Socialism: The Creed of Failure

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery
Socialism: The Creed of Failure

“Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.” - Winston Churchill



This is probably one of the most well-known quotes about socialism, and there’s a reason for that.  It so succinctly sums up what “progressivism” is really all about – it’s about tearing down those who have worked hard, it is about creating jealously and envy against those who have succeeded in overcoming the trials of life, it is about dragging people down to the lowest common denominator instead of encouraging them to aspire to greater things.  Churchill’s apt definition describes not only the socialistic tendency towards wealth redistribution and dependence on the almighty state, but also helps to describe the psychology and mindset of those on the Left.  It’s not just that they want to drag down the productive classes economically, they also want to hobble individuals so that they will prefer to limit themselves instead of trying to be the best that they can be.

I am reminded of this lesson whenever I think of my own personal experiences in junior high and high school.  When I entered the 7th grade (at the time, my school district used the 7-9th grades junior high school / 10-12th grades for high school model), not knowing any better, I tried to be a good student and make good grades.  Indeed, that’s what I did – got all As in my classes and tried to genuinely learn the material being presented.

Of course, this didn’t go unnoticed, so I and others who also got good grades were tagged with the label of “nerds” by some students who didn’t want to do the same, and who resented those of us who actually tried hard in our classes.  Now, this didn’t come from people in my immediate circle of friends, but was more from the “circle outside the circle” of other students who knew who I was, but with whom I wasn’t particularly close.  So there was really no good reason for me to care what these folks thought or to take it seriously when they ridiculed me for being a good student.

But – as we all know – kids in junior high are also extremely self-conscious and susceptible to peer pressure.  Kids at that age are insecure, they’re in many ways still trying to find out who they are, where they fit in, and they frankly aren’t sure what to do with themselves.  I was this way, and because of that, I cared what these other kids were saying.  I shouldn’t have, but I did.  So in the years following in junior high, I began more and more to scale back my studying, tried not to get as good grades as I had, I “calibrated down” my academic abilities to conform to what these kids wanted me to be, to be accepted by them.  Again, it was stupid to do so, but you try telling that to an insecure 14-year old.

Obviously, my grades suffered as a result of it.  While in the 7th grade, I had made all As on my report cards, in 8th grade, it was more like all Bs, and by 9th grade, I was making mostly Cs, with some Bs mixed in.  I was smart enough to be able to tell just how much I had to scale it back to sort of drop into the mediocre middle of C-land, without ever actually failing any classes or getting the dreaded “D.”  I would learn and know the materials in my classes, but would try not to do as well on my homework and on tests.

What I was doing, essentially, was letting psychological socialism hold me down.  Those in this extended circle of students who were all about on the same “social level” as myself in the hierarchy of popularity (and any of you who went to public schools know what I’m talking about) who were envious of kids who made better grades and who would rather remain ignorant of what we were supposed to be learning instead of trying hard to obtain it – I had let them dominate my thinking.

But a funny thing happened during the summer between my freshman and sophomore years.  Over that summer, I matured quite a bit.  It was then that I began to “fill out” physically, putting muscle on my hithertofore scrawny frame and growing a bit taller.  I hadn’t played any sports before, but joined my high school’s swim team that fall as my athleticism increased, allowing me access to the school’s weight room.  But that wasn’t the only area in which I grew up.  It was over this summer that I really began to think about my academic history up to that point.  It was then that I sort of realized – a flash of insight – that I was letting myself be pushed in a wrong direction by people about whose opinions I really shouldn’t care.  I started caring about my future, instead of remaining stuck in a short-term, present-only way of thinking.  I knew that if I didn’t stop doing what I was doing, I was setting myself up for future failure.

So I made the choice to stop caring what other people thought, and to just try to be the best that I could be, even if I got labeled a “nerd” or a “geek” in the process.

And you know what?  It worked.  For the next three years, from that first semester of my sophomore year to the time I graduated, I got almost all As (I think there may have been the very occasional B in there in the mix), taking AP and college level courses like pre-calculus and physics.

Unfortunately, from a grade point average perspective, the damage had already been done, since our grades from our freshman year were factored into our overall final GPA and class placement.  In ended up being something like 25th out of a class of around 220 graduates – not even making it into the top 10%, because of that freshman year where I had let others drive my thinking instead of working hard to excel.

Socialism, in a sense, is like a society-wide case of peer pressure by those who don’t want to work hard to excel, applied by the force of government against those who do.  Self-styled progressives want to drag down others, instead of working to better themselves.  The only thing they work hard at is trying to create envy and resentment in the hearts of many people so that they can hobble and undercut those who have striven, invested their talents, time, and abilities, and bettered themselves and those around them.

Modern-day liberals are, in a very real sense, immature and insecure people
Modern-day liberals are, in a very real sense, immature and insecure people who resent those who achieve more than they do.  The reason my antagonists in junior high tried to pressure myself and others to not excel academically was because they didn’t want us to do better than they did – simple as that.  They were insecure about themselves, and didn’t want others excelling them.  And just as these kids chose that path instead of investing the effort to better themselves for success, so many of today’s liberals are not willing to put in the effort to get the education, the skills, and the foundation to success, and they don’t want other people to as well.  They’re rather drag everyone down to a dependency on government programs and handouts – welfare, ObamaCare, etc. - rather than encourage them to struggle to lift themselves out of their present station in life.  This is why they hate the small business owner, the professional, the working man who chooses hard work over government handouts, the retiree who scrimped and saved all his life.  These folks don’t need socialists, and often don’t want them.

In short, those who try to get other people to support or believe in socialism are trying to engineer those people to fail in life, to fall short of their potential to be whatever they could be.  Socialism is a destructive creed that hinders human advancement and genuine progress.  It is a belief system that seeks to inculcate hatred towards the productive and toward those who don’t need the government to “help” them, and instead of encouraging the down and out to pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and keep pressing forward, it asks them to wallow in self-pity and resentment against others who have never actually done them any harm.

Our country is suffering the ill effects of socialism

Our country is suffering the ill effects of socialism.  Not only are we seeing the economic effects of discouraging work and encouraging dependency, but we’re also seeing the psychological damage as well.  There are literally millions of able-bodied, otherwise capable people in this country for whom the concept of ending welfare and other “assistance” programs and getting the govenrment off the backs of businesses so that they can expand and create more jobs is literally unthinkable.  They view these with utter and abject horror.  This is because they’ve bought into the ignorant and foolish notion that “the rich” got that way by “stealing from the poor” rather than by working 80 hour weeks to make their businesses successful in their formative years.  They’ve believed the lies that the socialists have told them, and have given themselves over to that destructive combination of apathy, envy, and sense of entitlement.

Ultimately, if we are to see our nation turn away from socialism, it’s going to take more than just rolling back government programs.  We need to work to change the psychology under which people in this nation labor, to get them out of the mindset that everybody else owes them something, and that people who work hard and achieve great things are somehow morally suspect and “probably just stole it from the poor.”  There are many, many people in this nation who need to be confronted with the fact that the mindset and ideology they have imbibed – that of socialism, liberalism, leftism, progressivism, whatever the term may be – is leading them only to continued failure and heartache.  They need to learn that they cannot advance themselves by holding other people back.  Instead of trying to reduce everyone to the lowest common denominator, they need to learn to work hard to raise that denominator to a new and higher level.  Until this happens, America will continue to become a nation of failure, instead of the shining city on a hill that our Founders intended her to be.