Senate Democrat nominee James Talarico appears ready to bring a touch of Trotsky to Texas. In a video from a climate forum, Talarico is shown declaring capitalism an “oppressive system” linked with white supremacy and that it must be “dismantled” to achieve a better world. It is reminiscent of Leon Trotsky, who denounced the “fundamental evil of the capitalist system” and called on citizens to free themselves from its oppression. The Democratic Socialists of America and radical sites have long called “to dismantle the capitalist state.”
As a state representative, Talarico addressed the 2020 climate conference by the Austin chapter of the Sierra Club with other Texas House candidates. However, it was Talarico that roused the crowd with an attack on capitalism:
“I’m so thankful that you asked this question and also thankful that young activists have really drawn the link between climate change and White supremacy and capitalism in our country … And I think only ending the ways that all three of those oppressive systems work together are we gonna be able to begin the process of dismantling them.”
Talarico added criticism of Texas’s oil and gas industry, which he mocked as a dying industry “like being the leader in cassette tapes in the 1980s.” He predicted with obvious satisfaction, “That industry is not gonna last.”
Ironically, given his earlier promise of running a meatless, Vegan campaign, opposing both beef and energy markets in Texas could well achieve the dismantling of the economy by default in Texas.
Talarico’s views closely parallel socialist and communist talking points online. Democratic Socialists of America has challenged people to “Imagine the end of capitalism.” Those words in the Democratic Socialists of America manifesto offer Americans a world without landlords, debt, mandatory work hours, and “food, education, energy, medicine, and transportation… are common goods and utilities.”
The DSA is premised on the same stated objective of Talarico, declaring that there has to be “a revolutionary transformation to replace the capitalist social order based on exploitation and oppression.”
Other candidates have sought to pander to this radical mob. Recently, California Gov. Gavin Newsom thrilled the mob by declaring that “nostalgia is not working,” adding that “capitalism as we know it doesn’t work either.”
In “Rage and the Republic,” I discuss the rise of socialism and the coalition of politicians, pundits, and professors in attacking capitalism as well as core institutions such as the Supreme Court. It is a crisis of faith on the 250th anniversary of the oldest and most successful republic in history.
It is the 250th anniversary not only of the Declaration of Independence but of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. Smith’s free market theories were immediately embraced by the founders as the perfect economic theory to match their political theory. They had declared the first Enlightenment Revolution based on a belief in natural rights that came from God, not governments.
However, those rights mean little without economic freedom. Capitalism offered citizens the ability to transcend class and social barriers, to advance as far as their skills and labor would take them.
Together, those political and economic theories created the most prosperous and stable democratic system in the world. That system is now under attack on both sides. Radicals are calling for the trashing of the U.S. Constitution and the discarding of our core constitutional values.
Even establishment figures from former Vice President Kamala Harris to California Governor Gavin Newsom now dismiss faith in core institutions as mere “nostalgia.” Those of us who support the Madisonian democracy are derisively called “institutionalists” and constitutional “cultists.”
The New York Times ran a column, “The Constitution Is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed,” by Ryan D. Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale, calling upon citizens to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.”
As these attacks on our constitutional system mount, a similar attack on capitalism is unfolding. In New York, Zohran Mamdani promised to show citizens the “warmth of collectivism” from free child care to free buses to state-run grocery stores. Across the country, Mamdani allies are joining him in calling for the de-commodification of private property and the seizing of the means of production.
Polls show that these candidates are being propelled not by the working class, but by young, college-educated voters fresh out of the ideological echo chamber of higher education. They are armchair revolutionaries like Talarico, repeating socialist slogans with the same robotic rote delivery of a Young Pioneer camp.
As these videos surface, radical candidates from Abdul El-Sayed to Talarico brush off their earlier comments as media allies attack any reporting on prior statements. Socialist Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is considering a run for president, recently referred to her own extremist statements as “Woke 1.”
