How Long Has the Socialist Movement Been Going On?
Article audio sponsored by The John Birch Society

The other day I came across a book buried in my library for years, H. G. Wells’ The Open Conspiracy: Blue Prints for a World Revolution, published in 1928. Considering that I’ve been writing about the conspiracy for world government for decades, I wondered “how long has this been going on?” Of course, that’s the title of one of George and Ira Gershwin’s immortal popular songs, written in 1927 for a Broadway musical called Smarty. And wouldn’t you know that it is the smarty insiders who have been promoting this world revolution since the late 19th century. (And some conspiracy historians say much longer.)

The fact is that I am tired of writing about socialist utopians taking over America when the American people should have been smart enough long ago to reject the socialists and their insider promoters. How long is it going to keep going on? How long will it take for the world’s greatest capitalist nation to learn that socialism doesn’t work?

The lyrics to the Gershwin tune are quite apt. Here are a few of its lines:

I could cry salty tears;
Where have I been all these years?
Little wow, tell me now
How long has this been going on?

I’m sure that some readers in my age group will even remember the tune. How long has this been going on? As long as I can remember. The modern Western socialist movement began with the formation of The Fabian Society in 1884 by young English utopians who wanted to replace capitalism and private property with socialism and communal property. They assumed that all of the ills of society were created by the competitive capitalist system in which some people, through efforts of their own, became enormously successful and rich while most of the working class simply managed to survive.

Of course, capitalism also created a very affluent middle class, so that even Detroit auto workers could afford to own vacation homes on lovely lakes.

To understand the strategy of the Fabian Society you should know how it got its name. Believe it or not, it was named in honor of the Roman general Fabius Maximus, the “delayer,” which was quite appropriate since the society advocated the gradual, piece-by-piece, law-by-law takeover of society rather than by violent revolution. As the first Fabian pamphlet states:
"For the right moment you must wait, as Fabius did most patiently, when warring against Hannibal, though many censured his delays; but when the time comes you must strike hard, as Fabius did, or your waiting will be in vain, and fruitless."

And that is why Obama is trying to “strike hard,” by pushing through a socialized healthcare program that most Americans don’t want. That is why he is determined to bankrupt America before he is forced to stop spending. He believes that he is on the brink of destroying capitalism in the greatest capitalist nation in history. If he doesn’t strike hard now while he still has the power to do so, then all that waiting by socialists will have been in vain and fruitless.

As for the Fabian Society, immediately upon its inception it began attracting many prominent contemporary figures drawn to its socialist cause, including George Bernard Shaw, the great playwright; H.G. Wells, the author of The Open Conspiracy; Annie Besant, the Theosophist occultist; Graham Wallas, author of The Great Society; Leonard and Virginia Woolf, eminent writers; and Ramsay MacDonald, organizer of the Labour Party. Even Bertrand Russell briefly became a member, but resigned after he objected to the Society's principle of entente (in this case, countries allying themselves against Germany) because he believed it could lead to war.

In the United States, the Progressives took the Fabian philosophy as the model for their own. John Dewey and his colleagues began to impose the socialist philosophy on American public schools so that what we have today is a totally socialized system that dumbs-down children and deforms their brains. But Dewey was not only influenced by the Fabians but also by Edward Bellamy’s famous book, Looking Backward, published in 1888. The book, still studied in American universities today, is a utopian romance that pictures future America under a system of state socialism.

So all of this has been going on for well over a hundred years. In the interim, we’ve witnessed the rise and fall of national socialism in Germany, the rise and fall of utopian communism in Russia and Eastern Europe (both of the preceding morphing into brutal totalitarian regimes), the rancid communist regime in Cuba, the brutal communist tyranny in North Korea, and a host of mixed economies in Western Europe on the edge of economic collapse. Communist China (following the extermination of over 30 million Chinese under Mao during the 1950s and '60s) is using capitalist economic principles to become the world’s superpower. But its communist rule is being undermined by a growing Christian movement among its people.

And here we are in America about to embark on a socialist path that will be no more successful than all of the socialist experiments that have tormented and debased human beings throughout history.

How long has this been going on? Long enough! It’s time for the Tea Party to serve notice that we shall not go the way of failed socialism, and will do whatever it takes to restore America to the principles of government and economy that made us the richest, freest, most productive and inventive nation in history. We not only owe it to our Founding Fathers who gave their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to give us the freedom we’ve enjoyed, but we also owe it to our posterity, who will wonder what this generation of Americans were made of if we don’t pass on to them the great legacy of liberty that was given to us.