“When I was five,” writes Chinese-American Ying Ma, “my kindergarten instructor in China asked me to stop painting my nails. She explained that none of my classmates had access to nail polish, so I should try not to make them feel bad. I was too young to understand: Socialism had made China too poor to afford basic goods like nail polish.
Today, the Democratic Party’s proud socialists simply choose not to understand: Socialism brings equality, but it is the equality of scarcity.
When I was asked to stop painting my nails, I lived in Guangzhou, the third largest city in China. It was the early 1980s. After decades of totalitarian chaos and failed socialist experiments, my native land was finally beginning to open up to the outside world and undertake economic reforms.”
Some of us ask: “How long would the typical American today last during a widespread and prolonged power outage, or Internet outage?” Millions of people would have to put down their phones and find something else to do.
Far worse, however, is the poverty that socialism brings with it. Grocery store shelves wouldn’t have the things you expect. Hospitals would be disaster areas, far worse than the frustrations people experience now. Roads would be in ruins. Why? Because when there’s no money, nothing can happen. And when there’s nobody to create and sustain the wealth in society we all take for granted — everything fails.
China’s a great example. China is not, by any stretch, a free country. Citizens have no First or Second Amendment. And it’s more of a state-run capitalism than actual capitalism. But economic reforms were enacted after decades of command-and-control socialism, and the results have been miraculous. Yet there’s no miracle behind capitalism, or even semi-capitalism. It’s all very real, logical and tangible. It’s quite simple: When human beings are accountable for their actions, and permitted to keep all (or even most) of what they earn, they perform far, far better than when only permitted to work for the government.
Only in the United States do we call it “progressive” to move toward an economic and social system where nail polish is in such short supply that young girls are not permitted to use it, lest they hurt the feelings of other little girls. It’s not merely that everyone is poor under socialism. It’s that no wealth can be created. Because people will not create things like Amazon, American Airlines, eBay, Apple, your favorite clothing lines, your favorite cars, your favorite sports and entertainment teams, and all the rest — not if they’re not allowed to make a profit. Would you?
The level of ignorance among leftists and leftists-by-default–millions of young people who will vote for totalitarian blockheads like Bernie Sanders and AOC–is staggering.
If they hated all material wealth, it would be one thing. It would make sense for them to embrace socialism.
But the socialism we find in America comes from two places. Both are psychological. One is envy, and the other is neurotic guilt. There are two types of people that embrace socialism, at least in America. One are the types who don’t have a lot, and who feel they never will have a lot, or who perhaps (deep down) don’t want to do the work required to gain a lot. They’re envious, they’re bitter, and they want others to suffer their fate. The others are the already wealthy who, regardless of how they attained their wealth, feel it’s not fair they have more than others. Rather than giving their money away, they demand a social system which prevents others, in effect, from ever having what they have, or even from ever having anything at all. It’s a neurotic form of psychological atonement. “I’m bad for having all this. If I support redistribution of wealth, that makes me a little better.”
Many of us who advocate the free market and individual rights try to understand why socialism once again is gaining ground in — of all places — the United States of America, the only country on earth that remained mostly capitalist during decades of Nazism, Soviet Communism, and all the rest of the miserable, large-scale experiments with social control.
If you examine the psychology of envy and unearned guilt, you’ll have your answer. We’re not going to get rid of socialism, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Occasional-Cortex and all the rest UNTIL we challenge the unearned guilt and envy of millions of citizens who suffer from these problems. The problem is psychological and ultimately ideological, since human emotions are based upon ideas. We are stuck at the ballot box until we first get to the subconscious. I see no other way out of this mess.
It would be stunningly sad if America, the most moral and successful society in all of human history, went down in a frenzy of psychological neurosis and disorder. But as I look around today, that’s exactly what I see happening. None of it has to be so. America was not preordained. It happened because people wanted it. It can rise again too–but only if people want it.
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