Book of the month -March, 2011

Introducing with this post a new feature of The Liberty Blog and the Liberty News Central -The book of the month. Starting off with the latest in The Politically Incorrect Guide to series-

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism

  

 by National Review
deputy managing editor Kevin D. Williamson 

From the National Review description of the book-

Stalin’s gulag, impoverished North Korea, collapsing Cuba . . . it’s hard to name a dogma that has failed as spectacularly as socialism. And yet leaders around the world continue to subject millions of people to this dysfunctional, violence-prone ideology.

In The Politically Incorrect Guide™ to Socialism, Kevin Williamson (“chancellor” of NRO’s exciting Exchequer blog) reveals the fatal flaw of socialism—that efficient, complex economies simply can’t be centrally planned. But even in America, that hasn’t stopped politicians and bureaucrats from planning, to various extents, the most vital sectors of our economy: public education, energy, and the most arrogant central–planning effort of them all, Obama’s healthcare plan.

In this provocative book, Williamson unfolds the grim history of socialism, showing how the ideology has spawned crushing poverty, devastating famines, and horrific wars. Lumbering from one crisis to the next, leaving a trail of economic devastation and environmental catastrophe, socialism has wreaked more havoc, caused more deaths, and impoverished more people than any other ideology in history—especially when you include the victims of fascism, which Williamson notes is simply a variant of socialism.

Williamson further demonstrates:

Why, contrary to popular belief, socialism in theory is no better than socialism in practice

Why socialism can’t exist without capitalism

How the energy powerhouse of Venezuela, under socialism, has become an economic basket case subject to rationing and blackouts

How socialism, not British colonialism, plunged the bountiful economy of India into stagnation and dysfunction—and how capitalism is rescuing it

Why socialism is inextricably linked to communism

If you thought socialism went into the dustbin of history with the collapse of the Soviet Union, think again. Socialism is alive and kicking, and it’s already spread further than you know.

What’s the central characteristic of socialism?

That’s easy—it’s failure, says Williamson.

Thats worth a repeat in large letters-

What’s the central characteristic of socialism?

That’s easy—it’s failure

Now somebody tell that to our Supreme Court judges.