The transparent insincerity does not matter to their base. These figures have already shown their bona fides with extremist statements in the past. Talarico’s desire to dismantle capitalism was not some slip of the tongue but a planned speech to fellow activists. To pivot now is considered to be mere packaging for uneducated and malleable dupes.
Indeed, the Talarico campaign responded by simply declaring that Talarico is a “proud Capitalist,” though one staffer admitted that the comments were a bit “cringey.” Being a “proud capitalist” who wants to “dismantle” capitalism is a bit like being an avid meat-eater who denounces meat consumption as killing the world and banning meat from his campaign.
Accordingly, when asked about past radical positions, these figures immediately deny or dismiss them. If you want to dismantle the constitutional or economic systems of the United States, a few white lies hardly seem of much consequence. After all, as Trotsky explained, “The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.” For these radicals, there is no greater justification than their own election.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
This column also ran on Fox.com
This column was updated with the response of the Talarico campaign.
Who does he view as the new kulaks?
We will discover that after the dekulakization — when the person has been “disappeared.”
“Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy”
– Franz Kafka
The new $1 Trump coins are now officially available.
One side has his image and the notation “LIBERTY 1776 – 2026”
The meaning is obvious.
Liberty was born in 1776 and died in 2026 under Trump.
You can buy 25 of these $1 coins for the bargain price of $64.
So I can buy a $1 coin for $2.44?
Isn’t that 144% inflation !!
The grift never ends !!!
Only for the idiots who have no idea what is being sold – a collectors item.
You think sex with children is right eh?
Let’s be honest “Labels” are always exaggerated and misleading. Most voters support some socialized government, the real issue is what is the healthy balance?
Most voters support Social Security and Medicare (partially subsidized by other taxpayer after about 5 years). Most voters support public schools, public police departments, public fire departments, public rescue squads, public utilities, public roads & bridges and public colleges.
Bottom Line, most voters want government to benefit them and dislike government waste, fraud and abuse.
One idea is to create competition within government. For example: although they have made great progress in recent history, the Veterans Administration couldn’t perform the simple task of mailing out checks on time. Former combat veterans were becoming homeless on the streets because their checks took months or years simply to mail a check.
Why couldn’t you have a more Capitalist federal agency like the VA combined with vouchers? In other words, without firing any government employees, divide the agency into 3 totally separate divisions. Maybe name them the Red Team, Blue Team or Yellow Team.
Then let the veterans themselves be “customers” and choose which division to deal with. If the Red Team won’t answer the phone and won’t mail checks, the veteran can spend their voucher with the Blue Team. Vouchers equate into money for budgets.
The bad divisions literally go bust (Red Team), the veterans reward good service and penalize bad service. As the poorly managed division loses money the government employees can apply for jobs in another division that is properly managed. The customer (veteran) and taxpayers are the biggest winners.
That “customer” model could be used in many government agencies. Monopolies have never worked in government or the private sector.
Yes, conservatives are creative problem-solvers, not just hyperdefensive naysayers. You prove we can come up with a better mousetrap — the question is can we “sell” complex solutions pitted against simplistic pipedreams like Socialized Medicine?
“Most voters support Social Security and Medicare”
Let’s say I invested some money but there was no way to un-invest it, maybe it was such a huge capital investment to get it going that my future depended on that investment. I had to ‘let it ride’ like in a game of roulette or the whole big project would be a bust.
I would be forced to support & hope my investment does well. What other choice do I have? I would support it vigorously.
Free to choose might be a better system for me if I was not in so dire an investment at the moment.
Thank you, SS and Medicare for not letting me choose and dominating the economic course of my life.
“. . . the real issue is what is the healthy balance?”
Same as the “healthy” balance between wellness and disease.
More Age of Rage bait from Professor Turley.
Can anyone show a single time Talarico has expressed support for the DSA?
