This time they were ready — because there was too much at stake.

Looking back at the unusual election we just had, and viewing it in the context of political events going back 150 years, it’s clear that the Democrats had no choice but to rig the presidential election — and, now, they’re going for all the marbles.

In the last weeks of the presidential campaign, Donald Trump was drawing tens of thousands of enthusiastic supporters several times a day, and people across the land, and at sea, formed massive rallies and caravans of their own. Meanwhile, the Biden camp was barely limping along, with one or two funereal gatherings a week, before, at best, a few dozen people (sometimes, overwhelmingly outnumbered by Trump supporters); the campaign’s apparent strategy was to minimize the candidate’s exposure (and let the media do the work for them) — not only because the candidate was feeble and the campaign advocated lockdowns, but also because evidence began emerging of the Biden family’s dealings with foreign oligarchs and corrupt countries — most importantly, Communist China.

So, as election day approached, things were looking good for the president. Indeed, as the results came in on election night, the president was headed for re-election. He was ahead in the electoral college, and had big leads in the handful of remaining states he needed to win.

Then, suddenly, the counting stopped. Late at night, five decisive states announced at the same time that they stopped counting. Has the counting of votes ever stopped on election night in any election, let alone a presidential election? It’s as if, with a couple of minutes left to play in a basketball game, one team is way ahead and “running away with it,” and the other team is down and dejected, staring defeat in the face; and all of a sudden, the referees stop the game for the first time ever, and for no stated reason. Then they send the team that’s winning, home, blindfold them, and tie their hands; leave the trailing team on the court by itself, with control of the scoreboard and the keys; and ask them to send in the final score, whenever they want. If there were fans in the stands, they’d yell, “How much they payin’ you, ref?”

* * *

In hindsight, though, maybe we should have seen this coming because a “perfect storm” of major forces and trends came together to make sure that Joe Biden and the Deep State would not lose.

The most pressing concern was the Biden family. Their pipeline to funds from around the world had been exposed, and was now threatened, and if the country’s chief law-enforcement officer (who’d already “blown the whistle” on the family’s criminal dealings) continued in that job, members of the Biden family, including “the Big Guy,” would be at risk of criminal prosecution. As far as the Bidens were concerned, and quite a few other powerful players too, that simply could not happen. Nor was it only a matter of graft. Being “on the take” from Communist China meant that Joe Biden had “sold out” the country to the ascendant global power, and was unlikely to be working solely for America’s interests; awareness of that could not be allowed to see the light of day — such knowledge, and further probes into the family’s dealings with foreign oligarchs and corrupt countries, especially Communist China, had to be crushed. In addition to the Bidens, there were other crime families, and countless crooked “politicians,” at risk of being exposed, of having their livelihoods threatened, and of being criminally prosecuted. Nobody wants that.

A more significant factor at play was the Deep State. The Swamp rats had been drawn out of the sewers, for all to see. Their unchecked leeching off the country, and their growing grip on society, were being questioned, and might even be checked. The rats wanted to get back to chomping as before, and they were supremely confident they could do it; for, even after the lights were turned on, they still got away with success after success — with almost no legal, financial, professional, or political consequences. And it’s an impressive roll call of accomplishments: spying on domestic presidential campaigns (not only Donald Trump’s, but Ted Cruz’s and Ben Carson’s too); sabotaging a presidential transition and administration; fabricating tales of treason and foreign control of the president (and, with the media in tow, having half the country believe it, and believing so much more); an endless string of preposterous and farcical charges and investigations (on the public’s dime); and attempting to cripple the country — all of which profoundly affected the political process and the country’s elections. And all of that, after eight years of politicizing and corrupting the I.R.S., the Drug Enforcement Administration, the F.B.I., the Justice Department, the judiciary, the intelligence services, and the military — with a corrupt and fawning press, covering everything up, instead of shining a light.

Joining the Deep State were the media, Big Tech, schools, and entertainment — most of them, in bed with Communist China, and wanting to maintain the marriage of convenience, undisturbed. So, when the president drew attention to the doings of the Swamp and China, they all turned their guns on the only thing that stood in their way; and they proceeded to thoroughly malign and demonize the president, members of his family, his associates, and half of the country — with the other half, lapping it up. And having recently succeeded in other demonization campaigns, and passing off an America-hating Marxist on the country, the Democrats and their allies knew they were dealing with a politically illiterate and naive nation, which meant they could pull off anything they wanted, with no risk to themselves and the rest of the Swamp — they were invincible.

