As a system for rejecting individual moral growth, Socialism is therefore counter-Spiritual. It contains and diminishes souls. It does not exalt and expand them. Indeed, most Socialists are overt atheists. This is why they are Socialists in the first place: their meaning-makers are broken.
Now, I have many friends who I am very fond of who no doubt more or less conflate leftist economic policies with generosity of spirit and compassionate intercession. They feel that the people who want to feed and clothe and shelter the poor are intrinsically good for this reason alone.
In this regard, it is worth separating actual generosity from Socialism. Socialism is a moral philosophy based upon egalitarianism, whose first premise is that no people are better than any others, and whose necessary first correlate is that only societies can be good: individuals cannot, and the creed named for them is intrinsically to be rejected as selfish in a formal sense: it retains notions of self apart from its relation to the State.
The ESSENCE of the teaching of Christ, among others, is that people are different. They make different decisions, follow different paths. All the deep spiritual teachers taught that some paths are better than others, that the people who follow them become better than others–not in the sense that they increase their right to demand obedience or wealth from others, but on the contrary that such things become less important to them as they develop personal–intrinsically individual–relations with Spirit, or Dharma, or Christ, or God, or the Tao, or whatever words you want to use to describe the indescribable.
It is categorically good to feed the poor and provide them with the opportunities to better themselves. But that is not the task the modern Democrats have set themselves. They decided long ago that actual economic outcomes are far less important than political outcomes. It has been obvious for some time that what poor kids need are two parents, but that does not fit the socialist meme that all people–and implicitly all family forms–are instrinsically equal. So what do they do? Paper over their failures with indefensible excuses, hatred for anyone who still fails to agree with them, and on-going promises they still cannot keep, and which they never will be able to keep.
It is position that annoys people, but to my mind there can be no doubt that Christ would be a socially liberal but politically conservative Republican. He would feel deep compassion not just for the poor–and by the standards of his day, our poor are very rich–but much more for the people who are lost, who are despairing of God, of meaning, of hope for something better; who despair they will never be loved, understood, cared for, integrated into something meaningful and large.
He would love gays equally as straights, but I think he would ask the same questions I am asking: where is the mutual consideration? Where the mutual respect? Where the concern for the feelings and sensibilities of those who are profoundly torn and disturbed by being compelled by force of law to betray–as they see it–the very reason they have for living, the very purpose of their life, by people who have only inferior ideas and practices to suggest in its stead?
Where is all this going? Much is being taken away, but very little given. We are told what we cannot do, but no one is spending much time thinking about what we can do that is worth doing. Hedonism is a vacuous philosophy. People need to make sense of death, and need to know how the universe works so as to feel they are doing useful work while alive. Leftism cannot provide this.
People need challenges. They need hard work. War has often provided this, but so too do the radicals. This is one of the main methods of Communists: to demand not little of their accolytes, but an excessive amount. It provides what people need, and pulls them even closer to the cause, since everyone is naturally more fond of anything they have given much to.