For many of us who were raised in liberal, Democratic families, the infusion of socialist, anti-free-speech, and anti-Semitic elements into the party has been alarming. The party was always in favor of social welfare programs but remained ardently committed to free markets and free speech. Now, we have CNN anchors openly questioning whether candidates are too Jewish-looking for the Democratic base as socialists sweep away establishment candidates. A recent poll reaffirmed that trend with a vast majority of Democrats saying that they are prepared to support the socialists.
A recent Economist/YouGov survey asked respondents, “Would you ever vote for a candidate who identified as a “Democratic Socialist?”
While 85 percent of Republicans and 40 percent of independents said that they would not vote for socialists, 62 percent of Democrats said that they would. Among self-described liberals, the percent of support for socialism soars to 73 percent.
For Kamala Harris supporters, 64 percent would support socialists.
Even more alarming is the preference of Democrats for socialism over capitalism. Some 34 percent choose socialism while only 22 percent choose capitalism. Overall, 58 percent of Democrats view socialism in general “favorably.”
It is not surprising that socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders went on YouTube this week to proclaim that “we are on the verge of the political revolution” that they have long sought to fundamentally change our system.
In Rage and the Republic, I discuss this shift toward socialism:
“Much of the anti-capitalist movement is composed of young people who have never lived under a socialist or communist government. Popular politicians like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) have made socialism chic, alongside wealthy celebrity adherents such as Lawrence O’Donnell, Susan Sarandon, Michael Moore, and Sarah Silverman. There is a superficiality to many in this movement of wealthy celebrities wearing socialism on their designer sleeves. In one of the most glaring disconnects, Ocasio-Cortez attended the ritzy Met Gala (where tickets cost tens of thousands of dollars) wearing a designer dress with ‘Tax the Rich’ in large letters. It perfectly captured America’s armchair socialists, a commitment that often seems more performative than philosophical.”
Democratic establishment figures are maneuvering to stay ahead of the mob, many offering the far left the Supreme Court as bona fide. Others are staying silent as anti-Semitic figures fill their ranks.
Some politicians are struggling to curry support with the growing socialist movement. Rep. Dan Goldman, who inherited a massive fortune as a trust baby, unwisely promised to help subsidize his campaign from his family fortune. With the addition of three homes, Goldman looked like the Richie Rich of the Democratic Party and lost by over 30 points.
Others are trying to downplay their wealth, from Rep. Ro Khanna, who reportedly has half a billion dollars from his wife’s inheritance, to Gov. Jay Robert “J.B.” Pritzker, who also inherited his fortune. Pritzker assured the mob that he is a different kind of billionaire, pointing at Trump billionaires as the rightful targets (not him with $4.3 billion).
Notably, votes for socialists are not coming from blue-collar workers but from young, college-educated voters. These younger voters never experienced or watched the collapse of socialist systems in the last century. For them, the promise of the Mamdani’s “warmth of collectivism.”
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
By conflating things he doesn’t understand, GSX falsely claims countries are socialist when they aren’t. Virtually all modern nations have mixed economies. He ignorantly conflates “socialist” with “social” and relies on an erroneous definition of the word.
Here is the accurate definition: Socialism is an economic and political system where the means of production (factories, tools, land, and resources) are owned and controlled by the community or the state, rather than by private individuals. There is no private equity.
If a country offers universal health insurance, that is a social program, not socialism. Funding a service does not control the means of production.
The Nordic countries are not socialist; they are social democracies. Democratic socialism explicitly seeks to transition the ownership of the economy from private hands to the state or collectives.
Norway’s state control of its oil is not socialism either. It is state capitalism: a state-owned entity operating for profit in a global market.
Congratulations, you just spent five paragraphs trying to call me ignorant, only to inadvertently prove my exact point and tank your own argument.
Thank you for admitting that there is a massive, fundamental difference between a Soviet-style command economy and democratic socialism.
You laid out the exact distinction yourself, even if your own reading comprehension didn’t allow you to realize it.
Your side has been screaming that any progressive policy—whether it’s a rent freeze, universal childcare, or NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani balancing the city budget—is “ruinous Soviet/Cuban communism.” But you just explicitly stated that funding social programs, universal healthcare, and public services “is not socialism” because it doesn’t dismantle private equity.
