Socialism and the Soul of America
This article was published in the October 2020 edition of Front Line. It was written by William J. Federer and edited by Landreth Johnson. The content is as relevant today as it was then, leading up to the Presidential race between then Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald J. Trump.
As we look at the number of Americans who are embracing the concept of socialism as a viable system of government for the United States of America, one must ask, how did we get here? In William Federer’s [new] book, Socialism: The Real History, From Plato to the Present, he poses and answers the question: Socialism: The dream of an ideal society? Is it a wonderful utopia or a totalitarian nightmare? References and quotes from his book make up much of the following information as we look at the birth and demise of societies.
In the 4th century BC, the Greek philosopher Plato¹ referred to the legendary island of Atlantis, which was supposedly a highly structured civilization, renowned for being advanced and powerful, and the ideal structured society. However, let’s not forget that it was submerged into the sea.
Plato lived in Athens, which had a democracy (which was unstructured): demos means people and cracy means to rule. Democracy’s chief characteristic is tolerance. Describing democracy, Plato declared that it was “a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike; like a bazaar at which you can buy anything. There will be the greatest variety of human natures … being an embroidered robe, which is spangled with every sort of flower. Freedom as they tell you in a democracy, is the glory of the state. The manner of life in such a state is that of democrats: every man does what is right in his own eyes.”
Subsequently, the tolerance of democracy allows citizens to tolerate people that are a little bit off. In due course, they tolerate people that are a lot off, and finally, they are tolerating crime, looting, lawlessness, with criminals wandering the streets. Freedom, unrestrained by private virtue, casts off moral restraints, results in licentiousness and sexual promiscuity. As Plato explained: “And so the young man passes into the freedom and libertinism of useless and unnecessary pleasures. In all of us there is a lawless wild-beast nature; in some persons they are controlled; while in others, they are stronger, and there is no conceivable folly or crime, when he has parted company with all shame and sense, a man may not be ready to commit.”
Although a lawless wild-beast nature has pervaded our society without regard to age, Plato described the attitude of youth as “from his youth upwards to have been trained under a miserly parent, who encouraged the saving appetites in him and then he got into the company of a licentious sort of people, and taking to all their wanton ways rushed into the opposite extreme from an abhorrence of his father’s meanness. Neither does he receive advice, if anyone says to him that some pleasures are evil desires, he shakes his head. He lives from day to day indulging the appetite of the hour. His life has neither law nor order. He is all liberty and equality.” This attitude is prevalent in youth today who have taken on attitudes of selfish, thoughtless behavior as they burn cities to the ground in protests.
However, all age groups seem to be entering into rampant lawless behavior on the streets of America’s cities. In The Lessons of History, historians Will and Ariel Durant quote Plato’s Republic: “The teacher fears and flatters his students, and the students despise their masters and tutors. The old do not like to be thought morose and authoritative, and therefore they imitate the young.”² It is a condition that continually grows like a snowball rolling down a hill that cannot be stopped. As Samuel Johnson wrote, “Temptation succeeds temptation. We, in time, lose the happiness of innocence with sensual gratifications … immerse ourselves in luxury. We then look back upon our lives with horror, with sorrow, and with repentance; and wish, but too often vainly wish, that we had not forsaken the paths of virtue.”³
Economy
The current state of affairs in some of our major cities has created wastelands where there used to be vibrant business and commerce. Protest and violence have a tremendous effect on our economy. Rob Garver wrote in the Voice of America News, “As business owners and residents yet again clean up the debris, there is growing concern that the economic damage to many of the communities where violence is taking place will persist long after the last window pane is replaced and the last burned out car is towed away. Businesses and neighborhoods where protests have turned violent will have to contend not just with the aftermath of the protests, but with multiple aggravating factors that will make recovery even more difficult.”⁴ Plato warned: “Can liberty have any limit? Certainly not, by degrees the anarchy finds a way into private houses. The son is on a level with his father, he having no respect or reverence for either of his parents; and this is his freedom. They will have no one over them. Citizens then yield to selfishness and vote to spread the city’s wealth around, draining the treasury.”
