Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - REPLAY： Socialism

00:00:00.240 Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to Relatable. I am so excited about today's episode. I have

00:00:07.640 gotten lots of emails, messages, comments over the past year asking me to talk about

00:00:13.640 socialism. We have talked about socialism in the past and a lot of you who already listen

00:00:19.480 to other political podcasts or you read political books or you've been involved in politics

00:00:24.160 for any amount of time, you probably already know a lot about socialism and probably know

00:00:29.640 a lot of the things that I'm going to cover today. I certainly am not a socialist expert

00:00:35.040 and then I, you know, I haven't been studying the history of Soviet Russia for the past 13

00:00:41.340 years of my life or anything like that. But I have been studying this, of course, especially

00:00:46.600 since Bernie Sanders came on the scene and it seemed like socialism was going to be the

00:00:51.700 big new thing, especially among our generations. And the fact of the matter is there is, there

00:00:57.340 are a lot of people who follow me and follow this podcast that don't know about socialism

00:01:01.760 and don't know about socialist policies. What's the difference in socialism and welfare? Is

00:01:07.120 there any biblical aspect to socialism that we should be okay with, that we as Christians

00:01:12.160 should get on board with? These are perfectly wonderful and appropriate questions. It's okay

00:01:16.940 if you don't know everything about socialism. It's okay if you don't know anything about socialism,

00:01:20.640 but at least you've realized if you've messaged me or reached out to me, this is probably

00:01:25.460 something that we need to discuss and that we need to know about, at least in some kind

00:01:30.540 of basic way. And that's what we are going to do today. So you already know how I feel

00:01:37.060 about socialism. Like I'm not coming at this from an approach of like, I don't really know

00:01:41.380 how I feel about this kind of stuff. You know that I'm anti-socialism. You know that I don't

00:01:46.120 think that socialism is good. Nevertheless, I am going to do my very best to give you only factual

00:01:51.380 information, of course, coupled with my analysis as this podcast always is. And I'm not just going

00:01:57.080 to give you this kind of one-sided story and not just what I want you to hear. I'm going to give you

00:02:02.120 the facts. Now, like I said, I already have an opinion about it. You are going to get my analysis

00:02:06.920 throughout this. So don't expect this kind of like middle of the road on maybe socialism is not

00:02:13.140 that bad after all. That's not what this podcast is. So I don't want any reviews from y'all saying,

00:02:18.000 oh, you didn't give socialism a chance. Well, Venezuela gave socialism a chance and we saw how

00:02:24.360 that turned out. OK, first of all, what is socialism? According to Encyclopedia Britannica,

00:02:31.100 socialism is a social and economic doctrine that calls for public rather than private ownership or

00:02:36.440 control of property and natural resources. According to the socialist view, individuals do not live or work

00:02:41.560 in isolation, but live in cooperation with one another. Furthermore, everything that people produce

00:02:46.860 is in some sense a social product and everyone who contributes to the production of good is

00:02:51.580 entitled to a share in its society as a whole, therefore, should own or at least control property

00:02:57.060 for the benefit of all of its members. So that's that's according to Encyclopedia Britannica. So

00:03:02.820 let us break that down. In America, whether you are on the right or the left, we are all more familiar

00:03:08.260 with capitalists or capitalism because it is the economy that we currently have and that we have had.

00:03:14.820 So I think socialism is probably easier understood from our perspective through the lens of

00:03:21.820 capitalism. Capitalism believes in private property and private earnings. You make a profit.

00:03:27.240 You use that profit for the most part to feed yourself, feed your family, give to charity. You do with it

00:03:32.860 what you see fit. Of course, you do pay taxes in the capitalist society, but the profit that you earn

00:03:38.820 is for you and you have your own property that you are entitled to. As socialism believes for the

00:03:45.360 most part in shared property or collective ownership, a socialist would say that all work is done for

00:03:50.600 the good of the whole, not just of the individual, not just for the good of your family, not just for the

00:03:55.220 good of a corporation or a business, but for the good of everyone. That's what a socialist would say

00:03:59.460 that they stand for. Now, you might be thinking, well, what is wrong with that? It sounds very generous

00:04:04.820 to me. It sounds really good. Maybe even sounds like the early church a little bit. Everyone

00:04:08.860 working together in cooperation for the common good. That sounds awesome. It sounds like the

00:04:14.980 opposite of greed. And isn't that what we want, especially as Christians? Don't we want the

00:04:19.200 opposite of greed? Don't we want some kind of generosity among our communities? But hang on just a

00:04:26.060 second. So here is what the definitions of socialism, if you noticed in the Encyclopedia Britannica,

00:04:31.660 if you noticed in the generous definition of socialism that I gave you, here is what is

00:04:38.600 missing in the pitches for a socialist economy or a socialist country. The how. How do we go from

00:04:47.640 private ownership, which is what we have now, to public ownership, or as they say, democratic ownership

00:04:53.960 or collective ownership? Socialists will say that in a socialist society, the people are in charge.

00:05:01.480 There is no real hierarchy. There are no oppressive power systems. The people control. The people are

00:05:08.560 leading. The people are cooperating together to meet the needs of those around them. No one is getting

00:05:13.260 exploited by profit-driven corporations, they would say. But how? Who puts the means of production in the

00:05:20.620 hands of the people? Making sure that they're in the hands of the people rather than what they would 0.58

00:05:25.800 say in the hands of these corporations? Who makes sure that this is all democratically owned and

00:05:32.060 collectively owned? What if someone wants to keep her private property? What if I want to keep my

00:05:38.100 private property? What if I want to keep my profits to provide for myself and to provide for my family?

00:05:44.060 Who makes sure that my profits and my property are collectively owned rather than individually owned?

00:05:49.440 What happens then? That's what socialists don't want to say. That's what they don't want to talk

00:05:55.560 about is the how. How we go from personal private property to collective ownership of the means of

00:06:01.880 production. All of that, the truth is that all of that is impossible without government coercion. If I

00:06:08.800 don't want to give up 95% of my profits or however much it is, if I don't want to give up a private

00:06:15.560 property or private ownership, there has to be an authority to come along and to make me do it.

