We All Must Choose
America should be destroyed, or it shouldn’t. America must be destroyed, or it mustn’t. That is every American’s choice today, and it can no longer be ignored or avoided. As the riots ramp up in cities across our country (particularly in Chicago, Portland and Seattle), and their perpetrators’ capacity for destruction gradually increases, it is clear the war has already begun and every one of us must choose a side. Do you believe America should be utterly annihilated, or can it be changed from within? Is the system evil, dehumanizing and corrupt beyond redemption, or does it grant us rights and freedoms enjoyed nowhere else in the world? Did our Founding Fathers develop the most ideal form of government in the history of mankind, or do we need to give socialism a chance? These are the questions of 2020, and we cannot avoid answering them.
The popular concept among the left today is “Well, that wasn’t real socialism.” Soviet Russia, Communist China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, East Germany, those weren’t/aren’t real socialist states; they tried but then just became dictatorships. They were headed down the socialist path, but then veered off into authoritarianism and never returned. They tried socialism but didn’t quite make it there. We want liberal socialism in this country, many on the left say. We want democratic socialism. That’s never really been tried, they say. We want socialism, not communism. First, let’s be clear: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the creators of all this stuff, used the terms socialism and communism interchangeably. The goal of socialism is communism, as Lenin put it. It’s all pursuit of the same end: a stateless society with common ownership of the means of production, free access to consumer goods and no social classes. On paper, this seems like a great idea. Imagine there’s no country, as John Lennon put it. Nothing to kill or die for. Wouldn’t that be nice.
It would be nice. A world with no countries, no governments, no armies to fight wars. But the problem is we live in the real world, the world as it exists today. Our world has countries, and armies, and nuclear weapons. If you become a stateless society with no government and no army, then some other country that does have an army will come invade your country and take your resources. In our case, this would be China. They would come over, invade our country, and take all of the land that they don’t already own. Freedom of speech, expression, assembly and religion, the right to keep and bear arms, the right to due process and protection against cruel and unusual punishments would disappear overnight. Dissenting voices would silenced. State control of the internet and mass surveillance (even worse than what we already have) would be immediately implemented. This is why this debate matters, this is why it matters that Antifa is a domestic terrorism group and Black Lives Matter is a Marxist organization. This is why it matters that it says “Abolish Capitalism” on the Antifa logo. This is why we each need to ask ourselves, “Am I okay with these people destroying America or not?”
Five or ten years ago, my answer to that question might have quite different. The first time I saw Loose Change or Zeitgeist, I might have said yeah okay, America needs to be destroyed. But not today, not in 2020, not when I’ve seen the kinds of people who want power and control and what they’re willing to do to get it. Not when I’ve seen what they’re willing to do to people who disagree with them. Not when I see the importance of the right to keep and bear arms to protect ourselves from tyrannical governments and invading foreign powers. Imagine how much harder of a time China will have invading our country when each and every home is armed and ready to fight back. That matters, that is important in 2020. It seems ridiculous but a year ago this “pandemic”, these government lockdowns and widespread violent riots would have been unthinkable. And it’s only going to get weirder, more unbelievable, more dissimilar from the world we once knew. The cognitive dissonance will only get stronger and more debilitating.
I don’t want to see an America run by these violent, radicalized far-left groups. I don’t want warlords and community patrols instead of police departments. I don’t want to live in a world run by China. I love freedom of speech, the right to keep and bear arms, the right to due process and trial by an impartial jury. I don’t want to live in a country where I can’t do what I am doing right now, exercising my right to voice my opinion without fear of reprisal or imprisonment. The ability to express what’s in our hearts and minds is central to what it means to be human. It is innate and to me is as essential as breathing. Words flow out, I put pen to paper and feel alive. We resonate with other people and the despair becomes tolerable. Sharing the human story with each other makes it all worth it. Speaking my truth helps me get through another day, and maybe it does for you as well. The freedom to do so may soon be a thing of the past if these groups are successful in their endeavors.
Socialism has been tried, and it concentrates power in the hands of the very few, and leads to authoritarianism and totalitarianism. The socialist experiment has failed in every country in which it was implemented and we don’t need to try it here. I don’t want America to be destroyed, but maybe you do. Maybe this is the day of reckoning you’ve been waiting for. Maybe the ball is already rolling and these groups cannot be stopped. Maybe you’re out there in the streets every night with these groups looting, robbing and destroying. Maybe you want to burn it all down because you think you can do it better. I’m not sure that I believe you.