With all of that in mind, why should the Swamp rats “stay in the closet” and operate in the dark — far easier, quicker, and cheaper to be direct and up-front, and the effect on the citizenry would be more powerful and long-lasting. Why play “cloak and dagger,” when you can hit them with a sledgehammer, and pound them into submission. For the Democrats and the Deep State, drunk on victory and confidence, and bolstered by a sense of moral superiority and entitlement, a little election tomfoolery was a necessary and logical next step — everything else had succeeded (“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”) — just another coup attempt — and one that would finally finish off the job. Nothing’s going to happen to them — nothing ever does. So they were going to dare the country — “Prove it!” — and they may not even have feared being taken up on the dare. They would show what they can do, who’s really in charge, with a demonstration of power politics at its rawest — and “You will like it!” As every dictator knows, the ultimate goal is for people to believe the lie; and to make that happen, the propaganda organs have to repeat the lie enough times, until the public doesn’t know any better. Which brings to mind Groucho Marx’s line “Who you gonna believe — me, or your lying eyes?,” and the media’s polar-opposite depictions of the support for Trump and Biden.

In addition, the public had become a bit of a nuisance.

Ayad Rahim, frontpagemagazine.com

Trying to preserve the integrity of American elections by insisting that Americans not speak about their real concerns only makes the 2020 election outcome more suspect.

“Why are you forcing me to wear a mask but not forcing me to wear disposable gloves?”

“Because I said so.”

“Why are Fortune 500 stores allowed to stay open while local businesses must go bankrupt?”

“Because I said so.”

Why must I believe the 2020 election was untainted by fraud when nothing about it smells right?”

“Because I said so.”

If any lesson has been driven home during the last year, it is that the public must stop thinking for itself and let the government do its thinking for it.  Questioning the wearing of masks is called “unpatriotic.”  Questioning the authority of local politicians to ban family and church gatherings is called “selfish.”  Questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election is called “dangerous.”

In the United States, however, the government is not meant to be separate from the people.  It is meant to be representative of the people, and its application of power is at all times checked by the people.  It is a form of consensual government.  The buck stops with us, not the governing class. 

There is nothing consensual about “because I said so” governing.  That’s “rule by authority,” a whole other monster that Americans have fought on global battlefields since the country’s founding.  It’s way past time for Republicans and Democrats holding elected offices to understand that millions of Americans find the wide proliferation of “because I said so” government as dangerous as any virus or any foreign attack.  Representative government in the United States is hanging by a thread, and there’s nothing wrong with saying that out loud.  

Former House Speaker Paul Ryan recently told Bank of America’s European Credit Conference that “legal challenges to the outcome and the attacks on our voting system really need to stop” because they “will only serve to undermine our faith in our system of government, our faith in our democracy.”  In other words, voters are not supposed to think for themselves because… Paul Ryan says so. 

Sorry, Ryan, but that ship has sailed.  If you wanted Americans to have faith in the outcomes of monumentally consequential national elections that put the stark choice between individual freedom and socialist state coercion on the ballot, then election integrity should have been the number one priority of state and federal governments as soon as the Bush v. Gore debacle split the nation’s voters in half twenty years ago.  Ever since, neither Democrats nor Republicans have had great faith in election outcomes.  Al Gore’s nearly forty-day recount in four Democrat-majority counties in November and December of 2000 permanently convinced Democrats that he had been robbed of victory.  Four years later, John Kerry reluctantly conceded to President Bush while also alleging that voting irregularities had tipped Ohio toward his Republican opponent.  In fact, the New York Times Magazine ran a story two years ago — before the 2018 midterms — insinuating that hacked electronic voting systems may have stolen both presidential elections from the Democrats.  That’s kind of a big deal, one that career politicians should want to fix if they’re so concerned about “faith in our democracy.”  Instead, we are in the middle of perhaps the most disputed election in American history right now, and one of the chief allegations is that electronic voting systems were repeatedly manipulated in key battleground states to benefit Joe Biden.  Nobody is shocked except the same politicians who demand we blithely accept the results as if nothing strange has been observed.

Likewise, Republicans watched Barack Obama take office in 2008 with a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate after Al Franken defeated Minnesota Republican senator Norm Coleman by a mere 312-vote margin out of nearly three million votes cast.  Franken gave Obama the sixty Democrats he needed in the Senate to ram socialized medicine down the throats of the American people, but he took office at the same time a conservative advocacy group called Minnesota Majority documented numerous voting irregularities, including the fact that 1,099 felons had voted during the election, despite being ineligible to do so.  Journalist John Fund and Bush Justice Department official Hans von Spakovsky published a book on vote fraud in 2012 called “Who’s Counting?” in which they noted that 243 people had either been convicted for vote fraud or were awaiting trial stemming from the 2008 Minnesota election delivering Franken his seat.  Here we had a consequential election that gave Democrats complete control over the Senate — decided by 312 votes and producing at least 243 criminal cases, with allegations of hundreds or thousands more illegal votes in the election — and Americans are expected today to forget it ever happened.