Talarico — then a state representative — described capitalism as one of three “oppressive systems” and said we must begin “dismantling” them. Reporting by CNN (via Breitbart) characterized this as rhetoric “similar to language used at the time by [DSA] and other progressive climate activists,”
You are the one posting bait. everyone knows leftys are taking up every position that exists left of center all the way to murderous commies and none of them are sincere about their true intentions of course because Americans would be horrified.
Hasan piker is the de-facto leader of the democrat/DSA party now.
Why can’t anyone left of center be sincere about anything?
What party is he running under and does his rhetoric match that party? No one knows as he’s planning a spanberger-esqe leftward sprint.
The Democratic Socialists of America and radical sites have long called “to dismantle the capitalist state.”
It is instructive that Democrats and DSA both advocate these anarchistic talking points. However, when a few morbidly obese, out of shape, middle aged pansies gathered at the US Capitol on January 6 2020, and were given entry and a tour of the facility by its employed personnel, all to protest the rigged “elections” orchestrated by Obama/Hillary, we heard daily from Dems about “threat to democracy”.
It’s just once in my life I’d like to see a liar’s pants catch on fire
correction: January 6, 2021
Hey Estovir I don’t comment much. But I read about your service. Thank you for serving. I read you work from home for blog security. Was wondering if I could do that to. If you could say who employs that I would be thankful. I need a job from home.
We all appreciate the service of veterans. But I wish this blog could be a real discussion without some professional programming content under fake names.
They were morbidly obese and out of shape, too? And why are they pansies? That seems gratuitously bigoted. It might be an expression of how “devout” you are, as Joe & Nancy likewise brag.
Creekan is Estovir.
Help! I’m being victimized by equality, freedom and opportunity!
And the Bill of Rights and election integrity
A few years ago common-sense members of Congress actually came up with a “Capitalist” healthcare plan called “Medicare-X Choice” that both parties would support and it would have provided universal healthcare to every American.
Essentially instead of “Medicare for All” it was “Medicare for All that choose it” (Pro Choice on your healthcare dollars).
As I understood it, if you were happy with your current private healthcare you could keep it. If in a few years Medicare was a better deal, you could switch to Medicare. In a few more years if Medicare were a worse deal, you could switch back to a private plan.
The point was healthy free market competition at all times. The consumer would choose the healthcare provider that best served them. If Medicare started offering lousy service and ignoring customers, the consumer could also switch back.
This system would create a financial incentive to always serve the customer buying healthcare. Ignore us and you lose our money as customers. Once you establish monopoly healthcare (no competition) the healthcare provider no longer cares, since you have no choice. Seems like this plan could even be combined with vouchers or some other systems.
Are there really enough useful idiots in Texas to elect this fool to the U.S. Senate?
Vicente is Estovir.
Can someone explain to me why he is currently leading in the polls??
Because more people like Talarico than Paxton.
It’s really quite simple.
We elected Jasmine Crockett, didn’t we?
-g
Yes you did! How’s that working out for you?
If you go to a barbershop, restaurant or Starbucks. If you hire someone to mow your yard. If you hire a car mechanic. Why did you choose one automobile brand over another?
Why did you choose to spend your money at that business? Do you have a favorite? As a customer did one business charge more than the other for the same service or product? Did they show up on time? Did they do a bad job or good job? Was the establishment clean, etc?
That is healthy free market competition and a benefit of Capitalism. Consumers (you and me) essentially vote with our money. Consumers reward businesses that serve them best or produce the best product. If in 5 years that same business ignores consumers, they penalize that business (we no longer give them money).
This system creates a strong incentive (money) for a business to be responsive to their customers. The old saying “the customer is always right” means the business works for the customer.
On the flip side, monopolies and cartels that destroy free market competition is not American Capitalism. This system is closer to foreign communist regimes.
Recently when foreign soccer fans visited the United States they were most impressed by our (Capitalist) grocery stores, they couldn’t believe what healthy free market competition created, by financially rewarding excellence and financially penalizing bad services and bad products.
