America's Future
Noted journalist and author John T. Flynn warned more than 50 years ago that America was headed down "the road to Socialism."
by F.R. DuplantierIn a book called The Road Ahead, published decades ago, the late John T. Flynn argued that Americans committed to fighting the creeping advance of socialism in our country must first "rid themselves of the moral intimidation which has been imposed on their minds." An excerpt from that book appears in a new compilation of Flynn's writing entitled Forgotten Lessons, published by the Foundation for Economic Education. Flynn noted that "the American system has been painted as something wicked, bungling, even brutal, while the Planned New World of the future will be filled with sweetness, light, and plenty." This false picture has had an impact not only on naive Americans, but also on those who ought to know better.
John T. Flynn observed that the choice before us is not "between a perfect system called Socialism and an imperfect system called Capitalism. It is a choice between two human systems both of which will inevitably have their imperfections because they are human. But the Socialist Planners do not concede this. Capitalism they present to us only in terms of its defects. But Socialism is painted only in terms of the wonderful things it is going to do some day." Citing the disastrous effects of Socialism in Russia, Germany, Italy, and Britain, Flynn reminded his readers that "the greatest and most efficient producing machine in the world is in [America]. This did not happen by accident," he asserted. "It is the result of the soil of freedom in which it grew."
Socialism was far advanced in America even in Flynn's day, and it has gained ground since then. Forty years later we are still confronted with the need to counteract what Flynn called "the social disease that is destroying us." Flynn urged his countrymen to "stop apologizing for our Capitalist society." We should take no more steps down the road to Socialism, he said, and we should turn out of office any politician who tries to lead us in that direction. Flynn pointed out, long before Dan Quayle and Pat Buchanan, "that we are in a social war, and that we must fight it as such." He said we should "put an end to the orgy of spending that is rapidly bankrupting the nation," quit trying to plan our economy, and instead let "our free system of private enterprise operate at its fullest capacity."
John T. Flynn was a founding member of America's Future, the producer of this series of broadcasts, and a man of great wisdom and vision. Flynn advised his readers to rediscover their principles in the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and American history -- and use those principles "to dismantle the tyrant State in America and to build up once again the energies of a free people."
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