America will soon be going to the polls. In fact, in some cases, early voting for the crucial midterms has already begun.
In one form or another, especially in the example of Democratic Socialist candidates, I think it’s fair to say that in a number of places around America, communism is on the ballot this time around.
That’s an amazing turn of events in a nation where free enterprise has served us so well and allowed us to thrive and prosper as a nation.
A couple of months ago, I wrote a column on the Ten Commandments and how communism undermines and disobeys every one of them. But a reader, who supported the gist of what I wrote, felt the article fell short because I didn’t develop the point more fully about the commandment against lying.
The ninth commandment says, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” In short, we should not tell lies.
Since columns generally have a limited number of words, e.g., 800, here is a separate article by me on just that topic alone. (Hat tip to Stephen Martin.)
Communism is an assault on truth. Communists reject the existence of God. In effect, they make the state god. Furthermore, they claim that they can deliver the goods, that they can feed the people.
Instead, many starved, and many were oppressed, unto death. Historians Eugene Genovese and his wife Elizabeth Fox-Genovese once published the Marxist Perspectives magazine, but then became disillusioned by communism. They told the National Review (1997) after the Soviet Union imploded: “When it all collapsed, the question was, after 70 years, what do we have to show for it? … tens of millions of corpses.”
In contrast, why has America historically succeeded in granting us freedom? It’s because the Founding Fathers recognized the fact of human sinfulness. They did everything in their power to limit how much power any one man or group of people might have. Belief in the sinfulness of man can be seen in the Constitution with its strict separation of powers.
The Bible says repeatedly that we are all sinners. When we are judged by God’s righteous standards, we learn there is no one good, no, not one.
Mankind tends toward evil. Therefore, power must be separated. I am not aware of a single example of any of the founders of America believing that man was basically good. This is not cynical. It’s just the reality and has led to the most prosperous forms of government – and economics too.
Here’s a sampling from America’s founders on man’s basic nature:
- During debates at the Constitutional Convention, James Madison, a key architect of our nation’s governing document, argued, “All men having power ought to be distrusted.”
- Thomas Jefferson said that power should be divided for everybody’s sake: “The way to have good and safe government is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many.”
- Ben Franklin stated, “There is scarce a king in a hundred who would not, if he could, follow the example of Pharaoh, get first all the peoples’ money, then all their lands and then make them and their children servants forever.”
Our Constitution has endured because it was realistic about man’s nature and because it was predicated on the Declaration, which says our rights come from God. In contrast, communism is based on a lie: Man is basically good.
The former Soviet Union built their system of government on an atheistic, Marxist base – on the notion that man is basically good, but has been corrupted by capitalism and religion.
Marx thought that when the workers seized the means of production and the reins of government and imposed the workers’ state, then government would become unnecessary and wither away. (For documentation, see Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, “The Communist Manifesto,”Samuel Moore, trans., Chicago: Henry Regnary Company, 1969, first published 1848, pp. 56-57.)
So, the new Soviet man or woman was to be free from religious superstitions and from the curse of selfishness as found in capitalism with its emphasis on private property. Who created a better system? The communists or America’s founders? The answer is so obvious.
Historian Paul Johnson said the 20th century state, in large part because of communism (which asserted the basic goodness of humanity), has proven to be the greatest killer of all time. (Paul Johnson, “Modern Times,” New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1983, p. 729.)
It is ironic that the main newspaper in the Soviet Union during its heyday was called “Pravda,” meaning “Truth.” Ironic because it pumped out content that was anything but the truth.
Capitalism and free enterprise often lead to human flourishing. In contrast, communism often leads to poverty, misery, tyranny and death. And that is the truth of the matter.
