Over the past hundred years, there have been more than two dozen attempts to build a socialist society. It has been tried in the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Albania, Poland, Vietnam, Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia, North Korea, Hungary, China, East Germany, Cuba, Tanzania, Benin, Laos, Algeria, South Yemen, Somalia, the Congo, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Mozambique, Angola, Nicaragua and Venezuela, among other countries. All of these attempts have ended in varying degrees of failure. How can an idea which has failed so many times, in so many different variants and so many radically different settings, still be so popular?
-Kristian Niemietz (Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies)
He lists 27 nations as examples.
And let’s not forget America’s own and first version of Socialism – Plimouth Plantation when the Pilgrims landed. Once again, I remind our Left of Center “friends” that until Governor Bradford ripped up their original charter, that basically proclaimed that all things were to be held in common, and went to private property, the colony was in a death spiral. Once done, it became a success.
They keep on trying because:
- They don’t understand human nature
- They don’t understand history (or willfully choose to ignore it)
- They are so egotistical and smug that they DO believe they are smarter than everyone else that has come before them, so they are the “right people”
- They think it is their way to absolute Power (because they aren’t good enough to gain Power in the US that was meant, by design, to be transitory.
Or all of the above. They just haven’t grown up to be smart enough that people should leave other people alone.
(H/T: Cafe Hayek)
