Communism - The fantasy that persists.

About 25 years ago - give or take a couple of elections - a fellow in western Missouri ran for Congress. In his campaign advertising, he told how he, his father and his brothers all "lived from the same wallet". They each worked and put their earnings into a common bank account. All lived and spent frugally and all prospered. You can imagine that if one lost his job - he was taken care of until he found a new job. If one suddenly got a better job with higher pay, all profited. What a wonderful picture. Many folks I knew planned to vote for him. Sadly, the poor man was killed in an airplane crash before the election, so we'll never know how he may have governed had he been elected. But his story was very appealing. Of course, their success depended entirely upon every member working equally, spending frugally, being always true to the group.

For centuries, men have watched ants and bees, admiring and envying the way they all worked for the common good. There were no "poor" ants or "poor" bees, unless the entire colony was poor.

Then a German named Karl Marx spelled out a way for humans to live the same way... to live in an always equally sharing commune. Communism.

Trouble is, humans are not ants or bees. Humans are individuals with unique thoughts, aspirations and ambitions. Bees tolerate drones. Males whose only purpose is to mate with the queen and then be killed. Bees have worker bees which work endlessly until they drop dead on the job, never achieving anything special for themselves. Humans will not tolerate such a society.

But the Marxists have persisted. When enough people in a nation subscribe to their philosophy and install their form of government, the results are always the same. Too many workers refuse to work. Those who do work soon realize they are being cheated and quit working. The requisite rules and regulations soon trump reality and big mistakes are made in the name of compliance.

In the 1960s, the U.S. and Soviet Russia cooperated on an exchange program where teens of each nation spent a summer in the other nation, to learn about their way of life. Some farm boys from Kansas who participated were appalled when rules required that everyone leave the fields at quitting time, leaving crops to be destroyed by a coming storm. In Kansas, If your hay crop is cut and baled ahead of an approaching storm, you stay in the field, working through the night to get the hay safely in the barn. Then you can rest as necessary.

Every nation that has tried Communism has failed. Current examples are Cuba and North Korea. The greatest failure of Communism, of course, was the U.S.S.R.

Now some point to China as a success of Communism. But Communism in China exists only in the halls of government. Essentially, they have turned away from the collectivist rules and allow the people to make their own way. China is now the most entrepreneurial nation in the world. Unlike the Russians on the collective farms of the 1960s, the Chinese work tirelessly to succeed. Chinese people make great sacrifices to travel and live in distant places when that means a better job, a better salary, a better life for their families.

Still, the world is full of "bee watchers", intent upon transforming humans into drones and workers, etc. How much more proof do they need that this is a fantasy that has not, does not, will not work?