Socialism has to fail, we all know this. And it, like all other authoritarian forms of government, fails because of two natural, two immutable natural laws.
     About the first, part of our on-going analyses about socialism have been about how the natural law of bureaucracies always kill it in the end. This is a common theme but requires a little deeper analysis. There is a simple logic to this, for the First Law of Bureaucracy is that they will (must) always subordinate the primary mission of the organization to their own primary mission, which is first, to survive, and then, grow. The First Ancillary to the Prime Directive of Bureaucracies is that there is always room for one more desk. (For full scientific detail, Google Parkinson's Rule. Better still, read it.).
     In the end, a bureaucracy can never solve problems or attain goals for it is in its nature to merely tend to them...in perpetuity.
     Enough said.
     But the exploration of the nature of bureaucracies carries us into the nature of Evil and Good themselves. Bureaucracy is a necessary linchpin to understanding Good and Evil in government. And we are not required to grab up the Bible, or the Qu'ran or any other religious text to determine this. Aristotle will do. You see, that which will carry man to a good end is Good and that which will lead to his demise is Evil. Or "Bad" if you prefer.
     Now, although we all call bureaucracies "necessary evils" they are not really Evil. But those who would use them knowing the end game are. And those who would use them under the delusion they do not destroy also are invoking Evil, for the end for man is still bad. Ignorance is not a defense. But it is not for us to ascribe a certain place in hell for malefactors who bring this bad end about. As the uncommonly wise sage Barack Obama said (and he's been quoted by so many others), that is above our pay grade. What separates socialism from say, General Motors, who certainly has destroyed itself these past thirty years because of bureaucratic structures it was unable and unwilling to control, is that, in a free market, there is a leaner structure willing to step in to replace. Free markets provide a safety line for Man, if not some men, or the corporation. No such safety net exists in the state sector, for no competition exists or even allowed, so when bureaucracy kills the state, it is more or less absolute...although even there, there will always be another sort of power to step into the vacuum. Man loses in the end. (By the way, none of this makes sense if you believe that some people are foreordained to be bosses over some other people. Then, the bad end for Man is just one big Oops for you. Better luck next time.)
     Why this is important is that once you accept that there is actually a Good and an Evil out there, you have to understand that they can never sit at the table as equals. I recall Sam Donaldson of ABC always said that the USSR was entitled to their opinions, too, as if to say that Good and Evil should sit at the table as equals.
     This can never be. Good and Evil are locked in everlasting warfare, but they can never tie. One must always be on top, or at be least ascending. Battles rage, one is on top for awhile, then the other. Until the very End neither can actually win. But while Evil can never win totally, Good will win in the end..and both instinctively understand this. Evil can sure win a battle, even a war, and drive Good into retreat, even hiding. But it instinctively shrinks away when Good stands firm and matches Evil toe-for-toe. Good is better than Evil...and Evil knows it!
     The question before us now: Is this what we are seeing now in America...Good in full retreat? Evil has generally been in retreat since July 4th, 1776. Is this the big turnaround? This is why seeing the One Big (and only) Chance for Mankind to reach out to find his Good End take a giant step backwards is so damned aggravating to me. Why should Mankind have to wait another what, decade, century, millennium before all the pieces come together again? Damn, damn, damn. Say it ain't so, God.
     Oh, well. Why Evil cannot win in the end is because of that second immutable law: No matter how tightly Evil ties its nets, or how broadly it casts them, there will always be a minnow that will escape. You can find allusions to this in the New Testament such as when Herod killed all the babies...but One. Still more examples can be found throughout history and literature. It is a common theme. Even Machiavelli alluded to it. But since I direct this at younger ears (for specific reasons), a better way to understand this can be found in the literature of Tolkien (Ring Trilogy), Lewis (Narnia), or even J K Rowling. Evil just can't touch all the bases it has to in order to win...because man will always instinctively be driven toward Good and away from Evil. There will always be someone there to screw the pooch.
     Leaving hobbits, Solzhenitsyn called them "wreckers". From 1918 forwards every year there was a crop failure in the USSR, and the Stalinists said it was due to "wrecking" by counter-revolutionaries. Like Sauron, it was in Moscow's nature to look in all the wrong places for just who it was that was peeing in their Cheerios.
     This second immutable law that destroys socialism can be written thus: No matter how authoritarian, no matter how totalitarian a regime, the people always reserve unto themselves one single power, and that is is to deny the master power what it wants. The people may be forever denied what they want for themselves, and forever changed in ways they could never imagine (this is the scary part, as Russia is proving now), but they have that one absolute power to deny socialism what it wants. This and this alone, even if bureaucracies did not exist, would in the end, kill it outright.
      Then Good would come out of hiding.
Vassar Bushmills