A Young Conservative’s Answer to “Was Robin Hood a Socialist?”
When you first heard the legend of Robin Hood in pre-school or elementary school, it probably went something like this: your hippyish teacher said that “Robin Hood was someone who stole from the rich to give to the poor.” The implications there, which both beg the question “was Robin Hood a socialist?,” are that being rich makes you an inherently bad person and that it is, therefore, ok for people like Robin Hood to steal from the rich as long as they’re doing so to help the poor.
Those teachers are teaching kids that the answer to “was Robin Hood a socialist” is a “yes” for the same reason that they’re teaching them that the answer to “was Jesus a socialist?” is “yes;” they want to confuse our young children and make them predisposed to believe that we will all be equally rich rather than equally poor under socialism.
First off, I think it’s important to say that those teachers are wrong and most of the kids they teach will eventually learn that socialism is evil. Once they grow up, they’ll have jobs, have to pay taxes, and learn that they’re actually Republicans and that the answer to “was Robin Hood a socialist?” Everyone hates taxes, but for some reason, only Republicans want to cut taxes. That’s the main reason why the left will fail.
More relevant to this post about “was Robin Hood a socialist?,” however, is setting the record straight on the true legend of Robin Hood. Robin Hood did not steal from the rich to give to the poor. That’s an oversimplification meant to turn young children into future young socialists.
In reality, the original legend of Robin Hood is that he stole from the thieving government to return money to those who had been taxes almost to death by their tyrannical government. Even better, the events surrounding that legend spawned the Magna Carta, which began the West’s long march towards the liberty we now enjoy. The Russell Crowe Robin Hood movie (surprisingly) does a pretty good job of showing that progression of events.
So, hopefully, you now understand that the answer to “was Robin Hood a socialist?” is obviously “NO!”
But I think it’s important to understand more than that. The only reason we even have to ask ourselves “is Robin Hood a socialist?” is that the teachers of our young children, those we trust to mold the minds of America’s future leaders, are taking advantage of their position to turn young children into socialists. They’ve done that primarily through warping legends and aphorisms.
Just think. “Sharing is caring.” “Robin Hood stole from the rich to give to the poor.” “Don’t be selfish, if you have a toy another child wants you should share it with them!” And so on and so forth. Now we have children that don’t understand the virtue of selfishness, have to ask “was Robin Hood a socialist?,” and have a predisposition to believe in the redistribution of wealth. We need to reclaim our schools from those pernicious leftists.
Ayn Rand on Robin Hood and “Was Robin Hood a Socialist?”
No discussion of the myth of Robin Hood and the new interpretation of it that has led people to ask “was Robin Hood a socialist” would be complete without Ayn Rand’s quote on Robin Hood from Atlas Shrugged, in which character Ragnar Danneskjöld elaborates on the evil of the modern meaning of the Robin Hood legend. It’s excellent and perfectly summarizes my thoughts on the subject, so I won’t analyze it afterward. Just read and understand it if you want to understand how leftist teachers are destroying America’s youth.
“It is said that [Robin Hood] fought against the looting rulers and returned the loot to those who had been robbed, but that is not the meaning of the legend which has survived. He is remembered, not as a champion of property, but as a champion of need, not as a defender of the robbed, but as a provider of the poor. He is held to be the first man who assumed a halo of virtue by practicing charity with wealth which he did not own, by giving away goods which he had not produced, by making others pay for the luxury of his pity.
He is the man who became the symbol of the idea that need, not achievement, is the source of rights, that we don’t have to produce, only to want, that the earned does not belong to us, but the unearned does. He became a justification for every mediocrity who, unable to make his own living, has demanded the power to dispose of the property of his betters, by proclaiming his willingness to devote his life to his inferiors at the price of robbing his superiors.
It is this foulest of creatures — the double-parasite who lives on the sores of the poor and the blood of the rich — whom men have come to regard as a moral ideal. And this has brought us to a world where the more a man produces, the closer he comes to the loss of all his rights, until, if his ability is great enough, he becomes a rightless creature delivered as prey to any claimant — while in order to be placed above rights, above principles, above morality, placed where anything is permitted to him, even plunder and murder, all a man has to do is be in need. Do you wonder why the world is collapsing around us?
That is what I am fighting… Until men learn that of all human symbols, Robin Hood is the most immoral and the most contemptible, there will be no justice on earth and no way for mankind to survive.”
— Ragnar Danneskjöld in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, Part II, Chapter VII
This quote by Ragnar Danneskjöld and Ayn Rand on Robin Hood speaks for itself; it shows why her answer to “was Robin Hood a socialist?” is “Maybe not, but he’s regarded as one.” Read it and understand it, and then teach it to your children if you want to save them and yourself from the lies of leftists.
By: Gen Z Conservative
