Karl Marx believed that “Democracy is the road to socialism.” Socialists seem to have found a generation of dupes to buy their ahistorical, fanciful pitch. A new poll shows 43% now have a positive view of socialism. An astonishing 65% of Democrats have a positive view. Socialism is now the rage on the left.
Like clothing styles, if you wait long enough, socialism tends to come back into style with generations with no memory of past failures. However, it is an astonishing trend in one of the most prosperous nations on Earth that outlasted a history cluttered with the broken failures of socialist and communist systems.
A new slick packaging of socialism has emerged with leaders such as Zohran Mamdani offering to teach people of the “warmth of collectivism.” The Democratic Socialists of America are enticing voters with narratives like “Imagine the end of capitalism.” Those words promise voters that there is a brave new world without landlords, debt, mandatory work hours, and “food, education, energy, medicine, and transportation… are common goods and utilities.”
What is incredible is that many are buying this pitch.
It is also ironic that this is happening not just on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence but also on the 250th anniversary of the publication of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations.
As I write in Rage and the Republic:
“While he never visited the United States, his theories seemed quintessentially American to many of his generation. For a revolution that was triggered by tariffs and fueled by events like the Boston Tea Party, Smith’s general principles read like an economic version of Common Sense. It was a type of declaration of independence not just from the British policy of mercantilism (emphasizing British exports over imports) but from economic controls over individual productivity and self-determination….
In summary, Smith was first and foremost viewed as a political theorist, and his economic theories were closely tied to his views on the natural liberties of humanity. He saw capitalism as a liberating system for individuals to allow them the wealth and resources to pursue their own chosen paths. Conversely, he saw government controls and subsidies as forms of control and potentially forms of suppression of the human will. If people are to be truly free, they must have the resources to pursue that freedom. The government dole can become a type of servitude or at least a subterfuge for citizens. If they are dependent on the government, they are never truly free.”
The book compares many of these proposals to identical policies of the Jacobin movement in the French Revolution. Both the American and French revolutions arose during the same period, but one became the world’s oldest democracy while the other became the blood-soaked “The Reign of Terror.”
Notably, the Jacobins pushed for the same unicameral system that the socialists are now advocating as well as attacks on the wealthy.
The DSA is the direct descendant of the Jacobins in seeking to tear down moderating institutions and replace the president and justices with democratically elected figures by a Congress composed only of the House of Representatives.
As with the original Jacobins, those demanding these changes are not the working class but professors, pundits and young college-educated voters.
Pushing this analogy to a more menacing level, another poll shows that roughly 60 percent of Democrats now would support a military coup to remove President Donald Trump.
The return of socialism is like the reappearance of low-rise jeans. You are left mystified by anyone who believes that this is a worthy theory to emulate after consistent and catastrophic failures. Long forgotten is the disaster of the socialist government of François Mitterrand in France.
Most recently, Prime Minister Andy Burnham condemned the privatization policies of Margaret Thatcher: “The country surrendered control of the essentials — housing, water, energy, transport — and left people exposed to higher costs.” What he does not mention is that she followed the collapse of socialist policies under Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan in 1977–78 during the so-called “winter of discontent,” which I also discuss in the book.
Perhaps Marx was right after all: “History repeats itself, first as a tragedy, second as a farce.”
Jonathan Turley is the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
As Hannity would say, “UnBalieveAGable!”
Israel firsters need not be concerned. Regardless whoever or whatever is in charge in the United States, it’s true capital shall always and forever be Tel Aviv. The land of Perpetual War is always ready create out of thin air a reason for Americans to bleed blood and treasure for its israeli Homeland.
I say amen and amen.
True Dat, brudha!
So you’d like to see Israel disappear? Israel’s one country that repays America and then some with technology and intelligence. Try to rely on Jordan or Egypt and see how well that works.
Dr. Mengele had some great research results. All we expect from Israel is to give up their torture of Gaza and West Bank Palestinians.
Tell us what torture you are considering that occurred during an active war in which Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking 250 hostages. Hamas and citizens of Gaza raped women, including pregnant and dead women, and cut off body parts, etc. Yes, the Gazans used violence and torture.
Now, Mr. Uninformed, tell us what you are talking about.
Of course, Paletsine doesn’t exist. I’m sure wisdom has chased you, but you always seem to outrun it.
Yes Mr Jon Pollard repaid his theft of many secrets with insults to the land of his birth, didn’t he? and he gloats over a threat to use nuclear weapons in 1973 in a televised interview. Sick!.