We see this in the continuing demands for more money than the nation has, nor can possibly afford to spend, for relief from the effects of the coronavirus. These monies in the trillions of dollars were allocated on the state and individual level. And yet, the House of Representatives is demanding more and more money to be added going forward. Alarm bells should be going off.
When the city (or nation) runs out of money, Plato explained they vote to take money from the rich. “Their leaders deprive the rich of their estates and distribute them among the people; at the same time taking care to reserve the larger part for themselves. And the persons whose property is taken from them are compelled to defend themselves before the people as they best can.” That is certainly a clear definition of the political and economic theory of social organization, which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.
Four Stages of Culture
After studying 86 different tribes and civilizations over 5,000 years, including Sumerians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Teutons, and Anglo–Saxons, Oxford anthropologist, J.D. Unwin found that sexual promiscuity always preceded the decline of a civilization. Unwin concluded that cultures go through four stages:
People go through a painful time of struggle, famine, poverty, or war.
They then exhibit self-discipline and become productive, innovative, protective, patriotic, pioneering and expansionistic.
Eventually, they become prosperous and enjoy abundance.
Finally, they become lax, cast off discipline, abandon self-restraint, lose courage and become weak. They indulge in self-gratification, decadence, lawlessness, the pursuit of pleasure and sexual promiscuity.⁵
Even though many throughout history have warned or predicted a decline in our culture, America seems to have entered into the fourth stage of decline. Evidence of this deterioration in our society is the rampant lawlessness, the calls to defund the police, and the attitudes toward destruction as a way to effect change. But it is nothing new.
Examples of strong warnings include Solzhenitsyn comments to a graduating class at Harvard University: “Young people (seek) happiness; possession of material goods, money, and leisure, toward an almost unlimited freedom in the choice of pleasures. Voluntary self-restraint is almost unheard of; irresponsible freedom has turned out to have scarce defense against the abyss of human decadence.”⁶ This was not always the case. Long before Solzhenitsyn spoke, on the anniversary of the Boston Massacre, John Hancock wrote: “Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed, by the soft arts of luxury and effeminacy, into the pit digged for your destruction.”⁷ John Adams queried Thomas Jefferson, “Have you ever found in history one single example of a nation thoroughly corrupted that was afterwards restored to virtue? And without virtue, there can be no political liberty. Will you tell me how to prevent luxury from producing effeminacy, intoxication, extravagance, vice and folly? No effort in favor of virtue is lost.”⁸ Encouraging America to reestablish its moral and spiritual principles, General Douglas MacArthur said, “History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse, or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster." ⁹
In stark contrast, vice presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, proclaimed recently at the NAACP’s national convention that, “… nothing that we have achieved that has been about progress, in particular around civil rights, has come without a fight, and so I always am going to interpret these protests as an essential component of evolution in our country – as an essential component or mark of a real democracy.…" Harris also praised the brilliance and impact of Black Lives Matter, which has received media praise but also come under fire for promoting left-wing stances like opposing the nuclear family. "I actually believe that Black Lives Matter has been the most significant agent for change within the criminal justice system," she said.¹⁰
Explaining how the chaos causes citizens to look for someone to come along and fix this mess, Plato maintained, “Democrats contemptuously rejected temperance. Citizens chafe impatiently at the least touch of authority, and at length, they cease to care even for the laws, written or unwritten. And this is the fair and glorious beginning out of which springs dictatorship (tyrannis). The excessive increase of anything causes a reaction in the opposite direction. And so dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme form of liberty.”¹¹ Are we witnessing this chaos on the streets of America today?
Battle for Virtue
Further examples of those who have taken a stand for virtue are Rep. Fisher Ames, who proposed the wording of the First Amendment, explaining that without virtue, “democracy could not last. When the tyranny of the majority leads to chaos, society will submit to rule by the sword.” In 1792, British Statesman Edmund Burke said, “What is liberty without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils ... madness without restraint. Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.”
