I was reading a book on economics the other day when I came across the word fabian. I had no idea what it meant, so I used my Kindle’s dictionary feature to look it up. One more reason I love my Kindle. You just drop the cursor next to the word and a definition appears at the bottom of the screen. Very handy.

The short definition according to Wikipedia is, “favoring gradual change rather than revolutionary change.” It was named after the Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus nicknamed, “The Delayer.” He avoided head-on battles with the enemy, preferring guerrilla warfare tactics instead such as harassment and attrition. He was quite successful.

This reminded me of the boiling frog story, again from Wikipedia, “The boiling frog story is a widespread anecdote describing a frog slowly being boiled alive. The premise is that if a frog is placed in boiling water, it will jump out, but if it is placed in cold water that is slowly heated, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death. The story is often used as a metaphor for the inability of people to react to significant changes that occur gradually.”

What struck me is that Fabianism is really just the political application of the boiling frog story. This may surprise you, but as many people as there are that believe in Democracy, there are many others who believe in Socialism.

Socialists did not just die off like some plague…they are still here, still walking around among us, and they believe in Socialism as much as you believe in Democracy. They simply believe that Socialism is a better idea.

So if you’re a socialist, and you want to socialize a Republic, you have two choices; revolutionary change or gradual change. Revolutionary change, like dropping the frog into boiling water, will not work in the U.S., but slow gradual change will.

So, if I were a socialist and I wanted to transform this country, knowing that socialism is not popular in the U.S., how would I do it?

• First, I would never admit I was a socialist.

• Second, I would simply become a politician of any party and impose socialist policies slowly, making small gradual changes over time…even if it took decades to bring the water to a boil.

So the way I see it, we are slowly being cooked to death by many of our own politicians.

Categories: Government Failures, Socialism

Tags: boiling frog story, communism, fabian, Fabianism, nationalization, revolution, socialism