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We are told that Americans don't read much any more. Newspapers are dying and we get our information from the Internet. Perhaps it's time to remember the way political issues were written for mass consumption back in 1964. That was a definitive year in U.S. politics; it was the year Barry Goldwater and his dedicated supporters invented the modern conservative movement. They bypassed the propaganda of the mainstream media with small, inexpensive paperbacks that sold tens of millions of copies: None Dare Call It Treason by John Stormer, A Choice Not An Echo by Phyllis Schlafly, and A Texan Looks at Lyndon by J. Evetts Haley. Eager voters were buying them in 1,000-book shipments at 10 cents a copy. The snooty intelligentia sneered at them as just pamphlets, but conservatives were copying the tactics of the most effective paperback in history, Tom Paine's Common Sense, which convinced wavering Americans in 1776 to give up on the king and go for independence.
Socialism was supposed to be dead, or at least dying, when the Union of Soviet Socialist countries fell apart in 1990. Yet in February 2009, the cover of Newsweek boldly proclaimed, "We're All Socialists Now." That isn't true, of course - that was merely what the Socialists and liberals hoped. This pocket-sized book, 10 Truths About Socialism, relates how Socialism has failed every time it has been tried, from the Christian Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock in 1620 to today's Venezuela under Hugo Chavez. This book concisely explains how the philosophies of Jean Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx and others paved the way for both the Nazi and Communist versions of Socialism, which are responsible for the deaths of more than 100 million people in the 20th century. Socialism's insistence on the primacy of the state over individuals and families and churches is at odds with man's very nature. As the Jamestown and Plymouth Rock colonial settlers back in the 1600s learned and recorded for history, people work much harder when they are allowed to keep the fruit of their labors, and they resent providing for those who refuse to work. Unfortunately, public opinion surveys show that many young people in the 18- to 29-year-old age group have a positive reaction to the word Socialism. Perhaps that's because of the infiltration of "social justice" teaching into our schools and colleges. "Social justice" is the false doctrine propagated by Barack Obama's friend, Bill Ayers; it teaches that poor people in the United States live in an oppressive, unjust and racist country, and they should join community organizers to overthrow the private enterprise system and adopt Socialism. Envy is the driving engine of Socialism, which leads inevitably to spreading the poverty around and imposing tyrannical government. Ten Truths is a useful little paperback that gives the reader talking points and quotes to show that Socialism is at war with the family, with religion, with our Constitution, and with individual liberty. (Fort Lauderdale, Coral Ridge Ministries, 2010, 157 pp., $15) |
Coral Ridge Ministries has given us a useful little paperback called 10 Truths About Socialism. Now that Stanley Kurtz's book Radical-in-Chief has copiously documented the fact that President Obama is transforming America into Socialism, Americans should find out what Socialism is, how to recognize it, and why we must reject it.