Once citizens abandon virtue, lawlessness causes them to look for someone to restore order. A governor comes along who promises to fix the situation but demands emergency powers, and in the end, rules as a despot. In James Monroe’s inaugural address, he said, “When the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace (mob), they are incapable of exercising the sovereignty. Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and a usurper soon found. The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin." ¹²
Without Virtue, Where is Liberty?
President Harry S Truman stated, “Without a firm moral foundation, freedom degenerates quickly into selfishness and license. Unless men exercise their freedom, within moral restraints, a free society can degenerate into anarchy. Then there will be freedom only for the rapacious, and more unscrupulous than the rank and file of the people.”¹³
In the confusion, a governor seizes power, as Plato wrote: “Last of all comes the tyrant. In the early days of his power, he is full of smiles, and he salutes everyone whom he meets, making promises in public and also in private, liberating debtors, and distributing land to the people and his followers, and wanting to be so kind and good to every one. This is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears above ground, he is a protector. He begins to make a party against the rich (to make them) impoverished by payment of taxes, and thus compelled to devote themselves to their daily wants and therefore less likely to conspire against him.”
Plato explained that the tyrant governor incites mobs to target his political opponents: “Having a mob entirely at his disposal, he is not restrained from shedding the blood of kinsmen; by the favorite method of false accusation he brings [his opponents] into court and murders them, and if any of them are suspected by him of having notions of resistance to his authority, he will have a good pretext for destroying them.” Until finally: “Standing up in the chariot of state with the reins in his hand, no longer protector, but tyrant absolute.” He also described Athens’ equivalent of Hollywood and fake news: “[The tyrant] will hire voices fair and loud and persuasive, and draw the cities over to tyrannies. Moreover, they are paid for this and receive honor. Poets are the eulogists of tyranny praising tyranny as godlike.”
Washington warned in his Farewell Address, 1796: “Disorders and miseries gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual [who] turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.”
President William Henry Harrison warned: “The tendencies of all such governments in their decline is the spirit of faction. In times of great excitement imposes itself upon the people as the genuine spirit of freedom, and, like the false christs whose coming was foretold by the Savior, seeks to, and were it possible would, impose upon the true and most faithful disciples of liberty.”
Coronavirus Tyrants
In the beginning of the lockdowns in cities because of the spread of COVID‑19 looming on the horizon, some in authority have overreached their dominance in their cities. John Daniel Davidson remarked in an article in The Federalist, “Some mayors and governors seem to think their authority is limitless in the face of the pandemic. They need a remedial lesson in the Constitution. They think they have unlimited and arbitrary power over their fellow citizens, that they can order them to do or not do just about anything under the guise of protecting public health. We’ve now witnessed local and state governments issue decrees about what people can and cannot buy in stores, arrest parents playing with their children in public parks, yank people off public buses at random, remove basketball rims, … ticket churchgoers, and in one case try—and fail—to chase down a lone runner on an empty beach. All of this, we’re told, is for our own good.”¹⁴
As citizens, we are accountable for what responsibility we hold to those we love and to those with whom our lives touch. It is critical that we question the authoritative reach of elected officials. Bertrand Russell warns us that, “holders of power become increasingly tyrannical ... Power over human beings is shown in making them do what they would rather not do, the man who is actuated by love of power is more apt to inflict pain than to permit pleasure.”¹⁵ Commenting on what is now referred to as cancel culture, President Harry S. Truman warns that we must not “… forget the examples of such men as Washington, Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson [so that] we will [not] start down the road to dictatorship and ruin.”¹⁶
