Mad Rant: Why I Hate Socialists

I do too, but I come at it from a different angle. At one time or another in my early 20s, I was a member of the First, Second, Third, and Fourth Internationals or their successor formations, plus a couple of anarcho-syndicalist organisations.

From The Mad Monarchist (15 June 2012)

Hate. I say, “hate” and I’m comfortable with it. I try not to toss that word around lightly but over the span of my life I have arrived at that firm conviction. This is not something I came to without thought. True, I was around during the Cold War when the “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics” were the big bad guys of the world. I remember emergency news bulletins about Soviet cruise missiles being moved into Eastern Europe. I remember a teacher telling us about what would happen if the Soviets hit San Antonio, Texas with a nuclear missile and I remember when the Berlin Wall came down. But, during that time, I never questioned or understood the ideological differences between NATO and the USSR, I never thought about socialism or capitalism. The Soviets were just the “bad guys” and that’s as far as it went. When I ventured into the world of higher education I had professors who sang the praises of socialism, Marxism and even communism. One admitted to being a communist and I’m sure he was not the only one; just the only one honest enough to say so. My natural inclination to go against the grain made me skeptical of their rosy picture of a socialist utopia.

After all, I could see as well as anyone how poor and miserable and oppressed people are in socialist countries like North Korea, Soviet Russia or Cuba. I was told that was because these people just didn’t understand socialism or do it correctly. That didn’t wash with me though. Surely, amongst all of the people of all the socialist movements from East Germany to Red China and the Soviet Union to Vietnam could not ALL have been mistaken or inept. I oppose socialism because socialism doesn’t work. But being opposed to something is not the same as hating something and I HATE socialists -even more than socialism itself in many cases. I have seen, as anyone can see, what effect socialism has had on countries all over the world. Their effort to make everyone “equal” is much older than Karl Marx and it has been misleading people, ruining lives and destroying countries for hundreds of years. Time after time history shows that the most murderous, totalitarian regimes in the world have had the word “socialist” in their name and promise equality, wealth redistribution and a classless society where everyone is blissfully the same.

Because of their drive for the (unobtainable) goal of “equality” socialists have historically been the avowed enemies of monarchy as well as traditional, organized religion. In just about every monarchy that has fallen in the Twentieth Century socialists of one variety or another have been at the forefront of bringing them down. Spain, Germany, Italy, Russia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, Mongolia, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia were all instances wherein socialists brought down existing, traditional monarchies and not one of those countries improved as a result of it. Of course, some people will point to modern monarchies which are, in Europe and Japan at least, often extremely socialist and yet the monarchy survives. I say, give them time. Even in these countries where monarchy survives it is the socialists that are invariably the ones who wish it were not so and are just waiting for their chance to bring the monarchy down. If there are those who are devoted monarchists, I am certainly glad, but given the history and principles of the socialist movement I don’t think I could ever trust them. It is hard to imagine how one could reconcile being a socialist and a monarchist but if they can, while I would be pleased, it still would not make me accepting of their other policies. Too much ruination has already flowed from those ideals.

This in itself tends to work against monarchies as history and even current events have shown. The state takes from those who have to give to those who have not. Soon those who have no longer have much or have left the country and so money must be borrowed to continue giving to those who have not. Eventually the well of credit runs dry, the bills come due and there is great pain and consternation as those who have come to depend on the state being generous with the property of others fear they may be forced to do without or (God forbid) become responsible for their own welfare. This invariably leads to attacks on the monarchy with all the usual slogans and tired lines of attack. ‘Who are they to get to live in a palace and go to fancy parties while the state only pays me enough to survive without having a job?’ It happened in Russia and it happened in France. Neither the Tsar nor King Louis were causing anyone to go hungry but the royals are always easy targets for those who stir up envy and class hatred. They do not see the lifetime of service, the numerous charities or anything like that; they only see someone living better than themselves and so raise the howl of “social(ist) justice” and “wealth redistribution” and the end of the “class system”. The fact that this has never ended up working out well for the least of those in society seems to make no difference.