Twelve years later, election integrity has never been weaker.  Voting in 2020 has taken place with the unprecedented use of mail-in balloting made nearly impossible to authenticate, in-person voting with watered down requirements for personal identification, and scant enforcement of signature matching to verify — at a bare minimum — that the person casting the ballot can vaguely reproduce his or her own signature on file.  

Ryan could have looked at what happened in Minnesota in 2008 and concluded that any election where the number of criminal cases equals the margin of victory is unacceptable if Americans are expected to believe in the integrity of election results.  He could have witnessed how vote fraud in dribs and drabs in Minnesota produced fundamental change throughout the country by ushering in the takeover of American healthcare and concluded that “faith in our system of government” is now at stake.  But Ryan did no such thing, and twelve years later, Republicans have no faith in “free” or “fair” elections at all.  Nearly half of America believes the 2020 election has been stolen from President Trump, including a whopping 30% of Democrats, precisely because so many Americans deem the 2020 election to have been neither transparent nor verifiable.

Now the same politicians who have done nothing to allay American voters’ fears expect Americans to hold their tongues and pretend that everything about the 2020 election is fine and dandy because the politicians insist that it is so.  Demanding that Americans be silent about their concerns in order to preserve the Republic sounds a lot like suppressing free speech to preserve freedom.

In a system that depends on democratic elections to determine the future course of the country, even the appearance of impropriety or illegality in the elections of one state becomes poison to the whole Union.  The politicians who have refused to call out vote fraud when it pops up and nip it in the bud produced this volatile moment in American history.  As Obama would say, the American people didn’t build that; the ruling class did.

J.B. Shurk, American Thinker

I have long reported that Trump did not understand Washington, did not know who to appoint, and would have an establishment government hung around his neck. The two non-establishment appointees he made—Gen. Flynn and Bannon—were quickly eliminated by the establishment.

I have several times asked the questions where Attorney General Barr is on the Russiagate investigation (answer: nowhere), where Barr is on the Hunter Biden laptop investigation (answer: nowhere), and where Barr is on the massive electoral fraud (answer: on the Democrat side).

Here is the latest from Trump’s “Justice” Department: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/528194-barr-says-doj-hasnt-uncovered-widespread-voter-fraud-in-2020-election

It will take a revolution to overthrow the corrupt establishment that rules America. It cannot be done via the ballot box.

Paul Craig Roberts

Barr, Durham and the rest of the Republican Establishment have sacrificed President Trump and American Democracy in order to preserve the Establishment’s reputation.

As I predicted in 2016, Trump had no understanding of Washington and no idea of who to appoint.

As I also predicted, Trump was staffed by the Establishment with an Establishment government. Trump thought, based on his experience as boss, that the boss was the boss, but as I learned from my quarter century in Washington that is not the way Washington works.

Trump’s Establishment government has destroyed Trump, first by permitting the Russiagate hoax and refusing to hold the perpetrators—who clearly committed federal felonies— accountable. No indictments for the obvious felony of misleading the FISA Court, for example, have been forthcoming from the DOJ Establishment figures of Barr and Durham. 

Second, the Trump “Justice” Department permitted the hoax that Trump did what Biden clearly did—bribe the president of Ukraine with US foreign aid. Trump, who made no such bride, was investigated and impeached in the Democrat House for something it was clear he did not do. In contrast, Vice President Biden, who boasted (you can watch it on video) to the Council on Foreign Relations that he threatened the president of Ukraine with the withholding of billions of US dollars unless he fired the prosecutor who was investigating the corrupt company that was paying Biden’s son a fortune for Biden’s protection, has not been investigated by the DOJ or FBI.

Neither has Biden been investigated for the incriminating information on the laptop of his son’s computer that is in the hands of the DOJ and FBI. The FBI will cover this up just as the FBI covered up the Hillary servers and the murder of Seth Rich who leaked the information that was blamed on Wikileaks and Julian Assange.

Biden will not be investigated — unless Biden’s ill-chosen vice president demands it as “a person of color” in order to displace Biden in order to complete the American color revolution that took place on November 3 and 4, 2020. Those were the days that American democracy was officially murdered by the Democrat party’s carefully organized electoral fraud, about which not a peep from the presstitutes.

The United States cannot be restored via the ballot box. Only a revolution can restore American democracy. Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, a hated person by the woke liberal/left, himself said that elites have to be periodically replaced by revolution if freedom is to be preserved. Otherwise, the people become slaves of the Elite’s agendas.

The Democrats’ theft of the presidency has split the country and has made such a revolution possible. Lt. General Flynn, the former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, is a military leader who was indicted not for any infractions but because he was a non-establishment appointee as National Security Advisor who would not follow the Establishment’s agenda. He realizes that the theft of a presidential election is so serious a threat to the United States that Trump should impose martial law and have the US military hold a new election. 