Neither can we forget the past or right the wrongs of it by destroying statues or memorials even if they represent questionable events or notability. In an article on ForeignPolicy.com, Justin Jampol observed, “If the statues survive, they will become memorials instead of monuments, just in the way that sites of the Holocaust were first destroyed out of anger and then fastidiously preserved as evidence of historical crimes and injustices. The barracks at the infamous concentration camp at Dachau were first removed and then later reconstructed, with furnishings from three different periods, presenting a three-phase narrative of the Holocaust while showing visitors the unspeakable conditions that prisoners faced.”¹⁷
Jampol explains another instance of trying to erase history which happened after the Berlin Wall fell: “… graffiti-painted concrete segments of the Berlin Wall were hastily removed, ground up by machines that rolled along the border while physically chewing it up, and, poetically, turned into asphalt to repave the crumbling streets of the former East Berlin. The people of Berlin, who had lived in the shadow of the wall for decades, celebrated the cement edifice’s demise. They were so thorough, so confident in the righteousness of their cause, that nearly all of the original pieces were either removed from their original positions or destroyed. [Now the] German media is full of talk about historical amnesia. Young people do not remember the wall or what their parents had to endure. A key lesson has been lost, the older generation contends. Their solution? Segments of the Berlin Wall are being reproduced and replaced in strategic positions around the city, including at perhaps the most infamous, most public site of all: the former Checkpoint Charlie. But this time, there is an audio guide, ample signage, and the opportunity to talk about the wall as an oppressive structure that separated friends, colleagues, and family.”¹⁸
American Constitution
Writing in his memoirs, President Truman encouraged us to continue to uphold our constitution, which was written by men who “were all well informed on the history of government from Babylon to Britain ... The most important thought expressed in our Constitution is that the power of government shall always remain limited, through the separation of powers.”¹⁹ Patrick Henry continued, “When the American spirit was in its youth, liberty was then the primary object. But now, assisted by the ropes and chains of consolidation there will be no checks, no real balances.” John Adams wrote, “The only foundation of a free Constitution is pure virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our people in a greater measure, than they have it now, they may change their rulers and the forms of government, but they will not obtain a lasting liberty.”
Democracy was doomed to fail because people really do not have virtue, envisaged Plato. If you give them the choice of giving up their virtue or giving up their life, they will always give up their virtue to save their life. He asserted that “if a truly just man lived, let him die as he has lived. … the just man will be scourged, racked, bound, and will at last be crucified.”
The ancient Hebrew republic lasted longer than the democracy of Athens, because it had a big magnet in the sky, so to speak, the awareness that each person was accountable to God in the next life. Athens did not have that. By Plato’s time, the Greek gods were fickle deities that no one really believed in. Plato concluded the best one can hope for is a nice tyrant – a philosopher king. This tyrant would set up a structured society, consisting of a ruling class and the ruled class. This is the origins of socialism. The tyrant-king is the head of gold, and his political party are the arms and chest of silver. Together they are the ruling class. They are a deep state, above the law. Everyone else is in the ruled class – the abdomen of bronze and iron, the worker class. These own no property, have no families, government decides who gets to have children, government takes children away from parents and socializes them in government schools, teaching them noble lies so they will obey the ruling class.
Initiated in the late 1970s and early ‘80s by the central government of China, the one-child policy seems to have reached its unthinkable conclusion. Originally, the purpose was to limit the great majority of family units in the country in order to reduce the growth rate of China’s enormous population. It is evident now that the birth rate is so low that “by 2050, a third of the country’s population will be made up of people over the age of 60, putting severe strain on state services and the [one-child policy] children who bear the brunt of caring for elderly relatives.”²⁰ China’s one-child policy ended on January 1, 2016, but now the challenge is to encourage families to have more than one child. It seems like China’s policies were written out of Plato’s playbook which asserts that “… the true philosopher kings will set in order their own city; take possession of the children, who will be unaffected by the habits of their parents; these they will train in their own habits and laws.”
