Don’t Mess With This Ism.

All sorts of isms exist in our vocabulary. We can think of extremism, communism, fatalism, perfectionism, skepticism, and the list goes on and on. The dictionary describes an ism as: “A distinctive doctrine, system, or theory.”

Today, the big ism-rage is socialism. To many, this word means a state where everything is fair, proper, equitable, and right. This would be a society where everyone is happy and satisfied, gets paid just what is right, has all of the basics, and even more. Many young people are coming into adulthood without ever having worked at any type of job and therefore have little understanding of the real world of work.

In the early days of the US, virtually everyone worked. Men, women, and family members worked primarily in agriculture and all had their daily schedule of duties and chores. It was clear that in order to have something, something had to be produced. There was cotton and corn and other crops to be planted and harvested, and cattle, hogs, and chickens to be raised. Meals had to be prepared and cooked, clothes washed, and the farmstead maintained. Most farms were virtually self-sufficient, and all members of the family knew what it took to survive and hopefully prosper. It was a no-nonsense situation. About the only involvement the average family had with government was paying the county property taxes and interacting with the US Post Office. During the Great Depression of the 1930’s, except for the dust bowl areas, if you could just pay your property taxes, the farm could survive.

I remember my grandfather’s farm where we had a small main house, a large barn, smokehouse, chicken pen, mule barn (with two large impressive grey mules), an equipment and tool shed, well-house, corn-crib, and a dipping vat for the cows. It was quite an integrated operation. It is all gone now, but the memories linger of times spent feeding the cows, riding my grandfather’s horse Trixie, and fishing or hunting on the property. My wife Toni has memories about her family’s farm which had similar facilities. I will add that all of these structures were built by the families themselves.

Today it is a much different landscape. Young Americans can arrive at 18 years of age with little understanding of the world of work. In 1979, 7 in 10 teens were working during the summer, but in recent years this number has declined to 3 out of 10. Many will attend a college or university with scholarships and/or student loans and spend the next four to six years acquiring knowledge, having a generally good time, and hopefully preparing for the future. However, without valuable job experience, these individuals can arrive on the workplace doorstep with little understanding of what they will be facing and with an exaggerated view of the role of government. They can also arrive in the real world with only a vague appreciation for the fact that in order to have, they must produce. There is a tendency to support high minimum wages, income redistribution initiatives, free college, free medical care, and some free everything. Such concepts were not on the dinner table discussion list for early farm families
who realized that what they had depended on what they could produce themselves.

This helps explain why so many citizens today have a favorable view of socialism. Some may refer to the ism as “democratic socialism,” as if that makes it any better. Dedicated socialists really seem to believe that somehow government can right all the wrongs and correct all of the challenges facing mankind. The problem is that it is people who run governments, and governments tend to use coercion to make things happen. In the process, socialist governments tend to appropriate a lot of the national decision-making power and income to fuel their efforts.

The real problem with socialism is that the perfect society only exists in the minds of the socialists. They want society to function according to their ideology which can change with the wind. Socialism is fundamentally at odds with freedom. It takes power to create and maintain socialism, and socialists do not want that power to reside with the individual.

The early farm families generally had a challenging life. But they also had a lot of personal freedom. In the process, these families raised generation after generation of hardworking and creative Americans who built the world’s most powerful and productive economy. Capitalist free-market nations set their citizens free to be creative and productive, and rewards them for their efforts. It is important to remember that socialism has a record of leading nations to slower economic growth because it hampers the productive potential of its citizens.

When we look to a central government to solve all our problems, we turn a significant corner in making socialism the order of the day. We won’t like it.