So, by your own literal definition, when democratic socialists in the US campaign for universal healthcare, free college tuition, and funded childcare, they aren’t trying to build the USSR. They are pushing for social programs in a mixed economy. You accidentally cleared them of the very “communist” charges you’ve been trying to stick to them.
Nice job moron.
I find the term “universal healthcare” vague and nebulous. “Health care is a right!” takes a valuable service which takes years of training and investment to provide — and redefines it as “a valuable service to be given away free to everyone demanding it”.
Can that service commitment be achieved without coercion of the service provider? Ask those considering becoming trained in medicine…there you’ll discover the contradiction. Who is going to want to take on the obligation to provide unlimited services, to an unlimited clientele, for free or a paltry salary?
It’s a promise that can’t be kept.
Scandinavia tells Bernie Sanders [and our own commenter “X”] to Stop Calling it Socialist:
(of course, X/georgie kept modifying his words as he continued to be reduced to rubble
https://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/denmark-tells-bernie-sanders-to-stop-calling-it-socialist/
Burning Down the House
“I forgot to get napkins. I just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me.” —Darializa Avila-Chevalier, primary election winner, New York’s 13th Congressional District
https://www.kunstler.com/p/burning-down-the-house-c19
Who are all these Democratic Socialists of America, anyway?
“We are Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization,” one of their spoxes declared on Instagram in 2024.
The platform apparently has a lot of appeal to a certain demographic — which, I suspect, includes the many young recent graduates of the diploma mills who are pissed-off that Mr. Trump & Company are methodically shutting down the NGOs that were supposed to furnish these young race-and-gender studies majors with cushy, six-figure jobs doing “activism.” Alas, that pathway is increasingly blocked and the country only needs so many baristas. What to do then? Take it to the limit! Be communists. . . with all that entails. What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine, too.
They are a bunch of first generation 3rd world immigrants. They figured out how to bite the hand of the people that provided the opportunity for freedom. Scum
This should be a wake up call to all. We are, presently, a free people generally comfortably secure in the idea that our freedom, security, and prosperity are safe. We could never be so foolish as to give up what we have. But we are now seeing the evolution of the Democrat Party that has been taking place for about 2 decades come to fruition. The seeds sown by Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer and others in their pursuit of power through party allegiance and discipline has created an opening and now a leadership vacuum that the DSA will happily fill. We are free enough to give away our freedom or by not voting, allow a small but motivated and savvy minority to make that decision for us. The revolution won’t come through the muzzle of guns but when most of us decide it’s too inconvenient or troublesome to take time to vote.
Feed the worms, they got to eat too!
Happy 250th! I don’t like to see a dichotomization trap closing in our political-economic thinking.
Our country is a clever hybrid of free enterprise and democratic governance. Entrepreneurial energy and creativity are pervasive and bountiful….but not allowed to cross over into criminality. The framework of law that keeps free enterprise from creeping towards grift, theft, risk-dumping and enslavement must be kept the more powerful of the two forces. Our Founders well understood that they were creating a system of regulated capitalism, where The People collectively hold the reigns of lawmaking, with businesses left free to pursue activities within those legal guardrails.
The family unit raising children is by necessity one of benevolent socialism. An infant does not come into the world as an autonomous economic actor. The resources within the family are shared “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need”. The challenge we haven’t yet fully faced up to — something Adam Smith, Hayek and Milton Friedman swept under the rug — was a systematic, dependable way to transition tweens from benevolent socialism-dependency into independent, thriving capitalist actors by the time they turn 18. Them chickens are coming home to roost.
Wouldn’t it help to admit that within-family economics are naturally socialistic? That brings into focus the transition from socialist dependency to capitalist life that every teenager must be prepared to surmount. It doesn’t happen automatically — it’s not like flipping a switch on the 18th birthday. The fact that young adults are struggling economically, and this is delaying pair-bonding, marriage and childraising — conservatives need to start thinking and proposing how we plan to fix this, otherwise the DSA Democrats with their stale, lame prescriptions will win by forfeit.