With all we definitely now know about how the presidential election was stolen, it would be possible to hold an election with paper ballots only cast in person by certified registered voters and by certified absentee voters. From what I have concluded from my examination of the election fraud, Trump would win not only the electoral college vote but the popular vote by 20 million votes or more.

When you see, as is clearly evident, the total disinterest not only of the American presstitutes but also the presstitutes of the entire Western World in an obviously stolen presidential election, you see the death of Western civilization. The Western media have made it clear that democracy is no longer of any importance to the “watchdogs of government.” Agendas unacceptable to the people are what rule the Western World.

Washington, Britain, and the EU, full of aggressive talk of liberating the rest of the world with sanctions, bombings and military invasions, themselves need liberating. Who is to do it?

Can it be done by a population indoctrinated for many decades and convinced that they are racists, imperialists and unworthy of self-rule?

Or are such people made helpless by their indoctrination ?

Paul Craig Roberts

ANTHONY Everitt called Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BCE) an “architect of constitutions that still govern our lives.” John Adams said “All ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philosopher combined.” Thomas Jefferson said the Declaration of Independence was based on “the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, etc.”

Cicero was a Roman senator in whose writings the historian Edward Gibbon “breathed the spirit of freedom.” Particularly influential was his idea of natural law, echoed by John Locke and other enlightenment thinkers: human nature included reason, which could discover justice, which was the basis of law. Voltaire said, “He taught us how to think.”

Cicero stayed loyal to the Roman Republic against Julius Caesar. Antony had him murdered for those same principles, and had his head and hands nailed to the Senate speaker’s podium as a warning to others, making him a model of resistance against tyranny to America’s revolutionary leaders. Cicero’s ideas on justice, law, and liberty still merit remembering, two millennia later.

Justice is the crowning glory of the virtues. Justice consists in doing no injury to men. Justice is the set and constant purpose which gives every man his due.

The foundations of justice are that no one should suffer wrong; then, that the public good be promoted. Justice must be observed even to the lowest.

Justice does not descend from its pinnacle. Justice extorts no reward, no kind of price; she is sought … for her own sake.

Extreme justice is extreme injustice. If our lives are endangered by plots or violence … any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right.

True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application.

The welfare of the people is the ultimate law.

The precepts of the law are these: to live honestly, to injure no one, and to give everyone else his due. According to the law of nature it is only fair that no one should become richer through damages and injuries suffered by another.

The strictest law often causes the most serious wrong. The more laws, the less justice.

The arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled. The administration of government, like a guardianship, ought to be directed to the good of those who confer, not of those who receive the trust.

When a government becomes powerful … it is an usurper which takes bread from innocent mouths and deprives honorable men of their substance for votes with which to perpetuate itself.

We are in bondage to the law so that we might be free. The essence of liberty is to live as you choose.

Freedom is a man’s natural power of doing what he pleases, so far as he is not prevented by force or law. Freedom is a possession of inestimable value. What is so beneficial to the people as liberty … to be preferred to all things.

Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude. Freedom suppressed again, and again regained, bites with keener fangs than freedom never endangered. Only in states in which the power of the people is supreme has liberty any abode.

Peace is liberty in tranquility.

Servitude is the worst of all evils, to be resisted not only by war, but even by death.

Cicero was an important influence behind the American Revolution. He symbolized opposition to tyranny, and his ideas on justice, law and liberty inform our founding documents, which is why Jim Powell’s The Triumph of Liberty begins with his story. Though he wrote two millennia ago, his understanding of why defending liberty requires tightly constraining government was thoroughly modern: “Never was a government that was not composed of liars, malefactors and thieves.” If Americans are serious about their liberty, defended by treating our founding documents as more than mere words on paper, Cicero merits renewed attention today.

During President Donald J. Trump’s impeachment trial, we heard a lot of talk about our rules for governing. One frequent claim is that our nation is a democracy. If we’ve become a democracy, it would represent a deep betrayal of our founders, who saw democracy as another form of tyranny.

In fact, the word democracy appears nowhere in our nation’s two most fundamental documents, the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. The founders laid the ground rules for a republic as written in the Constitution’s Article IV, Section 4, which guarantees “to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.”

John Adams captured the essence of the difference between a democracy and republic when he said, “You have rights antecedent to all earthly governments; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the Universe.”

Contrast the framers’ vision of a republic with that of a democracy. In a democracy, the majority rules either directly or through its elected representatives. As in a monarchy, the law is whatever the government determines it to be. Laws do not represent reason. They represent power. The restraint is upon the individual instead of the government. Unlike that envisioned under a republican form of government, rights are seen as privileges and permissions that are granted by government and can be rescinded by government.

