“Socialism of any type leads to a total destruction of the human spirit.”

We hold this truth to be self evident. The superstition that is socialism has proven destructive to its participants (individually and societally) over, and over, and over, and over again. Here in Amerika and, everywhere else, socialism is a sole destroying and freedom and liberty eradicating disease.

Excellent quote from and excellent source. The man who at 20 is a Socialist is forgiven due to his youth. The man who at 40 is still a socialist...is an idiot.

Coming from man that lived it and was willing to pay the price to expose it for the evil that it is.

Socialism is a wonderful thing for every ant bed and bee hive.

When you rob Peter to pay Paul, you'll always have the support of Paul.

It is the strangest thing to me that any one who has lived free would want to convert to Socialism. It is like they were never educated and didn't know what they had when they lost it.

Solzhenitsyn lived in a corrupted socialist system.The corporation have taken the place of the state in our corrupted capitalist system. Solzhenitsyn had few good words for our "capitalism".

gtheo, yes, we who would participate in free market capitalism, as originally defined, also have few good words for what now passes for capitalism.

Capitalism of any type can also lead to the annihilation of the human spirit.

Funny. I haven't read anything about the countrymen of Scandinavia losing any human spirit. As a matter of fact they seem to outperform other nationalities in that particular virtue. And, come to think of it, there seems to be a huge drop in that spirit in good old, capitalistic U. S.

Socialists must be experts at ignorance. Scandinavia? Give me a break. Some of the highest suicide rates in the world. Norway is one of the only countries in the world that has no debt -- due mostly to conservative principles in government (after Keynesian liberalism resulted in massive taxation and inflation) and of course their huge oil reserves only recently being profitable in the 1980's. Norway still has a monarchy, too, as do most Scandinavian countries. They resisted the Nazis and the Soviets by being individually armed even though the government declared neutrality in the world wars. Their success is in production and transportation -- i.e. capitalism. Huge oil revenues back up their currency and pay for their social services. Without the oil, their incredibly high taxes would not be enough to cover the government's liabilities. Any country that uses debt instruments as their trading medium will find themselves poorer and poorer -- it is only a matter of time. That is a banker's trick which has brought down more nations than any revolution. Ned and dick are going to have to do better than that...

Perfect!

Now let us stamp out the socialists.

Semper Fi.

Ned and dick, please read E.Archer's comments. He's right on target.

"In the Scandinavian countries, like all other developed nations, the means of production are primarily owned by private individuals, not the community or the government, and resources are allocated to their respective uses by the market, not government or community planning.

While it is true that the Scandinavian countries provide things like a generous social safety net and universal healthcare, an extensive welfare state is not the same thing as socialism. What Sanders and his supporters confuse as socialism is actually social democracy, a system in which the government aims to promote the public welfare through heavy taxation and spending, within the framework of a capitalist economy. This is what the Scandinavians practice."
https://fee.org/articles/the-myth-of-scandinavian-socialism/

"As Sanandaji explains clearly in his meticulously sourced book, though, what most Big Government advocates see as desirable outcomes in Scandinavia — relative prosperity, high levels of income equality, long lifespans, good health, low levels of poverty, and more — all predate the welfare state. On life expectancy, for example, four out of the top five OECD nations were in Scandinavia in 1960, with Norway at the very top. On income, meanwhile, most of the shift toward “equality” happened between 1870 and 1950 — long before the welfare state took over. Ironically, the emergence of Big Government even put some of that at risk, along with the long-established cultural norms such as the Protestant work ethic, honesty, social trust, entrepreneurship, innovation, and more that made those advances possible to begin with.

Indeed, before the emergence of welfare-state policies beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, Sweden was among the most prosperous and fast-growing economies on the planet. Between 1870 and 1936, when Sweden was characterized by relatively free markets, the nation enjoyed the highest rate of growth in the industrialized world. Innovation and entrepreneurship flourished, making Sweden one of the richest countries on Earth. Then came the radical Social Democratic period characterized by an ever-larger and more expensive government. Between 1975 and the mid-1990s — marked by the radical, if short-lived, experiment in “Third Way” socialism — Sweden dropped from being the fourth richest nation in the world down to the 13th richest.

Fortunately for Swedes, as the giant welfare state's harmful effects became increasingly obvious, the Swedish political class began to reverse course. From lowering taxes and government spending to deregulating and privatizing broad swaths of the economy, policymakers realized that the nation's continued success depended on freer markets — not total government. Still, the damage was severe. As Sanandaji explains, citing his earlier research on the subject, the rate of business formation during the “third-way era” was “dreadful.” In 2004, none of the 100 largest firms ranked by employment were founded within Sweden after 1970. “Furthermore, between 1950 and 2000, although the Swedish population grew from 7 million to almost 9 million, net job creation in the private sector was close to zero,” he observed.

Today, Denmark, despite higher taxes, has more economic freedom than the United States. Sweden and Finland are both catching up, too. And interestingly, despite Sanders' recent pronouncements on ABC News about Scandinavia having “more income and wealth equality,” Sweden still has a great deal more “wealth inequality” today than the United States, according to a study cited in the monograph.

To understand just how damaging the Scandinavian “third way” era was, Sanandaji cites a startling admission by Bo Ringholm, the Social Democratic finance minister of Sweden at the time. “If Sweden had had the same growth rates as the OECD average since 1970, our total resources would have been so much greater that it would be the equivalent of 20,000 SEK [$2,700] more per household per month,” Ringholm is quoted as saying in 2002. And as Sanandaji shows clearly and convincingly, often using government data, a major reason that Sweden's economy did not grow at the rate of other OECD economies during that period was the lack of economic freedom."
Debunking the Myth of Socialist “Success” in Scandinavia
http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/europe/item/21463-debunking-the-myth-of-socialist-success-in-scandinavia

Both socialism and capitalism in there extremes are an abomination.

I hope that no one present will suspect me of offering my personal criticism of the Western system to present socialism as an alternative. Having experienced applied socialism in a country where the alternative has been realized, I certainly will not speak for it. The well-known Soviet mathematician Shafarevich, a member of the Soviet Academy of Science, has written a brilliant book under the title Socialism; it is a profound analysis showing that socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Who, I ask, depicts the human spirit? As the Socialists disagrees with what seems to be the whole world speaking favorably of crime and its effectiveness, the Socialist seemingly alone believes humans are not naturally criminal. The Socialist's quest to create a natural crime free setting for our species makes him the only human therefore the only representative, creator, and preserver of any human spirit. Additionally, the Socialist would like to add that destructive person is not human while the creative person is purely human.