Don's Tuesday Column

      THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   Red Bluff Daily News   2/21/2023

Socialism is as socialism does—fail

First, greetings to a recent writer, Lloyd Brasch, “Editor for a Day” last week, for sharing some valuable experiences and insights that reflect local common-sense values of this “red” outpost in a “deep blue” state. Let us hear from you again.

Weeks ago, our now-Republican House of Representatives made a bold statement condemning the “Horrors of Socialism”; the response of 86 Democrats (44 percent of those voting) was basically “C’mon man, Socialism ain’t all that bad.” A “full court press” followed, as the left-leaning media chorus and even local voices told us that Republicans were creating the “s-word” bogeyman, demonizing the “socialist” blessings we already enjoy in schools and health care.

We can agree that much of the public school system, as well as major parts of America’s health care, reflect the inexorable injection of state control and monopoly. Questions should be asked, with an open mind: How are the results going? Can we compare the “socialist” approach to non-governmental private initiatives? What differentiates socialism from communism and its death toll of about 100 million over the last century? Is “socialism” one of the most destructive ideologies in world history?

Communism’s “god father,” Karl Marx, decried “utopian communism,” wherein all possessions and property were shared equally, as impractical; a “dictatorship of the proletariat” was needed to oversee the system. Someone, or some group, would necessarily direct it. Hence, the “all are equal but some are more equal than others” mentality, coined by George Orwell in “Animal Farm.” To Marx, socialism was the intermediate step to communism; the goal has always been to abolish capitalism.

The degree of state “ownership” is a trifling distinction. Whether entire industries are seized (socialists don’t create that which they take from others by force) or, as in the fascist version of socialism, the state simply exercises total control of privately held businesses and institutions—the effect is the same. People are not free to profit from the “fruits of their labor”. The state allows the illusion of ownership as long as the supremacy of the state’s rulers and directives is not questioned; see the Chinese Communist Party system.

America’s public schools range from abominable (cities like Baltimore where most children can’t read or do math at grade level even with bloated budgets), to just o.k., to shining examples of excellence (where’s Tehama County on that continuum?). Per-pupil spending has roughly tripled over decades with no discernible improvement in test scores; likewise, the numbers of teachers has remained fairly constant while administration and staff have tripled.

Boasts about public schools ignore private, religious and home-schooled students routinely performing better, often at a fraction of the cost; teachers’ unions fight tooth-and-nail to keep their monopoly on the tax dollars that could go to parents wanting their children better educated. The “Big Ed” socialized school system brooks no competition, and disallows parents using their own tax money to educate their children. Socialism means total control with often lousy results that parents are forced to accept, like “Gender” fantasies and racist Critical Race Theory.

Do we really need to compare “socialist” health care to its alternatives? The VA’s failures required allowing veterans to access private doctors and facilities. Medicare and Medicaid cannot live within their budgets; reduced reimbursements prompt doctors to refuse new patients. Obamacare’s a very poor example of cost-effective health care because high premiums keep most people away; few evaluate the so-called “Affordable Care Act” so as to not alienate the left.

Socialized health care always relies on the private sector: For Canada’s socialized system, it’s America’s doctors; for the U.K. National Health Service, it’s private health insurance and doctors, and “medical tourism”; North Korea and Cuba have socialized health care but you’ll never know their faults or deaths; their elites get special care while the masses suffer.

The COVID pandemic response is classic socialism/fascism: Mandated vaccinations with non-tested vaccines that provide no better protection than natural, infection-resultant immunity; side effects that can be life-threatening, especially to young adults; mandated mask compliance over the objective fact that masks produce no quantifiable protection;

Use of “Big Pharma” products that guarantee their massive profits and liability protection without proven efficacy; business, school, recreation, family, church and public assembly shutdowns that accomplished no verifiable results while subjecting supposedly “free” citizens to sanctions and legal abuse.

We have the massive commandeering of resources and citizen compliance in perpetuity for the endless, socialist boondoggles of “climate action” policies: So-called “renewable” (unreliable) wind and solar; uprooting our entire way of life from private, gas-fueled transportation to mass-transit and “non-polluting” electric vehicles (which still pollute from manufacturing to coal-fired power plants); denied gas utilities, forced electric heating and cooking; home and zoning restrictions and mandates.

It's predicated on temperatures that are not rising to any concerning degree, weather that hasn’t exceeded historical norms, sea levels that remain essentially unchanged, fires and droughts that differ little from millenniums of such events. Our stupid-smart leaders demand that we not question their debatable, government-funded research that only supports the climate alarmists’ vision of a dying, human-polluted planet requiring ever-greater taxes on our hard-earned money.

A hard “NO” to every socialist, fascist imposition on America’s freedom, liberty and “pursuit of happiness.” Their motto: You will own nothing, and enjoy it.