With each passing election in the United States, there is a growing cry in favor of “socialism” and against "capitalism." From Francis in the Vatican to the classrooms of our colleges and universities to our election campaigns, we hear the steadily increasing condemnations of "capitalism" and "capitalists" as the cause of world poverty, as though every instance of “inequality" must be due to an injustice perpetrated by owners against laborers. Kari Marx's communism denounces the property owners (the bourgeoisie) and calls for their violent overthrow by the workers (the proletariat). This is the same Marxist class struggle that is being urged now by the socialists in America. Although a number of militant socialists are now running for elected office as Democrats, the entrenched leadership of the Democratic Party has tried to downplay their involvement. Even Barack Obama refused to endorse the candidacy of the young female New York socialist barista who has catapulted to prominence in our national news media. Does this indicate that the Democratic Party opposes socialism? Not at all. Recent surveys show Democrats favor socialism over capitalism by a wide margin. But the rising prominence of the young militant socialist candidates, who are riding in the wake of Bernie Sanders, threatens to expose and upset the establishment Democrat Party’s agenda for the gradual imposition of socialism in America through the means advocated by the Fabian Society: using the democratic process to advance Socialism step-by-step.

Pope Pius Xl warned Catholics that "no one can be a good Catholic and a true Socialist" (Quadrogesimo Anno, May 15, 1931). Why is this so? Because in order to gain and to hold complete control over the economy of any society, the government must take complete control over both capital and labor. In other words, government must control the population itself. Thus, to maintain its socialist plan, the government must strictly regulate even births and deaths. The communist agitators and propagandists during the French Revolution understood this well, calling for the murder of thousands in order to reduce the French population to the levels suitable for the establishment and maintenance of a socialist society. And here in America today stand the Georgia Guidestones setting out in ten "commandments" how humanity must be governed. These principles begin with the three statements:

Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature. [Note that this calls for the elimination of more than 90% of the people now living!]

Guide reproduction wisely, improving fitness and diversity. [Note that this calls for permitting or preventing births according to Darwinian "fitness" and to improve "diversity” in the population.]

Unite humanity with a living new language. [Note that Sacred Scripture tells us that the human race once spoke a common language and conspired to build a Tower of Babel so as to exalt itself to heaven.]

[The fourth of these "commandments" requires that humanity use reason to:] rule passion, faith, tradition, and all things. [The final command is this:] Be not a cancer on the earth, leave room for nature, leave room for nature.

Do we not have here the new Ten Commandments for a new religion, a world religion aptly named "gnostic environmentalism"? The economist and former head of the Vatican Bank, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi has recently stated that the highest authority in the [New Order) Church itself is providing the pulpit from which this new world religion of "gnostic environmentalism" is being proclaimed: the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

These are sobering developments and among the lessons we should learn are these: we ourselves must not act like socialists and we must warn our children about the evils of socialism. How might we act like socialists? One way to behave like socialists is not taking seriously our financial responsibilities. A characteristic of socialist thinking is the sense of entitlement to whatever it is we need (often that means whatever we want). In other words, that we're owed everything by society, that we should always get what we want and that other people should pay for it. A Lebanese priest once mentioned that Muhammad gained his large following among the poor in Yathrib (now Medina) by preaching that, if they became followers of Muhammad and the servants of Allah, they were entitled to take the property of all those who were not followers of Muhammad and servants of Allah. They then proceeded to plunder caravans, taking the victims to hold or to sell as slaves and seizing their property (Muhammad always took 20% of the spoils). This was the beginning of Muhammad's warriors for Islamic conquest. Behold Muhammad's key to success!

It is precisely this mentality that powers socialism. But whereas capitalism is based on the premise that, by human ingenuity and industry, one can build and increase wealth for the whole society and everyone in it, the premise of socialism is that one man's enrichment requires another man's impoverishment, one can gain only by another's loss — as though there is an ironclad fixed amount of wealth in the World so that one person must suffer loss for another to enjoy gain. This lends itself to the dangerous notion that, if anyone has more than you have, it must be because he acquired it at your expense rather than because he worked for it and deserves it. Thus, you have the right to take it from him because it should be yours. While it denounces capitalism as based on greed and competition among men, socialism itself presupposes that we are all in competition with each other for the wealth and resources of the world. The socialists' solution? The government (public sector) must take away the rights and liberties of individual citizens (private sector) and the politicians and bureaucrats should control and regulate everything "democratically."

We can think like socialists by envying the wealth and success of others rather than by working hard for our own advancement and enrichment. We can act like socialists by wallowing in a sense of entitlement to be given, or to take, what we want from the work and sacrifice of others rather than by earning it and paying for it ourselves. We can think like socialists by adopting the attitude "What's mine is mine and what's yours is mine." We think like socialists when we wait for the handout rather than seeking and seizing the opportunity to earn and to deserve what we need. We think like socialists when we expect others to pay our bills. Socialism is not only built upon such thinking; it indoctrinates people — especially young people — with both the mentality of coddled dependence and the sense of entitlement.

Agents for socialism understand that, in order to achieve their goals of a socialist society, they must form an entire generation in the ideals of socialism: envy, dependence, indolence, the mentality of victimhood, and the sense of entitlement. A generation of young people whose minds are cast in this mold is a generation ripe for embracing socialism. They are primed for the pitch of any glib, shrewd con artist who knows how to play upon their grievances to manipulate them into proclaiming him their Comrade, Il Duce, der Führer, or even — in the case of the Antichrist and -- their "savior." But in the end, socialist societies bear the character and the fate of those who build them and those who populate them: producing nothing, while consuming everything!

*To watch Father Jenkins further discuss this idea, click here.*