00:06:21.020 Someone has to take the money that I make and the property that I have away from me, away from my

00:06:26.720 family, and force me to give it to the community. But here's the other thing. My money, even if it's

00:06:33.340 given up, say I want that. Say I want my money to go to the socialist class. I don't get to give my

00:06:41.260 money directly to the people that I want to give it to. I don't get to give my money directly to the

00:06:45.660 causes that I care about. I give it to the government. And so in a socialist society, we're

00:06:51.260 talking to anywhere from 60 to 90% of the paycheck. It just kind of depends. It depends on how much you

00:06:57.460 make. It depends on how much you live and what the policies are. A large majority of my profit,

00:07:02.840 my paycheck, is given to the government to redistribute to the country and to the community

00:07:07.560 how the government sees fit. So not how I see fit. So when we hear about socialism,

00:07:13.340 meaning generosity, well, you don't see really where that money goes. You don't get to decide

00:07:19.640 where the money goes. The government decides where the money goes. Socialists, a lot of times you'll

00:07:25.300 hear them decry the evils of corporations, how corporations exploit their employees and

00:07:29.560 corporations are greedy and they're immoral, which we can talk about that as a problem. I do think that

00:07:35.900 that's a problem. We can talk about that. We can work to solve that problem. But the solution

00:07:39.620 to that problem, to the greed of corporations or the exploitation of some corporations is not

00:07:45.080 shifting power from a corporation, which is an organization that takes your time, your money,

00:07:49.340 and your energy on a voluntary basis, shifting the power away from them to the government who takes

00:07:54.980 your time, money, and energy away from you on a coercive basis. So at least corporations who you could

00:08:01.320 argue have too much power, you could argue exploit their employees, you could argue you have too much

00:08:05.480 greed. Well, we can decide whether or not we want to buy from those corporations. We can decide

00:08:09.460 whether or not we want to work for those corporations. We cannot decide in a socialist

00:08:14.980 society whether or not we give our money to the government and whether or not we are under the rule

00:08:19.780 of the government. We just are, or else we're considered lawless. And that is exactly why in order

00:08:25.920 to accomplish a socialist society, it takes a strong government to make you hand over your money,

00:08:31.600 your property, your time, your energy, whatever it is, in order to cooperate. It all sounds well

00:08:36.320 and good until you ask the how. How does socialism come about? So I just want to be clear up front

00:08:42.260 that this is not some happy-go-lucky time where we're all linking arms and saying, yeah,

00:08:49.020 government, take everything that I have and distribute it for the good of those around me

00:08:53.340 without really my say in it. Now, democratic socialists will say, well, you do have a say in it.

00:08:58.960 But, of course, they also believe in a pure democracy where you have the tyranny of the

00:09:03.360 majority and you have mob rule. And so if someone like me doesn't believe in socialism or giving up

00:09:08.320 my private property, well, the government's going to make you do that anyway because the majority

00:09:12.660 ruled against you. Now, of course, this already happens in the sense that I might pay taxes

00:09:18.480 to something that I don't want to pay taxes to. There are plenty of things that my federal tax

00:09:22.400 dollars go to that I don't agree with. But it's a little bit different than in a socialist society

00:09:30.180 to where you don't get to keep hardly any of your profits and you don't keep any of your private

00:09:35.080 property. So like I said, you cannot have socialism without big government. Do not let them lie to you

00:09:41.600 about that. So when you hear the terms socially controlled or democratically controlled, understand

00:09:46.980 that this means government controlled because you have to ask how things go from privately owned to

00:09:54.460 collectively owned. An authority has to force people to give up their money and their property

00:09:59.320 so that authority can redistribute those resources how they see fit. If everyone were already giving

00:10:05.540 their money and their property on a voluntary basis, socialism wouldn't be necessary. We wouldn't

00:10:09.940 even be having this conversation. But because human beings have this crazy desire to own property,

00:10:15.080 which we will talk about as a natural desire, a desire to keep their, to earn their keep and to

00:10:20.400 keep what they earn, big government is necessary for seizing the means of production and ensuring

00:10:26.340 in theory that everyone is cared for because a lot of people aren't going to voluntarily get on board

00:10:31.200 with this. They don't want to say this because they realize that people don't really like the sound,

00:10:35.840 especially people in the West and in the United States. They don't like the sound of their freedom

00:10:39.620 being trampled on. But socialists, and I think this is an honest way to describe them,

00:10:45.440 socialists see individual freedom as a worthy thing to give up or a worthy exchange for the

00:10:50.720 meeting of the needs of the poor, how they would describe it. That's the transaction that they see

00:10:56.960 happening, that if people simply give up their right to private ownership or their right to earn a

00:11:01.600 profit and hand these things over to our oh so benevolent bureaucrats that reign above us, 1.00

00:11:06.580 these bureaucrats will ensure that everyone is taken care of, that no one is marginalized,

00:11:10.460 that no one is oppressed, no one is trampled on. Socialists see themselves as the enemy to what

00:11:15.620 they call the elite. They typically depict the elite as these rich CEOs who are wielding their

00:11:20.660 wealth to push those to the bottom further down. They don't believe there is any reality,

00:11:25.940 at least anymore, to the American dream. The idea that someone can go, anyone can go from

00:11:30.780 nothing to something, can pull themselves up by the bootstraps, make something of themselves,

00:11:36.440 they believe that for the most part, that the poor are inescapably oppressed by big business,

00:11:41.380 which of course is silly considering the economic mobility that exists in this country,

00:11:46.280 even for the most poor. But regardless, they don't believe that the free market is truly free,

00:11:52.560 but rather is being manipulated by those with the most money. So they see capitalism as a tool to hurt

00:11:58.200 the poor, not to give poor people the ability to lift themselves up. This is why you hear people like

00:12:05.760 Bernie Sanders talking about the 1%, how the 1% is hoarding all of the wealth in this country.

00:12:11.860 You will also hear the term fair share. This is something that we have heard from all the

00:12:15.920 Democratic presidential candidates so far, that the rich need to pay their fair share. Well,

00:12:21.180 what they won't tell you is that the top 50% of earners in this country already account for almost

00:12:27.280 100% of the tax revenue. The people at the bottom hardly pay anything in taxes, if at all. Some of them

00:12:33.080 make money from the government, which begs the question, what is fair share? They can't really,

00:12:41.020 what is rich? What is fair share? Well, they can't really say. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who of course 0.72

00:12:46.000 calls herself a socialist or a democratic socialist, which there's really not much of a difference

00:12:49.580 there. It's just socialism that you choose, has said that 70% would probably be what she picks for

00:12:56.800 the very rich. I think she kind of just said that arbitrarily in her 60 Minutes interview with

00:13:01.460 Anderson Cooper. But who are the very rich? Well, AOC said in a tweet, only the really rich. She's

00:13:07.440 talking about the really rich. She said like Betsy DeVos rich. That only includes, she said like 10

00:13:13.520 people. No, it doesn't. You realize that the majority of your comrades in Hollywood probably

00:13:19.760 fall into this category, right? So they can't really say what a fair share is, and they can't really say

00:13:26.300 who the really rich are. They don't want to put an exact number on it because they know what's going

00:13:31.820 to change if they actually ever got the power to do this. Because fair and fairness is a very

00:13:37.340 arbitrary term in this sense, unless you mean a truly fair tax, which would mean that everyone gets

00:13:43.680 taxed the same rate, a flat tax rate. In a truly fair system, the wealthy pay still a good deal more.

