I hear people say all the time that socialism sounds wonderful but does not work. I hate that saying, as it ignores the fact that under socialism, it is the collective that matters and not the individual. Individuals, under socialism, are little more than farm animals.

Socialists say they feed people. Farmers feed their animals. Socialists say they provide people with healthcare. Farmers take their animals to the vet. Farmers, in fact, provide free food, housing, and free everything else their animals need – just as do socialist governments.

Another thing both farmers and socialist governments do is to sacrifice individuals for the greater good of the collective. Farmers sell cattle to be butchered into beef products. So too, socialists are more than happy to sacrifice individual people, if they believe doing so is in the best interest of the collective.

I’m not very keen on being treated like a farm animal, and as a consequence, I do not believe socialism ‘sounds good.’ Socialism, rather, sounds like hell. How bad does socialism sound? When I hear people talk about climate alarmism, and the need to bring in socialism to address it, I sometimes tell them that I would rather see the Earth dropped into a vat of bacon grease than to live through the dystopian hell-hole climate alarmists prescribe.

People are not farm animals.

Socialism does, however, have one thing going for it: socialism is sexy.

Never mind the moral platitudes socialists talk with, as they throw the day’s slop into the pig-trough of humanity. The sexy part of socialism is the revolutionary spirit Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels emblazoned it with.

Let me briefly throw a bone to socialism by saying that socialism is not communism. Socialism is the economic system communism is built on, but communism throws a political structure on top of that economic system, whereas socialism can exist in other political structures. The Communist Manifesto was written in 1848, which predates the unification of Germany into an actual nation by 23 years, but The Communist Manifesto lived in obscurity until 1872 – one year after Otto Von Bismark created Germany as the first modern socialist state. Socialism has existed in one form or another for all recorded history, and people began using the term ‘socialism’ in the 1820s. Otto Von Bismark was not a follower of Marx and Engels, and did not implement their vision. Otto Von Bismark was a contemporary of Marx and Engels, who implemented a socialist state under a constitutional monarchy.

Marx and Engels did not intend for communism being brought about peacefully. Marx and Engels, rather, envisioned a revolution in which the ‘proletariat’ would overthrow and execute the ‘bourgeoisie.’ The revolutionary period of communism was intended to be brutal and bloody.

What does free-market capitalism have to compare to the brutal and bloody revolution promised by Marxism? Capitalists talk about personal responsibility, hard work, drive, and ambition.

As horrendous a system as communism is, there is something romantic in the notion of rising up against an oppressive ‘bourgeoisie’ and overthrowing it. Young people are drawn to the revolutionary spirit of communism in the same way that young people used to be drawn to war, the notion of self-sacrifice for a larger cause having a powerful draw.

I’m going to throw two messages at you. Never mind which makes more sense, or which is more practical. Listen to both, and then ask yourself which is the sexier message in terms of how it will resonate to an idealistic 18-year-old.

Message one: “Rise up and overthrow the oppressive regime in a glorious, bloody revolution, that will take from those who have been living off the efforts of the downtrodden for too long! We will overthrow the bourgeoisie, taking their wealth, and distributing it to the people!”

Message two: “Get an education in some marketable skill, be it through a trade school or a college, and then work hard, and one day you will be able to raise a family and buy a house.”

The free market offers young people the ability to do as well as (usually a little better than) their parents, in the same basic system their parents, grandparents, and great grandparents lived under. The fact that the lights come on at the flick of a switch, and that food waits for people (rather than people waiting for food), just does not resonate with young people who have never lived without power or had to wait for food.

Communism offers young people a way to build something entirely new – to reinvent the world. When we tell young people that communism has never worked, this actually makes the idea of trying it even more appealing, as it allows young people to be a part of something not just new, but smarter than anything that has been tried before – they can try to be the first generation to take this failed, miserable idea, and get it to work.

When our nation was founded, we were under the British monarchy, and the notions of freedom and liberty were the sexy new thing. Our children have not only never known anything but freedom and liberty. Our constitutional republic is 232 years old (going back to the ratification of the Constitution). That’s more than ten generations. Unless you are an immigrant yourself, or the child of an immigrant, freedom, and liberty are the old, tired way our country has always done things. There is nothing sexy about keeping the status quo – even when the status quo works, and what you want to replace it with does not.