Instead of admitting Hamas and Gazans committed atrocities and Israel defended itself, your argument shifts to one man, Jonathan Pollard, who doesn’t represent the nation of Israel. He is one man out of about 16 million Jews in the world today who lost about 6 million during the war due to animals like Hamas and you. I don’t agree with some things Jonathan Pollard might say, but I wouldn’t let your type, a cowardly antisemite who can’t even create an alias, push me around.
“Yes Mr Jon Pollard repaid his theft of many secrets with insults to the land of his birth, didn’t he?”
You are only partially right. He stole secrets, but not to hurt America. He didn’t insult America, but as an American, he felt he belonged in Israel, the place of his forefathers. The insult you are talking about was probably his calling America a five-star hotel. Compared to most of the world, it is, and that is not an insult, but a compliment. But he also said: “I have a lot of respect and appreciation for America. I’ve expressed remorse for my deeds. I never did and I never would do anything to harm the United States.”
“and he gloats over a threat to use nuclear weapons in 1973 in a televised interview. Sick!.”
Antisemites will look at the worst possible meaning as they distort what a person says. Nuclear weapons in 1973; the US used nuclear weapons in 1945 and today recognizes that Iran having nuclear weapons would likely mean a nuclear armageddon, but you are unhappy that the US destroyed its ability and fight America every day. You are the traitor.
Pollard was 18 in 1945, so it is doubtful he had those feelings at that time. He did make some comments later in life, but you are not the smartest crayon in the box, and you are a generic crayon at that. What was Pollard thinking? Didn’t he say, “It was for deterrence.” How can one blame him when, just ten years before his birth, half the Jewish population of the world was murdered over a short period of time, and not one great nation attempted to stop the killings? Your type of antisemite won’t be happy until all are dead, with maybe an exception of a few. After all, you think it was OK for the animals in Gaza to rape and murder Israeli women, whether dead or alive, pregnant or not.
“Sick!.
Yes, that is what you are. Your mind is sick and blind to the realities of the world. You rightfully support gays and women, yet the people you believe are right are precisely the people that will take your gays and throw them off the roofs of buildings, while essentially locking their women up without any freedom.
What a pile of crap.
He stole secrets, but not to hurt America???
Really? And who gets to decide whether it hurts America. Apparently Pollard and whoever he handed the secrets to gets to decide. How come loyal Americans don’t get a say in whether this theft of nuclear secrets hurt America. You seem to think that we loyal Americans should just stand back and say that what he did was no big deal.
And Pollard felt that as an American, he he belonged in Israel. If he belongs in Israel he is not an American.
You seem to think it is just fine and dandy when Jews steal our secrets, and then you have the audacity to say that people who object to the theft are antisemitic.
YOU ARE INSANE !!!!!
And Pollard is a traitorous scumbag.
Yes, Pollard was guilty of spying and paid the price. He deserved it, but he didn’t intend to harm America. The secrets he disclosed to Israel had to do with the armaments Israel’s Arab enemies were getting from the US, Russia, and elsewhere. He did not steal U.S. nuclear-weapons secrets, and we know of no direct harm to America.
You demonstrate your antisemitism by your double standard. Read your sentence. You can’t accuse me of that in this case because I agree he was guilty. We agree that Pollard sold secrets and agree that jailing him was correct. I just wish you were as careful with China, the MB, and elected officials. On that matter, you are concerned about who is an American. I wish you were equally concerned with birthright citizenship and immigration.
So you are going to double down on this insane notion that spying and selling America’s secrets is not a really a big deal as long as there was no harm done to America. You seem to think that Pollard only handed over secrets to Israel about “the armaments Israel’s Arab enemies were getting from the US, Russia, and elsewhere”.
THAT IS ABSOLUTELY FALSE.
You are either deliberately lying or you are completely ignorant of the facts and simply making stuff in an attempt to defend Israel.
Here are the facts:
He handed over technical specifications of America’s most highly classified spy satellites.
He handed over the RAISIN manual which is an ultra-secret manual that describes the characteristics of every known electronic signal, what they mean, and how the US was able to identify, monitor and interfere with enemy signals.
And you falsely claim that Pollard only gave this information to Israel. The investigation and evidence at his trial documented that he passed information to Pakistan, South Africa, Australia, Argentina and Taiwan.
In addition, he gave material to his wife who ran a public relations business. They kept the material at home and regularly showed it to potential clients.
There is also evidence that Israel handed over material to the Soviet Union in exchange for allowing more Jews to leave.
But the greatest, and irreparable damage to America was actually the fact that the human sources used to gather intelligence were revealed. When an adversary looks at the raw intelligence it is often possible to reverse engineer how that intelligence was gathered. In Pollard’s case they didn’t have to do much reverse engineering. The material he handed over actually identified thousands of people who had provided information to US intelligence. This effectively burned those networks as a source of further intelligence.
