Once again, my title is a little obvious, but those words will seem strange to anyone who is not a Christian and/or a conservative. There truly is no reason for anyone to support socialism. The same could be said for communism or fascism, given they all have roots in Marxism anyway.
 
But why am I talking about this now? Well, according to a Fox News report from journalist Hollie McKay, who has looked into and detailed the despicable tragedy that is socialism in Venezuela, girls as young as 14 are selling their own bodies for a little bit of cash. The same goes for straight men who are selling their own bodies on gay markets.
 
But that’s just the tip of the ice berg. There is a whole lot more that’s messed up in this once wealthy country.
 
McKay reports: “Thousands upon thousands of Venezuelans pour into Colombia over the crowd cross-country bridge, their faces gaunt, carrying little more than a backpack. Rail-thin women cradle their tiny babies, and beg along the trash-strewn gutters. Teens hawk everything from cigarettes to sweets and water for small change.”
 
McKay also reports that malnourished and starving females, both girls and women, resort to selling anything they possibly can, including their own bodies, hair, breast milk, etc. in order to survive.
 
According to McKay: “According to several walkers, some women ‘chose’ prostitution as a means to make money and earn rides along the way. And some heterosexual men ‘sell themselves on the gay market’ for a little money.”
 
“Other women are manipulated or forced into giving ‘pimp types’ their documents and identification cards, and are subsequently drawn into prostitution rings. That’s particularly the case in border areas, where many rebel and drug-trafficking groups operate.”
 
“They come from a country they say now resembles a war zone. Their lives have been ripped apart by displacement, starvation, disease, desperation and torment. But now they’re in Colombia, where conditions are far from perfect, but are at least safer, and more stable.”
 
That last paragraph, particularly the first two sentences, is particularly sobering.
 
While not a direct quote, McKay says that these people say Venezuela resembles a war zone. The last war Venezuela had was a civil war between the government and military rebels, in which the government won. That was in 1962.
 
After nearly two entire decades of socialism (Chavez took power in 1999), the country now looks like it’s been through a war. You can’t possibly tell me that this is a good thing and proves socialism works.
 
In doing research for this article, I came across some articles that tried to say that socialism has worked in Venezuela (I literally laughed out loud) or that Venezuela’s situation proved nothing about socialism.
 
I’ll ignore the first one because it’s that ridiculous. All I’ll say is that socialism hasn’t worked, but has been faithfully and fully implemented… which is why it hasn’t worked.
 
But looking towards the second one, tell me, why wouldn’t it prove anything about socialism? Should we also ignore how socialism eventually sank the Soviet Union? Should we ignore how when Lenin tried to fully implement communism, he had to scale it back because it was like dropping a bomb on his own rear? Should we ignore how communism has destroyed North Korea and it has only remained because of China and Russia? Should we ignore how China had to implement more capitalistic policies to boost their economy and actually make it grow?
 
Time and time again, and within the confines of Venezuela, we see just how terrible socialism is and just how much it doesn’t work.
 
It’s sunk nation after nation in relatively quick succession. But before you even get there, millions upon millions die, either by starvation, disease, or by the state killing them for any given reason. And those who are unfortunate enough to survive live in their own slice of Hell. It’s either die or live in misery whenever you’re talking about a socialist country.
 
And the other unfortunate thing about this is that this entire catastrophe could be completely avoided. Like previously mentioned, Venezuela used to be the richest Latin American country before socialism ravaged it. Its rich oil reserves made it a blessed country in terms of natural wealth. They now resort to importing gas instead.
 
The U.S. is sort of similar. We also have rich oil reserves. The difference is that we can choose to take advantage of them (depending on the people in control). We don’t depend on foreign oil anywhere near as much as we used to because we use our own supplies. As a matter of fact, the US is a net oil exporter for the first time in 75 years.
 
Obviously, we were still pretty wealthy and prosperous even without using our own oil reserves, but that’s because of our free-market, or capitalist, economic and government systems.
 
Milton Friedman is often credited for saying the following: “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there’d be a shortage of sand.”
 
Now, the origins of this quote go back before Friedman and a similar quote can be attributed to William F. Buckley Jr., but the point is not to discuss the origins of that quote. The point is to discuss the relevance of said quote today.
 
Under socialism, the government owns the means of production. Meaning they own what is sold to people, at what price, and how much to make available for sale. The government takes the rest, which usually tends to be a sizable majority.
 
So saying that the federal government would make the Sahara Desert run out of sand is not entirely accurate, but also not entirely inaccurate. There’d be a shortage of sand for the people, not for the government.
 
