and all of the world knows.
Whenever you form a conclusion based entirely on faith, hope or anything other than the evidence of the senses giving rise to rationally defensible concepts, you will tend to find this phenomenon of disappointment followed by a doubling down on the prior, erroneous belief. People suffering from this irrationality lack the corrective internal programming which in reasonable, honest and healthy people states, “Oh, I guess I was wrong. Back to the drawing board.”
What compounds the problem is that Communism and socialism are primarily the beliefs of the rich, politically powerful and intellectually articulate. The media, culture and “Deep State” elites, fueled by the likes of Communist-Socialist (and possibly never reformed Nazi) George Soros as well as his comrades in media, entertainment and academia, are the ones doubling down on their faith in socialistic and communal systems as an alternative to free minds, free markets, private property and the morality of individualism and political liberty.
They hate these things because they have never given up on the collectivism and socialism of their dreams.
Just as Seventh-day Adventists were never stopped by the fact their absurd prediction for October 22, 1844, never came true, today’s unreformed Communists-socialists-collectivists will not give up until they have the whole world living under the force of their views. Because, unlike the Adventists, their ideology is not merely one of supernatural faith, but one of here-and-now, earth-driven force. Hence their brutality and intolerance for dissent exhibited by political correctness, violence when conservatives speak on campuses, Antifa violence, false and arbitrary allegations against President Trump, and all the rest.
Socialistic leftism is a religion, but it’s a religion of the fist. And rest assured that no amount of dissension – raised by Donald Trump and his supporters, nor anyone else – will ever cause them to roll over.
People flourish and thrive under the economic benefits and intellectual liberation of freedom, while they perish and flounder under socialistic dictatorships of all kinds. Even democratic socialist states, as in Western Europe, perish from a gradual economic decline fueled by the infestation of religious fanatics seeking to mooch off their long-since-bankrupted welfare states.
No matter to the elites. Like the Seventh-day Adventists who experienced their disappointment when Christ did not appear on October 22, 1844, they will never, ever give up. At least not until they bring us all down with them.
It’s up to lovers of freedom, liberty and individual rights to stop them.
Follow Dr. Hurd on Facebook. Search under “Michael Hurd” (Rehoboth Beach DE). Get up-to-the-minute postings, recommended articles and links, and engage in back-and-forth discussion with Dr. Hurd on topics of interest. Also follow Dr. Hurd on Twitter at @MichaelJHurd1