Looking for Utopia
Utopia means nowhere. It supposedly was a fictitious island discovered somewhere off coast of South America. After Columbus discovered the New World, there was a fascination among Europeans scholars of setting up structured societies. Inspired by Plato, Sir Thomas More wrote “Island of Utopia,” which was a story whose fictional traveler was Hythlodeus, whose name means peddler of nonsense. Utopia consisted of an upper class rulers and lower-class commoners. The society offered: free healthcare; free identical clothing; communistic welfare lifestyle; shared identical public housing; no locks on doors; common meals in monastic communal dining halls; no private property; all goods stored in communal warehouse; no taverns, no alehouses, no coffeehouses; no places for private gatherings; no privacy; everyone tracked everywhere they went; government decides everyone’s careers; no families (“takes a village to raise a child”); marriage & childbearing regulated by government (i.e. China’s one-child policy/Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger: “No woman shall have the legal right to bear a child without a permit”).
Sir Francis Bacon was influenced by Plato’s “Island of Atlantis” and Sir Thomas More’s “Island of Utopia,” when he wrote “The New Atlantis,” which was a fictitious island in the South Pacific off the coast of Peru. It was highly structured with a ruling class and a ruled class. The government controlled everyone’s life, even dictating careers. It was more scientific, as the Scientific Revolution had taken place by this time.
Spring boarding from Bacon’s “New Atlantis,” Jonathan Swift wrote a parody titled “Gulliver’s Travels.” Gulliver was shipwrecked on the Island of Lilliput and observed the ridiculousness of their highly structured society of a governing class and a governed class. It is of note that neither Plato’s, More’s, nor Bacon’s imagined socialist societies have ever been realized, nevertheless, naive youth are not dissuaded from continually trying.
Foundational Government of the Colonies
Of considerable interest is the fact that Plato, More, and Bacon influenced the Pilgrim colony in Massachusetts. Originally, the Pilgrims were a “company” colony with bylaws written by investors who made everything owned in common – “a communistic plan.” Pilgrims tried it, but almost starved to death! The bylaws of the Pilgrims’ company colony stated, “all profits & benefits that are got by trade, traffic, trucking, working, fishing, or any other means… remain
still in ye common stock. All are to have their meat, drink, apparel, and all provision out of ye common stock & goods. That at ye end of ye seven years, ye capital & profits, viz. the houses, lands, goods and chattels, be equally divided betwixt ye adventurers, and planters." According to Governor William Bradford, “The failure of that experiment of communal service, which was tried for several years by good and honest men, proves the emptiness of the theory of Plato and other ancients applauded by some of later times that the taking away of private property, and the possession of it in community would make a state happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God. For in this instance, community of property was found to breed much confusion and discontent; and retard much employment, which would have been to the general benefit and comfort. … It did greatly diminish the mutual respect that is so important should be preserved amongst them. Let none argue that this is due to human failing, rather than to this communistic plan of life in itself. … Seeing that all men have this failing in them, that God in His wisdom saw that another plan of life was fitter for them. So they began to consider how to raise more corn, and obtain a better crop than they had done, so that they might not continue to endure the misery of want. At length after much debate, the Governor, with the advice of the chief among them, allowed each man to plant corn for his own household. So every family was assigned a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number. This was very successful.”
The Pilgrims dispensed with the bylaws and set up a covenant form of government, based on ancient Israel during the 400 year period when they first came out of Egypt, before they got their first king, Saul. It was referred to as the Hebrew Republic and was taught at Harvard and Yale. In his address to the New Hampshire Ratifying Convention, Samuel Langdon, explained “Instead of the twelve tribes of Israel, we may substitute the thirteen States of the American union, and see this application plainly.”²¹
The Pilgrims’ covenant form of government introduced biblical concepts, such as:
• Government should be by the consent of the governed
• Government’s purpose is to secure to individuals their God-given rights
• All men and women were equal, made in the image of God
• There should be no respect of persons in judgment
A century after the Pilgrims, during the Age of Enlightenment, the word covenant transitioned into social contract. Instead of people being accountable to God to care for each other, it simply became people in agreement with or without God. If God existed, He was considered distant, removed, and impersonal – a concept birthed out of the scientific revolution. A century after that, the French Revolution transitioned social contract with a distant god into social contract with absolutely no god. The last phase has been Marxism, socialism, and communism wherein we have the social contract made into the state god.
