Socialism rooted in bailouts is a big threat to America, says Flint Journal columnist John Tomlinson

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on November 24, 2008 at 1:56 AM

Socialism is being bandied about to describe the "bailout." But how many Americans "get" why it's dangerous? As defined, socialism is when government owns the means of production.

In other words, government actually owns the companies producing our goods and services. When we loan money to troubled companies, so they can recover and repay us, it's banking. But when government takes an equity stake in those companies, it's socialism.

Why is socialism bad? When governments run companies, profits become subservient to political concerns. The company's reason for being switches from making money to making jobs. Sans the profit motive, the inevitable result is some version of the Postal Service.

Countries that embraced socialism all discovered the same thing. When you stop competing for the public's cash, the blade rusts over. After a while, companies can't cut it. Goods and services become horrible and the nation's standard of living plunges. There are no exceptions.

But it gets worse. Winston Churchill observed that the difference between Europe and America is that Europeans seek equality, while Americans seek freedom.

This difference is why we're the most prosperous nation on earth. Capitalism goes hand-in-hand with freedom, daring and initiative. Socialism makes everyone exactly equal via state planning. The stranglehold central planning exerts makes it impossible for the cream to rise.

Churchill also noted: The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. Freedom demands personal responsibility. Get it right and you prosper beyond all imagining. Get it wrong and you suddenly want to tax the rich.

Each economic system creates a derivative government. The Founding Fathers produced something unique in America by holding freedom as their first principle.

However, socialism has also spawned historic governments. Marx sought equality through communism. But, as depicted in George Orwell's "Animal Farm," it doesn't take long to discover that some are more equal than others. The upshot of communism: Nothing works, and the cream, disheartened, curdles.

In the 1930s, Germany saw the rise of the National Socialist German Workers Party, which led to a governmental form known as fascism.

During the Great Depression, the Weimar Republic, after discovering it was really easy to just print money for every economic difficulty, collapsed amid hyperinflation

During this collapse, the Nazis were voted in. With just the right chancellor and complete control of the legislature, nobody could stop the party's economic "fix." As promised, the Workers Party produced dramatic change, and Germany never had those problems again.