People need struggle in their lives, for it is when we overcome adversity that we feel most alive. This is true in spite of the fact that we live with the least adversity any country has ever had, at any time in human history. What do people do when they lack adversity and have nothing to struggle and triumph over? Historically, they get bored and burn it all down, which is exactly what we are seeing in America today.

I said earlier that not all forms of socialism follow the communist model, and while socialists like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may praise the Cuban regime, they are calling for election wins rather than violent revolutions. This form of socialism seduces young people by representing a cultural revolution that people can still fight for – including violently – but without an actual, physical revolution.

Democratic socialists focus on moral platitudes even more so than do communists, railing against profit rather than against the ‘bourgeoisie.’ ‘People should not profit off of healthcare,’ they will say, completely ignoring the fact that it is the high pay medical care provides that attracts people into that field, to begin with.

The siren song of Democratic Socialism is the notion that we can take care of all our fellow mankind simply by voting, and that doing so will cost us nothing personally. Supposedly, the rich will pay for everything.

We conservatives tend to use factual and logical arguments to show how socialism and communism don’t work (in the case of communism, it kills on an industrial scale). What we have to do instead is to show how different totalitarian systems (communism, socialism, and fascism) have taken over the political left and embedded themselves in America’s institutions and corporations, such that the true revolutionaries are the people calling for freedom and liberty.

The model for conservatives, going forward, will not resemble the Tea Party. The Tea Party was too overtly Christian, and while many conservatives are Christians (myself included), the future of the party will be focused more on enlightenment values, such as freedom and liberty, than on Christianity itself. Certainly, religious liberty will be a focus, but with an emphasis more on liberty, and less on any specific religion.

Right, wrong, or indifferent, but America’s youth is less Christian than previous generations, and focusing on Christianity alienates many younger people who would otherwise be natural allies. The way to attract younger voters is to show them how radical leftism has infiltrated the government, the media, corporate boardrooms, and every other part of the establishment. The left is not the party fighting the rich anymore, but for the most part, they are the rich.

What is it that ‘the rich,’ the government, the media, corporate boardrooms, and the rest of the establishment want? That’s easy. All of these groups want to take away choice, and to control the public. The left is the party of climate alarmism and mask mandates. The left is the party of fear and of lockdowns.

The left is increasingly trying to make the political right look unhinged – like a bunch of radical revolutionaries intent on taking the system down. We must embrace that. We are not the party of the status quo, and have not been so in some time. We are, rather, the party that holds the radical belief that all people are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Let the left be the party of big, bloated, controlling government. We are the party that holds the radical belief that government is not imposed upon the governed, but created among the people, with the purpose of securing these rights, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that when government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

These were radical ideas when Thomas Jefferson coined them, and though these ideas may have become the status quo in America for a while – leading to the most prosperous nation in human history – they are STILL radical when taken in a global context, and are increasingly radical even in America, today.

To go forward, we must go back, and model ourselves after the Sons of Liberty. If we need a new mantra for the modern-day, let it be the following:

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all people are created by our Creator (however, one may wish to define that word) with the right to be treated equally under the law. The right to be treated equally under the law cannot be justly removed, and nor can the rights to life, liberty, earned property, or the pursuit of happiness.

We hold that the purpose of government is to protect the rights of the people as individuals and that the proper limitations on the rights of an individual do not occur until a conflict with the rights of other individuals emerges.

We reject identity politics in all forms. The logical extension of intersectionality is the individual, and as such, we look at each person as an individual.

We believe in Democratic-Republican forms of governance, but we also believe that government should be limited, with defined powers it stays within.

We believe the United States Constitution, as interpreted by James Madison (the author), provides the best framework for a federal government, and that the frameworks for states and local municipalities should be determined by the people living within those states and municipalities.

We believe in America’s founding values, and strive to finish the job started by our Founding Fathers, by extending these values to all people. Conversely, we stand opposed to those who would deny the natural rights of their fellow citizens.

We believe in the Bill of Rights as a set of rules government must adhere to at all levels. No government is ever justified in denying the natural rights of its citizens.

We reject tyranny and totalitarianism in all forms: communism, fascism, socialism, etc…

We recognize the growing Cultural Revolution around us, and stand in opposition to it.