Socialism is Tyranny

In the modern era, whenever socialism has come to a society it has always been regarded as irreversible, and the new regime has always demanded complete submission.  This is true across the entire range of degrees of socialism, from outright communism to the milder forms, programs like the National Health Service in England, or Social Security in America.  Yet the idealists who have consistently defended and rationalized even the horrors of the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Viet Nam and all the rest of the nightmare regimes of the 20th century, never seem to notice the contradiction.  Socialism is by definition tyranny, and a tyrant who can’t be overthrown and who demands that every individual abjectly submit, can in no way be characterized as representing a civilization with “a passion to throw off tyranny.” 

Patrick Michael Murphy, “How the West Was Lost,” p.89