Crisis of Socialism

Delayed since Orwell's time c. 1948, the Crisis of Socialism is now upon us. Something-for-nothing, the pyramiding of ever more volatile financial instruments atop tottering piles of "monetized" (unsecured) debt, now reveals itself for the Ponzi Scheme it is.

For some three generations now, those who experienced the 1930s Depression and survived World War II have engendered a "spread the wealth" mentality that stifles competition, innovation; radically compromises individual initiative and responsibility; blasts healthcare, pensions, self-reliant opportunity at their very roots.

Collectivist Statists must always revert to eating their seed-corn. When previous generations' hard-earned social capital --including education, merit-based employment, housing-- has finally been expended by wastrel "populist" (read Socialist) regimes, the surprise is that economic pies cannot be re-distributed because there are no pies.

Libraries of studies, centuries of cruel experience attest that National or International Socialisms (Nazism, Communism et al.) rapidly degrade to nihilistic death-cults sacrificing acolytes in high proportion on Statist altars glorifying class (Marx), race (Hitler), sectarian dogma (Reformation orthodoxies, today's secular alarmists, always militant Islam).

Must this be our "human condition," or may timeless Enlightenment ideals exemplified by America's founders, unique in history, somehow nurture individual aspirations that hold rapacious Socialisms and their atavistic, reactionary State at bay?

In matters of life-and-death it seems that Eliot's "hollow men," Hoffer's "true believers," benighted Islamists of every stripe will choose the latter. On the most basic level, if parents and children --families-- do not eventually band together in defense of Life, humanity will face a global Dark Age so destructive of civilized relations, so prolonged, that no new Renaissance ever will or likely even can emerge.