How Can We Dismantle the Myths Being Taught about Socialism?

            The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday is the myth that socialism is better than democracy. Progressives, socialists, and communists continue to push America toward “fundamentally transforming” America in a socialist country. They work diligently to convince Americans – and the younger the better – that socialism is better than democracy, and they disguise it by calling it “democratic” socialism.

            Educators should be teaching the values of the free market system. However, they must first teach the dangers of socialism. Lee Edwards exposed some of the myths being taught in American schools. 

Myth 1: Karl Marx, the founder of socialism, was one of the great thinkers of the 19^th century. In truth, Marx was wrong about nearly everything. Nearly 200 years after “The Communist Manifesto” was published, the nation state has not withered away, and capitalism rules most of the global economy….

Myth 2: Socialism places power in the hands of the people. In truth, socialism cedes power to the government and the political elites who run it. After more than 60 years, the Cuban people are still waiting for the free and open elections that Fidel Castro promised….

Myth 3: Socialism is working in Denmark and the other Scandinavian countries. In truth, Denmark has a free market economy – and it is capitalism that enables the Danish government to finance a bountiful welfare state through top-to-bottom personal income and value-added taxes….

Myth 4: Socialism has never failed, because it has never been truly tried. In fact, socialism has failed everywhere it has been attempted for over a century, from the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 to present-day Chavez-Maduro socialism in Venezuela. Nowhere has democratic socialism been more faithfully practiced and then rejected by public demand than in Israel, India, and the United Kingdom following the end of World War II….

Whether it was a small Middle Eastern country, a large agricultural country with a population of 1.3 billion, or the nation that sparked the Industrial Revolution, capitalism topped socialism every time.

            Edwards wrote, ‘Millennials do have a choice: the suffocating embrace of socialism, under which individual freedom and responsibility are surrendered, or the freedom of democratic capitalism, under which people of all colors and classes can work to be whatever they want to be.”

            The rising generation has a good excuse – not a good reason – for not understanding the value of the free market system in maintaining liberty. Their excuse is that they have not been taught. However, what is the excuse of the older generations? Why haven’t we insisted that our children and teens be taught American history, American government, economics, and civics? They are our children. Why did we allow the schools to drop these classes that are so valuable to maintaining the American way of life?