my best friend is becoming a socialist

 So we’ve been best friends since grade school, he grew up in a conservative family like I did. He stayed a conservative but I basically became a liberal after reading Why Nations Fail because it made sense and it was the first time I’d ever heard anything political actually make logical, rational sense. I tried to get my friend to read it a couple of times over the years, even one time “accidentally” leaving the book at his place but he never seemed interested which is a shame because he is intelligent, more intelligent than I am, and very logical. At least he was. But that all changed.

 So we graduate and end up going to different colleges and I didn’t see him for ages. Something was different because he became distant and withdrawn. It sounds stupid but I could tell that something was wrong – he wasn’t so excited about life, he took longer to reply to me with stuff… all of that. I thought maybe he was really depressed or he was going to come out as gay or something but I was so wrong about that. When we finally had a chance to meet up again he looked different and he acted different. I thought maybe we were just growing apart. But one time after we had been drinking together he confessed to me that he was becoming interested in socialism. I was floored. This guy who I went through everything with, the guy who I would trust with my life is suddenly a Bernie bro! Wtf!? I got angry. I probably overreacted but I was drunk and I’m passionate about this stuff. I told him that socialism sucks because it steals from everyone and redistributes everything to people equally which destroys the economy(except for what gets used to line the pockets of the dictator and his friends of course) regardless of the risk or hard work of the investors who produced the wealth being redistributed forcibly and that socialism is against any kind of freedom because they would literally steal all of your property to state ownership and even kill you if you refused or if you were rich, just like they have always done in history. I told him that free trade is the only thing that makes logical sense to build a political system on and that if we don’t have free trade then we might as well be slaves, and that socialism is designed to destroy people and the incentive to achieve anything. It would literally crush every people to make it’s “collectivism” (aka totalitarianism). After a while of me yelling he stormed off. I made him apologize for being so rude to me and we agreed to disagree. I had to hold my tongue a lot but I thought maybe this was a faze and eventually he would realize that the idiots he hangs out with at college are poisoning his mind with lies. So we left it at that. Things were a bit tense between us but they were okay until recently.

 So recently we had the chance to catch up again and this time it was even worse. He explained to me he had become a liberal. I was relieved because I thought he finally saw reason and when I asked him if he had ever watched an Obama speech he scrunched his face up in disgust and said he wasn’t “that kind” of liberal but a democratic socialist liberal – what an oxymoron! It got heated again and I started yelling about how you can’t be an Democrat and a socialist because socialism is literally opposed to everything that Democrats stands for. He was so mixed up and irrational. He had everything backwards. It literally felt like he had joined some cult. He wouldn’t listen to any reason. After a while he stormed off (again) but I followed him out to his car because I didn’t want to leave this on bad terms and I felt like I was losing my best friend. I stopped him at his car and we started to talk but I noticed a bumper sticker that said “property is theft” and I was completely enraged. I pointed to it and asked whose it was. He told me it was his. (How come every socialist has no sense of irony?? . so I made a point and ripped it off. He yelled “You fucking neoliberals just don’t get it!” and then he told me to fuck off and that he never wants to see me again.

 Anyway the problem isn’t that Bernie bros are irrational hypocrites who have no idea about human nature, history, society, economics, politics or irony (trust me – I’ve found plenty of evidence to prove this online when debating with socialists) but it’s that I don’t want my friend to go down this dark path and I feel like there’s nothing to do to save him. I don’t want to lose my best friend but I’m worried that if he keeps on being a socialist that it will end our friendship. How do I convince him that socialism is wrong? I tried looking to see if there was anything about socialism being a cult and what to do – I found an article called “Understanding left cults” on Libcom. I assumed that this was a liberal website I never heard about but then it seemed a bit off. It turns out that this website is run by libertarian communists (hence Libcom)!! It’s just like how Scientology runs the Cult Awareness Network! I’m at my wit’s end and I have nowhere else to turn.

 What should I do? How do I convince my best friend to see reason? I’m worried it’s already destroyed our friendship but I’m more scared that it’s already making him destroy his because it’s made him think that it’s the “right” thing to do.

 TL;DR; BFF is suddenly becoming a socialist . How do I make him change his mind?