Tag Archives: socialism

DSA is the best thing to happen to the GOP since Jimmy Carter

Posted on by
3

Jimmy Carter the peanut farmer was great, OK?

His 4 years of ineptitude gave us 12 years of Republican rule in the form of Ronald Reagan and his successor, George H. W. Bush. (It would have been at least 16 years, if not for Ross Perot taking many of Bush’s votes to be re-elected in 1992.) And arguably, that 12 years of GOP rule produced another 8 years of GOP rule through the prodigal son, George W. Bush.

I love Jimmy Carter. (I hate Ross Perot.)

There is a chance we’ll see something similar in the midterms this fall. The Democratic Socialists of America, or DSA, has been winning Democratic primaries. It turns out that Democrats love socialists.

Or they think they do. Democrats’ support for the idea of socialism is quite different from their support for socialism itself. For example:

One of the DSA policies in its platform is to abolish prisons. That’s right, convicted murderers and rapists would go free. But only 27% of Democrats support that policy. (You have to wonder what those 27% are smoking, but, still, that’s only a little more than one in four.)

Another DSA platform position is to abolish the U.S. military. If China invades, we’ll rely on guys with shotguns. (Oops, we’ll have taken away everyone’s gun, too.) Democrats in general disfavor that policy by about a two to one margin.

Another DSA position is to grant amnesty to all illegal immigrants. Democrats actually favor this policy by a plurality(!) but still only 44% favor it.

Here, it gets interesting. Another DSA platform is to abolish the Presidency and the Supreme Court, replacing both with arms of Congress. Only 30% of Democrats agree with this proposal.

While we’re abolishing sacrosanct branches of government established by the Constitution, DSA would also abolish the Senate. The problem with the Senate, they say, is that it serves as a check on pure democracy. Even the Democrats mostly oppose this abolition.

In short, the DSA would make us a lot like the Soviet Union (which failed, by the way), the Eastern Europe Soviet client states (ditto), Cuba (which will soon fail), and North Korea (ditto). It’s been tried many times, and the absence of checks and balances always results not in democracy, but tyranny. Assigning a word like “fair” to such a system will not make it work. It’s a trap.

DSA should have kept its trap shut about its trap. It should have just said, “We’re socialists, isn’t that wonderful?” Instead, they told us what it means to be a socialist. It’s not wonderful; it’s idiocy.

The media, of course, will try to hide the DSA platform because Orange Man Bad. They will not be successful, however. The DSA is quite proud of it, and intends to promote it.

Between now and the midterms in November, the American people will discover this platform. I anticipate they will soundly reject it.

Of course, the wild President is a wild card. He might find a way to prove me wrong. Or right.

“Democrat” means it’s easy to get them, “Socialist” means it’s not so easy to get rid of them

Posted on by
4

There’s an expression that I won’t use in a title to a piece, but I’ll use it in the body. The expression is, “You get a socialist with an election, you get rid of them with a gun.”

Socialists have a pattern. They won’t go away. It’s a one-way ratchet. They get elected, and then they refuse to get un-elected. So, we get more and more of them. They’re like houseflies – just as parasitic, just as bothersome, and just as unhealthy.

Bernie Sanders is a good example. He has been in politics for most of his 84-year life. Since 1981, he has been the mayor of Burlington, then a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and then a U.S. Senator since 2007.

Politics has been very good to Senator Sanders. He now owns multiple houses and has a seven-figure net worth. Not bad money, especially for a public servant who preaches the evil of the stuff.

Bernie reminds me of a bootlegging whiskey runner, which is perhaps appropriate since he represents a state that borders Canada. He opposes the legalization of alcohol because he doesn’t want the competition.  (BTW, can we trade Vermont for Alberta?)

Now, we have five more socialists. Three have won their Democratic primaries in New York and are shoo-ins to win the general election since New Yorkers are not allowed to vote for Republicans.

Two won their primaries in Colorado this week – one against a 15-term Congresswoman who herself was hard-left, and one in a contest for the governorship. Both will win their general elections in November because, alas, my formerly great State of Colorado has gone to the dogs (or, more precisely, to the wolves, but that’s a different column).

Of course, socialism will work no better this time than it has worked since Karl Marx dreamed it up a couple of centuries ago. Giving to each according to his needs and taking from each according to his abilities will produce a very needy society with very little ability. When it comes to free stuff, people like to be on the receiving end more than on the giving end.

Who would have thought?

So, we’ll eventually vote the socialists out, as societies always do once they re-learn the fact that the Elon Musks of the world may or may not be likable but they do make the trains run on time, and the spaceships, too.

But what do we do when they don’t go away after we vote them out? When they plead “voter suppression” or some such nonsense? When they pull a Bernie Sanders by hanging around for 45 years? When they pretend to be Nicolus Maduro or Nicolae Ceaușescu or Czar Nicholas?

It will be interesting.