Here are a few quotations that demonstrate the contempt that our founders held for a democracy. James Madison, in Federalist Paper No. 10, wrote that in a pure democracy, “there is nothing to check the inducement to sacrifice the weaker party or the obnoxious individual.”

At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Edmund Randolph said that “in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy.” Alexander Hamilton agreed, saying: “We are now forming a republican government. (Liberty) is found not in “the extremes of democracy but in moderate governments. … If we incline too much to democracy, we shall soon shoot into a monarchy.”

John Adams reminded us: “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” John Marshall, the highly respected fourth chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court observed, “Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.” Thomas Paine said, “A Democracy is the vilest form of Government there is.”

The framers gave us a Constitution replete with undemocratic mechanisms. One constitutional provision that has come in for recent criticism is the Electoral College. In their wisdom, the framers gave us the Electoral College as a means of deciding presidential elections. That means heavily populated states can’t run roughshod over small, less-populated states.

Were we to choose the president and vice president under a popular vote, the outcome of presidential races would always be decided by a few highly populated states, namely California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois and Pennsylvania, which contain 134.3 million people, or 41% of our population. Presidential candidates could safely ignore the interests of the citizens of Wyoming, Alaska, Vermont, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Delaware. Why? They have only 5.58 million Americans, or 1.7% of the U.S. population. We would no longer be a government “of the people.” Instead, our government would be put in power by and accountable to the leaders and citizens of a few highly populated states. It would be the kind of tyranny the framers feared.

It’s Congress that poses the greatest threat to our liberties. The framers’ distrust is seen in the negative language of our Bill of Rights such as: Congress “shall not abridge, infringe, deny, disparage, and shall not be violated, nor be denied.” When we die and if at our next destination we see anything like a Bill of Rights, we know that we’re in hell because a Bill of Rights in heaven would suggest that God couldn’t be trusted.

Walter E. Williams was a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at http://www.creators.com.

Matt Walsh of the Daily Wire titled today’s article “The Truth Is Out. We Don’t Need The Public School System.” He points out,

[T]he education system has failed to do what it should be trying to do, which is to equip new generations with the strong base of knowledge and critical thinking skills they will need to be well rounded, well adjusted, contributing members of society. It has not failed to do what it has actually tried to do, which is to indoctrinate new generations into the religion of leftism.

Walsh points to the huge rise in the number of families choosing homeschooling. The huge uptrend in homeschooling has helped the movement make a leap from merely an acceptable option (a level attained only over the past few years) to the preferred option for many families.

No one yet knows whether this is a temporary blip in the number of homeschooling families, but it has certainly revealed many failings of government-run schools as Walsh points out.

I’ve been participating in webinars and podcasts for new homeschoolers recently. One thing I point out is that right now, the risk of homeschooling is lower than ever. Almost all parents worry about their ability to homeschool well, but with the disarray in the public schools, parents can hardly do worse. That’s not an excuse to be lazy about homeschooling, but it does take some of the pressure off new homeschoolers.

In addition, homeschoolers in the past have frequently been concerned about legal challenges. However, now that everyone has been forced to homeschool, fundamental challenges about the legality of homeschooling are dead. (That doesn’t mean that individual families might not run into issues related to custody and control of educational decisions, or other such problems.)

Homeschooling won’t be the answer for everyone. For instance, our local Catholic diocese of Orange has finally created an online academy. Other private school operators are also expanding their vision as to how to best serve families in the midst of the pandemic. This is an overdue re-examination of traditional models of education.

Homeschoolers have long known that education can be provided far more efficiently and inexpensively than it is in traditional educational settings. It’s time for the rest of the world to learn from them and reorganize education in ways that really help children to learn without wasting time and money.

Matt Walsh, Daily Wire

The constitutional concept of “states’ rights” pertains to the division of power between local and national authorities, and serves to protect the states from the Federal government; it does not grant to a state government an unlimited, arbitrary power over its citizens or the privilege of abrogating the citizens’ individual rights.

[George Wallace] is not a defender of individual rights, but merely of states’ rights—which is far, far from being the same thing. When he denounces “Big Government,” it is not the unlimited, arbitrary power of the state that he is denouncing, but merely its centralization—and he seeks to place the same unlimited, arbitrary power in the hands of many little governments. The break-up of a big gang into a number of warring small gangs is not a return to a constitutional system nor to individual rights nor to law and order.

“The Presidential Candidates 1968,”
The Objectivist, June 1968,

Did President Trump err in his two choices for Attorney General, first Sessions, then Barr?

