There is a strong basis for abolishing socialism from the earth—not just temporarily, but completely and for all time. It has something to do with birds, frogs, snakes, and raccoons.
Letting Others Do the Work
One specie of the cuckoo bird has an interesting laziness to her nature. Perhaps it’s not laziness, maybe it’s her clever exploitation of circumstances—it is difficult to read nature at this level.
When the cuckoo hen needs to lay her egg, sometimes she flies about to locate the nests of other birds. She will wait patiently until the nest is unguarded, and then swoop in, lay her egg, and leave it for tending by other birds. This frees her from nest duty. She is free to fly. The unsuspecting nest owner returns to see the egg, or if it’s among her own, maybe not notice, and plops down to warm and protect them, keeping the eggs safe until hatching.
This trick doesn’t always work. Some birds recognize the strange addition and remove the egg completely. Nevertheless, it’s a great way to get what the cuckoo hen wants without the responsibilities and consequences—or so it would seem.
“Careful, That Will Land You In Hot Water!”
There’s the old story of the frog standing on his hind legs in the pot of water that was just placed over a hot stove. At first, the water is cool, a temperature typical for any pond or gentle stream he is familiar with—just like home. So, the frog is content to stay for a minute. He senses no urgency to leap away.
As the water becomes warmer, a relaxing embrace of summertime comfort entices the frog to bask in the delicious lure, and his eyes go half closed—he thinks a short nap would be nice, and does not leap away.
As the water gradually becomes hot, the frog suddenly realizes he is in danger. His instinct is to leap away but his legs and muscles have become too weak—he tries, but fails to find the strength. The heat quickly overcomes him and he dies in the boiling broth.
You Knew I Was a Snake When You Picked Me Up
In an adaptation of Aesop’s fable, a hiker is working his way off a mountain and comes upon a snake. The snake addresses the hiker and pleads for a ride down to the valley below. The hiker hesitates, but eventually agrees to do this favor for the snake.
Upon arriving at the bottom, the hiker sets the snake down and is promptly bitten. As the hiker falls to the ground, shocked and saddened at the sudden betrayal, the snake replies, “Why are you surprised? You knew what I was when you picked me up.”
How Curiosity Killed the Raccoon
The classic children’s book Where the Red Fern Grows, tells the heartwarming story of a boy and his two Redbone Coonhound hunting dogs. Early in the book, author Wilson Rawls unfolds an exchange where Grandpa explains to his young grandson Billy how to catch a raccoon with a simple trap.
The trick, Grandpa said, is to bore a deep hole in a log and pound four nails around the outside at an angle so their points pierce the inside of the hole. The idea is to leave just enough space for a raccoon’s paw to fit through. Put a shiny piece of tin at the bottom and the raccoon’s curiosity will get the best of him—
“It’ll catch him all right,” Grandpa said, “and it won’t fail. You see, a coon is a curious little animal. Anything that is bright and shiny attracts him. He will reach in and pick it up. When his paw closes on the bright object it balls up, and when he starts to pull it from the hole, the sharp ends of the nails will gouge into his paw and he’s caught.”
Billy thinks it over a bit and decides Grandpa is telling a big joke. Growing angry, he gets up to leave but Grandpa calls him back and tells about a time when as a boy he had his own pet raccoon, and how he learned his pet would do exactly that—ball up his fist when he got hold of something he wanted, and refuse to let go. He told how the whole family had to hold down the raccoon to release his grip on a pat of butter he grabbed by reaching into the small hole in the lid of a butter churn. His balled-up fist was too big to pull back through, and he was caught.
Billy becomes convinced and goes to the nearby woods to give the idea a try. The next morning, he finds a raccoon stuck with its paw in the trap. It hisses and growls as Billy approaches, but won’t let go. Billy calls his family to come see, and they’re all surprised that grandpa’s idea really worked. Billy’s father kills the raccoon and goes about releasing it from the trap.
After Papa had pulled the nails, he lifted the coon’s paw from the hole. There, clamped firmly in it, was the bright piece of tin.
In a low voice Papa said, “Well, I’ll be darned. All he had to do was open it up and he was free, but he wouldn’t do it. Your grandfather was right.”
Letting Go of the Delicious Lie
Comfort, ease, and security are difficult to let go for the sake of long term prosperity. Most people in countries ruined by socialism are in that trap. They don’t want to let go of their pensions, monthly checks, food stamps, insurance, housing, transportation, or anything coming to them gratis from the government. Like the cuckoo hen, people on welfare grow content to leave the burden of their financial and medical care in the nest of another’s labors.
But like the frog’s trap, socialism’s promise of an easy life feels good until enough time has passed and financial reality sneaks up hot and boiling, and quickly turns deadly.
Like the snake’s ulterior motives, the appeal to embrace the hopes for an easier life may seem right at first. But when a socialistic takeover has reached its goal, there is deadly betrayal for which hundreds of millions have been sacrificed already.
And like the raccoon, that shiny bit of tin—the hope for free money from someone else, a government handout, welfare, entitlements, a bit of nothing that seemed so important and desirable at first, soon turns out to be a trap holding fast those who can’t let go, from which the only escape is death.