Tuesday, February 2, 2016

A Professor Takes On Socialism and Maleducation.

OU professor: Youths' attraction to Sanders shows education failure
David Deming


It's disheartening that an avowed socialist is a viable candidate for president of the United States. Socialism is a dead end. For hundreds of years, it has failed everywhere it's been adopted. The enthusiasm of our youth for the candidacy of Bernie Sanders is a symptom of our failure to educate them, not only in history, government and economics, but also basic morality.

You don't have to be a student of ancient history to know socialism doesn't work. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 was an unequivocal demonstration of the moral and economic superiority of capitalism. The misery caused by socialism is unfolding today in Venezuela. Since Venezuela embraced socialism in 1999, poverty, crime and corruption have all increased. Grocery shelves are empty and the annual inflation rate is estimated to be as high as 200 percent.

The United States is a constitutional republic founded on political equality, not equality of income or circumstances. Our system of government was designed to secure the natural rights of its citizens. These rights include not only “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” but the right to acquire and maintain private property. The Founding Fathers considered property rights to be sacred and
paramount.

Under capitalism, goods and services are distributed through private, voluntary exchanges. When people engage in volitional transactions, everyone benefits. If we believe a transaction is in our best interest, we have an incentive to maintain good relations with those with whom we're trading. Thus a society based on freedom and trading promotes good will and civility. Our free-market system has produced the greatest prosperity in human history.

There are no property rights under socialism. Goods and services are distributed by force through political means. Everything you possess is subject to confiscation and redistribution. Industrious and productive people are punished; parasites are rewarded. When people come to believe they have a right to goods and services produced by other people, society disintegrates into squabbling factions. If socialism is allowed to progress to its logical extreme, it culminates in a military dictatorship like North Korea.

What about so-called “crony capitalism”? This is nothing more than socialism that benefits the wealthy and influential. It's just as wrong as any other form of socialism. The cure is to limit government power. Human nature is corruptible. If government has the power to redistribute wealth, it will always act in the interests of the powerful segments of society. What made America great is not progressive government, but the genius and industry of a people freed from arbitrary power by the chains placed upon government by our Constitution.

Socialism isn't so much a legitimate economic system as it is a moral failing. It will always exist because ignorant people will always want something for nothing. If we want to retain our freedom and prosperity, then we must educate our children that the purpose of government is to secure liberty, not provide free lunches.
Maleducation is no accident; it is the objective of totalitarian Leftists, and has been implemented by the very unelected officials who inhabit education, from the Department of Education (which redistributes wealth depending on ideology) to the self-selected professoriat, to the first grade teachers who implement sex perversity spectrum possibilities to 5 year olds. There is no values-free education; there are only bad values and good values. Education has largely eschewed good values.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Check this out: On You-Tube, I was watching this old episode of the Morton Downey, Jr. show on Atheism.

In the comments section, there was a person that said that Moral Nihilism is true, and that it is the future.

I asked the person to provide evidence. Here is what he said:

Quote"What is the evidence that morality exists? The burden is actually on you. But the evidence is that cultures, before being homogenized today, have had vastly different moral concepts (not the specific rules. i mean the concept of what it means for something to be classified as moral or immoral).
And the evidence that you present, of a 'conscience' has been tampered with by society through decades of conditioning since before you were even born."Quote

Stan said...

I think I'd reply that that is not evidence, it is totally without data or possibility of data, and is a leftist fantasy story, concocted to cover their amorality and desire for total autonomy separate from socio-political constraints.

Anonymous said...

I said to him that the burden of proof isn't on me. It's on him because he is the one that is making that claim. Just another atheist that says stupid things that they can't back up. At the beginning of that message chain, he said something about how Jesus is a fad. Total idiot.

Steven Satak said...

Jeez. A fad that's lasted 2000+ years. That dude or dudette is definately living a fantasy. Good thing there's an Internet to indulge them, eh?

Anonymous said...

I saw your comments, Steven. Like the one about the shopping cart. Also, that Zebram idiot still thinks that the burden of proof is with me when I am not the one making crazy claims.