True Words of Wisdom

Writing shortly after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, historian Orestes Brownson almost prophetically summed up socialism and where it would lead. “Humanitarian democracy [or the ‘social democrats,’ as he called it] . . . which scorns all geographical lines, effaced all individualities, and professes to plant itself on humanity alone, has acquired by the [Civil] war new strength, and is not without menace to your future. . . . The humanitarian [i.e., socialist] presently will attack distinctions between the sexes; he will assail private property, as unequally distributed….  There is [in “humanitarian” socialism] inequality, therefore injustice, which can be remedied only by the abolition of all individualities, and the reduction of all individuals to the race, or humanity, or man in general. He can find no limit to his agitation this side of vague generality, which is no reality, but a pure nullity, for he respects no territorial or individual circumscriptions, and must regard creation itself as a blunder.