Socialism and Discrimination: An incompatibility with the Bill of Rights

Younger generations have always had that group trying to be “edgy” with their support for socialism, but it's becoming more mainstream in liberal politics. You have viable socialist leaning presidential candidates like Bernie Sanders, a full blown socialist in the Seattle city council, and democratic socialists running unopposed for legislative seats in several states.

To be fair, I don't think of socialists as red devils running around with a nefarious agenda, or just crying for “free” stuff because they're too lazy to work. Their intentions are legitimately noble, wanting to establish equality by giving everyone the same access to life's necessities regardless of differences such as demographics or economic class. The idea of achieving equality and putting safety nets in place affords everyone the chance to live their lives mostly worry free.

In application, however, socialism devolves into exactly the kind of system they'd claim to be championing against. Their naivety conveniently overlooks that in practice socialism's objective of establishing equality ends up being achieved through a sadistic elimination of those very differences that a free society can learn to value and appreciate.

A hard pill to swallow: Socialism is one of the most discriminatory examples of governing there is, as it is required in order for the model to survive. It requires like-minded thinking that shares the same goals and collective thought process in order to be achievable, which necessitates state sanctioned discrimination to preserve sustainability.

Consider this - The only successful models of socialism, such as the Nordic Model, have been in homogeneous societies lacking diversity and multiculturalism. Take Norway as an example:

Ethnicity: 91.5% white (83.2% being specifically Norwegian)

Religion: 71.5% Lutheran (another 6.7% being other Christian)

Urbanization: 81% urban population

Religion being one of the biggest factors, as Martin Schroder argues “Lutheranism promotes the idea of a nationwide community of believers and it promotes state involvement in economic and social life. This allows nationwide welfare solidarity and economic coordination”. Immigration also being key, as (despite some rhetoric) Europe in general is fairly xenophobic in comparison to the United States.

In more diverse societies, sustainability of socialism becomes far more complex as compliance isn't naturally afforded like you would find in one where ideals are mostly shared. In order for the model to survive you have two options – become selective with who can be apart of your society, or use force and manipulation to gain compliance. This leads to common traits or practices found in these systems of government:

-Heavy censorship

-An information bottleneck through nationalized networks

-Suppression of organized religion operating without state sponsorship

-Violent elimination of political opposition

-Labor Camps or Gulags

-Civilian disarmament

This requirement for selectiveness and compliance was also learned repeatedly on a smaller scale during the 1960's and 70's with hippie communes. Open admission and group infighting were the leading causes for financial ruin and failure. Taking the longest self-sustaining secular community in North America as an example – the Twin Oaks Community – their system has required rigid rules, labor requirements, and selective membership. There's further examples of writers providing personal tales living in communities, where they discuss the rigid life style and removal of folks with mental illness. Other longer running examples could include monks and monasteries, that are sustainable through like-minded religious faith and strict order. My favorite example being Dieter Duhm who had become disillusioned with socialist communities, as they ultimately failed for being far too open and indiscriminate in invitation.

Efforts to mix socialism into a free society are just disasters in the making. Why? Well, you have the above examples of what happens when people fail to contribute... but there's also the problem of having people like me that are vehemently opposed and will fight your policy tooth and nail to ensure you don't force something on me that I don't want. That ultimately means most efforts for creating socialist policies are doomed to failure with heavily flawed legislation and little cooperation to keep it afloat. Take the Affordable Care Act as an example. If this were in a society where everyone generally thinks the same, this is something that could have been tweaked and perfected (or just completely shifted to universal healthcare). However, in a society where everyone thinks differently, this legislation was born without a chance for survival. It was severely flawed, and rapidly became unsustainable without collective cooperation for a solution to fix it.

You place these examples on a grander scale, and you see why multicultural socialist governments become oppressive over time in order to maintain their system. The model can't afford to have people like me in it, therefore the only option is to exclude me or force my compliance. Forced compliance has been the trend, which is why most socialist takeovers follow a formula of *Step A) Revolution, Step B) Take away the guns, Step C) Run the propaganda machine*

All this considered, people are oblivious to that fact that identifying as a “democratic socialist” means you're a walking oxymoron. Rights you'd expect in a free and fair society can't sustainably coexist with collectivism in a place that boasts significant diversity.