Nobody builds a raft to sail toward Cuba.
Think about that for just a second. In all the world, with all its borders and all its boats, and its billions of people - - - the traffic only ever runs one direction. People risk the jungle, the desert, the river, and the sea to claw their way out of the socialist paradise and into the capitalist one.
Not once in my lifetime have I watched a single solitary soul sell everything he owns to flee America for Venezuela. That one-way traffic is trying to tell us something. And I think it's time we gave it a listen.
Let's go back in time and talk about a country that had it all…
In 1950, Venezuela was one of the richest nations on the face of the earth. Not one of the richest in South America — one of the richest ANYWHERE. Richer per person than Japan. Richer than most of Europe still digging out from the war. They called Caracas the Saudi Arabia of the Caribbean. Oil flowed, skyscrapers rose, and immigrants poured in from all over the world to get a piece of it.
That was the starting line. Now watch how a nation walks itself off a cliff - - - one "seemingly" reasonable-sounding step at a time.
In 1998, a charming man named Hugo Chávez got himself elected promising to fix inequality and redistribute the wealth to the little guy. Who could be against the little guy, right? Certainly not me… I love underdog stories!
But get this… His brand of help (socialism) caused him to, within 5 years of being in power (2003), impose price controls and currency controls. Sounds boring, right? Well… it wasn't. Almost overnight the black markets opened and the shelves started to empty. That same year his government rolled out "free" healthcare, staffed by doctors shipped in from Cuba and paid for in discounted oil. Extremely long lines and wait times were the norm.
By 2007 his socialist state programs were swallowing whole industries — oil, telecom, electricity, cement, steel. Production started to sink almost the moment the government's hands closed around it.
By 2010 they'd cut the value of the people's money in half. Every dollar Grandma had saved was suddenly worth fifty cents.
And then came 2012… This is the step I need you to circle in red and highlight bright yellow! In 2012, the government banned the private sale of guns. From then on, only the army, the police, and the government's own street enforcers were allowed to be armed. Remember that. It matters more than any other line in this story. It matters in our story too - - - don't ever let anyone overrule our 2nd amendment!
Here is what came after the "little people's" guns were gone.
Chávez died in 2013 and the machine was handed to Nicolás Maduro. Opposition leaders went to jail. The economy went into free fall. By 2016 there was no food and no medicine — the people started calling their forced starvation "the Maduro diet." In 2017 the elected legislature was shoved aside. In 2018 inflation hit one million percent, and Maduro "won" an election nobody honest actually believes.
And the people? They ran… by the millions! By 2020, roughly eight million Venezuelans had fled the country on foot and by boat — one of the largest human stampedes for the exits the modern world has ever seen. They ran toward the capitalist nations. They have never, not once, run the other way.
Please study this staircase carefully. It matters more than you could ever know… [1] Prosperity to [2] price controls to [3] nationalization to [4] a disarmed people to [5] hunger to [6] hyperinflation to [7] eight million refugees — and every single step was sold as compassion. Every one.
We're literally talking about how to lose your nation in 7 easy steps here… But really, it only took one - - - the blatant, turning a blind eye to ALL available history surrounding socialism (or communism-lite) just because a charismatic leader appealed to emotions and a few base (and extremely tempting) tendencies of our sin nature.
Now here is the part that God's Word will not let me skip…
Three thousand years ago, the nation of Israel came to the prophet Samuel and demanded a king — a strong central ruler who would provide for them, protect them, fight their battles, and take care of them. God told Samuel to give them exactly what they asked for — but to warn them first what it would cost.
"He will take your sons... He will take your daughters... And he will take your fields, and your vineyards... And he will take the tenth of your seed... and ye shall be his servants. And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the LORD will not hear you in that day." (1 Samuel 8:11-18)
Read that list again. He will take, he will take, he will take - - - and at the end of all the taking, ye shall be his servants. God's warning about big centralized government wasn't an economics lecture. It was a heart diagnosis. A people who stop trusting God to provide will always go looking for a government that promises to — and they will hand over their sons, their daughters, their fields, and finally their freedom to get it.
That is what socialism is, underneath the compassionate and friendly branding. (Kudos to their marketing department!) It is the ancient human temptation to trade liberty for the promise of bread. It dresses up covetousness in the language of fairness and calls the confiscation "compassion." And I'll say the hard thing plainly, because someone has to: socialism has never once in human history delivered the paradise it promised. Not once. It has a perfect, unbroken, one hundred percent record — of failure, of empty shelves, of prison cells, and eventually of graves. The reason why it fails EVERY time is because it's founded on the wicked vices of envy and covetousness. It's like building your house on sinking sand.
I do need to say something so I don't catch grief from some of my center-left friends: I don't believe every person waving this banner is wicked. Most of them are not. Many genuinely believe they're building something kinder than what we've got. I don't doubt their sincerity for a moment. But sincerity has never once repealed the law of the harvest. You cannot plant covetousness and reap justice. You cannot seize a nation's freedom and hand back a nation's flourishing. It has never worked, because it runs against the grain of how God made us — to work, to create, to own, to give freely rather than surrender at gunpoint.
And now comes the part that I wish a thousand times over I didn't have to write…
In 2025, a man who proudly calls himself a democratic socialist was elected mayor of the largest city in America. And in the months since, candidates carrying that same banner have started knocking off their own party's old guard — a sitting congressman in New York, a thirty-year incumbent out in Colorado, and dozens more down the ballot. This is no longer a fringe waving signs on a campus lawn. It is a faction — a rising one — and this November is the test of just how far it reaches.
We have read this opening chapter before. We literally just read it in Spanish down in Venezuela.
So where does that leave those of us who see it coming?
Concerned, Yes! Panicked, like Chicken Little with the sky falling, No… But also not asleep, either.
Let's face it… Here's the difference between Venezuela and us — and it's the whole difference. When Venezuela finally came apart, there was somebody left to help pick up the pieces. This past January, it took American special forces flying into Caracas to finally pull Maduro out and end the 13 year nightmare.
Venezuela couldn't vote its way free. It couldn't buy its way free. And having been disarmed back in 2012, it could not fight its way free. Somebody had to come from the outside and rescue them.
Now answer me this one honest question: if it ever happens here - - - who exactly is flying in to save us? What outside superpower is coming to rescue the United States of America? There isn't one. There is no cavalry over the hill for us. We ARE the hill.
Scripture tells us where this road finally ends. The Word of God describes a coming day of total economic control — a time when no man can so much as buy or sell without the government's mark of permission (Revelation 13:17). Every step toward handing a central power the keys to the whole economy is a step down that same road. I'm not saying the mayor of New York is the antichrist. I am saying the appetite — the hunger for a government that controls everything and provides everything — is the exact appetite that road runs on. And it is being cultivated in American hearts right now, dressed in the friendliest possible clothes.
So I'll leave you where a watchman ought to. Freedom is not the natural state of man — tyranny is. Freedom is the rare exception, bought with blood, kept only by a people who still fear God more than they fear going without. The moment a nation decides it would rather be taken care of than be free, it has already started down Venezuela's slippery staircase, whether it knows it yet or not.
Keep your eyes open. Keep preaching and teaching the virtues of the free market. And do not — for all the compassion in the world — sell what your children cannot buy back.
Nobody sails toward Cuba. Let's make sure they never have a reason to sail away from here.
— Signed, A Watchman on the Wall
(and eight million people who already learned this the hard way)