After World War I, Henry Cabot Lodge warned, “Look at the United States today, we have had shortcomings. But nonetheless, is there any country today on the face of the earth, which can compare with this in ordered liberty, in peace, and in the largest freedom? If the United States fails, the best hopes of mankind fail with it. The United States is the world’s best hope. Beware how you trifle with your marvelous inheritance, this great land of ordered liberty. For if we stumble and fall, freedom and civilization everywhere will go down in ruin."²²
Conclusion
What am I to do? “... if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. 2 Chronicles 7:14.
Love God: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." Matthew 22:37.
Love your neighbor: Honor your father and mother. Love your neighbor as yourself. Matthew 19:19.
Give thanks in every circumstance: Pray without ceasing. 1 Thessalonians 5:17.
Research the Candidates and Vote Your Values
“In this country of ours took place the greatest revolution
that has ever taken place in the world’s history. Here
for the first time in all the thousands of years of man’s
relation to man, the Founding Fathers established the
idea that you and I had within ourselves the God-given
right and ability to determine our own destiny.”
– President Ronald Reagan, 1961.
End Notes
1 Complete quotes of Plato may be found in “Socialism: The Real History, from Plato to the Present,” William J. Federer, or by contacting: Amerisearch, Inc., https://amerisearch.net, (888-USA-WORD), 603 12th Street, Virginia Beach, VA 23451, or www.americanMinute.com.
2 Durant, Will and Ariel, “In The Lessons of History,” NY: Simon & Schuster, 1968, p. 74, from Plato’s Republic.
3 Johnson, Samuel, “A Dictionary of the English Language,” 1755.
4 Garver, Rob, “Economic Damage From Civil Unrest May Persist for Decades,” Voice of America, https://www.voanews.com, June 2, 2020, accessed September 25, 2020.
5 Unwin, J.D., “Sex and Culture, 1934.
6 Solhenitsyn, Alexander, “A World Split Apart,” Harvard University commencement address, June 8, 1978.
7 Hancock, John, “On the anniversary of the Boston Massacre (1774),” https://resources.billofrightsinstitute.org.
8 Adams, John, “To Thomas Jefferson from John Adams," https://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/, December 21, 1819.
9 MacArthur, Gen. Douglas, December 12, 1951.
10 Dorman, Sam, “Kamala Harris praises BLM, says ongoing protests are ‘essential’ for change in US,” Fox News, https://www.foxnews, September 25, 2020, accessed September 26, 2020.
11 Ibid, Durant, p. 74.
12 Monroe, James, Inaugural Address, 1817.
13 Truman, President Harry S Truman, April 3, 1951.
14 Davidson, John Daniel, “The Coronavirus Is Exposing Little Tyrants All Over The Country,” The Federalist, April 13, 2020, accessed September 25, 2020.
15 Russell, Bertrand, Nobel Lecture, “What Desires Are Politically Important?,” December 11, 1950.
16 Truman, Harry S, personal memorandum, April 16, 1950.
17 Jampol, Justing, “Tearing Down Statues Won’t Undo History,” Foreign Policy, https://foreignpolicy.com, June 30, 2020, accessed September 26, 2020.
18 Ibid.
19 Truman, Harry S., Memoirs – Volume Two: Years of Trial and Hope.
20 Kuo, Lily and Xueying Wangin Shenyang, “Can China recover from its disastrous one-child policy?, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com, March 2, 2019, accessed September 25, 2020.
21 Langdon, Samuel, “The Republic of the Israelites an Example to the American States,” address to the New Hampshire Ratifying Convention, 1788.
22 Lodge, Henry Cabot, speech before the U.S. Senate, August 12, 1919.