00:13:51.200 So if everything or if everyone pays, for example, a 10% income tax, the millionaire is obviously going

00:13:58.000 to be paying a lot more amount wise than the person who makes $25,000 a year. Right now we have an unfair

00:14:04.600 progressive tax system in which the more you make, the larger percentage you pay in taxes. I don't really

00:14:12.960 understand how that equals the rich paying their fair share. They're already paying not just a more in

00:14:18.080 an amount, which would make sense, but a more percentage wise than poor people do or than middle

00:14:24.920 class people do or anyone who is below them. That is inherently unfair. And yet those on the left insist

00:14:31.220 that the rich need to be paying even more, that to them that would be fair. I don't know how you decide

00:14:36.480 what is more fair in a progressive tax system. But that is how socialists believe that they will fund

00:14:43.260 socialism by taxing the rich almost in totality. So that will go to pay for everyone's health care,

00:14:49.220 everyone's education, the large government that is necessary to maintain and enforce socialism.

00:14:56.060 Now, what happens, the question is, what happens when there are no more rich people because you've taxed

00:15:01.100 them all into oblivion? They don't have an answer for that. Socialism both demonizes and depends on

00:15:07.460 billionaires. So if you demonize to the rich into non-existence, where do you go for the money

00:15:13.700 that you need to maintain socialism? That's what Margaret Thatcher said is the problem with

00:15:19.540 socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money. That's just common sense. That's

00:15:23.580 just true. You don't create more money. I know a lot of people on the socialist left believe that you

00:15:28.060 just create more money, but that's not how it works. Heavy taxation of the rich to accomplish wealth

00:15:35.260 redistribution to take power out of the hands of the people at the top of the economic food chain

00:15:39.900 is central to socialism. That's what socialism really runs on. And to understand why we to to

00:15:49.480 understand why this is, we have to understand something. You cannot separate socialism and social

00:15:57.400 justice. Social justice today, if we as we have discussed many times on this podcast is based on the

00:16:03.240 desire for equal outcomes, not equal opportunity, equal outcomes. So that is what socialists see as

00:16:11.460 true equality. And now this is very different from the equality recognized in say the Declaration of

00:16:17.760 Independence, which says all men are created equal and were endowed by their creator with certain

00:16:22.360 inalienable rights among them being life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This equal means equal

00:16:27.060 in the one in the Declaration means equal in value, equal in worth, equal in the eyes of the law,

00:16:31.920 equally made in the image of God. Now, it is important to know, it's important to know that

00:16:37.860 this equality of worth recognized in the founding documents has, of course, been demonstrated

00:16:41.860 completely and perfectly throughout America's history. When you look at slavery, when you look

00:16:46.980 at Chinese railroads, when you look at Japanese internment camps, Jim Crow, but it's an idea that is

00:16:54.740 correct. It is an idea that will properly recognize legally leads to human flourishing as it recognizes

00:17:01.060 the worth and the potential of the human being. But the equality that socialists believe in is not

00:17:06.940 just equality of worth, though they would probably agree on that. They'd probably say that all people

00:17:11.460 are created equal, but they believe in equality of outcome. Socialists see any gap in success or any

00:17:18.840 gap in earnings as inherently unjust and a product of an oppressive system. So for example, and this is a lot

00:17:25.920 of people on the left, not just socialists, but they would see the gender wage gap, which has far more

00:17:31.740 to do with choices and what women choose to do with their lives than it does any kind of system 1.00

00:17:38.700 whatsoever. They would say, well, that is indicative of some kind of oppression when that's not actually

00:17:43.860 true, but they see any and all gaps as indicative of some kind of oppressive system. Rarely, rarely will

00:17:51.500 you hear a socialist account for individual choices or chance. If one group is on average poorer than

00:17:58.080 another group, it is not because, according to a socialist, of irresponsibility, but because of an

00:18:03.560 unjust system that is keeping them down. So that is always their thought. That's always their go-to.

00:18:09.920 This is why socialists want to eliminate hierarchy as much as possible, which is why they say they want

00:18:16.260 power in the hands of the people, in the hands of democracy, in the hands of who they call workers,

00:18:21.840 which is a Marxist term. They believe that heavy taxation, wealth redistribution, the elimination

00:18:27.200 of profit and private property will accomplish that because in order to have equality of outcome,

00:18:33.520 which they believe is perfect social justice accomplished, you have to take away from the 0.98

00:18:39.620 haves and give it to the have-nots so that everyone has the same amount. Equal mediocrity. They would 0.88

00:18:45.980 rather have equal mediocrity than have these large disparities between some people doing really

00:18:52.540 well and some people not doing well at all. But as we've already discussed, that idea is inherently

00:18:58.500 unjust. The idea of taking almost all of what someone has earned and giving it to those who have not

00:19:04.720 earned it is theft. And the reality is, again, equality of outcome can only be accomplished through severe

00:19:10.700 government regulation to ensure that all those who work harder than those who do and all those who work

00:19:17.380 harder than those who don't work very hard at all have their profits taken away from them and and used to

00:19:24.820 take care of the people who are not working as effectively and as efficiently as they are. This is one of the

00:19:31.940 ways this is one of the many ways that socialism does not account for human nature. Humans are naturally

00:19:38.620 competitive. We have this natural bent towards reaping what we sow. This is not a western social

00:19:44.980 construct. This has been true in every society throughout all of history. We feel entitled to

00:19:51.180 the fruit of our labor and we do not take well to people stealing the fruit of our labor, all of it

00:19:56.240 almost, and giving it to those who did not work for it. Humans and Christians especially have shown

00:20:02.020 a great capacity for voluntary generosity towards those who need it. But whenever our profits and

00:20:07.460 property are confiscated in the name of forced compassion, which by definition is not compassion

00:20:12.580 at all, we don't react well, which is precisely why, as we'll get to, socialism has been such a horrific

00:20:18.860 failure every time it has been tried. And yet this idea of equal outcomes by repressing those who have

00:20:27.220 in favor of those who don't have is the keystone of socialism. And here's why. So socialism, most of you

00:20:33.560 probably know, is the brainchild of Karl Marx. He was a German philosopher in the 19th century. He wrote

00:20:40.560 a book called The Communist Manifesto, which outlined the problems with the bourgeoisie, which is the elite

00:20:46.000 and the evils of capitalism. This is by far the most praised piece of literature among socialists. So

00:20:52.440 whenever they mock you or scoff at you for comparing socialism to communism or observing that socialism

00:20:59.780 leads to communism, remind them that their favorite political book is literally called

00:21:05.800 The Communist Manifesto. OK, so there's really not much of a separation between socialism and

00:21:13.140 communism. Socialism is always supposed to lead to communism. If you read any part of The Communist

00:21:19.460 Manifesto, even if you just read some of the quotes online, you will see that this is exactly where

00:21:24.240 the socialists of today, where the Bernie Sanders and the AOCs and even the Elizabeth Warrens of today

00:21:28.820 are getting their ideas and inspiration. So here's how Karl Marx saw history in his modern world.

