The Trump administration’s actions in Venezuela have prompted some interesting conversations on the Right about United States foreign policy goals and methods. They also open the door to another beneficial conversation, one dealing with the horrendous outcomes of socialism/communism.

We reckon most are familiar by now with NYC Mayor Mamdani’s comments about the ‘frigidity of individualism’ and the ‘warmth of collectivism.’ Venezuela under Chavez and Maduro shows the pretty promises of the latter to be a sham. A couple of testimonies will illustrate. The first is from a native Venezuelan:

‘“My decision to leave Venezuela and emigrate is directly tied to the tragedy of governance we have endured for more than 26 years, a dictatorship disguised as democracy. For many years, I ran a successful marketing and design company. We worked hard, built something honest, and believed in our work. But the same government that claimed to support its people made it nearly impossible for small businesses to survive. Endless bureaucracy, arbitrary regulations, corruption, and constant uncertainty turned daily operations into a battle. Eventually, we grew exhausted from fighting a system designed to wear you down and left Venezuela for the U.S.”’ (Rod Dreher, ‘Venezuela: The Country That Emptied Itself,’ roddreher.substack.com).

The second is from a fellow from the States who worked in Venezuela. His observations dovetail with the above:

‘My Venezuela experience as head of trading in the region for Cargill.

‘Cargill was/is the leading producer of critical staple ingredients such as flour, pasta, vegetable oil, and rice in VZ. . . . I did have a front row seat to the damage a kleptocracy did to innocent people.

‘1. The government took over our “minute rice” facility at gunpoint because we were “gouging” the nation’s poor. The government was never able to run the plant. It never ran again. It was returned years later with no equipment inside

‘ . . . 3. The government opened grocery stores and sold staples below the cost we sold them to the government. In theory they used petro oil money to lower grocery prices. Our regular grocery outlets were forced out of business. When the government demanded we sell them products below cost we simply had to shut down. The populous became ever more dependent on the government handouts. (PS this is the mayor of New York City’s proposal.)

‘4. Dollars- We needed dollars to go buy raw materials like wheat from places like the US and Canada. The government would periodically allocate us some dollars that could only be spent for raw materials and freight. Eventually only the local companies that can and would pay bribes got dollar allocations. We had several facilities closed for lack of raw material

‘ . . . 6. Employees became very close to others inside the apartment building. Going out on the street with a desperate population was not advisable.

‘ . . . 9. Livestock- Our feed business completely collapsed. Even if you could raise a pig, you couldn’t defend it from being stolen. People with guns were hungry’ (Dreher, ‘Understanding ‘The Warmth Of Collectivism’,’ roddreher.substack.com).

A third of the population of Venezuela have fled their native land because of the crimes and corruption of the socialist regime. But the crimes of collectivists are always done with good intentions, and this is why their regimes have been the most destructive the world has ever known. The famous dissident writer of Russia when that country was under the Soviet yoke Alexander Solzhenitsyn explained this in his works:

‘Relevant: this quote from Gary Saul Morson, in a WSJ piece about The Gulag Archipelago:

‘How was such evil possible? Shakespeare and Schiller clearly did not grasp evil, Solzhenitsyn instructs, because their villains “recognize themselves as evildoers, and they know their souls are black,” but those who commit the greatest harm think of themselves as good. Before interrogators could torture prisoners they knew were innocent, they had to discover a justification for their actions. Shakespeare’s villains stopped at a few corpses “because they had no ideology,” nothing to compare with Marxism-Leninism’s “scientific” and infallible explanations of life and ethics. “Ideology—that is what . . . gives the evil-doer the necessary steadfastness and determination . . . the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good . . . in his own and others’ eyes”’ (Ibid.).

We need to call socialism/communism/Marxism what they are: not merely social theories or ideologies but substitute religions. More specifically, substitutes for Christianity.

Collectivism from the French Revolution onward is little more than a counterfeit of the Christian Church, with its pathetic attempts at brotherhood and union, which in the end must be established by violence. The socialists preach the warmth of the collectivist family, but it is they who subject their peoples to the frigidity of hunger, despair, incompetence, scarcity, and other indecencies, the most monstrous being the ‘liquidation’ (mass murder) of those who refuse to cooperate with the new totalitarian regime of the collective.

It is Christianity, and it alone, that offers the true warmth humanity longs for. Another Russian who contended with the atheist communists, Vasily Rozanov, illustrated this beautifully in an essay he wrote about Christmas:

‘Christianity is warmth, universal warmth. The cradle is also warmth. Both the manger and the Infant in it are warmth. In contrast to cold and soulless Buddhism, in contrast to

the formal Mosaic Law with its vindictive “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” and with the Pharisaic division of people and even objects into “clean” and “unclean”, Christ brought to earth a grace-filled Kingdom where vengeance is extinguished and where all that was “unclean” is sanctified by grace and is made clean’ (‘Christianity is Universal Warmth. Happy Nativity of Christ!’ orthochristian.com).

The Christian society is superior to anything the collectivist or anyone else can offer, he goes on to say:

‘The Nativity of Christ conveys what is “native” and “dear” to every hut. No kingdoms and no authorities, no extensive and new laws that require man to obey and speak to him in the language of command, would ever have brought that inner content and heartfelt speech, which the Newborn Infant gave to people. Here is the difference and separation of religion from kingdoms. And here is the reason why all kingdoms and authorities bow down before religion, because even for them, for these kingdoms, religion gives more royal and legislative than they themselves contain. Religion gives an inner conviction, your own desire to follow the best, the noblest, and the most humane. Towards the law, stern and external, with its tone—and before it knew how to command—religion arouses impulses in man that not only coincide with the law, but also give a “grace-filled addition”. No law or any kind of its severity could bring about the radiance of ascetic labors and good works that can often fill the life of an active and impetuous Christian, not to mention in the early centuries of Christianity’ (Ibid.).

He enumerates other ways that Christianity surpasses the ‘warmth of collectivism’:

‘“For Christ’s sake” hospitals are built. “For Christ’s sake”, through penny-by-penny collections, all our churches were erected. “For Christ’s sake”, good flows and pours from generous hands to the poor, and this flow is still so great, abundant and energetic 1,900 years after the Birth of the Divine Infant, that only sick tongues covered with scabs, and only a sick and worn-out conscience, suffocating in its own selfishness, can talk about the “fading away of Christianity”. And many people are talking, and talking with joy, about the “fall of religion in general”; and in particular, about the “obsolescence and fading of Christianity”, rejoicing that “prejudices and superstitions are disappearing”. But people will not compromise “their own” and “dear” before them, as we said above. The majority of people know perfectly well that secular, non-religious philanthropy will leave them naked in the snow, that it will feed only one out of a thousand. If there were no popular movement “for Christ’s sake”, if there were no impulse in the majority of people to share what they have with their neighbor and feed the poor—not for themselves and not for their humaneness, not for the sake of their education and scholarship, but “for the sake of Christ,” Who taught everyone to sacrifice for humanity’ (Ibid.).

And this where we must take great care now in the United States. We must not fall into what Jeff LeJeune has been writing about for some time now – the false binary. We must not oppose socialism with its opposite ideology/religion of individualism. The choice is not either/or, either collectivism or individualism; it is both/and, both community and the individual. The individual without love for the community is stripped of any meaningful connection to history or culture, leaving him an isolated soul without purpose, without a deep sense identity or belonging, just as the community without respect for the individual becomes merciless, coercive, etc.

There must be a balance between the two, between the individual and the community, the one and the many; they must not be in a perpetual war with one another. Once again, Christianity is the answer to the riddle. The Holy Trinity is the model for humanity: Three Persons are united as One God, yet the Persons – Father, Son, and Holy Ghost – do not lose Their unique identities in the union, in the community. There is no tension between the two, between oneness and separateness, but perfect balance and harmony. That is our goal as human beings in the Church, to imitate the life of the All-Holy Trinity.

And this is why it is essential that leaders in the United States in whatever field they find themselves in – arts, politics, business, sports, etc. – work tirelessly to promote the Christian Faith here in the States. It is the only real antidote to harmful, demonically inspired religions like collectivism. Whatever slogans and ideas one throws out there – freedom, capitalism, etc. – they will fail to hold back the satanic Revolution against God and His good order. Quoting Rozanov once again:

‘Christianity is the protection of people, and Christ is the Protector of people. Never, never will people give up on this protection of theirs, and never turn their back on their Protector. A shallow and unwise school and certain distraught families cut down the root, neglecting the religious education of their children, and the clergy also dry up this root by the formal and external fulfillment of their blessed duty both in school and in the family. But the root has been around for 1,900 years and is still fresh. An enormous period of time! And it strengthens our hopes. These crazy days will pass, everyone will come to their senses and realize that there is no upbringing without the Law of God, there is no grace-filled growth of children without prayer, without a candle placed in the church, without a whole range of cares and thoughts, the thread of which begins in the Church and ends in the distant orbit of our civil, official, and any other activities’ (Ibid.).

Socialist Venezuela has shown once again the bankruptcy of collectivism. But we cannot leave things there. We must go further, out from coldness of political ideologies and slogans of any kind and into the true and everlasting warmth of Jesus Christ in His Church. It is only in that haven that any family, any State, any culture, any country, will survive long on this earth and experience true prosperity. It is only Christianity that offers the solution to the decay of our socialist Blue cities and States. It is only in Christianity that there will ever be any real hope of reconciliation between the peoples of the Red and Blue States, whose affections for one another have become bitterly cold.

‘Jesus, beloved Warmth, make me warm!’ (‘Akathist to Our Sweetest Lord Jesus Christ,’ saintjonah.org)