Socialism is a theoretical system in which the means of production, distribution, and exchange are owned collectively, by a society, from the scope of a community to the scope of a state. No industrial civilization has developed from a socialist state, nor can it, as socialism requires an industrial host. From inception, in an attempt to perpetuate itself at scale, the socialist nation necessarily matures into a state of slavery and collapses. But the destruction of socialism’s 20th Century hosts has not prevented its survival. Politicians, celebrities, and a class of wealthy elitists again evangelize the faith, and in some cases openly fight for its adoption. If widespread adoption occurs, everything important in this world will end. Socialism is a suicidal ideology. It must be named, examined, and eradicated. The first and likely most important test of the new, American generation is our self-conception. Do we value our lives enough to assume our natural freedom, to assume its associated responsibility for life, and to fight for such liberty, or will we pass the torch to despots and let the fire die? Freedom is a choice. I believe we must fight for it, and I believe it is a fight we can win.

While capitalism emerges naturally and can then be considered in abstract terms, socialism is not an instinct. Socialism begins in abstract terms, as an idea. From conception it must be formed into a plan, and the plan must be implemented and maintained in a society by force. While certainly in conflict, capitalism and socialism are not opposites. Capitalism is an economic system. Socialism, a specific prescription for force, is primarily a political system. Only in part, and only in theory, does the socialist political system encompass an economic system — the centrally-planned economy. The proper contrast to socialism is therefore the liberal government, an altogether different prescription for force, which protects the individual as he operates freely in a market economy. In any sufficiently industrial society, the force applied in order to maintain socialism must be considerable, and in practice every attempt at such application has resulted in catastrophic, multi-generational human misery. But while the tremendous failure of socialism is well-documented, the threat persists. This is in part because logical arguments against socialism are increasingly made impotent by the corruption of our language. But even were the logic of the ardent liberal conveyed in perfect clarity, it could not alone defeat socialism, because socialism is also a faith. Our Cerberus is a beast with three heads — a twisted logic, a fraudulent language, and a dark morality. Each must be conquered.

Over a century in conflict, free men have developed powerful if not perfect antibodies to socialism in abstract reasoning, in rhetoric, and in a meticulous, historical documentation of the socialist fruits, from the largest-scale mass murders ever recorded to the psychotic institution of Dead Hand, and mankind’s closest brush with actual apocalypse. But our guards in rhetoric, reasoning, and history are coded entirely in language, and the natural, largely-beneficial flexibility of our language has been exploited. Where the malicious definition of socialism as some form of capitalism is now occasionally accepted in contrast with corruption, itself now defined as capitalism, where freedom is defined as chaos, and where democracy is defined as freedom, what use is an argument in any direction? The rules of language in popular culture have been distorted in such a manner as even arguments ostensibly in favor of liberty can only by their structure lead away from liberty. So we necessarily begin our defense of the liberal state with terms.