00:21:34.160 He says,

00:21:34.840 The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Free man and slave,

00:21:40.420 patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild master and journeyman, and a word oppressor and oppressed,

00:21:46.280 stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight

00:21:51.480 that each time ended, either in the revolutionary reconstitution of society at large,

00:21:56.300 or in the common ruin of the contending classes. Everything in Marx's mind was about the oppressor

00:22:04.040 versus the oppressed. That's how he saw society organized, and he believed that communism would

00:22:09.320 bring an end to that. He hated capitalism. He hated free trade. He hated private property.

00:22:15.900 He saw all of this as evil, as turning men into greedy scrooges who stomped on his fellow man. And you

00:22:20.940 can also see, if you listen to my, I think it's episode 99, if you listen to that episode about

00:22:25.420 black liberation theology, you can see where they get a lot of their ideas. It's from Karl Marx and

00:22:32.600 these collectivist ideologies. Everything in Marx's mind was about this dichotomy. Everything was viewed

00:22:43.780 through the lens of oppression. And this is where, again, we have to note that socialism and today's

00:22:50.960 version of social justice cannot be separated. They go hand in hand. It is all about the elimination

00:22:57.060 of differences between groups by pushing down those whom the left sees as the oppressor and lifting up

00:23:04.720 the ones the left sees as the oppressed, primarily through an economic system that taxes the wealthy into

00:23:10.460 obscurity, but also through social constructs like intersectionality that invade our public discourse

00:23:16.420 and the messages that we see in the media, et cetera. We have discussed this many times, this idea of

00:23:22.620 intersectionality that people are defined by their various intersection points, which are skin color,

00:23:28.360 religion, gender, sexual orientation, et cetera, and how those points correspond to a particular level of

00:23:35.400 oppression, according to the left. The more intersection points you have, they say, the more

00:23:40.800 credibility and value that you have. So any opinion that you have or view that you hold is weighed against

00:23:46.260 how intersectional you are to many people on the left. Straight white men, of course, are the least

00:23:51.700 intersectional. Thus, they are the least oppressed. So if a white man is a conservative, for example, it is because

00:23:58.200 he is a straight white man, not because he has those ideas. If a white woman is conservative, it's because she is 0.71

00:24:04.280 white, not because she really has those ideas. Oh, and also because she's a woman who is a conservative,

00:24:10.260 it's probably also because she is oppressed and brainwashed by the patriarchy. Same goes for black 1.00

00:24:18.020 conservatives, for immigrant conservatives, for Muslim conservatives. It's because they say you have 0.99

00:24:22.940 been oppressed. And so you have been brainwashed by white people, not because you think your own 0.57

00:24:27.940 thoughts or have your own values, because if you really thought for yourself, they would say you would be 0.95

00:24:32.920 a socialist and a communist. Because these people believe that it is not conservative versus liberal,

00:24:40.800 just like Karl Marx, they believe that it is the oppressed versus the oppressor. They see anyone who

00:24:48.300 disagrees with them as as on the side of the oppressor. So it doesn't make sense to them when

00:24:53.860 someone who is black or someone who is gay or someone who is an immigrant or someone who is Muslim 0.94

00:24:58.160 would be on the conservative side, would be against them. They see those people as on the side of the 0.97

00:25:02.460 oppressor. And the only reason an oppressed person in their mind would be on the side of the oppressor

00:25:06.540 is if they are brainwashed. And so that's why they just can't deal with people who are minorities who 0.99

00:25:12.640 don't agree with them. People like me are, you know, a white person, a white woman, a white man. They can

00:25:17.920 just brush off as just being racist, of just being as a part of the oppressive white supremacy. That's why 0.90

00:25:26.200 they disagree with them. So they don't actually have to contend with any ideas. And you see that a lot

00:25:31.320 in our debates in our discussions today. Just like Karl Marx, they believe that the only way for the

00:25:37.000 oppressed to be free is through socialism and or communism. So if you're against socialism,

00:25:42.800 then again, you are on the side of those who want to oppress people. So how do they decide,

00:25:50.800 you ask, who is being oppressed? Typically in a very superficial way. Who has been the most poor

00:25:58.080 and or who has been the most discriminated against? And I say and or because this is complicated on the

00:26:04.720 intersectionality scale. If you haven't noticed, everything is extremely subjective because it's not

00:26:10.960 just who has been the most discriminated against. For example, the Jewish people have been discriminated

00:26:15.700 against and marginalized and brutalized throughout history. And the left does not have a high view of

00:26:21.140 Jews. You'll notice they really only care about violence against Jews when it's done at the hands 0.91

00:26:26.700 of a white supremacist. If it's a Palestinian terror group like Hamas, they don't really have anything 0.97

00:26:31.080 to say about it. And in fact, they're going to stand up for Palestine. That's because to the left,

00:26:35.480 Jews rank lower than non-Jewish white people. Even or even though Jews rank lower than non-Jewish white 0.90

00:26:42.960 people on the intersectionality scale, they still rank higher than Muslims in Palestine. Why? 0.99

00:26:49.600 Because traditionally, the Jewish people have been successful.

00:26:53.100 They have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. They have, in general, been well-educated. They have

00:26:59.780 been financially successful. They have refused to bow down to victimhood. So even though they have been

00:27:06.740 traditionally oppressed throughout history to the intersectional and even socialist left, they are not

00:27:14.160 given as much credit. They are not given as much compassion and as much sympathy as Muslims because Jewish 1.00

00:27:20.320 people, probably to a lot of people on the left, are just too white. They are just too successful 0.96

00:27:26.780 to have a lot of compassion for, which is why they always will go against Jews if it's Jews versus 0.91

00:27:33.820 Muslims, but not a Jew versus a Christian white person. It's just crazy. It's really hard to grapple 0.95

00:27:41.260 with. But once you realize that this is how they think, a lot of the things that they say and do make a lot

00:27:46.500 of sense, or they don't make a lot of sense, but at least you know where they're coming from.

00:27:51.620 So American leftists who buy into this oppressed versus oppressor dynamic claim to be

00:27:56.400 woke, but the reality is they actually see things through a very narrow Western lens. They look

00:28:03.420 exclusively, really, on how groups have fared in the United States and not on a global scale. So,

00:28:11.380 for example, they count Christians as privileged in America, as mostly whites, when the reality is

00:28:17.380 Christians are persecuted far more than any other religious group in the world, and most Christians

00:28:23.560 are not whites. And Christianity did not start in the West. It most certainly did not start in the

00:28:28.800 United States. But this, again, reflects the ideology of Karl Marx. He hated Christianity. He called Jews 0.99

00:28:35.560 hucksters. He really actually loathed most religions, but primarily loathed any group that he's 0.98

00:28:41.360 saw as an oppressor. When you realize that this is how that a lot of these leftists, not all, but a lot

00:28:47.980 of these leftists see the world stemming from Karl Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels. A lot of

00:28:53.660 what they do, like I said, it doesn't make sense, but it does. Everything is viewed not through the lens

00:28:59.340 of what is true and what is not, but what group is this person a part of and how oppressed have they

00:29:06.560 been? And that's how I'm going to figure out who is to blame or how much sympathy or credit to give.

