This is the course we should mandate teaching in our schools
by Robert Roper
I’ve got to say it’s more than a bit distressing to head into the celebration of our great nation’s 250th birthday on the heels of Democratic Socialist winning a bunch of elections in New York and Colorado. So, this semiquincentennial (yes, I had to look it up, and even my spellcheck still doesn’t believe that’s a real word), I think it is important to not just focus on the history of our own great free-market capitalist, constitutional republic’s unparallelled success in raising people out of poverty, protecting individual rights, etcetera, but also the history of all those other countries that tried socialism in one form or another – because, in a word, they all suck. And it seems today a lot of folks need to be reminded of that fact.
Be it the National SOCIALISTS of Hitler’s Germany, or the Union of Soviet SOCIALIST Republics under Stalin, et al, or the full evolution of socialism into communism as practiced in China, Cuba, North Korea, a hundred other tin-pot redistributionist dictatorships, and even throwing in the more benign Western European versions of capitalist funded socialist welfare states, they all have one thing in common: they suck. France, Italy, Germany, Great Britain… all the cool stuff we go over there to see happened before the end of the nineteenth century. The post socialist revolution tourist attractions are things like Auschwitz and what’s left of the Berlin Wall. That should tell you something right there.
Experiments in socialism are a laundry list of nothing but failure. As mentioned above, National Socialism led to attempted genocide and world war. Let’s give that an “F.” Soviet Socialism gave us gulags, mass government orchestrated starvation, and mass murdering purges of dissidents estimated at around 20 million people. Also “F”, along with China under Mao who’s bloody Cultural Revolution into “warm embrace of collectivism” killed between two and three times that number. Maybe worth pointing these things out to AOC, Mamdani, and their followers.
Also, look at the many side-by-side economic experiments that have played out over the decades. Capitalist West Germany versus socialist East Germany after World War II. Is there any possible way to argue that the socialist governing philosophy did better for its people in terms of standard of living, freedom, opportunity, environment, or… anything? No. Perhaps even more stark is the contrast between the largely capitalist South Korea and the communist North Korea after the Korean War. These are cases of people from the same cultural and familial backgrounds given similar natural resources and geography, but half governed by (mostly) capitalism, and half by (mostly) some version of socialism. The capitalists thrive; the socialist descend into poverty and oppression. Every… single… time.
Look at Venezuela under a free(er) market system – the richest country in Latin America — versus Venezuela under the socialist leadership of Hugo Chavez and Nicholas Maduro – a corrupt, poverty-ridden, narco-state where people had to resort to eating zoo animals to survive. And similarly Argentina. And Chile. The more a country embraces capitalism, even a little bit (see China here), the better it does, and when a country falls back into the trap of socialism it doesn’t take long for things to turn to a steaming crap. The pattern is undeniable.
So, given its historical track record, messages peddling socialism as a solution to anything should trigger PSA fraud warnings on the radio on par with those regarding emails from lottery officials in obscure African nations insisting you won a million dollars (how exactly?) and all you’ve got to do is send them your bank account data for them to transfer you the money. Because anyone peddling socialism as a solution to anything is either (A) mentally incapacitated, (B) completely void of any economic and/or historic education, or (C) a sociopathic grifter (cough, cough Bernie!) out to swindle A and B.
Which gets me to my 250th birthday wish for our state and nation: Somebody next year please put in a bill to mandate teaching the history of capitalism vs. socialism as a graduation requirement from high school. I’m not advocating for rah rah propaganda here. Capitalism has its warts too, and those should be discussed. But when making the side-by-side comparison of outcomes, it’s pretty clear that shortly after the feast featuring the butchered and cooked golden goose, socialism is all wart. And if young people are seriously looking at a socialist future for themselves – as they very much apparently are – they should at least be given the facts about the absolute scam they’re buying into.
In the last legislative session, Senator Anne Watson (D/P-Washington) put in a bill mandating that the Secretary of Education develop a “climate change” curriculum. In 2023 there was a similar bill requiring a “racial equity” curriculum. There is a bill to require Holocaust education for grades 6-12. So, there is some precedent here, and even if the bill doesn’t pass, this would be a valuable discussion to have. I mean, if the Democratic Socialists in our ranks who currently hold majorities in both chambers really believe in the program they’re pushing, they would welcome such education with open arms, wouldn’t they?
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Rob Roper is a freelance writer with 25 years of experience in Vermont politics including three years service as chair of the Vermont Republican Party and nine years as President of the Ethan Allen Institute, Vermont’s free market think tank.