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.....Democrats want to talk about Republicans living in the past, but the new progressives, as they like to call themselves, are in fact a lot like the old socialists. They want free college, free cash, free health care, new mandates for this and that, and so on. The latest progressive policy du jour to be gaining traction among Democratic Party presidential hopefuls is the so-called “job guarantee.” Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) announced one, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has one in the works, and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) says she supports the idea too. Yet there are some signs of intellectual honesty on the left. Kevin Drum, a liberal blogger for the progressive gospel Mother Jones, thinks the jobs guarantee is a ludicrous idea: “Even our lefty comrades in social democratic Europe don’t guarantee jobs for everyone. It would cost a fortune; it would massively disrupt the private labor market; it would almost certainly tank productivity; and it’s unlikely in the extreme that the millions of workers in this program could ever be made fully competent at their jobs.” Well said. If Democrats go down this road, their only way forward will be to one-up each other in every primary election. Clueless liberals such as Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes want to guarantee $500 per month for every American earning less than $50,000 a year. But why not $550? Or should we go ahead and call it an even $600? A guaranteed monthly stipend would become the floor. And every subsequent election would be a referendum on whether voters want to support the candidate promising the larger pay raise from Washington. Is that where we want our elections to go?
Anyway, Clinton’s admission of the Democrats’ matter-of-fact acceptance of socialism couldn’t have been any timelier. Saturday marked the bicentennial of Karl Marx’s birth, and as Paul Kengor reminded us in his smart Wall Street Journal commentary last week, Marx’s communist philosophy “set the stage … for the greatest ideological massacres in history.” Marx’s rebuke of capitalism and individual property rights inspired the likes of Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Mao Zedong, the Kim family, the Castros and countless others to wage mass murder against millions of innocents.
But never mind that, at least according to many of today’s millennial voters. According to the 2017 YouGov-Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation Report on U.S. Attitudes Toward Socialism, more millennials would prefer to live in socialist countries than they would in capitalist countries. That fact reveals a powerful force shifting today’s Democratic Party. Barack “you didn’t build that” Obama and his contempt for private business is starting to seem quaint. It certainly means every Democrat running for president in 2020 will be asked if they favor socialism or capitalism. It will be interesting to see if they blush, stammer and wince, or if any of them will have the confidence to give a robust endorsement of free enterprise and a historically accurate critique of socialism vs. capitalism. I’m not holding my breath.
Rather than there be a wholesale capitulation to the shallow-minded embrace of socialism, I hope at least a few Democrats will have the courage to teach millennials and others the history of socialism’s debilitating, murderous past and the historic human advancement that has been produced by a free market. Remember, socialism is just a kinder, gentler version of communism. Democrats should think twice before they abandon capitalism.
They are also proud globalists who want to erase our national borders (and therefore our nation) and to eliminate the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.
In other words, the Democrats ebrace socialism on an international, worldwide basis.
The democratic party clearly doesn't have a clue where to go from here.
I get the impression they are experimenting right now, putting their feelers out to see which ideology grabs the largest number of people. In the meantime, they are keeping the anti-Trump propaganda machine operating at level 11 to keep the nation's mood low and mitigate permanent losses from the party.
Both parties have socialist tendencies--the Democrats are just a bit more open about it.
All forms of collectivism--communism, socialism, fascism, and nationalism--were responsible for well over 150 million deaths in the 20th century alone. Yet politicians of all stripes are drawn to and endorse one or more of these without fail.
The United States has always had a mixed economy, and it works fine. Many times the best policy is theoretically a socialist idea, that doesn't mean we can't employ it for our own purposes to good effect.
Public libraries, Fire Departments, Water Departments, mutual insurance companies, free public education, credit unions, farm co-ops, public hospitals, public transportation, public zoos and parks and yes, social security are all basically socialist ideas which work well in our mixed economy. We as a nation have been doing these things since Benjamin Franklin's day.
The United States has always had a mixed economy, and it works fine. Many times the best policy is theoretically a socialist idea, that doesn't mean we can't employ it for our own purposes to good effect.
Public libraries, Fire Departments, Water Departments, mutual insurance companies, free public education, credit unions, farm co-ops, public hospitals, public transportation, public zoos and parks and yes, social security are all basically socialist ideas which work well in our mixed economy. We as a nation have been doing these things since Benjamin Franklin's day.
Enough of the scaremongering already ...
Are you saying they are socialist because the government foots the bill? Because that does not mean socialism to me.
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