Right on! If you chose it out of two or more choices, you’re a capitalist!
If you had no choice, you’re a sucker and you’ve been hoodwinked by “crony capitalism” (it’s not capitalism at all) which requires a corrupt politician or bureaucrat to operate their scheme.
Supply demand and competition is a “natural law” . Socialism and Communism have not nor will they ever overcome that law any more than a human can overcome gravity. If a rocket or aircraft runs out of fuel in a gravitational field it will eventually crash. SUPPLY, DEMAND, COMPETION. They arent good,they arent bad they just are.
The family unit raising infants into young adults runs on “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need”. Your choice of labels. Are you saying this is out of step with “natural law”? All societies going back to caveman days lived under communal economics.
Capitalism is a way of organizing society at a higher level, making possible millions of cooperating actors, each able to act independently but within a common set of laws.
The problem Capitalists never really faced up to was “How to transition the helpless baby into a thriving, independent economic actor?” There is some yet-to-be-perfected process for this transition. It’s already perfected for wealthy families (they provide seed capital to their offspring). For everyone else, it’s never worked.
Big, gnarly problem, yes, but we can solve it. We have to solve it. Without giving up liberty.
The problem Capitalists never really faced up to was “How to transition the helpless baby into a thriving, independent economic actor?” There is some yet-to-be-perfected process for this transition.
pbinca, there will never be a perfected process. We have free will and it’s the type of variation that cannot be engineered out of a system based on our ability to choose. Adam Smith wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments 17 years before The Wealth of Nations. It boils down to the market didn’t produce the moral citizen, the moral citizen is upstream of capitalism, not a product of it. Generations before capitalism became a thing, the founding generation was already being formed for it. So Smith named what that “helpless baby” has to become before the system can work. What no one has done since 1759 is measure whether it’s still happening.
Femboy Talarico is a prototype of the new democratic party….a socialist/communist wimp who hates everything about our great country, and is hell bent to convert it to the global socialist/communist country he and the other left wing psychopaths dream of….with him and others like him being the overseers, who issue edicts to the unwashed masses regarding what they can and can’t do, where to buy food, what property they can and can’t own, etc. And of course, Talarico and the other overseers will make sure that they, as the central scrutinizers, live a far better lifestyle than the serfs under their control.
Talarico = the opposite of Texas.
HazPat is Estovir.
Ano is a NO-body..
Dustoff is Estovir, of course.
Dustoff is registered sex offender in Seattle.
The company “Cost Plus Drugs” founded and owned by (Capitalist) Mark Cuban contradicts the anti-capitalist movement.
Mark Cuban – a Capitalist – still makes a profit and through Capitalism and healthy free market competition provides low cost drugs through his online pharmacy.
And through Capitalism, if the government system isn’t functioning properly many poor people choose to pay out of pocket for prescription drugs on Cuban’s website.
Any politician with any sense would hire Cuban as a consultant to help solve America’s dysfunctional healthcare system.
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.’ Carl Sagan
Jonthan Turley writes posts and sells books, utterly dependent upon this phenomenon, every single day. And he knows it.
Too bad you forgot to mention that Sagan was talking about his new publication,”The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.”
Leave your jealousy and envy in the dark room and come out and join us. We’ve got chocolate and burgers and banana cream pie…and good books too.
Carl Sagan was an imperfect human and therefore also was hoodwinked by his ‘beliefs’ on multiple occasions and he presented his ideas as truth when they weren’t. When he heard the quote you quoted, he ‘adopted’ it because it sounds ‘smart’ and he knew he had to say smart stuff when he was invited on TV shows. Your post is included in this phenomena as you cannot fathom that you are also a victim of the fallacy.
You’re deference to a so-called authority figure speaks of your political leanings; you’re a follower, and therefore a dyed in the wool lefty.
Please don’t tell us what YOU think, just keep quoting people smarter than yourself and eventually you’ll find the problem between your ears.