I also have the case of the Native Americans and there are few things that infuriate me more than what has been done to the American Indians. I have mentioned this before as long-time readers will recall but the disgusting nature of it brings me to tears. Of course, many will say that socialism was not responsible for stealing land from the Indians, moving them against their will or massacring them if they resisted. If anything, that was the fault of the opposite of socialism; capitalism, right? To a degree, probably so. However, that was not the worst thing that was done to the Indians. Those Indians were faced by a far more advanced civilization with superior weaponry and so on, that fought them for their land and they lost. That is sad, but those Indians at least had their pride. They fought like lions and there is no shame in being beaten by a superior enemy. They lost their land but they didn’t lose their dignity, they fought to the last, went down in a blaze of glory and when treaties were broken it was their enemies who were dishonored and not them. But, then socialists came along who wanted to make up for all of that and they have killed the Native Americans with “kindness”. Their socialistic policies have robbed the Indians of their dignity and their pride and turned them into perpetual dependents, waiting for the government to drop some coins into their tin cup to survive. It is heartbreaking what such proud people have been reduced to. It is a simple fact that cannot be said often enough. There is no group in the modern United States that receives more government assistance than Native Americans and there is no group of people in this entire country that is worse off than they are. It is criminally despicable what has been done to them.

Finally though, what really infuriates me the most, what gets under my skin and bugs me half to death is the flagrant hypocrisy of the rich socialists. I’m talking about people like Michael Moore, a multi-millionaire who sides with the union but doesn’t hire union workers on his films, who condemns capitalism but goes to court to keep as much of his own money as possible. I’m talking about Oprah who so supported President Obama (peace be upon him) and his “spread the wealth” campaign while moving around the country from mansion to mansion, staying just long enough to avoid paying the full tax rate on each. I might also point to multi-billionaires like Warren Buffett, who supports raising income taxes on other people which will not effect him in the least because he pays himself no salary and so has no “income” in tax but … I think you get the picture.

I’m not trying to pick on these people personally. Oprah seems like a nice lady, I thought the one actual movie Michael Moore made (“Canadian Bacon”) was funny and Warren Buffett, well, I don’t really know enough about him to like or dislike him aside from the fact that he supports higher taxes while he’s locked in a legal battle with the IRS over back taxes he refuses to pay so … he’s got nerve I’ll give him that. But this goes to something I noticed way back at university when I was being lectured by a socialist, openly Marxist professor who I know, at that time, had a whole lot more money than I did. And I am sick and tired of being preached to about the need for me to pay more to the government by people with more money than I’ll ever earn in my lifetime. If charity begins at home, why doesn’t socialism? I’m ready to be autocratic about this. I will go on record as saying that if I had the power, yes, I would take away the freedom of speech of these people. I would take away the right of anyone to argue in favor of socialism so long as they had even one penny more than anyone else.

Think about it like this: If the Ecumenical Patriarch, the Pope or Franklin Graham went around stealing, murdering and fornicating but still said these things were wrong and the government should make them illegal; would anyone take them seriously or listen to them for a second? Of course they wouldn’t. They would be dismissed as utter, rank hypocrites and rightly so. Why then doesn’t the same principle apply to the socialists? If they believe all the crap they spew about income inequality, why don’t they start writing out checks to everyone in their neighborhoods who have less than they do? They could spread their own wealth around right now. They could start sharing their wealth and lowering the “income gap” this very day! Of course, whenever someone makes this point they always say, ‘well, just me and my friends doing it wouldn’t make a difference’ so they have to have the government force everyone else to do it too (while they stash money overseas and play musical chairs with their mansions). Frankly, that’s a pretty lame excuse. If they really believed what they claim to they would do it just on principle and it would certainly help some people -right? Just take, for example, the greater Los Angeles area where there are many very poor people, many poor “undocumented immigrants” and also many multi-millionaire celebrities (not as many as there used to be for some reason). Why don’t they prove to all what socialism can do and just redistribute the wealth in that area equally?

We all know they would never do it even though if they did and the greater LA area suddenly became a bastion of blissful prosperity it would sure prove all the greedy capitalists wrong. But, they won’t and we all know they won’t. And, I think, deep down, we all know why too. Because George Clooney, with his California mansion and villa in Tuscany or Brad Pitt with his chateaux in France never turned down a multi-million dollar contract because it was more than what they needed to get by on. There is no “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” when it comes to their own paychecks. That is why, more than anything else, that I cannot stand these people and that is why I don’t feel I should have to endure hearing them call for something and campaign for something that they would never in a hundred years actually do themselves. Until they put their millions where their mouth is I’d like them to all shut up and leave me and my bank account alone. What economic model is the best? I don’t know. I do know that socialism has been tried and it has never worked and I do know that those who are in charge never live equally with the common citizenry. They are hypocrites, they are phonies, they are monumentally ignorant or willfully deceitful and they never practice what they preach. That is who they are and who I am is … The Mad Monarchist.