May 1st is International Workers’ Day, also known as Labor Day in some countries; it celebrates laborers and working classes promoted by the international labor movement, socialists, and communists. It occurs every year on May 1st to honor rioters who killed seven policemen during the Haymarket affair and was promoted by the international communist or socialist movements, which during the 20th century killed at least 100 million people. They are governments that control the people and industry, unlike the U.S. government, which is designed for its people to control the government.

While still the best country in the world, America had been sliding toward Socialism for over a century. It sped up during the Obama administration and accelerated even faster under Biden. We seem closer to making the 46th President’s words. Truth be told, the socialist philosophy and the elimination of our individual freedoms are espoused by many in today’s Democratic Party. But Socialism attacking America’s freedoms started in America a century ago. For most of that century, the Socialist movement, disguised as the far left, was working towards taking away our freedoms and changing the American economy.

The basic concept of Socialism is that the government controls the means of production, distribution, and selling. Socialism requires a colossal government to control both the government and the economy. Another reason a large government is required is to create the society a government desires.

Socialism demands public rather than private ownership or control of the property. Society represented by the government owns or at least controls property for the benefit of all its members. Socialism takes away individual freedom. Therefore, in the existing society, it has to be executed slowly to avoid the shock of this significant change.

Conservatives must step forward, to tell the truth about capitalism: the better life it has brought to billions of people, the diversity and freedom of choice it celebrates, the individual responsibility it encourages, the continuing miracle of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand,” its rejection of government planning that always leads to dictatorship. Lee Edwards, Heritage.Org

Truth be told, the Socialist philosophy and the elimination of our individual freedoms espoused by many in today’s Democratic Party is the same freedom-eliminating Socialism attacking America’s freedoms that started a century ago. For most of that century, and through today, the Socialist movement was trying to promote policies that would boost their efforts to turn America into a Socialist nation. A critical tenet of Socialism is collectivism, which is antithetical to the version of democracy practiced in the American republic since the Constitution was enacted. The U.S. version of democracy insists that (with some exceptions)  individual rights are superior to the government’s or collective rights; three decades before he became President, Woodrow Wilson published an essay to fool the American public about Socialism.

One of the essay’s most famous passages was:

“It is very clear that in fundamental theory, socialism and democracy are almost if not quite one and the same.  They both rest upon the absolute right of the community to determine its own destiny and that of its members.  Men as communities are supreme over men as individuals.”

Today, Wilson’s political descendants falsely believe that Socialism is attaining equality, but they preach equity. The Socialists believe the government should ensure that everyone should have the same goods and services, etc., but there are no individual achievements. Equality means the government ensures everyone has the same opportunity to succeed. But it’s the individual’s job to take advantage of the opportunity.

During his 1912 presidential campaign, Wilson sounded a socialist theme that is still used by Democrats today.

 “The Constitution was founded on the law of gravitation. The trouble with the theory is that government is not a machine, but a living thing.”

A “living” constitution was a favorite concept of the Democratic Party today.

Another Lincoln quote is, “The philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.”

Socialism’s believers listened to honest Abe.

John Dewey, a progressive leader, was crowned “the father of American Education; some even call him the best educator ever. Dewey aimed to use children as a tool to expand the acceptance of leftist-progressive social policies. And that was before Randi Weingarten was born.

Dewey advocated conveyor belt education—training a conditioned child to better conform to his ethical ideal of humanity, thus making them more equipped for their future workforce and wokeness.”

Anyone with kids in public schools and universities knows that Dewey’s call for brainwashing has been adopted.

Educators have for decades turned America’s youth away from individualism and independent thinking into collective zombies. The only way to be successful in school was (and is) to adopt the teacher’s socialist-type philosophy. Those teachings are echoed in today’s progressive/socialist street protests under the banners of resistance, wokism, cancel culture, and more. Even the socialist doctrine of international income redistribution, cloaked as the climate change movement, began infecting children’s minds in public schools.

This may be behind the appeal of Bernie Sanders to Millenials. In some ways, he looks and sounds like the college professors who indoctrinate them into Socialism.

In 1945, F.A. Hayek saw what was being taught and implemented in free democracies and issued a warning via his classic tome, “The Road to Serfdom.” Richard McKenzie Neal explained what Hayek meant:

Hayek argued that Western democracies, including the United Kingdom and the United States, have “progressively abandoned that freedom in economic affairs without which personal and political freedom has never existed in the past. Society has mistakenly tried to ensure continuing prosperity by centralized planning, which inevitably leads to totalitarianism. We have in effect, undertaken to dispense with the forces which produced unforeseen results and to replace the impersonal and anonymous mechanism of the market by collective and ‘conscious’ direction of all social forces to deliberately chosen goals. Socialism, while presented as a means of assuring equality, does so through “restraint and servitude,” while “democracy seeks equality in liberty”

Along with Dewey and academia, political players have tried convincing Americans about Socialism. A 1970 New York Magazine piece by economist and adviser to JFK [and Bubba Clinton Presidental Medal of Freedom honoree]  John Kenneth Galbraith wrote, “Richard Nixon and the Great Socialist Revival.” At the time, Nixon was a very popular president, and Galbraith (who spent a lifetime working for advanced progressivism and social justice) implied that if Nixon liked socialist programs, he couldn’t be too bad.

