When Did American Become a Third World Country?

• Rolling power outages
• Seeming endless riots and protests
• The media acts like mouthpieces for the government
• The rich get richer while the poor get poorer
• People who complain or speak out lose their platform to do so
• Government spokespeople threaten reporters
• There are shortages and long wait lists to obtain goods
• Government gun confiscation and bans
• Large numbers of people wait in food lines
• High unemployment and massive deficits
• Politicians want to lock up people they disagree with

At any other time, I’d say the above are signs you are living in a third world socialist country. Today, it’s just life in these United States.

I find that frightening.

In just these last few decades, this country has slid so far down the slope towards socialism that it is hard to think we will not soon be a third world socialist country heading to the inevitable collapse. We could be the Venezuela of the Northern Hemisphere. Or maybe we will wall off California and a few major cities and let them become the East Germany of the United States. (And if you don’t know what that means, get a world history book written before the year 2000 and look it up.) 

If you think socialism is a desirable state, then let me refer you to Kristian Niemietz’s book Socialism. The Failed Idea that Never Dies. Or, If you prefer a shorter alternative, this interview with the author.

Socialism Always Fails

Besides the well-known failures of socialism such as the Soviet Union, Venezuela and Cuba, it has ended in failure in lesser-known examples, including Yugoslavia, Albania, Poland, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia, North Korea, Nicaragua, Mozambique and Angola.

Stunningly, the pilgrims tried it when the Mayflower landed and socialism resulted in the deaths of half of the new settlers that winter, largely because they failed to raise enough food. The next year, they discarded the idea of everyone working for the good of the colony. People were allowed to keep the food they raised, and food harvests soared.

Israel, India, and the UK also tried socialism, giving it far longer than the pilgrims did before discarding the idea. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher finally pulled the UK out of it, largely by banning the labor practices of many unions and reducing the state-owned industries by 60 percent with a wave of privatization.

Socialism will fail in the U.S., collapsing under its own weight. Unfortunately, we’ll have to live with it for years, and that’s going to be bad for everyone, including those who think higher minimum wages, basic universal income, and other financial giveaways will boost their quality of life.

Socialism = Death

There is a vast amount of historical precedent that shows that socialism leads to death. If you are lucky, it simply leads to the death (collapse) of the country and its government. If you are unlucky, it leads to the death of millions of citizens. Think Chairman Mao and his Great Leap Forward, which resulted in the death of 30 to 45 million people, which includes those killed by the Cultural Revolution and the mass starvation caused by making all the independent farmers part of the collective.

Socialist leader and their various revolutions, cultural or otherwise, kill people who speak out against them. Often, these “traitors” are disappeared by the secret police. But with socialism, a little is never enough. Before long, entire classes of people considered undesirable are rounded up for the “protection” of everyone else and then end up in prison camps or mass graves. This grows into the wholesale slaughter of anyone who is, might be, or even once knew an “enemy of the state.” 

Socialism starts with promise and a honeymoon period. When things start to fall apart—which is inevitable, as we see above—socialists look for scapegoats and enemies to blame, often picking unpopular movements and religious, ethnic, or social groups. Anyone who can be ostracized and made a target because they are different in some way is targeted by propaganda and eventually destroyed. When this does not lead to things getting better, another group is blamed, and the process repeated. Eventually, the lesson is learned and complaints are pushed so far underground that no one speaks out against the government and the elites, even as their children starve, their land is confiscated, and their livelihoods are stolen. This is what has happened in North Korea where very few will speak out, or even whisper, against their “great leader.”

The Second Difference

One reason the path of socialism in the United States will be different than it was in Nicaragua, Venezuela, or Russia is that we have the Bill of Rights. One would think that the First Amendment, which says Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or the right to peaceably assemble, would allow plenty of leeway for people to speak out against socialism, but as we discussed yesterday, Big Tech is taking steps the government cannot to censor and de-platform those who have opinions contrary to the socialists.

Until independent platforms are built by those who opposed the socialist elite and their useful idiots, our platform will be limited. And when those platforms are built, expect the ruling class to seek ways to extinguish it, from tax law and the IRS to the Federal Communications Commission finding ways to kick them off the Internet.

But the Second Amendment, which states that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed,” will be harder to squash. And it is the Second that will make all the difference. There is a reason every shift to a socialist government is preceded by gun control. Socialists hate gun ownership because gun owners possess the means to fight back and threaten their control.

When Twitter takes away your right to free speech by canceling your account, there is not much you can do. But Twitter cannot physically come and confiscate your guns. The government (or their jack-booted thugs) will have to go door-to-door, which violates the fourth Amendment. We’ve seen in the recent history of Randy Weaver and the Branch Davidians to show us how well that worked. A few sympathetic media stories or a few dead cops and there will be no more door-to-door raids.

Socialists Fear Gun Owners

Socialists don’t care that socialism has failed every time it has been tried; they fool themselves into believing those other countries just did it wrong, and their special blend of socialism is going to be different. But because socialism is about control, and it is very difficult to control a well-armed man, they fear gun owners.

Socialists want you to give up your private property, but it’s hard to confiscate farms when the farmers are armed. It’s difficult to nationalize or take over your business if you will fight back, with hot lead as well as lawyers. It’s difficult to haul you and your family away to a prison camp when the attempt to kick in your door is met with a hail of gun fire.

People with guns are not sheep, and socialism can only persevere when the people are sheep. Too many gun owners are guard dogs or even wolves themselves. There are plenty of veterans who will knock the rust off their old skills and fight to prevent their guns from being confiscated. There are too many citizens who believe, like the founders did, that sometimes the tree of liberty must be refreshed with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

It has been said that only three percent of the colonist actively fought in the Revolutionary War. If only three percent of gun owners fight back, that’s millions more people than there are cops, soldiers and marines.

They are Coming for Your Guns

Do not doubt for a moment that the government will try to confiscate your guns. Failing that, they will ban ownership, something the Biden administration has already asked Congress to do so.

Courts may delay them, but they will just come after our guns in sneaky, underhanded ways: banning our magazines, taxing our ammunition, and requiring registration to buy ammo and accessories. They will work on backdoor gun control, which will tax gun ownership and make it impossible for many to afford guns. (Kind of like a poll tax, this would not only be illegal, but racist.) They will call it “common sense,” but that is just more propaganda.

Guns are not the problem, criminals and the drug trade are the problem. Gangs are the problem. But it’s hard to lock up criminals when you defund the police who arrest them and elect liberal judges who let them go with a slap on the wrist.

The government has a poor history of banning products. They tried it with prohibition and it gave birth to the mafia. They tied it with the “war on drugs” and spawned drug cartels. Thirty years later, the war is lost and drugs are for sale everywhere, many of them legally. Banning guns will just drive them underground and give the smugglers something else to import.

From My Cold Dead Hands

When Charlton Heston stood in front of the NRA Convention in May of 2000 and warned presidential candidate Al Gore that if he wanted to confiscate Heston’s gun, he’d have to “Pry it form his cold, dead hands.” Today, many gun owners embody that statement. They are not going to give up their guns.

In the end, guns in private hands may be the only thing that keeps socialism from wrecking this country. Shots may have to be fired in anger, but it’s a line in the sand that we cannot let them cross.

Keep your powder dry.