Well, if so, President Trump is paying the price for those errors. Increasingly, I believe the government was irredeemably corrupt before Trump’s presidency, and given the threat posed to the “deep state” by his presidency, they upped their game. Our federal government is a dangerous, fully legalized mafia–perhaps the most corrupt institution in human history, surpassing Communists or Nazis. President Trump has been beyond heroic to stand up to it, and to do so LITERALLY ALL ALONE. But we, the people, by embracing a big, expensive and powerful government that America’s founders warned us against, created this monster. And, believe me: If the monster gets away with this election fraud, it will unleash a level of destruction on human liberty and economic prosperity like the world has never seen. These leftists are not your Granddaddy’s Communists and fascists. They are just getting started and are capable of anything. We have a much bigger fight on our hands than I think most yet realize.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Suppose you saw someone holding a bottle that had a label with the word “cyanide” and he was about to drink from it. You tell him to be careful, that that is poison, and he could die a painful death. He says, no that’s not true, cyanide is a delightful drink, that he has heard that it cures many common ailments, and, in fact, makes you feel better than you ever have.We need to not fall for the quack medicines peddled by the ideological hucksters trying to pass it off as the elixir of life that will cure all our ills.
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You reply that you once took a chemistry class and found out that the chemical compound in cyanide is one that burns the inside of anyone who swallows it and can cause severe discomfort before killing him. Besides, there are many cases of people taking cyanide and its effects have all verified the theory of how cyanide can work on the human body — a lot of people have died from it.

The other person insists that those are just the false accusations made by persons who don’t want to end human suffering or don’t want to make people feel better than they have ever felt. As for some people having, supposedly, died after taking cyanide, how can you be sure that that was the cause of the unfortunate circumstances, or that the facts about those cases are even true? Warnings about cyanide are spread by those against human happiness and who have something to gain from the poor conditions of others.

Once more, a false hope in socialism

Sound ridiculous? Not really, if we simply replace the word “cyanide” with the word “socialism.” Public opinion polls have suggested a majority of people in the United States, especially in younger age groups, have a positive view of socialism, with a noticeable number saying that they think America would be better off under a socialist system than a capitalist one.

What appeals to them are the promises made that socialism —usually accompanied by a modifier that makes it “democratic” socialism — will reduce poverty, increase social and economic equality, and will be more representative of the “real” needs and hopes of “the people” than the self-interested profit motives of a private-enterprise system. Moreover, “capitalism” fosters sexual discrimination and oppresses “people of color.”

As for the asserted examples of socialism-in-practice in places such as the old Soviet Union, the frequent response is that that was not real socialism; it was a distorted socialism that failed to be properly implemented and was abused by the accident that the wrong people rose to power, and they imposed a dictatorship that had nothing to do with the real spirit of the socialist ideal.

That is where we are today in the United States and many other places around the world. Forget about the bad twisted socialism of the Soviet Union; “this time” it will be a kinder and gentler socialism that can and will get it right. How will that be ensured? Well, “our” intentions are good intentions, and we will use government planning, regulation and redistribution to achieve the “right” ends. Besides, it will be “democratic.”

The challenge of socialism 100 years ago

This year marks one hundred years since the publication in 1920 of a now-famous article by the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, entitled “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth.” The First World War had been over for about two years. In Russia, a socialist coup d’état had occurred in November 1917, a year before the end of the conflict. In 1920, a three-year civil war was coming to an end, with the victory of the Bolsheviks — the revolutionary Marxists — under the leadership of N. Lenin.

These Russian communists were dedicated to the nationalization of industry, collectivization of agriculture, the imposition of government central planning, and, as a result, the abolition of the capitalist institutions of individual freedom and decision-making, private property, free enterprise, competitive markets, and the profit-and-loss system of production guided by prices formed through the interaction of supply and demand.

In central Europe, defeated Germany was in political and economic chaos, and suffering from rising prices that would soon degenerate into a hyperinflation by 1923. In German Bavaria, in 1919, there was a short-lived Marxist revolution, and in nearby Hungary, a Marxist government had come to power but was overthrown after several months.

Everywhere, it seemed at that time, was the desire by a growing number of people for the triumph of a new, bright and beautiful socialist future. The Marxist-Leninists in Russia said it had to come through violent revolution followed by a “dictatorship of the proletariat” to destroy the old capitalist order and to prevent any counterrevolutionaries from restoring it.

In Western Europe, socialists said that neither violence nor dictatorship was necessary. The bright and beautiful collectivist future could all come through the peaceful means of the democratic ballot box, with no loss of freedom, other than the unnecessary and socially harmful “economic freedom” of private enterprise. It would be a far more just and fair society when the economy was centrally planned for “the good of all,” without any capitalist exploitation.

The critics of socialism, back then, also were pooh-poohed as apologists for the “evil and oppressive” small group of capitalists; they were against greater economic equality and more “social justice” for the majority of those in society. They simply “hated the people,” and personally gained by making excuses for the selfishness of the profit motive.

Critics of socialism have understood the dangers.