Nicolas Maduro is not starving. He’s very well-fed. People in the government aren’t starving either. It’s the people outside the government that are suffering, while people within the government live like kings.
 
The reason socialism appeals to people, particularly young people, is that it promises a society in which everyone is equal, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, class, etc. And that is largely true, just not in any good way.
 
People outside the government are equally MISERABLE while people within the government are perfectly content.
 
Socialists think that the government is the best option for who gets to control the means of production. But this misery is all it ever amounts to. Why? Because man is evil.
 
I could spend another article talking about that, but the main point I’m making here is that socialism does not work in any real circumstance. It relies entirely in people in power being good and selfless and not taking the majority of the supply. The thing about that is that, even if the people in power were actually good and selfless, the government is REQUIRED to own the majority of the supply in order to own the means of production.
 
In order for socialism to work in the way people think it should (or does), it would literally have to be the opposite of socialism.
 
And in this sense, socialism does work… it’s called capitalism. Capitalism does work. We’ve had it here in the States for even longer than we’ve been a nation and it’s worked. Germany, before Nazism rose, was also pretty capitalist and pretty wealthy.
 
Countries that faithfully and fully implement capitalism tend to grow and thrive. Countries that faithfully and fully implement socialism or communism or fascism tend to stagnate at best and collapse at worst.
 
Again, Lenin had to implement SOME level of capitalism in order for his new Soviet Union not to collapse in on itself immediately. China is a similar story.
 
So we learn throughout history that there truly is no reason for anyone to advocate for socialism. It simply doesn’t work. And those who try it come to realize the error of their ways, unless they are in the government, in which case they couldn’t give a rat’s ass because they are not obligated to. Maduro can do whatever he wants with Venezuela because the people are too hungry, tired and downtrodden to do anything about it. He runs elections that are a complete farce.
 
The only thing that keeps him somewhat relatively contained is Russian and U.S. influence basically telling him to behave.
 
Socialism is a disease in this world that brings with it pain and misery. Capitalism is the solution because it's only in a Capitalist society, where the government focuses on protecting life, imparting justice and administering a small amount of resources to support a small government, that private enterprise and people can truly prosper. It's a system marked by equal opportunity, not equal result. Socialism kills innovation and any reason to prosper, given that government takes most of what you produce.  It’s a system in which everyone outside the government is a loser and can never escape that fate (unless they literally escape the country for a better one).
 
With capitalism, you can work towards success because it's the only system in the world where wealth is CREATED pretty much out of nowhere. You can work towards being a success. With socialism, that doesn’t fall on the individual, but on the state to decide a person’s fate. Usually you lose while the elitist ruling class wins. And because the state is the state, they will not want any strong opposition to it, so they are the only winners.
 
Those who advocate for socialism either have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about or have no heart.
 
Here’s hoping people come to realize the horrors of socialism without having to actually experience them.
 
Proverbs 18:15
“An intelligent heart acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge.”
 
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Author: Freddie Marinelli.

Most certainly not! Generally speaking, we would want to avoid having any sort of war with any nation in the world. War rarely is necessary and always brings largely unnecessary death and destruction. The only time war is a necessity is when there’s a clear evil threat to the world and good people leading good and powerful countries should do their best to save the world from the forces of evil. 
 
But with North Korea threatening to strike Guam, a U.S. territory, we might be forced into a confrontation in the near future. Like I said in the previous article, we could convince China to convince Kim Jong Un’s generals to take out the radical leader to avoid the generals' ultimate deaths. So war doesn’t even have to happen in this scenario. All that would have to happen is Kim Jong Un’s assassination by the Chinese and replacement with a Chinese puppet - and that's assuming Kim Jong Un doesn't come to his senses first.
 
Should that not happen and Kim Jong Un strikes, as he promised, then we would obviously be forced to retaliate and engage in war with North Korea. Trump isn’t like Obama. He’s not gonna beg Kim Jong Un to cut it out. You can shove Obama around and he won’t do anything. But if you try to shove Trump around, you won’t get a shove back. You get a punch to the nose.
 
Throughout the campaign, Trump faced opponents that wanted to take him down. When those opponents would attack him, he’d attack back harder. The same can be said when given a threat such as the one Kim is giving. If North Korea does launch a missile, even if it’s not a nuke, at Guam, we will hit them back… harder.
 
And we’re not afraid to go to war with them. Why? No one will back up North Korea. China has always been a friend to North Korea (of course they are, they’re both communist states that massacre whoever they want), but even they know that Kim Jong Un is a lunatic. If North Korea goes to war with the U.S. and China gets involved, the U.S. will cease all trade with China, which will really hurt their economy. The Chinese have a good thing going with us in the market, they won’t sacrifice that just to back up the crazy chubby guy.
 
