Socialism's Failures and the War Against Trump

I am increasingly of the opinion that the basis for the inflamed, visceral hatred of President Donald Trump in some quarters is neither his occasional vulgarity, nor his propensity to toss out "un-presidential" insults, nor the "misogyny" and "sexism" that the left pretends to see in his every word.

Rather, it's that his presidency has torn the veil off of the left's inexorable and — until recently — largely obscured march toward a socialist America. Trump has exposed and discredited many of the institutions and mechanisms the left uses to execute its fundamental transformation: the media, the entertainment industry and academia.

Furthermore, he is an unabashed capitalist, a walking manifestation of American achievement through commerce.

And for this, they despise him.

Health care is a pristine example of the battle being waged. Obamacare is collapsing. The GOP is too terrified to repeal it. Democrats know that its failure, particularly in the absence of legitimate free market alternatives, will virtually ensure the "single-payer" system they're now openly pushing.

Single-payer is a recipe for failure and abuse. (Exhibits 1 and 2: the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Indian Health Services.) Except in relatively small, largely homogenous populations, collectivism fails because in the absence of financial incentives, more people want to receive things than want to make or provide them. The government must therefore insert itself into every transaction: "You must make X." "You can only charge $Y." "You only get so much of Z."

Thus does single-payer health care morph from being a provision system to a rationing system. And those who control the rations control the people.

There is plenty historical evidence of socialism's disasters, most recently in Venezuela. Detractors will no doubt scoff: The Venezuelan government took over most private enterprise; there's no indication that such a thing would ever happen here.

However, socialist and communist regimes tend expand not because they succeed, but because they fail.

Those who espouse the glories of collectivism in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary are ideologues. And ideologues never accept defeat. Instead of admitting the collapse of a failing business model, the left's impulse is to take it larger: "We just need more money." "We need higher taxes." "We need the government to take control of more."

This produces larger, systemic failure, and more widespread misery. Then cometh the political oppression. To preserve the regime, it becomes necessary to silence anyone who complains or dares to point out the painfully obvious truth that these ideas destroy whatever systems they infect. Ordinary citizens starve. If they are entrepreneurs or industrialists, their businesses are stolen. Members of government are removed in fraudulent "elections," run out of town or arrested on trumped-up charges and imprisoned.

When no one in power will face reality, there are few options left, and they are almost always catastrophic: civil war, revolution, anarchy.

Failed policies. Collapsed economies. Political repression. The examples are so numerous as to strain credulity: Venezuela, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, North Korea, China, Cambodia, East Germany, Angola, Somalia, the former Soviet Union. Hellholes created under siren promises that government would provide everything for free.

So much suffering, and so avoidable.

But we're not supposed to know any of that.

Our educational system is supposed to be indoctrinating children to think that capitalism is greed and collectivism is compassion. The media willingly conspires to keep us ignorant. (The New York Times is running a series that former JWR contributor Robert Tracinski rightly decries as an effort to "rehabilitate Communism."

Lenin and the Bolsheviks were "well-intentioned people trying to build a better world out of a crisis"? Little has changed since the days of Walter Duranty, apparently.) Millionaire entertainers dutifully spout politburo propaganda in exchange for escaping the accusations of hypocrisy that should accompany their sky-high incomes and royal lifestyles.

As middle-class voters are realizing, Democrats have been pushing their party in this direction for decades. Republicans (at least at the Congressional level) suck their thumbs and pretend it isn't happening, whilst falling for the "bipartisanship" ploy that makes them ineffectual fools even when — as now — they hold political power.

Donald Trump may not have intended to be the man who pulled down the curtain, but pull it he did. He has become the face of the opposition to the plans of the cultural elite. For that he must be destroyed.

Ultimately, however, the left's war isn't with Trump. It is with those of us who see socialism's failures, and who refuse to sit back and watch while our freedoms are dismantled and our country is destroyed.

Comment by clicking here.

Laura Hirschfeld Hollis is on the faculty at the University of Notre Dame, where she teaches courses in business law and entrepreneurship. She has received numerous awards for her teaching, research, community service and contributions to entrepreneurship education.