Speaking three weeks ago at the Democratic National Committee’s winter meeting, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said. “The other day the oil companies recorded the highest profits in the history of the world. I want to take those profits.” Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Socialist States of America!

If she is elected President, Mrs. Clinton aims not only to take control of the profits of the energy companies, but to socialize health care as well. For Hillary, big government represents competence, goodness, and fairness. However, the track record of the Federal Government in virtually everything it has touched during the last fifty years indicates that Government is incompetent and inefficient at best; coercive and unfair at worst.

With the exception of defensive functions (a national defense, a court system and a police force to enforce the actions of the court), and the building of infrastructure like highways and airports, most other activities of government are outright tyrannical. If government is made for man, instead of man being made to serve government, then it follows that the government should be limited in size to allow its citizens the maximum freedom to pursue their lives, liberty, and property.

It is a myth that government can efficiently run an economy. The Soviets tried it on a grand scale for fifty years before their socialist economy collapsed. Tragically, the government of India followed the Soviet economic model (complete with five year plans) from 1950 through 1996. By doing so, the government of India set back the Indian economy fifty years. The United States fought a war in Vietnam, supposedly to stop communism from spreading throughout Asia. After we left, the government of Vietnam struggled with socialistic economic policies for nearly twenty years, only to realize that it wasn’t working. Now, three and a half decades later, the Vietnamese have become capitalists with US firms among the largest investors in the Vietnamese economy. The Chinese came to the same realization as the Vietnamese. During the leadership reign of Deng Xiaopeng, the communist party of China made a “deal with the devil” (Chinese Capitalists). By now everyone knows that the Chinese are some of the greatest capitalists the world has ever known.

The real end to socialism came on November 9, 1989 when the Berlin wall came crashing down. East Berliners, oppressed by their socialist dictators for 28 years, over-ran stores and businesses in West Berlin, in an unquenchable thirst for modern goods and services. Keep in mind that East Germans and West Germans were the same people. South Koreans and North Koreans are the same people. Only the economic systems are different. Socialism leads to poverty and oppression. Capitalism leads to prosperity and freedom. Everybody in the world knows this. Socialism isn’t even defended in the economics departments of Universities these days. There are perhaps only three men in the entire world who think socialism is a good economic system, Fidel Castro (Cuba), Kim Jung Il (North Korea), and Hugo Chavez (Venezuela). The people of Cuba and North Korea know what tyranny is. The Venezuelans, now facing food shortages because of Chavez’s government price controls, are going to find out.

With all of this evidence supporting capitalism, I find it astounding that ANY American want to slide down the slippery slope of socialism. Economic ignorance abounds. We must deny government the right to take the property of private citizens, except for defense and infrastructure. When government plays “Robin Hood”, taking the earnings of those who produce and giving it to those that don’t produce, this is the greatest crime of all. The income transfer from producers to non-producers lessens the incentive for producers to continue working or expanding their businesses and enterprises. The “handout” also ruins the incentive of the non-producer to get a job or invest in further training and education. With producers less interested in producing and looters even less likely to become involved in productive activity, the entire economy suffers.

I don’t care if the socialist is Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, or Monica Lewinsky’s boyfriend’s wife; socialism doesn’t work. Americans who believe it works and are willing to elect leaders who are successful in implementing Socialist legislation will lose a significant amount of their freedom and prosperity. Tragically, they won’t even realize what has happened until it is too late. As the late economist Milton Friedman once said, “The society that values equality over freedom will have little of either. The society that values freedom over equality will have a great deal of both.”