Next you’ll be quoting Neil deGrasse Tyson the ‘darling’ of ‘woke science’.
Anyone that hates healthy free market competition and Capitalism should go out and start a small business.
If you do that, as owner, you will start to understand economics and government regulation. Some regulation is vitally important but some is ridiculous bureaucratic mission creep.
For example: if you are a restaurant owner and you sell hamburgers for $10. The owner didn’t make $10. Per average hamburger, the owner might pay $5 in employee wages/benefits, taxes, licenses, debt on loans, loans on equipment, licenses, accountants, lawyers, rent, electricity, water/sewer, etc. Then factor in additional debt payments on loans during Covid (few if any customers) when no money was coming in.
So $10 minus $5 = $5 profit per hamburger. The owner only made $5 on each hamburger.
Consider small business owners that quote prices on jobs. The contractor you hire quotes you $300 for your home project. The contractor estimates the $300 job will take 10 hours. That math equates to $30 per hour per worker (essentially minimum wage for a small business owner without expensive equipment).
Essentially minimum wage for an equipment heavy business (construction, tree work, heavy equipment) may exceed $60 per hour per worker. The additional $30+ pays for the loan payment on the equipment. $30 labor plus $30 loan payment.
For the uneducated consumer, it appears that business owner is getting rich and they should if they take that risk. Many small business owners aren’t rich. When unpredictable events like Covid happen, they then could lose money for years or go bankrupt.
Today in 2026, with a shortage of good workers and cruelly deporting hard working immigrants, many business owners are not hiring more humans but investing in robotics and A.I.
This is potentially a crisis since human employees pay the taxes to sustain Social Security and Medicare. Wages definitely needs to keep up with rising costs of living, but if you raise the wages to much too fast, the business owners will simply invest in robotics and AI instead.
This is already happening: with Trump’s sadistic deportation program, not deporting criminals but deporting good people. Some farmers have invested in industrial scale John Deer robotic tractors, robotic lawn mowers and A.I. The farmer chose to invest in robots instead of human workers, thanks to Trump.
This is unsustainable but criticizing the Capitalist farmer or business owner doesn’t solve this!
“Today in 2026, with a shortage of good workers and cruelly deporting hard working immigrants, many business owners are not hiring more humans but investing in robotics and A.I.”
Gee, I thought we were only deporting ILLEGAL immigrants who flouted laws and rules.
Gee, I thought that we will continue to need educated persons who can design robots, increase their utility, REPAIR them when broken, create markets to sell them, assess and train new AI applications, and teach new students all of this, starting with basic R,’R, and ‘R, -and STEM.
Gee, I thought that we still had many unreached horizons, globally and extraterrestrial, to inspire future generations.
Perfect reply.
Here’s another “Gee:” The largest part of the workforce at SpaceX is *technicians* — those “humans” who now get to use their brain (more than their brawn), while working on fabulous new technology, as they make buckets of money.
And a final “Gee:” Ford, with their wonderful robotics factories. Guess who they’re desperate to hire? — more “humans”, mechanics to repair and maintain those cars.
Why do you think it’s ok for ‘these people’ to do jobs you are unwilling to do yourself?
Let me ask, if it comes down to robots growing your food or getting yourself out there farming, what’s it gonna be? because planning on having an underclass around to serve you just isn’t the type of entitlement Americans should be fostering and if they are so ‘good’ then they would be trying to make their own country better instead of breaking our laws.
Also, you’re a Luddite; anti-progress. You’d rather I have to mow my own lawn instead of my robot lawn mower doing it for me. You better not own a dishwasher, microwave or other automated appliances because then you’re a hypocrite too.
Why dont you ask your self where do these fecal based contamination of produce come from?
Some illegal immigrant could not bother to take a crap in the port-o-potty a few hundreds of yards away, and did it in the field, with the produce. And or did not bother to wash their hands.
It happens.