00:29:11.360 That is why when anyone criticizes, for example, Ilhan Omar for saying that Israel has hypnotized the

00:29:20.700 world or that Republicans' only support for Israel is because of the Benjamins or that AIPAC is

00:29:27.420 controlling Republican politicians or for sympathizing with and defending men from Minnesota who tried to

00:29:32.840 join ISIS or defending Hamas or trivializing 9-11, if we criticize her for any of this stuff,

00:29:37.680 it's because we are Islamophobic. So if we criticize a Muslim person for saying something

00:29:42.960 derogatory towards Jewish people, it is because we are Islamophobic, not because they are anti-Semitic.

00:29:48.020 Why? Because of this crazy intersectionality scale and who they see as more oppressed and more

00:29:52.820 privileged. So if you criticize Rashida Tlaib for saying that she feels a calming feeling when she

00:29:57.900 thinks about the Holocaust because of her erroneous belief that Palestinians were the savior of the

00:30:03.520 Jewish people rather than aiding and abetting Nazis, it's because you're an Islamophobe, 0.99

00:30:08.760 not because her comments were ridiculous and anti-Semitic. If you criticize AOC for the many, 0.98

00:30:14.820 many uneducated comments that she has made, it's because you are a racist, sexist, 0.99

00:30:19.360 and you hate women of color. That's why. It's not because she has anything wrong to say. 1.00

00:30:25.820 Uh, this is also why personal responsibility is really not something that's ever going to be

00:30:30.940 emphasized by the socialist left because every group who has not succeeded, uh, is seen as

00:30:37.120 systemically oppressed, not irresponsible as we've already covered. So now we see how this social

00:30:42.560 aspect of socialism really goes hand in hand with the economic aspect of socialism. Socialism sees

00:30:47.940 poverty as never, never the fault of people who are poor, but a consequence of oppression from the

00:30:53.520 people at the top, which is why they think it necessary to take the power and the wealth and

00:30:58.340 the property of the haves and hand it to the have not. So they do not see someone, for example,

00:31:03.460 like my parents who, uh, were raised poor, who were very poor when they got married, had to work

00:31:08.600 themselves, uh, through college, had to really pull themselves up and to make it work. And who couldn't

00:31:14.240 even afford a new pair of shoes when they first got married for my dad to wear to work. They don't see a

00:31:19.980 story like that. And then my dad, you know, both of them becoming successful entrepreneurs and being

00:31:24.980 able to make a good life for my brothers and me, they don't see that as a story of personal

00:31:29.260 responsibility. They see that as a story of privilege. They see that as a story of benefiting

00:31:34.000 from certain systems that are kinder to white people than to people who are in other groups.

00:31:39.200 They don't see that as the consequence of choices. They see that as the consequence of a system.

00:31:43.860 And the same thing goes with poverty. Now we do know just from a logical experiential perspective,

00:31:49.460 like we do understand that bad luck happens or maybe not luck from a theological term,

00:31:55.940 but bad things happen. Bad circumstances happen that are outside of people's control. Not everyone

00:32:00.760 who is poor, it hasn't always been a product of bad choices. Sometimes you are born into extremely

00:32:07.200 unfortunate circumstances in which you could not crawl out of because you were 14 years old and you

00:32:12.480 were left without parents, whatever it is. Not everyone who is poor is a product of bad choices

00:32:17.880 or is a product of your own bad choices anyway. And not everyone who is rich has had to go from

00:32:23.080 nothing to something. We know that that's true. There is chance, there are circumstances that people

00:32:28.140 are born into that are inherently more privileged than the circumstances that other people are born

00:32:32.460 into. That of course is true. But the socialist doesn't take that kind of nuanced look. They see

00:32:37.920 every kind of discrepancy, not as a consequence of choices, but as a consequence of some

00:32:42.400 kind of systemic oppression, which is why they justify saying, well, the government's got to step

00:32:48.000 in and do something about this to make sure that all outcomes are equal because anyone at the top

00:32:52.580 has exploited people at the bottom to get there. When of course that is not always true.

00:32:58.260 So let us talk about a little bit more about the background of socialism. There are two main branches

00:33:04.100 of thought within the socialist ideology. First is the belief that everything except personal items,

00:33:09.460 such as clothing, should be public property. So an example of this would be that of Sir Thomas Moore

00:33:14.720 writing in 1516, Utopia. Other socialists would believe that the only way that society is supposed

00:33:21.780 to control the economy is through property and other resources. So maybe not quite as extreme.

00:33:28.060 In this case, centralists in socialism would say that the state should be a central authority

00:33:33.420 but it should be in control of the resources of that specific society. This was the case in the

00:33:41.560 Soviet Union. And then you have people in the more decentralized camp of socialism that believe

00:33:46.780 that these decisions should be made at the lowest possible level of government. So state or local.

00:33:52.640 Ultimately, these decisions would be made by a populist decision. So that's what one side of this

00:33:57.640 of the socialist spectrum believes. But it's important to note that this kind of revolution or transition would

00:34:02.460 still take a powerful central government to force it to make it happen, even if it were to be more of

00:34:08.920 a populist socialist movement, which is part of why socialism has never really worked long term.

00:34:16.660 Marxism, Leninism tried in the Soviet Union, but failed. People were starving, were persecuted,

00:34:21.740 were oppressed by the tyranny of the Soviet government. India tried state socialism as well as Sweden

00:34:26.720 with democratic socialism. And in Germany, we all know how national socialism went with the

00:34:32.380 Nazi movement. Of course, you probably know Nazi stands for national socialist Chinese. The Chinese 0.55

00:34:37.720 have employed communism and still employs communism today. North Korea is a socialist regime. And I think

00:34:44.640 we can deduce how that's working out for people who have died from parasites after being forced to use

00:34:49.200 human manure to fertilize their crops. Venezuela has been under socialist rule. And people are, of course,

00:34:55.540 as you probably know, are dying of hunger and are still fighting to officially get out from under

00:35:01.900 Maduro's tyrannical rule. Socialism has had loud dissidents over the years who have pushed back against

00:35:08.860 the tyranny of socialism. So you've got Hungary, you've got Czechoslovakia, you've got Poland,

00:35:14.880 you have China, you have Cuba. That is why many countries who tried socialism realized that they had to