Blinded by their hate for Trump, the American left torches a Venezuelan freedom fighter

Posted on by
Reply

It’s a story right out of pre-woke Hollywood. Her country has been taken over by a series of corrupt socialist dictators (ah, but I repeat myself) who’ve seized the natural resources for their own personal enrichment. They’ve suspended or disregarded elections.

Not satisfied with stealing the country’s riches, the looters have also entered the drug business to support their palatial lives.

The regime operates in league with Russia, China, Iran and North Korea – not exactly upstanding citizens of the international community – whose main interests are in simply disrupting South America, along with sharing in the natural resource spoils.

All this is at the expense of the people. The country has gone from the richest in South America to one of the poorest in two generations. People are fleeing the country by the millions.

A brave, charismatic woman – a truly wise Latina – has stood up to the looting fascists. Risking her life, she demanded the ouster of the criminal dictator. She demanded fair elections. She’s been living in hiding, because the regime would surely imprison her, or worse, if they could find her.

Her name is Maria Machado. Her country is Venezuela. The Norwegian Nobel Committee this fall recognized her heroic work to free her country, and awarded her the Nobel Peace Prize.

President Trump has supported Machado and her efforts from the outset. He congratulated her for the prize, for her courage, and for her goals. She in turn said:

“This Nobel Prize is symbolic of that fight for freedom and is dedicated to the Venezuelan people and to President Trump for showing what strong leadership looks like in the moments that matter most.”

Speaking of strong leadership, the Administration assisted private American forces in extricating Machado from Venezuela for a harrowing journey to Oslo for the Nobel Prize. She arrived just hours too late to accept the prize in person, but her daughter accepted for her and read her stirring speech.

It’s an amazing story, still being spun. The Venezuelan dictator will fall – it’s just a matter of time (probably just weeks or months). Maria Machado will return to Venezuela. Socialist despotism in the Americas will be dealt a blow.

Stories in the American media (there isn’t really one in Venezuela anymore) including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have lauded Machado’s incredible efforts and harrowing journey. Give credit to the reporters and editors of both the Journal and the Times.

But the comments sections to those stories are chock full of hostility – not hostile to the Venezuelan regime, but hostile to Machado and Trump.

They’re hostile to Trump for the usual reason: Orange Man Bad! And they’re hostile to Machado for failing to scream “Orange Man Bad!”

The American left’s anger at Machado is heightened by the socialist dictator overlay to the story. They wonder, gee, what’s next? Will Trump go after our socialist friends in Cuba?  

The American left reluctantly admit that murderous terrorism is an “unfortunate accident” and narco-state kleptocracies are unseemly, but what’s really horrible are Western civilization, American capitalism and, most of all, Donald J. Trump.

How dare this woman thank and applaud Trump – in public, no less! – they grouse. In their eyes, she’s a freakin’ woman with freakin’ dark-ish skin. Doesn’t she know her place? When it comes to relations between white Yanquis and darkish Latinas, her place is to defer to us American liberals. What we say, goes. And what we say is:

“Orange Man Bad. We don’t care if you think he helps your so-called cause of fighting-for-freedom. Nothing done by Orange Man is good. Nothing. Especially when he undermines socialism.”

Ah, socialism. It invariably deteriorates quickly into corruption, graft, waste and cronyism, and then fascism, totalitarianism, torture and terrorism.

But the American left never stops trying it. They now argue that the proof it works is in the fact that Bad Orange Man thinks it doesn’t, and he’s always wrong.

But, in fact, socialism doesn’t work – even if Trump thinks it doesn’t. It never has, and it never will. In the matter of Venezuela, the left will wind up on the wrong side of history, once again.

Democrats sacrificed socialism on the altar of cultural wokeness – thank goodness

Posted on by
9

Here’s a thought experiment. First, picture Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot and other communist despots of the 20th century. (I could add to that list the head of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, but I don’t want emails purporting to correct me.)

Now imagine if part of their pitch to the public had been the following:

  • Men pretending to be women should compete against women in women’s sports, and, after the women lose to the men, they should be forced to shower with them;
  • People should be judged not on their merit or even their economic class, but on their skin color, and, moreover, those with skin colors who commit murder at 7x the ordinary rate should be judged more favorably;
  • Gay people should get preferences in admissions and hiring;
  • We should abolish our national borders;
  • Boys having adolescence issues should be called “girls” and have their penises cut off; and
  • Criminal laws are illegitimate.

If Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot and the other communists had preached such nonsense, the result would have been fantastic. Because they never would have come to power. And so we would have avoided 100,000,000 deaths caused by communism.

Fast forward to today. In an incredibly lucky twist of fate, would-be socialists and communists calling themselves Democrats over the past two decades did pitch that nonsense.

Enough people paid attention and recognized it as the nonsense that it was, that the Democrats were finally voted out of power.