The primary reason for govt. regulation is so you don’t have to compete against criminals, and criminals cannot threaten you and commandeer your business. Don’t forget: Criminals love freedom. Criminals see themselves as clever entrepreneurs. They compete aggressively. Only the law and its enforcement place this “free enterprise” in a different category. This is particularly acute as new technologies come online — all that the criminally-minded need is for regulation to lag behind the tech. That’s where we’re at.
Wrong.
Trump, DHS, ICE are deporting criminal illegals to include pedos, rapists, murderers, drug traffickers, and many more criminals.
The robotics thing was happening before Trump. Acres USA, an agriculture magazine, ran a article about a farm that was using robots to milk cows. About a year later, I got an opportunity to take a tour of that farmer’s operation. I do not do dairy cows, but it was pretty neat to see. And it has only gotten better.
Again, that was pre-Trump.
With all the “venting” and name-calling being done on this and other blog sites against “socialism” and “communism” and “DSA” and “DNC,” –while the other side refers to “capitalism” and “MAGAts” and “Trumpsters” and “authoritarianism” and “white supremacists” and “fascism,” we have become a nation of buzz words, euphemisms, and catch-alls.
I have yet to see or hear of ONE person at a Talarico or El-Sayed or Ossoff rally who is able to formulate–and ask—a simple, substantive question for these candidates. Things like, “tell us what very specific tenets of capitalism do you hate and would change. Name them.”
Instead, we get the repetitive and rapturous applause, responding to mere buzz words. Sheep looking for a charismatic shepherd, without even questioning where they are going, how will they get there, and what they will actually eat tonight.
When I went to elementary school, there were three monthly copies of a publication called “Ideals” in every classroom. You had to sign up and check them out, they were so popular, filled with good thoughts, encouraging poems, visions of how to knead and shape a good, fruitful life.
Now we have the latest buzz word hitting the Internet and social media: “Chinamaxxing.”
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/sep/01/gen-z-chinamaxxing-china-graphic-novel-you-must-take-part-in-revolution?
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/mar/23/chinamaxxing-chinese-culture-becomes-a-meme
You have hit on my main thesis; They are all either completely insincere leftists and hiding their true intentions OR they are the complete idiots that believe all the crazy, need the weird camaraderie, or just love to hate.
The Insincere Left. Say it with me.
Lin,
Great comment.
Similar with the people who call to replace the Constitution with something . . . else. But they never really name what that something is.
However, we do know by their own words, their plan is to pack the SC, add two additional states to gain seats in the Senate (if the do not do away with the Senate like they recently have said). Then pass laws to ensure one party rule.
Theirs.
And they claim it is all to protect democracy.
The rest of us call it for what it really is: Fascism.
I don’t think there are opportunities to ask the candidate questions at rallies.
Talarico could be the poster child for a tale of two suitcases. One of them has been open since 1791. The Constitution. But not the other one. The far Left wants to tell you what’s in their suitcase without putting it on the table and opening the whole thing up. Talarico says vote me into the Senate and I’ll guide Adam Smith’s Invisible hand better than than he can so it is not oppressive. He doesn’t say how he gets through the turnstyle oath to uphold the Constitution and Laws of the United States. That’s still in the closed suitcase. Article l § 8 of the open suitcase speaks to intellectual property. Congress is given the power “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries”. Patents, trademarks, copyright. That clause explains why We The People have as our signature technology all kinds, including national defense and security, the arts, books like Jonathan’s recent publications, and music. How Talarico sees intellectual property in the open suitcase is still in the closed suitcase.
Talarico will win this election, unfortunately, simply because about 20% of nominal Republican voters will not vote for Paxton.
Uh, the worst polluter in the world is communist China.
Briabbl1813 is Estovir.
But Ano is still a No-body
Hey pedo, f off.
DustOff,
Correct.
Must be really devastating knowing full well, we are successful people who have had rich, full lives and annony will amount to, well, nothing.
#WeAreEstovir