00:35:21.660 adopt at least characteristics of capitalism in order to survive or characteristics of the free market to

00:35:28.320 survive. Socialism in Sweden failed. So now they have a welfare state that A, has a fair flat tax rate of

00:35:35.720 60 percent and B, is funded by the free market. So everyone is taxed at a high flat rate. They get free

00:35:43.640 health care, they get free education, but there is a low corporate tax rate so that businesses and

00:35:48.480 individuals are still able to make a significant profit. In fact, the leaders of the Scandinavian

00:35:54.000 countries have publicly corrected Bernie Sanders, who claims that they are socialist countries. They've

00:36:00.240 said, no, we're actually not socialist countries. So the means of production in these Scandinavian

00:36:05.440 countries are mostly in the hands of the citizens and the businesses that they work for. Denmark, for

00:36:13.040 example, doesn't even have a minimum wage law. They are consistently ranked as one of the top free

00:36:17.760 market economies in the world. So these Scandinavian countries are not socialist. And even in using

00:36:23.640 the free market, but having a welfare state, a lot of these countries are still under significant

00:36:27.980 pressure. A lot of people say that even where they are using the free market, but taxing people so high

00:36:33.100 and providing for so many people who are dependent on the state, millions of people who are dependent on

00:36:37.840 the federal government, that it's not going to last very long, that it's eventually going to crash and

00:36:43.340 burn. So even that they're not a socialist state, but their welfare state, even that probably won't

00:36:48.680 last forever. China also realized that they weren't going to become an economic superpower without

00:36:53.460 capitalism. That's why they have special economic zones. These are zones where foreign and domestic

00:36:58.340 trade and investments are done without interference from the central government. They offer tax and

00:37:04.240 business incentives to attract foreign investment in technology. There was even an attempt kind of at

00:37:10.000 socialism in the 19th century. There was an English philanthropist named Robert Owen, who launched a

00:37:16.240 new harmony on the banks of the Wabash River in Indiana. Not too long after the experiment, harmony

00:37:23.600 collapsed and Owen went home. So it doesn't have a great track record. Socialism, bottom line, it just

00:37:30.560 doesn't work. Now, if you talk to a socialist, they'll say it's never truly been tried. Or they will say

00:37:36.680 that while it's happening in the Scandinavian countries, well, one, socialism has been tried

00:37:42.700 many times and it has failed. And socialism does not characterize the Scandinavian countries. Like I

00:37:49.840 said, they are welfare seats. So let's discuss the difference in welfare and socialism. So the idea of

00:37:55.260 welfare existed long before the idea of socialism. In 1601, the Parliament of England enacted something

00:38:00.860 called the Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601. It authorized government provision for the poor residing in

00:38:07.240 local parishes, established a system of obligatory financing outside the church. Early America instilled

00:38:14.800 this kind of principle as well. There was a form of welfare set up only for those who were young and

00:38:19.660 vulnerable or old and vulnerable or who were disabled. No able-bodied person qualified for public 1.00

00:38:25.660 assistance during this time. There was a big shift in welfare during the Great Depression. FDR

00:38:31.360 implemented his New Deal, which were, of course, a set of economic programs meant to provide relief

00:38:37.680 for families who were hit hard by the Depression. In 1935, the Social Security Act established a national

00:38:43.660 system of old age insurance for retired workers, benefits for victims of industrial accidents,

00:38:49.780 unemployment insurance, aid for dependent mothers and children, the blind, the physically handicapped,

00:38:54.920 and then you probably know about the 1960s when LBJ launched the Great Society. This had an aim to

00:39:01.300 eliminate poverty and also racial injustice. And during this period, new spinning programs were

00:39:07.080 launched that also addressed education, medical care, urban problems, rural poverty and transportation.

00:39:13.300 Medicare and Medicaid were products of this time. The Great Society really looked to expand FDR's New

00:39:20.100 Deal, but the New Deal was in response to a severe economic crisis. And so the Great Society was

00:39:25.120 something different. The Great Society occurred when the American economy was actually booming.

00:39:29.740 Everything was growing and flourishing due to what, by the way, due to Kennedy's tax cuts,

00:39:36.120 which slashed the top marginal tax rate by 20 percent. This resulted in the GNP rising,

00:39:41.660 the unemployment rate falling dramatically, and the average income increasing. So that was from the tax

00:39:46.520 cuts. Just want to make that clear. This was an effort to end poverty, to end injustice. But even

00:39:53.460 if the intentions were good, the results were not very good. So since then, we have spent over 20

00:40:00.300 trillion, 20 trillion dollars on these entitlement programs. So even if you spend a million dollars a

00:40:06.420 day for 2,000 years, you still wouldn't be out of 20 trillion dollars. That is how much money that is.

00:40:13.740 We have spent more than 20 trillion dollars on welfare programs that were originally meant to

00:40:18.540 create a level playing field and ensure people had opportunity, but it didn't really solve anything.

00:40:23.940 It didn't actually change the poverty rate. It didn't stop disparity. And many of these programs

00:40:30.180 just kept growing. In 2016 alone, we spent 2.7 trillion dollars on various welfare systems.

00:40:38.500 These specifically include Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, unemployment compensation,

00:40:43.800 and veterans benefits. According to Pew, more than two-thirds of our yearly spending goes to welfare

00:40:49.420 or entitlement programs. That's in comparison to 15.3 percent of total spending for national defense,

00:40:55.620 net spending to government debt, 6.1 percent, and education aid at 3 percent. That means that around

00:41:02.240 6 percent goes towards things like infrastructure, national parks, foreign aid, and various other

00:41:08.960 items. So that's a large portion of our tax money. Now, all of this, welfare, like I said, different

00:41:15.820 than socialism, but certainly over the past half century, a little bit more than that, has primed

00:41:20.700 the pump for socialism. Economically, people have come to expect to be taken care of. From the Great

00:41:27.640 Depression to now, welfare has gone from relief to people who absolutely need it, who are getting back

00:41:32.760 on their feet, to entitlement, whether or not you're going to work ever. People feel entitled

00:41:38.720 to their Social Security, to their Medicare, to their Medicaid, to their unemployment benefits. And in many

00:41:45.320 cases, it's more lucrative not to work than to work because of just how much the government will take

00:41:51.580 care of you. So Bernie Sanders being able to run and almost win the Democratic nomination in 2016

00:41:57.760 tells you just how far we have come and just how far we have shifted, really just within the past 10

00:42:04.060 years even. Welfare wasn't thought of as socialism originally because in the case of the New Deal,

00:42:11.040 it was a desperate measure called for by a desperate time. And it was meant to help people who were trying

00:42:17.940 to work in the case of the Great Society. Welfare was fueled by American wealth by that hard work.

00:42:23.220 But socialism and how we view welfare today negates the need for individualism. It negates the need for

00:42:31.660 entrepreneurship, for hard work, because everyone is going to be taken care of no matter what.

