Don’t wanna be an American idiot
One nation controlled by the media
Information age of hysteria
It’s calling out to idiot America
-- Green Day, "American Idiot"

Socialism.

The very word sends paroxysms of rage through every conservative.

But do conservatives know what socialism is?

I recently had a discussion with a die-hard MAGA “conservative” about socialism, and the results were laughable only because laughing kept me from spiraling into the depths of misery over the state of education (or lack thereof) in America.

Broken down to its simplest terms, socialism is largely understood to be a governmental system in which the means of production is controlled by the state and in which there is no such thing as private property.

The government claims the right to take however much of your wages it wants, and whatever of your property it wants.

It’s simple logic: If the government claims the right to your wages and property, it therefore follows that you yourself have no claim to them at all. Frederic Bastiat, in his book, The Law, discusses socialism in the following terms:

“But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.”

Everything that the government does and provides is funded through taxation, which is the government’s claim to your wages. It takes from you, and appropriates those funds to whatever it sees fit. Everything the government “provides” to its citizens is first taken from other citizens. The government is not its own resource. It requires a host from which to leech, and that host is those over whom it rules.

All government programs, including tax-funded education, military, infrastructure, medical care, etc are funded through the confiscation of assets, namely, taxation and eminent domain. Even the confiscation of “contraband” is the government claiming a right to that to which it has determined you do not. If your church is a 501(c)3 non-profit, it has submitted to the government yoke and given the state authority over it, thus making it a socialist organization.

Even Social Security is socialist by nature. Yes, we pay in to it, but most of us have no choice, meaning the government is wresting your assets from you in order to fund it. Further, rather than maintaining a fund with your name on it, all social security funds go into a pool from which pensions are drawn. You could do a much better job simply tucking those same funds into an envelope under your mattress until retirement, but the state in its infinite wisdom determines who gets how much and when from a collective fund into which you have paid. You are at the mercy of the state for access to your own money.

In trying to explain all these things to the die-hard MAGA conned-servative mentioned above, he argued (without evidence) that all these things are in fact NOT socialist, and that I was in fact a socialist myself for suggesting that all these programs, which are alive and well in the United States, were socialist.

Just take a moment to absorb the levels of stupidity here. In arguing against these government programs because they are socialist, I had convinced this Mensa candidate that I was a dirty Socialist myself.

How had this come to be?

After talking with and observing other conned-servatives, and pondering my many interactions with others in the past, I came to an unsettling conclusion. Their definition of “socialism” can be summed up simply as: Anything or anyone that questions the deity and inerrancy of muh American Republic, muh Republican Party, muh Constitution, or their latest Messiah, muh Donald Trump.

Obama’s Affordable Care Act was socialism because he was a Democrat, but Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” wasn’t because he was a Republican.

Hillary needs to be hung from a lamp post because she’s a Democrat, but let’s overlook Bret Kavanaugh’s liberal actions, because he’s a “conservative” justice.

KGB were bad because they were Russian, but the CIA is totally cool.

Obama’s empty chatter about gun control is damnable treason, but Trump’s bump stock ban and talk of “confiscate first, due process later” is “4D chess” (something we know is really clever and awesome but just can’t explain).

The fact is this: Because people’s standards of right and wrong have been reduced to the right/left paradigm, they have built on shifting sand. These same conned-servatives who rage about the sodomites and transvestites on the left love and adore the likes of Milo Yiannopoulos and Blaire White on the right because, well, they’re “conservative”, and that’s all you need to know. Right and wrong have been cast aside in favor of right or left. Morals are determined by politics, rather than by divine decree.

“Socialism” is determined by whether you’re a good ‘Murican, rather than its actual definition.

At the end of it all, the lesson is as follows: Idolatry leads to stupidity and ignorance. Americans have made the United State Republic their Mount Olympus, the parties their Olympians and Titans, presidents their god-kings, congresspeople and governors their pantheon of deities. Rather than thinking critically based on fact, they react based on political affiliation.

A nation of idiots can only end in destruction.

And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
– II Thessalonians 2:11-12