Only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism?

According to a new Rasmussen poll, only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism. Have we not learned *anything* from history? Do Americans today have even the faintest idea of the principles upon which this country was founded? As Richard N. Weltz says in an American Thinker article:

Most of us understand that state control of a nation's economy, whether under a socialist or communist régime has proven repeatedly to be a sure way not to prosper and progress in either wealth or liberty of the general citizenship. This lesson has been amply taught in the USSR, Eastern Europe, Cuba, China, and elsewhere.

Not only has there never been a socialist regime that *prospered*, there has never been a state-controlled regime that exists for the well-being of the people, which is the only ideological appeal of socialism, I imagine; they have only ever existed to benefit those in power (and assure that they have the power and the resources to stay in power). Unbelievable that Americans would prefer to give up their freedom to be ruled over by their government when we are blessed to live in a country where "we the people" *are* the government. Have I woken up in a different country? Has everyone (or at least 47% of us) gone completely mad?

Milton Friedman, Nobel-prize winning economist, explains why all people -- especially those in need -- are better off in countries that are capitalist than in countries that are socialist or countries that *depart* from capitalism:



I'd really like to find those 47% of people who think socialism is better (or aren't sure) and invite them to go live in a socialist country for a period of time, then come back and let us know if their perspective changed at all from the experience. Look at Eldridge Cleaver, who was an intellectual black radical communist in the 1960s -- he ended up fleeing America after a bout of violence and living in communist and socialist countries for several years before coming back to America. And this is what he had to say:

"It's one thing to study Marxism on paper, living in a capitalistic country where you have individual freedoms and so forth—you don't really see the relationship between the ideology and the form of government that comes out of that ideology. Now, when I had a chance to go and live in communist countries this individualism came into conflict with the state apparatus, and that's when I recoiled against it. But when I was here I was looking at Marxism-Leninism as a weapon, as a tool, to fight against the status quo, and you know, it's just a quality of human beings that when they are trying to tear something down they don't pay enough attention." (Source)

He also said, upon his return to America:

"Pig power in America was infuriating. But pig power in the communist framework was awesome and unaccountable."

My hope and my prayer is that Americans will pay enough attention to realize that its really stupid to create something significantly worse when you are trying to make minor corrections to something that seems broken. Classic 'out of the frying pan, into the fire', unfortunately.

Several members of the Congressional Black Caucus made a trip to Cuba to visit Fidel Castro and came back gushing with praise and full of respect. But look at what Eldridge Cleaver had to say when asked (in 1975!) a question about "visitors" from America being smitten with Castro:

Question: A lot of American intellectuals have gone, say, to the Soviet Union or China and come back full of praises. What you saw in Cuba, Algeria, China, or the Soviet Union, somehow they just overlooked. Do you think it's because usually these things are short, they just scurry right through? Or what was it that made you able to perceive...

Cleaver: It was exactly that—the shortness of it, the duration of their experience and the depth and quality of it. See, I lived in those kinds of places and I got to know people and made friends. I got to know the governments, the people in the military, people in the Communist Party or whatever they called it. That gives you a different perspective.

When I first went to those countries boy was I impressed. If you would read some of the things I wrote then! I was full of praise, because I got that standard tour that they give people to impress them. I took the same tour that Barbara Walters took in Cuba, and Senator [George] McGovern, but after the tour I had a chance to meet other people and have a different experience. If I had gone only on the basis of how the governments treated me, I would have continued praising them, because really they did treat me well. They gave me a red-carpet treatment in those countries. But when you get off the red carpet and step down in the mud where the people are, you get a chance to talk to them and hear the stories that they have to tell, over and over again.

Wow. Would somebody please send this to Rep. Laura Richardson (D-Ca.), Rep. Barbara Lee. (D-CA), Emanuel Cleaver(D-Mo), and Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), as they have been "raving about a regime that jailed political prisoners at a higher rate than Stalin, and executed more people (out of a population of 6.4 million) in its first three years in power than Hitler executed (out of a population of 70 million) in the Reich's first six years" (Humberto Fontova).

Clearly, we need to get educated in this country.