00:42:36.360 That was never the intention of the American welfare program. But it has been the unintended

00:42:42.140 consequence of thinking people can be freed from oppression and freed from poverty by just giving

00:42:47.840 them more money without really any expectations. But it wasn't just economic. They weren't just

00:42:53.800 economic policies like the welfare programs that made the way for the popularity of socialism. Because

00:42:59.040 remember, a major part of socialism is its social aspect, is social justice. And this idea of social

00:43:06.880 justice, this desire for equal outcomes across socioeconomic classes, races, genders, was championed by

00:43:13.560 none other than Barack Obama. We saw this in his domestic dealings as he pitted all white cops against

00:43:19.360 all black kids, as he belittled business owners by insisting that they didn't build what they had when

00:43:25.940 he demonized the wealthy by saying that at some point you just got enough money by targeting Christian 0.90

00:43:32.140 conservatives using the IRS. We saw this in his foreign dealings, his well-known apology tour for how

00:43:39.760 American strength he purported has negatively manifested itself throughout the world.

00:43:46.280 Barack Obama's worldview is that of the oppressed versus the oppressor. And those who have, in the

00:43:52.480 leftist mindset, been the subject of oppression need to be lifted up. Those who have traditionally

00:43:58.200 been oppressed need to be brought low. And we know that some of his mentors were affected by,

00:44:04.560 well, I don't really want to go throughout this whole lineage because it's a long story.

00:44:07.780 So if you listen to episode 99, you will also see how Barack Obama was affected by Marxism as

00:44:13.820 well. He demonstrated this through the vehicle of identity politics, which says that if you are this

00:44:19.260 race, you have to vote this way or believe this. If you are that gender, you have to vote that way or 0.99

00:44:24.860 believe that. This creates tribalism, which stokes resentment, all of which is fueled by

00:44:29.960 intersectionality, which all come part and parcel with socialism, as we see in the work of Karl

00:44:36.440 Marx. It is all about pitting the perceived oppressed versus the perceived oppressor.

00:44:42.400 During Barack Obama's presidency, we see in a 2017 Pew research study called Polarization in Politics

00:44:48.660 that Republicans and Democrats became more divided than they've ever been, with Democrats moving to

00:44:53.460 the left on almost every issue for racism to immigration to welfare and Republicans' views changing

00:44:59.560 much less. As of 2017, there were fewer people in the middle than had ever been. A dramatic shift

00:45:07.080 away from the middle and especially to the far left came while Barack Obama was in office. This study

00:45:11.720 was in 2017. You cannot blame this on Donald Trump. I'm not saying Donald Trump is the great reconciler,

00:45:17.020 but you cannot blame the level of division that we have and that we have had for the past few years

00:45:23.280 on Donald Trump. This started happening for the most part under Barack Obama. Yes,

00:45:28.000 there was always division. We've always had division in our country. I mean, we fought a war

00:45:31.940 north versus the south. There was a lot of division in the 1960s, but the modern division,

00:45:37.900 the division that we now have, began cultivating and really festering under Barack Obama.

00:45:43.740 Leftist economic policies that have lingered for at least the past half century, coupled with the

00:45:49.220 social shift to the left over the last at least two decades, has created the climate for the embracing

00:45:56.520 of socialism in the United States, especially among young people who just don't know better and quite 0.98

00:46:01.900 frankly are fed this postmodern garbage from their professors. More millennials and Generation Z identify 0.93

00:46:10.720 as socialists or at least view socialism positively than any other generation. More millennials voted for

00:46:16.800 Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primaries than voted for Trump or Clinton combined. Most millennials,

00:46:22.700 quite frankly, quite frankly, I think I just said quite frankly, I just said it again, don't know what

00:46:28.240 socialism is. What they usually mean is that they want more welfare. They think they want to be more

00:46:34.460 like the Scandinavian countries, but they have no idea what the difference is between the free market

00:46:39.740 and the free market economy with a high tax rate and a free health care system and that and socialism.

00:46:48.120 So if we tried to make our economy function the way Scandinavian countries do, most of those on the 1.00

00:46:55.040 socialist left would freak out. Like if we implemented a flat tax rate, if we eliminated the minimum wage

00:47:00.820 laws the way that they have in Denmark, they would say that's absolutely heartless. They wouldn't let us

00:47:04.540 do that. Also, if we cracked down on immigration the way that these Scandinavian countries do, if we 0.92

00:47:11.160 encouraged a sense of nationalist pride the way that they do, they would be against it. So I don't think

00:47:16.260 that they really want to be like Scandinavia. These people who say the Scandinavian countries are these

00:47:20.420 beacons of socialism. So really, I think that a lot of millennials who say that they want socialism

00:47:25.020 don't really know what they want. They think that these offers by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren

00:47:29.980 for free health care, for free college, of course, that affects the younger generations more than

00:47:33.960 millennials. They say, yes, that sounds fair. That sounds good. Let's get that 1%. Let's stick it to the

00:47:40.520 man and get his stuff. What they don't realize is that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are both

00:47:48.320 part of the 1%. They spent so much time demonizing the 1%. They are a part of the 1%. You would think

00:47:54.080 that Bernie Sanders would be able to give up at least two of his three houses or one of his three

00:47:58.300 houses and give a little bit more to the government than what he does right now or give a little bit

00:48:03.480 more to charity than he does right now. If he really thought the 1% was so evil, no one's forcing him to be

00:48:08.620 in the 1%. He can give away enough money so that he's no longer in it. But of course, they want

00:48:13.460 socialism for thee, but not for me or socialism for thee, but not for them. Same goes for AOC, of 0.94

00:48:22.320 course, who though she in many ways embodies the American dream going from being a bartender to a 1.00

00:48:28.460 congresswoman in the matter of a couple years, she doesn't think that other people can make it like 1.00

00:48:32.580 she does. She doesn't think that other people can make the same choices that she has. And in fact,

00:48:37.540 if you look at AOC's Green New Deal, it's clear that she doesn't think anyone should have to take

00:48:42.840 responsibility. Her deal promises economic security for those who are unable or unwilling to work.

00:48:49.900 And that's another key part of socialism, one that is unfortunately really attractive to a lot

00:48:55.060 of young people. The belief that there is no inherent morality or value in you working. You should not be

00:49:03.000 forced to work if you don't want to. That is why many on the side of the left are pushing this

00:49:07.320 universal basic income and are pushing for programs that would totally take care of all of your needs.

00:49:12.920 You should be provided for whether you work or not. That, of course, is the goal of socialism,

00:49:19.420 to force people into equal mediocrity and allow the government to take care of you. Remember that the

00:49:25.140 government does not give you provision without taking freedom in return. So the more provision the

00:49:31.740 government gives, the bigger it gets and the less free all of us are, which explains the revolutions

00:49:37.160 that happen consistently against socialism like the one going on right now in Venezuela.

