The problem with utopian dreams is that they always end in dystopian realities.
Lenin’s dream of a worker’s paradise transformed itself into Stalin’s nightmare of the gulags, starvation, and the eventual destruction of their nation. Mussolini’s dream of a return to the glories of Rome led directly to the loss of the empire they had and the destruction of their nation. Hitler’s dream of a Thousand Year Reich led directly to the Gestapo, the holocaust, the worst war in History and the destruction of their nation.
How can you possibly believe that we can follow a dream of utopia to any other end than the one everyone else has arrived at – the dust bin of history?
Some may say: ‘But we are Americans, and we have always done the things others could not do.’ I truly believe, not that diversity is our strength but instead, that the blending of all into a uniquely American hybrid has created the most talented, most dynamic, and most successful nation the world has ever known. It is not the will or the talents of our homegrown American collectivists that I question; it is the very nature of collectivism that I maintain makes the accomplishment of their utopian dream impossible.
People can have the best of intentions, however, if they believe they can take from Peter to pay Paul without making Peter resent the fact that he has less than he had before, they don’t know Peter very well. And, if they think they can set Paul up as a perpetual recipient of the swag taken from Peter without creating a pool of Paul’s who constantly want more and who resent those who do the distributing, they have never worked in a soup kitchen, a food bank, or a giveaway store for more than a day.
The vast majority of people are not by nature altruistic milk cows, and they resent it when that is how they are viewed by the nameless faceless bureaucracy necessary to make the machinery of utopia crank out the shabby imitation they deliver.
Conversely, the vast majority of people are not by nature perpetual moochers content to stand with their hands out waiting for the nameless faceless bureaucracy to deliver the bare minimum needed to survive which is always the bounty that actually drops from the utopian extruder.
I contend that a collectivist redistribution Utopia whether it is called Progressive, Socialist, Communist, Fascists, or merely the right thing to do is contrary to the nature of humanity.
People by nature want to be self-reliant. They want to make things better for themselves and their children and their children’s children. People want to strive for something noble, and they want to feel as if their lives matter. Yet in an industrial world divided into haves and have-nots it is easy to understand how the frustration of being a have-not can convince someone that there needs to be a more equitable division of the material goods which modern civilization abundantly provides.
Having come from a blue-collar family, I can well relate to not having health insurance because you can’t afford it. There were times I couldn’t. I can relate to having mornings where you don’t know what you will feed your family that night because I’ve been there. I know how the welfare people make you feel, the way they treat you as if you are trying to take their personal money or the condescension of pity. What I can’t relate to is either thinking it is a good thing to consign our fellow citizens to such a life or to being satisfied with such a life.
Not only does a welfare state corrupt both the dispensers and the recipients, it carries the seeds of its own destruction. Eventually the recipients will want more than the dispensers are willing to give, and revolution or collapse will be the end result.
As Margret Thatcher once said, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”
Plundered empires always collapse. Utopias always end up eating the goose that laid the golden egg. Central planning and collectivism, the Progressive dream for a Great Society, has never, can never and will never succeed. It just isn’t natural.
You can read Dr. Robert Owen’s article “The Nature of Things” in its entirety at this link
