In a new essay at the College Conservative, Vladimir Davidiuk responds to his own school newspaper and provides a reminder of the truth about socialism.

Socialism: 100 Million Dead

In the March 6, 2014 edition of the University of St. Thomas student newspaper, The Summa, a rather troubling and disturbing article entitled, “The Undeservedly Controversial Word: Socialism” was published. At first glance, I hoped that the article was in fact a parody, or perhaps an early April Fool’s joke. Surely no one could possibly take the misguided, backwards, and misanthropic notion of socialism seriously enough to label it as “undeservedly controversial”?

But to my dismay, reading further I understood that the author of this article had in fact fully embraced the concepts and tenets of socialism by citing America’s lack of “socialized healthcare”, by lauding America as a “Western welfare state,” and by defending these goals with irrefutable results from the “World Happiness Report.”

The fact is that as we begin the second decade of the 21st century, socialism remains a thoroughly discredited and completely obsolete mode of governance. For centuries across the globe in every place, and in every instance that it has been tried, socialism has failed completely and abjectly. There is a reason that while statues of Lenin are being torn down across Europe and the former Soviet states, statues of Reagan are being raised. There is a reason Obamacare is so unpopular. It doesn’t work. It turns out that even if you like your doctor you can’t keep him.

When the first English settlers arrived in America in 1620, they began their tiny colony by implementing a form of socialism. Fleeing England from what they considered to be religious persecution, they were also leaving an Old World which had been, in their view, overly materialistic, selfish, greedy and unprincipled. Their vision for the New World was to build a society erected on a new foundation of social altruism and communal sharing.