Yes, there was also the matter of their latest leader and his senility, corruption and incompetence. But in the absence of their culturally woke nonsense, the Democrats/socialists/communists probably would have overcome the drag of their bad leader. They probably would have won the last election, and we’d be well down the road to lethal, ruinous economics.

That’s because socialism polls surprisingly well. Although people understand that men in drag should not beat and shower with women, they understand basic economics less well.

Among young voters especially, there’s a convenient tendency to believe that the reason they aren’t as wealthy as they’d like is because rich people are stealing their money.

Many young people believe this because they’ve never heard of Marx, Lenin, Mao, or Pol Pot, or the destruction and misery they inflicted. That’s no surprise, for their “teachers” are mostly (not all, fortunately) socialists themselves.

Democrats are now at a crossroads. One road is the one they’re on – the road of socialism in combination with woke cultural issues. The other road lets go of the woke cultural issues while continuing the socialism.

It’s common wisdom, at least outside the fever swamps of academia, that the Democrats need to take the road away from woke cultural issues if they want to win elections. To win elections, they should focus on socialism, not rainbows and bathrooms.

I am praying they don’t take that advice. I’m praying they keep losing elections by staying on the road of woke cultural issues in combination with socialism. If they’ll just stay the course, the story of the 21st century might be the 100,000,000 lives that we didn’t lose to communism.

“Abundance” is the left’s latest rebranding, but it all means the same

Posted on by
2

First, there were Marxists. The Marxists got a bad reputation for destroying economies. Seems the approach of taking from people in accordance with their ability to give, and giving to people in accordance with their ability to take, sounded nice but didn’t work well.

So, they rebranded to “communists,” as in community-ists. Everyone likes a community, right?

Same result, this time at the point of a gun. And murdering 100 million people in the “community” didn’t help their reputation.  

Then they rebranded to “socialists.” What’s not to like about being social?

The socialists didn’t pack guns, but did pack prison terms for people who refused to pay confiscatory taxes. People liked the prison terms about as much as they liked the point of a gun. 

Then they rebranded to “liberals.” That was shrewd, because it co-opted a word that meant the opposite of their Marxist, communist, socialist, censorious, confiscatory, murderous authoritarianism.

It took a while for the people to catch on, but they eventually did. The people came to realize that the “liberals” were anything but liberal in the true sense of that word.

Don’t even get me started on “woke.”

So, they rebranded to “progressives.” Sounds good – who could dislike progress? But it turned out that their idea of “progress” was to turn the clock back to nineteenth century Marxism, etc.

But this time they schemed to buy the votes of the few people who are oppressed – and the many who imagine they are – with “free stuff.” Free money in the form of free no-payback student loans, free health care, free or subsidized solar energy, free maternity/paternity/no-ternity leave, free vacations, free “working” from home, free federal government where the bottom 50% pay only 3% of federal income taxes, and free parking. (OK, that last one is made up.)

It worked no better that time around. Turns out, the “free stuff” was not actually free. It produced a multitrillion-dollar deficit and 9% inflation.

They deflected from the deficit and the inflation by suggesting that their opponents are racist. But people didn’t like being called racist any more than they liked the deficit, the inflation, the pointed guns, the confiscatory taxes, and the 100 million murders.

So, they lost another election. Big time.

Now they’re out of power. No White House, a minority in Congress and state legislatures and governorships, and they’re outnumbered 6-3 on the Supreme Court.

You might think they’d pause and reflect. Marxism/communism/socialism/liberalism/progressivism/free-stuff-that-ain’t-free might not be such a hot recipe for winning elections. Maybe they need a new idea or two?

Nah. Let’s just rebrand the free stuff, they say. Call it “abundance.” It’ll take people years to recognize that there’s no such thing as an abundant lunch any more than there’s such a thing as a free one.

Even then, they can be told that the abundant lunches provided for people who vote “correctly” are paid for by a tax on people who don’t. In other words, there may be no such thing as a free lunch, but there’s such a thing as lunch paid for by other people, and that’s almost as good. In fact, it’s better – because you get to punish the other guy for being more successful than you.

If that doesn’t work, they still have the race card. Maybe.

“Woke” is now a term of mockery, and the left has only itself to blame

Posted on by
27

“Woke” was coined by the left some years ago to describe a person who had become sensitive to the left’s pet issues, especially racial and “social justice” ones. It implied that a person disagreeing with the left about those issues was not just wrong, but unconscious. Becoming woke was unintentionally analogous to the Christian concept of being born again — which is appropriate since leftism is the left’s religion.

This catchy term was initially successful. But the left never succeeds at success. That’s because what’s important to them is not being successful in resolving grievances, but parading those grievances as evidence of their victimhood.

Victim status is more important to the left than winning – and easier too. If the left were a sports team, they’d be lazy and winless but they would always say, gleefully, that it’s because the referees robbed them.

Continue reading →