photo #9300150

Socialism always begins with a smile.Step one sounds wonderful. Nobody should be poor. Who could argue with that? It sounds like compassion. It sounds like fairness. It sounds like a shortcut to utopia.Then step two arrives, and the smile disappears.Nobody can be rich. That is the part they never write on the chalkboard in September. The wealthy do not stick around to be harvested. They move their money, close their businesses, and take the jobs with them. What is left is not shared prosperity. It is shared poverty.And all that free stuff? It turns out to be the most expensive purchase a nation can make. Free healthcare, free college, free everything. Somebody always pays, and it is always the working family, through crushing taxes, runaway inflation, and empty shelves.Notice who never misses a meal. The government class does just fine. In every socialist experiment on record, the rulers lived in comfort while the people stood in line for bread.Even China got the message. The Communist Party only saw real growth after it let private enterprise and markets back into the economy. When the world's largest communist state quietly admits capitalism works better, the debate should be over.Yet somehow, poll after poll shows young Democrats still swooning over the same failed promise. It is perplexing until you remember they were taught the first panel of this cartoon and never shown the second. That is not education. That is salesmanship.The good news is that the truth is on our side, and the evidence fills every history book. Freedom builds. Central planning breaks. America did not become the most prosperous nation in human history by accident. We got here through liberty, property rights, and the free choices of free people.