In fact, they did more than attack him – they also surrendered their own races (prior to Super Tuesday, in the cases of Sen. Klobuchar and former Mayor Buttegieg), endorsed Joe Biden, and warned that the party dare not allow a socialist to be its nominee. About time, we say, as Socialism in all its forms caused more destruction, more pain, more deaths, more dislocation and more misery than any other political viewpoint in the last 150 years. Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, Nazism (remember- “Nazi” derives from the German words for “National Socialist”), Communism, Pol Pot in Cambodia, Castro in Cuba, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and many more, all have their roots in socialism.
President Trump, months ago, was saying things like, “America will never become a socialist nation” while Sanders’ adversaries for the nomination were taking pains not to anger his supporters nor drive them away from their party. So, it is a very good thing that, for whatever reason, those other candidates have come out against socialism. Or have they? They have certainly come out against having a self-proclaimed socialist as their party’s nominee, and none of these people support authoritarianism, but have they come out against any of the policies that he supports or advocates? Have they issued full-throated defenses of the American economic system? Or are their objections to socialism not to its policies but to the name itself?
After all, if one were to transplant the American political parties to Europe, there is little doubt that the leaders of the Democratic party here would be members of one of the Socialist parties over there. Again, we welcome the candidates’ criticism of Sen. Sanders and his socialism, but it seems to us that their objections are more out of electoral tactics than out of opposition to socialism as a force.
And that brings us to the most troubling aspect of the level of support Sen. Sanders receives. At various times in America’s history, Populism, or Socialism, or similar anti-capitalist doctrines, have appealed to major segments of the electorate – but until now, that occurred during recessions, or depressions, panics, or economic retraction – not (the coronavirus panic aside) when we have full employment, rising wealth, prosperity and economic growth. Anyone who has studied socialism and who knows what it stands for should not advocate for it at any time, but during an economic crisis it could follow that those who have suffered dislocation might look to socialism as a means of relief. That is what happened in the European nations as well, where hard times compelled those who had felt injured by the system to look toward other systems, such as Fascism, Communism, Nazism, or Socialism.
But those standards clearly do not apply in 2020 America, and those who advocate the loudest for “Democratic Socialism” are not those who hold the dirtiest end of the economic stick, but who are college students, university professors, billionaires who have made their fortunes in the “new economy” of the internet and cyberspace, and politicians, all of whom should know better than to lust after the provider state. This indicates that their motivations have more to do with ideology than with economics. Do Bernie Sanders and his supporters really believe that Chinese Communism “lifted more people out of poverty” than has the free market? Intellectuals have been blind to the dangers of socialism for a good long time – remember Lincoln Steffens reporting, after a visit to the USSR, “I have seen the future – and it works?” And he was only one among many.
Remember, “A government that is big enough to give you everything you want is powerful enough to take away everything you have.” That sums up socialism pretty well, and we hope that those Democrat politicians who suddenly found much to object to with Sen. Sanders and his program truly realize the dangerous folly represented by socialism in all its forms, and will instead champion policies that strengthen our free enterprise system, and not undermine it.