Pity the poor conservative who keeps trying to persuade his liberal friends with things like facts, logic, or history - you're wasting your time. Because socialism is not, and never has been, about reality. Or at least, not objective reality.

Socialism, or rather, the belief in socialism, is essentially a case of arrested development. In a sense, we all are born into a totally socialist environment - we are fed, clothed, protected, and comforted by an all-powerful external entity (the family). We do nothing for ourselves.

But gradually (in healthy families, at least) we are required to take on more and more responsibilities for our own well-being (making our own meals, etc), as well as learning that if there are things we want, we must work to earn them - the first exposure to the economic reality that "there is no free lunch." Even an allowance should not be just handed over without strings (unless of course, you are TRYING to raise a future socialist). No, in the best families, whether rich or poor, it is earned. We make our beds. We take out the trash. We mow the lawn.

But it is during adolescence that the real transition to adulthood begins - or at least it should. Because an adolescent is no longer a child, but is not yet an adult either - he wants all of the benefits of adulthood, but, like the child, wants none of the responsibilities. Sound familiar?

Now, if their parents do their job of gradually demanding more and more accountability from their teenagers, especially for their own needs or desires, they will be well on their way to becoming self-sufficient, independent citizens - with a clear understanding that their life (and life-style) is ultimately THEIR responsibility. They will go out into the world, get real jobs, know that THEY are responsible for their rent or house payment, car payment, and credit card bills.

But if adolescents are given the benefits of adulthood without any concurrent responsibilities, their growth will be inhibited - they will stay in perpetual adolescence. If you buy them a car, pay for the gas and insurance, send them to college with NO contribution on their part, and then let him (or her) live rent-free at home into their '20s and even '30s, don't be surprised if they embrace a socialist political view - having "the government" take care of them will be a natural extension of the world view they have lived in since birth.

Naturally, the budding socialist has a whole host of psychological rationalizations for their desire to take from those who earn and give to those who don't. You've doubtless heard comments like this: "I just feel that in the richest nation on earth, no child should go without ("free" food, "free" health-care, "free" education, cell phones, designer shoes, ad nauseum)."

Now, first of all, whenever a liberal/socialist talks about "free" anything, what they really mean is that they want YOU to pay for it - study after study shows that when it comes to being really generous (i.e. with their OWN money) self-described liberals, even rich ones, give dramatically less than even poor conservatives.

And note that when they say "the richest nation on earth" they make it sound like we just HAPPENED to find ourselves in all this wealth and prosperity, with the implication that, as Americans, we are just more "fortunate" or "lucky" than others. Which means, of course, that we should be willing to "share" our (undeserved) bounty with, well, just about everyone.

Note also how socialists see your simply wanting to keep what you earn as "greedy" - but their wanting to STEAL what your earn to give it to some other loser they condescendingly see as "needing a boost" - well, that's just, you know, "fair."

But America's wealth is no accident - it is the accumulated effort of millions of INDIVIDUALS who have the FREEDOM to achieve to best of their abilities that continues to produce the highest standard of living on earth. And no matter how many new and different immigrant groups come here, most wholeheartedly embrace the free enterprise capitalist system that attracted them in the first place. Of course they do - many of them left the very kind of socialist nightmares that American "progressives" are trying to bring about here.

However, if you want to use the force of government to forcibly take money from one citizen and give it to another, it helps to convince yourself that they didn't really earn it in the first place, or that they got it at the expense of some imagined downtrodden group or another - note how many times some hand-wringing quasi-socialist nitwit will attribute American success to somehow "taking advantage" of the Third World.

Nonsense. Wal-Mart has done more for every poor person in America than all of the government welfare programs put together - they not only provide goods at prices that make them affordable to the poorest Americans, they employ people of every age and background - giving them dignity in the process (something that no demeaning welfare check ever provides).

For two centuries, the bravest, most courageous people on the planet have left their homelands and traveled across oceans to come to a land where they didn't even speak the language, to participate in the most productive enterprise in all of human history. And now, in spite of all the abject failures of every socialist experiment across the world, America's "progressives" want to bring this same "equal distribution of poverty" here.

Pathology indeed...