Statism: The Endgame

Eighty North Korean people in seven separate cities were summarily executed by firing squad earlier this month. Their “crimes” involved watching foreign films, videos of South Korean television programs or possessing a Bible.

Witnesses saw eight people tied to stakes in the Shinpoong Stadium, in Kangwon Province, before having sacks placed over their heads and being executed by soldiers firing machineguns. In one instance, the local North Korean authorities rounded up 10,000 people, including children, and forced them to watch.

“I heard from the residents that they watched in terror as the corpses were so riddled by machinegun fire that they were hard to identify afterwards,” said one witness. After the carnage Relatives and friends of the victims were sent to prison camps as a reminder of the consequences for breaking the law or showing the least bit of discontent against the rule of Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s newest “Dear Leader.”

“Reports on public executions across the country would be certain to have a chilling effect on the rest of the people,” explained a North Korea analyst in Seoul South Korea. “All these people want to do is to survive and for their families to survive. The incentives for not breaking the law are very clear now.”

Where is the outrage?

This story should be occupying front page headlines for weeks in every major news organization on the planet, but it’s already been forgotten; swept into the statist oriented dustbin of history; ignored even by the enemies of statism.

What’s happening in North Korea represents the endgame of statism.

This is statism, collectivism, government control run amok and taken to the ultimate extreme. It happened in communist Russia under Joseph Stalin, and in fascist Germany under Adolph Hitler. Tens of millions of innocent human beings were slaughtered in the pursuit of the statist collective ideal.

Mao Zedong alone is estimated to have caused the deaths of up to 70 million innocent souls – all of them his own countrymen -- through starvation, forced relocation, hard labor camps, and summary executions during his thoroughly statist murderous reign of terror in communist China after 1949.

This statist murderer, who singlehandedly ruined China, placing that nation in the dark ages for over a half century, even in death is still held in high regard within the Chinese Communist Party as a great political mastermind, military strategist, visionary and savior of the nation.  

Similarly, the crazed Cambodian dictator, Pol Pot, presided over a Khmer Rouge statist communist revolutionary dictatorship which, in only four years time, from 1975 to 1979, led to the homicidal demise through starvation, forced relocation and summary executions of approximately 25% of the entire Cambodian population in the cause of the greater statist good.

The examples above represent only the tip of the iceberg. Examples of the endgame of statism abound throughout recorded history. At its extremes statism always ends in chaos, terror, mayhem and genocide among peaceful, honest innocent people whose only “crimes” are just trying to survive on this Earth.

Sadly, the vast majority of the people occupying planet Earth today has forgotten the perils of statism. They don’t believe its end game can happen again, at least not to them personally. They’re complacent in allowing their governments to take control over their lives, take their property, and even sacrifice some of their fellow citizens in the cause of the “greater statist good.”

There is no outrage.

This very week, Venezuelan soldiers, on President Maduro’s orders forcibly took over a chain of electronics stores, slashed prices, and declared henceforth that "fair prices" would be enforced around the country. Now Venezuelan businesses large and small are waiting for the next hammer to fall on them.

It’s all part of a planned "economic offensive" against the capitalist “hoarders and saboteurs stealing from the people.” President Nicolás Maduro says they are attacking Venezuela's economy and robbing its people. So he sent the nation’s military into the retail stores forcing the businessmen to sell their merchandise at drastically discounted prices.

Long queues formed and scuffles broke out as people waited to get their hands on a bargain, guarded by soldiers. Other electronics stores voluntarily slashed prices or shut down awaiting government inspection.

And the takeover of electronics retailers is just the beginning. Next there will be price inspections and military seizures of mobile phone, computer retailers and car dealerships, declared Maduro.

Those retailers who resist will no doubt be dealt with severely. If not imprisoned or executed, at least they will be forced to give up their wealth to the clamoring statist mobs. 

Very soon now there will be no more free enterprise in Venezuela. There will be no wealth at all; no products; no services; no nothing -- just crushing poverty, hardship and human suffering.

And once again there will be no worldwide outrage.

That is statism: the end game.