00:49:41.720 So I know this is a long podcast. We're almost done. As Christians, how should we think of this?

00:49:48.580 There are a lot of people who say I've seen a lot of people say this on Twitter that the early

00:49:54.400 church embraced socialism. No, the early church did not embrace socialism. The early church is described

00:50:02.120 in Acts 2, engaged in voluntary distribution of their goods to meet the needs of their community.

00:50:09.120 Their giving was out of a willing, cheerful heart, which the Bible says is the only kind of giving that God

00:50:15.620 loves. This was not forced redistribution. This was charity. And it was given to meet the needs

00:50:23.240 of their own community. Emphasis on needs and their own community. So they weren't helping those who

00:50:30.900 didn't just, who just didn't want to work. They weren't helping those who were unwilling to work.

00:50:35.700 They were helping those who needed it in their local church out of the love of Christ, which compelled

00:50:41.040 them to such kindness. This kind of love must be uncoerced, especially it shouldn't be coerced by

00:50:49.440 bureaucrats who don't have the needs of the church in mind at all. Usually by bureaucrats who don't

00:50:55.340 even see the need to protect the vulnerable like unborn babies. They are not to be the stewards of

00:51:01.760 all of our money. This does not mean, of course, that we don't pay taxes. We do. The Bible says

00:51:07.160 render to Caesar what is Caesar's. But what follows that? We render to God what is God's. So render to

00:51:14.040 Caesar what is Caesar's and render to God's what is God's. To God belongs our full generosity. To God

00:51:20.960 belongs our profit and our property. Also, rendering to Caesar what is Caesar's is not approval of

00:51:28.660 tyranny. We should ask the question, what is Caesar's? What should be Caesar's? And in a democratic

00:51:35.480 republic in which we now live, we have a say in what should be Caesar's and what should not be Caesar's.

00:51:41.520 And we should we should not say we would be stupid to say that the majority of our profits and our

00:51:48.880 property belongs to Caesar. Why? Because Caesar is not a good steward of our money and Caesar is not a 0.97

00:51:55.620 good caretaker of our people. Look no further than the VA for that. I'm just going to say when I was

00:52:01.340 saying that little monologue just then, I reminded myself of Gretchen Wieners from Mean Girls when she

00:52:06.440 goes off about Caesar. I won't get into that. Some of you maybe not even you might not even get that

00:52:11.320 reference. Anyway, so the Bible speaks to the legitimacy of private property as early as the

00:52:18.140 Ten Commandments through thou shall not steal and thou shall not covet. You shall not steal because

00:52:24.700 what someone else has is not yours and you should not covet because what someone else has isn't supposed

00:52:31.280 to be yours and even wanting it to be yours according to God is a sin. So the Bible legitimizes 0.97

00:52:38.900 private property early on. The Bible also makes clear in the creation account that work is expected

00:52:44.420 of and necessary for the flourishing of the individual. Work existed before the fall, before

00:52:52.660 sin entered the world. It was not a consequence of the fall. I think a lot of people think that work

00:52:57.800 was a consequence of the fall. It was not. In a sinless world, before the fruit was tasted,

00:53:03.000 the forbidden fruit. Before Adam and Eve hid themselves from God, Adam was given a job.

00:53:08.600 He was given responsibility. Work is inherently good. It is inherently moral. That is precisely why

00:53:14.800 when people do not work, they become purposeless. They become despondent, often depressed and suicidal.

00:53:21.960 Their mind and their character atrophies. This is part of why unlimited welfare is immoral and

00:53:28.460 unbiblical. That is part of why socialism is immoral and unbiblical. So here's a really good 0.99

00:53:34.720 quote from John Piper on socialism that I think sums this all up. Socialism borrows the compassionate

00:53:42.240 aims of Christianity and meeting people's needs while rejecting the Christian expectation that this

00:53:47.760 compassion not be forced or coerced. Socialism, therefore, gets its attractiveness at certain points

00:53:53.920 in history where people are drawn to the entitlements that socialism brings and where people

00:53:58.440 are ignorant or forgetful of the coercion and the force required to implement it and whether or

00:54:03.640 not that coercion might in fact backfire and result in greater poverty or drab uniformity or worse. 0.93

00:54:10.740 The abuse of the coercion as we saw in the murderous states like USSR and Cambodia. So I think that he 0.87

00:54:18.620 summarizes the problems with socialism from a Christian perspective, from a biblical perspective, really well.

00:54:24.720 So to conclude all of this, a socialism is at best a well-intentioned ideology aimed at economic and

00:54:34.600 social equality. And at worst, which is the only end of the spectrum that we've actually seen manifested

00:54:40.640 throughout history and in the modern day, is a coercive, unjust, and unbiblical system that disincentivizes

00:54:49.740 work eliminates generosity and controls every aspect of the populace. And it is the exact opposite of

00:54:57.840 what needs to happen in the United States. Every aspect of your life will be controlled. If you think

00:55:02.780 free speech, if you think freedom of religious expression, if you think the sanctity of life,

00:55:07.940 if you think any of the rights that are recognized in the Bill of Rights, in the Constitution, 0.96

00:55:13.480 if you think any of those are protected in a socialist society, you are crazy. When we give 0.64

00:55:19.500 the government the full power to take care of us, we also give the government full authority to take

00:55:25.600 over our lives. And that's exactly what happens in a socialist society. Do you think Christians, 0.97

00:55:31.960 do you think the church is going to fare well in a socialist society? Well, of course,

00:55:36.020 the gospel is going to thrive no matter what. The true church thrives on the margins. It's going to be

00:55:41.180 okay when we are persecuted. But do you actually think that that's better for the least of these?

00:55:46.740 Do you actually think that it's better for your community to be completely controlled and coerced

00:55:52.820 by a central government through socialism in the name of forced compassion, which, as I've already

00:55:57.740 said in this podcast, by definition is not compassion at all? Remember, we are the last hope. And as Ronald

00:56:03.860 Reagan said, we are always one generation away from eliminating liberty. That's a paraphrase.

00:56:10.740 We are always one generation away from giving up our freedom. Socialism might be attracted to a

00:56:16.980 bunch of lazy people. And I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, maybe some empathetic people

00:56:20.700 too, but it doesn't work. It leads to suffering. It leads to mediocrity. And it is not the future I

00:56:28.160 want or you should want for your children. So like I said, this is not going to be an unbiased podcast

00:56:35.180 episode. I have quite a few thoughts about socialism, but I hope you learned something. If you have any

00:56:40.420 thoughts you would like to send me, please feel free to email me. Leave me a five-star review. If you

00:56:44.580 like my podcast, subscribe on YouTube and on social media, if you so desire, and I will see you soon.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - January 08, 2020

REPLAY： Socialism

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript