The past century saw the disastrous failure of collectivist government in many forms including communism, socialism, fascism and America’s so-called mixed economy.

There is a simple explanation for that: homo sapiens are not a collectivist species like bees or ants.  Every bee except the queen and drones is almost identical and replaceable by another of its kind, genetically determined to perform certain functions.  But each human being is a distinct individual with the ability to choose his or her own way in life.

Those are natural laws of behavior, as self-evident as other truths mentioned in the Declaration of Independence.  Violation of such laws leads to harmful results.

The logical purpose of government -- upon which our nation was founded -- is to protect the people’s freedom to fulfill their individuality without harming each other. Man-made laws followed laws of human nature to encourage the most moral and beneficial economic system -- capitalism.

Yet many idealists (not to mention political demagogues) stubbornly repeat unworkable collectivist methods in their frenzy to crush individual men and women into a shapeless mass of interchangeable components -- a beehive without the honey.  President Obama’s: “You didn’t make that!” (implying that we shouldn’t be allowed to keep it) was a sick echo of bygone attempts to repeal laws that make humans human.

When Lenin’s Bolshevik thieves stole the Russian Empire in 1917, they immediately abolished private property ownership.  Top priority was given to destroying real estate deeds and other records that the Tsar had guaranteed his subjects the right to possess.

Instead, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat -- Lenin and his successors -- would take from each according to his ability and give what the Dictator decided each needed.  When humans are deprived of property, they are reduced to the level of property -- slavery.

Then as now, such brutal banditry had eager support from people who should know better.

In addition to making Soviet citizens compliant tools, Marxist/Leninist leaders learned to exploit “useful idiots” -- liberals smugly convinced that their high-minded objectivity enabled them to see Communist tyranny as just another variety of politics.  The New York Times’ Stalin-worshipping Moscow correspondent Walter Duranty was representative of too many journalists, intellectuals and artists on the left who happily spread Kremlin propaganda.  Their love of disinformation dissemination lives on in the heirs, as when MSNBC broadcaster Chris Matthews felt a thrill run up his leg at Obama’s rhetoric.

Soviet-style oppression has killed countless millions through starvation, disease and plain murder.  A bee swarm could not survive such losses.  But in a human hive such as North Korea all that matters is that the queen (government) remains firmly on her throne.

Capitalism’s morality is evident in that it combines individual freedom to earn money with individual responsibility to spend it wisely.  Liberals want to sacrifice that priceless virtue on the altar of central planning, where laws must be passed before they can be read.

The high priests at that altar may even find “scientists” insisting that collectivist slavery is really freedom.  The same way Bolsheviks won over leftwing fellow-travelers with scientific socialism‘s promise to build heaven on earth without God‘s help.  People who believe severe cold weather is scientific proof of global warming can believe anything.

Volumes have been published attempting to diagnose the pathology of liberalism, most notably James Burnham’s 1964 Suicide of the West.  But perhaps Ockham’s razor can cut to the most direct motivation: arrogance.

Liberals feel superior to conservatives and will embrace any ruthless power structure that proposes to destroy their despised inferiors.  Thus it was easy for them to switch their cheering of godless Communism to god-driven Muslim terrorism.  Ideology is subordinate to liberals’ emotional cravings.

Tragically, most conservatives are unaware of liberal malice.  Being reasonable well-intentioned people, conservatives assume liberals are the same and their wrong ideas can be corrected by logical discussion.  They are as likely to achieve that as President Obama is to get Russia’s bad boy Putin to play nicely on the world stage.

In the long run conservative naivety, more than liberal misanthropy, may determine if America is to bee or not to bee.