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Tools to Fight Back Against Socialism
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Memes and Zingers
by James Arthur
James Arthur of Knoxville Tea Party and Obamacare Truth Squad has been noodling on how to fight back against socialism for many years. He has honed his skills in numerous face-to-face and online encounters with Progressives. James has a gift for distilling mountains of information into pithy little zingers. Here are two:
by James Arthur
James Arthur of Knoxville Tea Party and Obamacare Truth Squad has been noodling on how to fight back against socialism for many years. He has honed his skills in numerous face-to-face and online encounters with Progressives. James has a gift for distilling mountains of information into pithy little zingers. Here are two:
- Socialists just want to take your stuff and tell you what to do.
- To show social justice warriors there is no justice in social justice, James simply asks: Should people who work twice as much be paid twice as much?
Here are James’ latest insights into fighting back against socialism:
My standard spiel on socialism notes two aspects:
1. As a simple, mechanical fact, it doesn't work. If 'B' is poor, giving 'B' something you've taken from 'A' does not fix why 'B' was poor in the first place.
a) In fact, you've just made 'B' dependent on 'A', and given 'A' the power of food and shelter over 'B'.
2. It's inherently tyrannical. Whenever you redistribute wealth, someone has to be in charge of deciding who is and who isn't worthy, of looking at your personal affairs and deciding how much you deserve to lose. That's a dictator.
I thought you might enjoy these, too:
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Here's a translation (and some highlights) of that excellent speech Tocqueville gave to the French Parliament on socialism:
Tocqueville’s Critique of Socialism (1848)
"Yes, gentlemen, sooner or later, the question of socialism, which everyone seems to fear and which no one, up to now, has dared treat of, must be brought into the open, and this Assembly must decide it. We are duty-bound to clear up this issue, which lies heavy upon the breast of France."
"Now, the first characteristic of all socialist ideologies is, I believe, an incessant, vigorous and extreme appeal to the material passions of man."
"The Old Regime, in fact, held that wisdom lay only in the State and that the citizens were weak and feeble beings who must forever be guided by the hand, for fear they harm themselves. It held that it was necessary to obstruct, thwart, restrain individual freedom, that to secure an abundance of material goods it was imperative to regiment industry and impede free competition. The Old Regime believed, on this point, exactly as the socialists of today do."
"AND AFTER this great Revolution, is the result to be that society which the socialists offer us, a formal, regimented and closed society where the State has charge of all, where the individual counts for nothing, where the community masses to itself all power, all life, where the end assigned to man is solely his material welfare—this society where the very air is stifling and where light barely penetrates? Is it to be for this society of bees and beavers, for this society, more for skilled animals than for free and civilized men, that the French Revolution took place? Is it for this that so many great men died on the field of battle and on the gallows, that so much noble blood watered the earth? Is it for this that so many passions were inflamed, that so much genius, so much virtue walked the earth."
http://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/tocqueville-s-critique-of-socialism-1848
Tocqueville’s Critique of Socialism (1848)
"Yes, gentlemen, sooner or later, the question of socialism, which everyone seems to fear and which no one, up to now, has dared treat of, must be brought into the open, and this Assembly must decide it. We are duty-bound to clear up this issue, which lies heavy upon the breast of France."
"Now, the first characteristic of all socialist ideologies is, I believe, an incessant, vigorous and extreme appeal to the material passions of man."
"The Old Regime, in fact, held that wisdom lay only in the State and that the citizens were weak and feeble beings who must forever be guided by the hand, for fear they harm themselves. It held that it was necessary to obstruct, thwart, restrain individual freedom, that to secure an abundance of material goods it was imperative to regiment industry and impede free competition. The Old Regime believed, on this point, exactly as the socialists of today do."
"AND AFTER this great Revolution, is the result to be that society which the socialists offer us, a formal, regimented and closed society where the State has charge of all, where the individual counts for nothing, where the community masses to itself all power, all life, where the end assigned to man is solely his material welfare—this society where the very air is stifling and where light barely penetrates? Is it to be for this society of bees and beavers, for this society, more for skilled animals than for free and civilized men, that the French Revolution took place? Is it for this that so many great men died on the field of battle and on the gallows, that so much noble blood watered the earth? Is it for this that so many passions were inflamed, that so much genius, so much virtue walked the earth."
http://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/tocqueville-s-critique-of-socialism-1848