Thus were those enthralled by the socialist promise able to ignore the many criticisms of what a future socialist society would lead to. The anti-socialist warned: If government was the only employer, because it was the monopoly central planner of all production, the individual would be a slave of those in the government planning and employment agencies who would determine his fate. Get on their wrong side for any number of reasons and your life could be made miserable, since there would be no “exits” for alternative employment, because there would be only the State.

How could the civil liberties of freedom of speech or the press be secure in the socialist society to come, when the government would be the single owner and producer of the means to express your ideas, including disagreements with what was being done by those in power? Place the resources with which newspapers and books are produced in the monopoly hands of government, and only what the government wants to be said and published may reach the wider audience of the other members of society.

It is disturbing how frequently then and now there were and are so many people who shrug such concerns aside, either because they naively think those in power would be “fair and balanced” in making available the platforms for exercising those civil liberties; or, as is far more explicit today, because they have a disdain for the civil liberties of any who hold views not in agreement with the collectivist fashions of the moment.

In the decades before the First World War, while socialists frequently described the “evils” of capitalism and the wonderful world  collectivism would usher in, hardly any attempt was made to discuss and explain how, exactly, a centrally planned economy would work, in the everyday mundane sense of making and delivering the goods that people need and want. Some of the anti-socialist critics raised this question in ways that were often very cogent, while those who dreamed the dream barely seemed even to notice that there might be a problem.

Ludwig von Mises on why socialist planning cannot work

That changed with Ludwig von Mises’s article in 1920. Mises chose not to challenge the good intentions of those who wished to radically change society. Nor did he point to the dangers to liberty or the possibilities for political tyranny by those rising to the top in a socialist society. He did not want to muddy the waters by either impugning socialist good will or the dangers to a free society. Even more, he did not question whether people would be willing to be as industrious under a collective system of work and reward compared with human incentives under a system of personal interest and reward.

He focused, instead, on the less romantic but no less profoundly important question of how the socialist central planners would actually know how to direct the physical and human means of production so as to produce the goods and services the members of the society actually would want, and just as cost-efficiently and productively as under a market system with its pursuit of individual profit and loss.

Mises’s basic answer was that the socialist economy could not do so, because it will have abolished all the institutional requirements for a successful process of economic calculation. The socialist planner could undertake a detailed inventory of all the physical characteristics of the land, resources, raw materials, capital equipment (tools, machinery) under its planning jurisdiction. Added to that might be a census of all those who could be available in the socialist labor force, along with their education, skills, and experience.

But that would not solve the problem of rational economic calculation, the reason being that it is not enough to know the quantities and characteristics of all the physical means of production. Many if not most of those means of production have the potential to be used in different ways to manufacture different types of finished consumer goods, in different combinations with complementary factors of production.

The crucial issue is: In what employments, with which other factors of production, to produce what specific good shall they be directed to ensure that each of them is employed for their most highly valued use to make the goods that were most in demand by the consumers of the society, which, of course, means all of us?

Markets and prices enable economic calculation.

Mises used the example of deciding to construct a railroad connecting two cities when there is a mountain separating them. Shall the rail line be built over the mountain, around it, or through it by means of a tunnel? Which one would be least costly to construct, in terms of the alternative uses of the resources and time that might go into building the railroad? If it was decided that a tunnel would be the best or least costly, with what reinforcing material should the lining of the tunnel be constructed — with, say, concrete or platinum?

Of course, the central planner could make this decision on the basis of any number of arbitrary benchmarks. But that is not the same way such a decision would be made in functioning, competitive market economies. The key to rational decision under capitalism is the existence of a market-generated price system.

Prices are the agreed-to terms at which persons consent to trade, to buy and sell useful inputs and desired consumer goods. Bob and Bill higgle and haggle until they, perhaps, reach agreement that the two pairs of shoes that one of them specializes in producing shall trade for one suit of clothes that the other manufactures.

At the same time, both Bob and Bill have to acquire the respective resources and raw materials and capital equipment (machines, tools) and human hired help with which each produces the  goods that are the means by which they purchase from others all the things they desire that those others supply in an interdependent system of division of labor. So Bob and Bill must enter the market in which those means of production are supplied and sold to purchase the ones they need for their respective producing.

Bob and Bill each have to make their best-informed judgments about what it is their particular customers would be interested in buying (what types, styles, and sizes of shoes and suits, respectively, for instance); and the price that buyers would be willing to pay to purchase a certain number of the goods Bob and Bill offer.

Prices permit rational market decision-making.

The prices for their finished consumer goods, based on their past experiences and anticipations of the future, serve to determine the maximum that they can pay to acquire the needed means of production available on the market and still break even or earn a profit. Their next decisions concern which usable combination of those means of production — more labor and less capital equipment, or more labor-saving machinery with fewer hired workers, including which types of such capital equipment — will minimize their costs of production, given what they think consumers want and the prices they will pay for the finished goods.