Chicago Tribune columnist Walter Trohan warned against America’s Socialism. In 1970, he wrote:

“It is a known fact that the policies of the government today, whether Republican or Democrat are closer to the 1932 platform of the Communist Party than they are to either of their own party platforms in that critical year.”

A year later, Trohan wrote that it might be too late as the only difference between the two parties was that the GOP slid toward Socialism a bit slower:

Conservatives should be realistic enough to recognize that this country is going deeper into socialism and will see expansion of federal power, whether Republicans or Democrats are in power. The only comfort they may have is that the pace will be slower under Richard Nixon that it might have been under Hubert H. Humphrey.

After the socialist-type programs of FDR, which were continued by Truman, America reacted with the conservative Eisenhower. While communism was an external threat through the 1960s, it was sold as a military threat and ignored the danger of internal moves toward a progressive/socialist loss of individual rights.

Galbraith and Trohan were correct in saying that Nixon was not a conservative. His creation of the Office of Management and Budget, the Environmental Protection Agency, and price controls are just a few examples of his rejection of Hayek and his belief that centralized, big government took precedence over individual liberty. Even the Watergate scandal exemplified that the government took precedence over individual free thinking.

The socialist slide continued with Jimmy Carter before the public stopped the slide by electing Ronald Reagan. Reagan’s surprising election and the popularity of his presidency were based on his belief in the power and wisdom of the individual American vs. the collectivization of progressive/socialist government. Some of his most famous quotes reflect that philosophy. Such as “In this present crisis, the government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,” or the oft-quoted nine most dangerous words in the American language. “I’m from the government and here to help.” Reagan’s signature tax cut program removed wealth from the collective government and restored it to individual voters.

Reagan’s drive to restore Americans’ belief in the individual and stop the slide towards Socialism turned around a horrible economy but was met with fake claims of racism and warmongering from the press (it was all MSM back then) and the Democrats.

After two terms of The Gipper, the slide returned with the election of Bush #41. Under Obama, the “slide” became a gallop.

As with the election of Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump’s 2016 victory was a voter desire to return to America’s individualism. His themes of “Make America Great Again” and “America First” were a promise to make Americans accessible again. His redesign of the economy—deregulation and tax reduction- returned to an America that empowered the individual. Unfortunately, Trump’s nastiness and a global pandemic prevented the continuation of his economic programs.

As they did with Reagan, the supporters of progressivism/Socialism, including part of the federal bureaucracy and much of the media, attacked Trump with false charges of racism/white supremacy and warmongering. However, Trump didn’t help himself with the nasty way he addressed people who disagreed with his policies or personality. Trump’s mean tweets gave the socialists a weapon against his successful small-government policies.

Trump’s successor, Joe Biden, is a return to socialist policies. He attacks anyone who disagrees with political positions with venom. He also refuses to recognize the First Amendment and politicizes law enforcement to guarantee his policies. Biden’s programs are an instrument to destroy personal freedom. Programs include COVID restrictions, removal of fossil fuels, growing government spending to cause a spike in inflation, restricting the staple products families can buy, parents losing the right to direct their children’s lives, and so much more.

There is a rash of Democratic members of Congress, such as Bernie Sanders, calling themselves “Democratic-Socialists. Others self-identified as Democratic-Socialists include Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Greg Casar, Cori Bush, and Jamaal Bowman. , Socialism is part of President Biden and the Democratic Party’s agenda. Some examples include the idea that parents should have no role in their children’s education, control of the energy and automotive industry, and the fight to remove state laws protecting against voter fraud.

A reason for those moves may be to make the lives of Americans so dreadful that they demand a change of government. Thankfully, it doesn’t look like that will happen now, Despite Biden’s despotic view that individual rights should be crushed.

What of our future? Will future socialist-leaning presidents find a way to continue the century-long slide toward Socialism? Socialist practitioners never explain what they are selling. They call it progressivism or liberalism, but they are selling voters policies that take away our individual freedoms. For example, the cars we drive must be electric.

Americans must be vigilant about what comes next. The next presidential election battle has started. Americans must elect candidates who will have a “no holds barred” battle against the freedom-stealing socialist movement. If you have a Rep. or Senator incumbent who is weak in the anti-socialist fight, vote against them.

In the end, it is up to the voters. If we fail to elect the right people in 2024, it may be too late because, As Lincoln warned:

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.

Those words will come true if America continues in this direction.