Conservatives can build a better mousetrap — a more clever, bountiful hybrid economic system — but not if we get ensnared in a dichotomization trap where the false choice is between capitalism or socialism.
The blog’s Perpetual Prevaricator claims that the D’s socialists are not advocating for a Cuban or Soviet style socialism.
And yet, out of the mouths of those D socialists:
“Long live the Cuban Revolution.” “Seize the means of production” (housing, banking, health care, . . .). And the very same Soviet/Cuban slogans: “Power to the People.”
Fundamentally, there are only two ways of dealing with others in an economy:
By production and free trade (which is the free market’s trader principle).
Or by government compulsion — by the government injecting physical force into the marketplace. (That is socialism, of any type.)
Sam, it’s obvious you never bothered to learn the distinction between socialism and democratic socialism. You’re choosing to be ignorant instead of learning something new.
More – X does not know what he is talking about – this is about Denmark
Again like the other nordic countries – Denmark WAS as X describes in the early 80’s – and that FAILED rapidly and badly and it took decades to undo the damage – and most nordic states are only PARTLY though that.
Denmark has the equivalent of US Social Security – but it is partway through intentionally replacing that with the equivalent of a 401K system.
And
AGAIN – no the nordic countries are NOT hjeavily regulated economies – they are very very lightly regulated – less than the US. Just about the lightest regulation in the world.
Denmark does not even have a minimum wage law.
Butch Mazzuca, veteran and conservative who sounds more like Prof. Turley than RedState and Townhall, nails it with today’s post titled “Compared to What?”
https://butchmazzuca.com/happy-birthday-america/
The post’s first three grafs set the tone:
One of the great ironies of our time is that the resurgence of socialism and the anti-American cynicism evident during our semiquincentennial are, paradoxically, a by-product of the extraordinary blessings of living in the United States.
So many of these people who have enjoyed exceptional freedom, prosperity, and security for so long have lost their perspective. They mistake imperfection for failure and incommodity for oppression. Having known only America, they assume the freedoms they experience daily are the natural condition of mankind rather than history’s rarest achievement.
So, when confronted by condemnations of this country, the proper response shouldn’t be anger, but rather a question: Compared to what?
“Compared to what?” is still a tad defensive. Why not “What would you like to see improved?” Then, “Have you thought about how those improvements could be achieved?……without causing worse problems?”
The goal is to use questioning and listening to get the cynical Dem to begin to take responsibility for results
(the antidote to casting blame and performative virtue signaling). Dale Carnegie’s gem of wisdom is that you become persuasive by listening.
Writing off your opponent as unreachable is admitting defeat. It’s the loser’s mindset.
The left strikes again. So much for being kind.
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A nurse who worked at the University of Texas Medical Branch has been fired after she posted a message suggesting that she would not treat patients who she caught watching Fox News in their hospital rooms.
Libs of TikTok first exposed the woman who posted video on her TikTok account.
Much like Trump, she was just making a joke.
Nope, but nice try.
No, she wasn’t. Also, get therapy. Trump is not nearly as bad as you hysterics act.
“[V]otes for socialists [are coming from] college-educated voters. These younger voters never experienced or watched the collapse of socialist systems . . .” (JT)
Worse than “never experienced or watched” is that those “college-educated voters” were never taught the evils of socialism. That is an indictment of academia. Those graduates are not just functionally illiterate. They are functionally ignorant. And socialists know that the ignorant are easy to dupe and to control.
Sam
So much for billionaires tax. The truth comes out.
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Washington, D.C. – U.S. Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Representative Brendan F. Boyle (D-Pa.), led over 45 lawmakers in reintroducing the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act, legislation that would apply a wealth tax to fortunes above $50 million
Same with this left-wing dem-o-rat
First $1 Billion, Now $50 Million: Khanna Says Wealth Tax “Must Not Stop at Billionaires”
Of course not. Let’s take all that is wrong with Europe and stuff it down American’s throats.
You’ll note the $$$ cut-off. It won’t hit them. But they are all millionaires with Warren being the richest of the three.
“The truth comes out.”
Redistribution schemes always progress like that.
When the income tax was first imposed in 1913, it applied only to the wealthy and to less than 1% of Americans.
And look at that confiscatory tax today.