But, again, what makes it possible for them to make such evaluations and judgments is the fact that there are market-generated prices for the purchase, rent, and hire of those means of production, owing to the ability for them to be owned and bought and sold on competitive markets.

The production decisions producers make in the social system of division of labor not only enable them to search for the resource combinations and uses that will maximize their own personal profits (if their judgments about market conditions turn out to be correct); it also means that no resources, workers, or capital tend to be employed in the competing lines of production where they are valued less highly.

Through the eyes of the employing and production-directing market entrepreneurs, consumer valuations about what they would like to buy, and in what qualities and quantities at particular prices, are transmitted back to the markets for those factors of production, so each is, in turn, evaluated and priced. Those prices reflect where the factors of production are most highly valued. Entrepreneurs are able thereby to produce what the consumers most urgently want as expressed in what they pay for the goods those resources can assist in supplying.

Costs reflect alternative consumer demands for goods.

Market costs for purchasing, renting, or hiring factors of production are exchange-based estimates of their importance and value in alternative employments for making other goods. Costs in the marketplace are competitively generated surrogates for the value of other desired things for which they
might be used. Factors-of-production prices are estimates of the value of the factors in other corners of the market. Each entrepreneur must judge whether his use of those factors is of greater value to the consumers to whom he caters than the use to which his supply-side rivals, who are also bidding for them, will put them in their own lines of productive activity.

Let us go back to Mises’s example of building a railway between two cities and a decision whether to go around, over, or through the mountain. A private railway enterpriser would estimate the possible rail traffic for cargo and passengers that might be his, if he builds the line and the revenues he might then earn. He has to project what the financial and other outlays would be to construct the railway between the two cities. As part of that decision he must evaluate which construction method between the two locations will be least costly. That also requires an estimate of which reinforcing material to use for lining a tunnel through the mountain will minimize his expenses of operation, since platinum is more durable than concrete and requires less maintenance, but is more expensive to purchase.

All of those estimates and calculations are impossible without a functioning market economy in which competition has generated the prices for both alternative finished consumer goods and the factors of production out of which they might be manufactured. For those prices to emerge there must be individual freedom of choice and action, a right of freedom of exchange and voluntary association, and private property not only in consumer goods but in those factors of production, as well.

Otherwise, how can users of consumer goods and purchasers of production goods express their actual valuations and appraisal on the basis of which trades are mutually agreed to? Those valuations are expressed and captured in the prices at which trades are consummated.

Abolishing markets and prices leads to planned chaos.

Mises’s central criticism of socialist central planning as an economic system that was being offered as a viable substitute for free-market capitalism is that in abolishing private property in the means of production and thereby eliminating free exchange and the formation of market prices, a socialist economy would have done away with the institutional prerequisites for rational economic decision-making.

Without private property in the means of production, Mises reasoned, there is nothing to (legally) buy and sell. Without being able to buy and sell the factors of production, there are no incentives to make bids and offers for their purchase and use. Without such bids and offers, there are no agreed-to and consummated exchanges. Without such actual market transactions there are no real market prices for the inputs without which outputs cannot be produced.

Without such prices, how would the central planner realistically know what consumers want, and know the least-cost methods of producing them to get the most out of the means available to fulfill people’s desired ends? Mises’s answer was that socialist planners could not — and certainly they could not come close to matching the way a competitive market economy solves this social problem of bettering the conditions of humanity.

It is for this reason that Mises later titled one of his shorter works, Planned Chaos (1947). That is and has been the result that imposing and implementing any form of fairly comprehensive socialist central planning must create.

Recall that that was an argument that Mises originally made one hundred years ago in 1920. Think of all the economic disasters that socialist systems have produced over this last century when imposed in any country anywhere in the world. And now fast-forward to today in 2020. “Progressives” and “democratic” socialists in America say that their form of socialism will be different. Their Green New Deal to centrally plan away global warming, to ensure the “social justice” of redistribution, and guaranteed government jobs for full employment, will have none of the defects of those false socialisms of the last century.

But their bottle of socialism has the same cyanide in it as those others that hundreds of millions have suffered from around the globe. We need to not fall for the quack medicines peddled by the ideological hucksters trying to pass it off as the elixir of life that will cure all our ills. That is why it is necessary and essential to recognize and emphasize Ludwig von Mises’s critique of socialism now in our own time as much as when he first penned it.

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This post was written by: Richard M. Ebeling

Dr. Richard M. Ebeling is the BB&T Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Free Enterprise Leadership at The Citadel. He was formerly professor of Economics at Northwood University, president of The Foundation for Economic Education (2003–2008), was the Ludwig von Mises Professor of Economics at Hillsdale College (1988–2003) in Hillsdale, Michigan, and served as vice president of academic affairs for The Future of Freedom Foundation (1989–2003).