Be Wary of Socialism, Very Wary!

Socialism is a vast bureaucracy dictated by the few for the good of the few and the control of the many. A small, elite governing body is responsible for making decisions. Socialism requires total control over the teaching of its citizenry and control over the relationships of its subjects. Citizens are asked, even required, to report their neighbor to government officials for even suspected violations of government directives.

NEED FOR CHECKS AND BALANCES

The beauty, freedom and strength of America, however, and of existence itself lies in a multiplicity of ideas and variations in cultural interpretations. This multiplicity of ideas maintains the checks and balances that prevent abuses of power and encourages evaluation and growth. It is the faith of the free system of government that open and honest debate provides a foundation where the general population can choose what form of laws and regulations will best serve the greatest good. The government is then held accountable to the people for its continuing existence.

U.S. MOVES TOWARD ECONOMIC SOCIALISM

As we watch the economic breakdown in the United States two weeks now before the election of a new president, it becomes evident that decisions by small, elite groups in both business and government have undermined our free economic system and replaced it with economic socialism. We have been misled and misdirected.

We are informed that it is in our best interest to move toward socialism in this time of economic crisis.

POLITICALLY CORRECT SOCIALISM

Socialism has been rampant in the universities for decades. I entered Cornell University to return to graduate school in the early 1970's, another era of social crisis. Watergate trials were playing non-stop on the television. The Vietnam war was waging. Minorities and women were challenging the university system for equal rights. The ideology being presented by the elite academic gurus was that we needed to move toward socialism. 'Benevolent dictatorship' was whispered to be the obvious solution. A chill ran down my spine, because 'benevolent dictatorship' is a contradiction in terms. Socialism continues to be 'politically correct' in the major universities.

In the 1800's, the historian and moralist, Lord Acton, noted the corrupting behavior of absolute power.
"POWER CORRUPTS AND ABSOLUTE POWER CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY"

Germany, the Soviet Union, and other communist countries have shown us the tragedies related to socialist perspectives in governance, and how all citizens can be drawn into these tragedies.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, in his book, The Gulag Archpelago, describes the atrocities of the Soviet prison system. He asks, "Where did this wolf-tribe appear from among our people? Does it really stem from our own roots? Our own blood? It is our own."
He concluldes, "If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being."1.

THE BANALITY OF EVIL

In 1961, Hannah Arendt reported on the trial of Otto Adolf Eichmann. She describes the banality of evil, noting that while the deeds Eichmann committed were monstrous, Eichmann, himself, was quite ordinary, neither demonic nor monstrous. What Arendt noticed was thoughtlessness, an inability to think. His responses were cliches, stock phrases, and standardized codes of expression.2.

We revolt in horror when we consider what was done in Nazi Germany by medical doctors. Robert Jay Lifton researched and reported the systematic genocide in Auschwitz and elsewhere. He noted that the Nazi motivation of 'killing as a therapeutic imperative' for the good of the Volk compelled medical doctors to participate in the Nazi eugenic vision. Doctors held no authority in deciding orders. They were powerless cogs in a vast machine, a faceless detached bureaucracy.3.

Lifton outlines the principle of 'doubling' which involves the formation of a second, relatively autonomous self, which enables one to participate in evil, while maintaining a prior self that continues as a family person and humane member of society.

CALL FOR CRITICAL THINKNG

Lifton notes that most Nazi doctors were not beasts, they were very ordinary people with families and children. However, the whole society failed to exercise the faculty of thinking critically.

Our present day 'preachings of political correctness' come dangerously close to careless and thoughtless cliches, stock phrases, and standardized codes of expression. We are being intimidated into accepting behaviors that render atrocious consequences.

Lifton concludes his discussions on doubling by saying, "In light of the recent record of professionals engaged in mass killings, can this be the century of doubling? Or, given the ever greater potential of professionalization of genocide, will that distinction belong to the twenty-first century? Or, may one ask a little more softly, can we interrupt the process - first, by naming it." 4.

COURAGE OF OUR CONVICTIONS

A crisis is that point in an illness where the patient either recovers or dies. The survival of democracy and the maintenance of the free citizen is dependent upon the vital reactivation of citizen awareness and critical thinking on the part of all. Most importantly, it requires the courage to speak out in support of our convictions.


REFERENCES:
1. Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr. The Gulag Archipelago. In Literary Cavalcade. Jan. 1976. Vol. 28, No. 4. Pg. 41.
2. Assy, Bethania. "Eichmann, the Banality of Evil, and Thinking in Arendt's Thought". Pg. 1. http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Cont/ContAssy.htm.
3. Lifton, Robert Jay. The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide. Basic Books. (1986)2000. Pgs. 14-15.
4. Lifton, pg.465.