Why Should America Defeat the Socialist Agenda?

             The 2020 presidential election is a contest between a man who loves America and knows how to use the free market system to Make America Great Again and a man who is being controlled by people with socialist ambitions for the United States. The sad thing is that many Americans like socialist ideas, particularly those who lean left.

            According to Kay C. James, president of The Heritage Foundation, “70% of millennials say they would back a socialist candidate for office.” One reason for this support is the idea of everything being “free” – college tuition, health care, and even guaranteed income. Young Americans are being indoctrinated in school and universities and through the media on the idea that socialism can fix everything that is wrong with the free market system. James offered the following information to debunk “six of the more persistent myths.”

1. Socialism has never failed because it has never really been tried.

In truth, socialism has failed everywhere it has been tried for over a century, from the former Soviet Union to the democratic socialism of Israel, India, and Great Britain after World War II to present-day Venezuela.

2. Denmark (or your favorite Scandinavian country) is a prime example that socialism works.

The reality is, Denmark has a free-market economy that produces goods and services that the government then heavily taxes to finance an extensive welfare state. Denmark’s prime minister once told a shocked Washington, D.C., audience: “I would like to make one thing clear … Denmark is a market economy.”

Like Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Norway all rely on free-market capitalism to finance their expansive welfare systems.

3. Socialism is compassionate and caring.

In truth, socialists only care about the collective, not the individual. In Maoist China, children as young as 12 were subject to capital punishment, women were forced to work in coal mines, and workers were harassed with threats of prison if they were late.

4. Socialism places power in the hands of the people.

Actually, true socialism depends upon the dictatorship of a military leader or a political party. Socialist leaders promised to bring down dictators only to replace them with their own Marxist dictatorships in places like China, North Korea, Vietnam, and Laos.

5. Karl Marx, socialism’s founder, was one of the great thinkers of the 19^th century.

Marx was wrong about nearly everything. Nearly 200 years after “The Communist Manifesto,” the nation state has not withered away. Capitalism, not socialism, rules the global economy. Workers have not turned into revolutionaries but entrepreneurs. And private property – rather than being rejected – is a cornerstone of every prosperous country.

6. Human nature is malleable and easily changed by government edicts.

For 70 years, the Soviet Union tried to suppress people’s innermost desires for freedom and for improving their lot in life. In practice, socialism depends on constant policing by the state and huge prison camps to coerce people and maintain power.

            James said that there are “many myths and realities of socialism.” However, the truth about socialism is that it is “an ideology that has failed everywhere it’s been tried.” Since socialism is a “poisonous ideology,” James indicated that the responsibility of the older generations is to “enlighten our children and grandchildren” and “counter the falsehoods they are learning from professors, the media, and pop culture.”           

            Although James is currently educating Americans on socialism, there have been other voices doing the same for many years. I believe that there are prophets and apostles on earth today who give us counsel to keep us safe, and I trust their words more than all other people. In the October 1979 General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Ezra Taft Benson, then president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, spoke on the topic of “A Witness and A Warning.” He began his presentation, “My message is a witness and warning about some of the evils which threaten America – a land I love with all my heart.”

            President Benson spoke about America being a consecrated land that is “choice above all other lands” (Ether 2:10). He said that all of America – North America and South America – will one day be “Zion,” and he stated that the United States. He reminded his listeners that the Constitution of the United States was ratified in 1789, and the new nation grew in strength in the next four decades. In the spring of 1820, Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, appeared to a young man named Joseph Smith and began preparations for restoring His gospel in the “cradle of liberty” provided by America. He also reminded his listeners that “whenever the God of heaven reveals His gospel to mankind, Satan, the archenemy to Christ, introduces a counterfeit.”

            According to President Benson, communism is Satan’s counterfeit to the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is a “system [that] established secret works of darkness to overthrow nations by violent revolution” and “proclaimed the atheistic doctrine” that God does not exist and did not create mankind. He said that communism is a “substitute for true religion” and a counterfeit of the gospel plan.”

            Socialism is a step taken by nations that eventually adopt communism. The more socialist programs that a nation adopts, the closer it moves to full communism, and there is no freedom in communism. President Benson said that “we are in a battle for the bodies and souls of man. It is a battle between two opposing systems: freedom and slavery, Christ and anti-Christ.” He shared his experiences of visiting various nations and seeing the effects of socialism and communism, and then shared the following warning published by the First Presidency to members of the Church of Jesus Christ and dated July 3, 1936.

Communism is not a political party nor a political plan under the Constitution; it is a system of government that is the opposite of our Constitutional government….

Since Communism, established, would destroy our American Constitutional government, to support Communism is treasonable to our free institutions, and no patriotic American citizen may become either a Communist or supporter of Communism….

We call upon all Church members completely to eschew [shun] Communism. The safety of our divinely inspired Constitutional government and the welfare of our Church imperatively demand that Communism shall have no place in America.

(Signed: Heber J. Grant, J. Reuben Clark, Jr., David O. McKay, The First Presidency, in Deseret News, 3 July 1936; italics added).

            President Benson continued by stating that the land of Zion has never before “appeared so vulnerable to so powerful an enemy as the Americas do at present. And our vulnerability is directly attributable to our loss of active faith in the God of this land, who has decreed that we must worship Him or be swept off.” He said, that “No nation which has kept the commandments of God has ever perished, but I say to you that once freedom is lost, only blood – human blood – will win it back.” Indicating that America is not yet lost, he made the following suggestions for Americans to keep the United States free.

First: we must return to worship the God of this land, who is Jesus Christ. He has promised that the righteous will be preserved by His power (see 1 Nephi 22:17). But we must keep the commandments of God….

Second: We must awaken to “a sense of [our] awful situation, because of this secret combination which [is] among [us]” (Ether 8:24). We must not tolerate accommodation with or appeasement toward the false system of Communism….

Third: We must do as the Lord commanded us by revelation in 1833: “Wherefore, honest men and wise men should be sought for diligently, and good men and wise men ye should observe to uphold; otherwise whatsoever is less than these cometh of evil” (Doctrine and Covenants 98:10). Men who are wise, good, and honest, who will uphold the Constitution of the United States in the tradition of the Founding Fathers, must be sought for diligently. This is our hope to restore government to its rightful role.

Last: We must study the inspired Constitution and become involved in the political process ourselves.

            President Benson concluded with his belief that “we can turn things around in America if we have the determination, the morality, the patriotism, and the spirituality to do so.” He gave this address more than 40 years ago, and the United States has not heeded his warning. Even members of the Church of Jesus Christ are accepting and adopting socialist ideas.

            We are now at a critical point in the history of our nation, and there is a clear choice in presidential candidates. Donald Trump is a man who dearly loves America and works hard to keep her safe and strong. Everything that he has done over the past four years he had done to Make America Great Again. Joe Biden is a puppet in the hands of Bernie Sanders and other socialists who are proclaiming their agenda to bring more socialism into the government. Americans better open their ideas and see things as they really are and how they will be in the future – depending on who wins the election.