And Russia really has no reason to get itself involved in this. They’re still recovering from the dissolution of the Soviet Union. And while they are a strong military force, I highly doubt they would start World War III with us to help a nation that could be destroyed so insanely easy. So North Korea really has no allies in this… other than maybe radical Muslims. But they’re already trying to destroy us and kill us, not to mention ISIS has been heavily debilitated since the recent destruction of the Mosul caliphate, so they’re in no position to back up the Norks.
 
So let’s focus on the head to head match-up between the U.S. and North Korea. Like I said in the previous article, it’d be like a high school basketball team facing the Golden State Warriors or a high school football team facing the Patriots. North Korea, on their own, can’t possibly stand up against the U.S.
 
Let’s look at some numbers. According to Wikipedia, the number of active personnel in the United States military is 1.2 million people (ranked 3rd). North Korea’s number of active personnel is 1.1 million (ranked 4th). They obviously have a lot of people in their military (but considering it’s either that or live in utter destitution, it makes sense that so many people would want to 'serve'). So the numbers are fairly even. In the event of a war, those numbers would obviously go up.
 
But while having people fighting is necessary, you also have to have the ability to pay for them and the weapons they use. The U.S. military budget is about $600 Billion, with 3.3% of the country’s GDP being used to fund that budget. Of course, this was during the Obama years. Now that Trump is President, I imagine that number will go up. Not to mention the fact that, during the event of a war, that number will DEFINITELY go up.
 
So we can clearly see that the United States is very rich and doesn’t eat up much of its GDP in its military… Then there’s North Korea. North Korea’s budget is roughly $10 Billion, with it taking up roughly 25% of the country’s GDP. So they use up a quarter of their country’s wealth and they have a budget that's only 1.7% of America's budget. Now, we’ve known for a long time that they were poor, but looking at the numbers… HOLY MOTHER OF GOD THEY’RE POOR!  
 
So as you can see, North Korea most certainly loses the war of finances. In a normal war, they’d easily get destroyed. In a nuclear war, same thing. The United States has a total area of 3.7 million square miles. North Korea has a total area of 46,540 square miles. Not that we would, but if we were to launch nukes at North Korea, given that we most certainly have the weaponry and technology to do that, they’d easily be wiped out. North Korea could easily stop existing in less than a day. But since the U.S. is far bigger, it’d take A LOT of nukes to completely wipe the continental U.S. off the face of the Earth. North Korea doesn’t have that kind of power.
 
The reason we’re even talking about this is because JUST NOW they’re able to reach us. Knowing that, I can’t imagine North Korea has a lot of missiles, at the moment, that can reach us. Meanwhile, we have all the power in the world to wipe them out. Again, we won’t be doing that. We don’t want to kill innocent civilians. All we want to do is resolve this issue diplomatically, but if not possible, we would resolve it with the destruction of the North Korean government and military. We won’t use nukes on North Korea, knowing the human cost that would ensue.
 
Even Mattis agrees with the President and myself. In an interview with CBN, Mattis said: “The DPRK should cease any consideration of actions that would lead to the end of its regime and the destruction of its people.” He knows we don't want to attack North Korean civilians, but he doesn’t want Kim Jong Un to think that we won't. He wants Kim to think we’ll go to any extent to ensure the safety of the world, even at the cost of an entire nation and its people. But the U.S., being the good guys, won’t simply attack civilian targets unless it's absolutely necessary.
 
Even the attacks on Japan during World War II were to destroy Japanese military installations and workshops or factories. We even WARNED Japanese civilians in targeted cities with the LeMay leaflets. The leaflets were dropped on dozens of Japanese cities during 1945 to warn civilians to evacuate the cities before they are destroyed. Granted, the leaflets didn’t mention atomic bombs, but that would be a given. YOU DON’T REVEAL YOUR MOST POWERFUL WEAPONS TO YOUR ENEMIES! We used atomic bombs to get the Japanese to surrender. And we were prepared to attack more than just Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We were prepared to destroy far many more cities if the Japs didn’t surrender. And thank God they did.
 
So we won’t be using nukes on the entirety of North Korea unless we have to. We likely won’t even launch a single one if unprovoked. We will, however, ensure Kim Jong Un either comes to his senses or is overthrown - a regime change that would lead to a unified Korea. The last time I checked, the Chinese didn't want a unified Korea...so they better step up to the plate.
 
2 Thessalonians 3:3
“But the Lord is faithful, and He will strengthen you and protect you from the evil one.”
 
Author: Freddie Marinelli.