Pollard’s activities are regarded perhaps the most damaging breach of US secrets in history, not only as to the content of the intelligence, but the people and methods used to gather it.
There is absolutely no doubt that Pollard caused irreparable harm to America.
And you continue to think that it is no big deal, and that anyone who objects to this characterization must be antisemitic.
YOU ARE COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY INSANE !!!!!!!
And your defense of Pollard places you in the same category of worthless, traitorous scumbags.
You are very loose with the facts. You are even loose with your accusation that I believe “spying and selling America’s secrets is not a really a big deal”
Did I not say I agreed Pollard deserved his conviction? Have I said anything that indicated I approved of his actions?
You are emotional, and the Pollard case is a politically charged issue where we simply do not have all the facts and can only use words like may have compromised, my views and my opinion. From various opinions, you have constructed a detailed list of actions by Pollard that may or may not be true. You cannot turn ‘may have’ or ‘could have’ into ‘did ‘.
Lots of questions have been raised, and we find that the secretary and undersecretary involved with the matter disagreed a lot.
You have to prove each point with a fact, but that is not necessary. We both agree he was guilty, and I don’t wish to separate your truths from your fiction.
Just look at your previous statements in this thread. A lot of misplaced love and hate, along with a lot of false facts.
You can keep raving and show your dislike for Israel all you want, as you did in your prior statements, but what does that matter to your stated grievance against my not becoming hysterical and going off the wall? Nothing. I agree that his punishment was deserved. I don’t see how this type of discussion can make things better. He admitted guilt, and they didn’t want certain secrets out. Period.
I couldn’t care less if Israel exists or doesn’t exist
One of Israel’s biggest financial supporters is dual citizen sharon adelson who gave Trump a quarter billion dollars to get reelected. Only Israel first types deny that Trump’s iran war is simple payback to Trump’s israeli pay masters.
Israel first types are the only ones enjoying the all-time highest fuel and diesel prices and all the misery that accompanies it.
One can quickly note at least half a dozen major factual errors that you can look up yourself, and along with that, you need a rudimentary education to understand that correlation is not causation. We also see signs of antisemitism throughout the entire statement, especially in your ill-educated use of language like “Israel first types” and your first sentence, “I couldn’t care less if Israel exists or doesn’t exist” which is a lie proven by the way you attack Israel and its supporters here and elsewhere. It’s a lie. You obsess about Israel; it’s all over your mind in your rant and so many others. Your antisemitism is so powerful you don’t even care if you got your facts right.
So you root for barbarians. The BBC just exposed how Arabs buy and sell maids online. Using an app that’s in both the Google and Apple app-stores. Then there is what they do to gays and women, which is also barbaric. And of course, Israel is the only country where you can be openly gay or trans and not have to worried about being jailed, executed or just thrown off the nearest building.
People like you think you’re moral. You’re just racist garbage.
Sure thing, IslamoCommuNazi. Thanks for the IslamoCommuNazi comment. It was deeply inspirational. We don’t hear nerarly enough from the IslamoCommuNazi community.
Local, state and federal task forces have been practicing covert blacklisting torture for over 25 years now.
The Judicial Branch refuses to do their judicial review duty for 25+ years.
The U.S. Constitution has been totally meaningless for the entire 21st Century. Maybe that’s more important than partisan electioneering?
Shouldn’t this torture program of native born citizens – many with no criminal records and no confrontation – be Turley’s #1 priority?
Ni, it shouldn’t.
If it is covert then you don’t know about it. Therefore it’s obvious you’re making shit up.
More proof of the systemic failure of the USA educational system.
Like I really believe a poll that queried 1200 people out of 330 million as being legitimate.
“Polls” are nonsense. They are more algorithm than poll. Almost no one answers their phone when they don’t recognize the number. Almost no one responds to text messages asking them to fill out a brief survey. The few who do are then used to extrapolate to the general population. Tweak a few variables in that extrapolation, and the number could be 25% or 75%.
Arguing about polls with 5% response rates is stupid. Lonely cat ladies are not representative of the general population.
“The Socialist Chic: Almost Half of Americans Now Hold Positive Views of Socialism”
Proof half of Americans are either ignorant, stupid or both.
Socialism/Communism has a history. A history of poverty, repression, labor camps and political executions. All you have to do is read about that to enlighten yourself.
Yet half of Americans are to ignorant, stupid or lazy to do that.
But this time it’s different. That’s the new mantra.
“Proof half of Americans are either ignorant, stupid or both.” So you’re one if the “half”. Because you sure do sound stupid and ignorant. Gotta give those MAGAots credit for knowing their own deficits.
Define a woman then Mr. Rocket Scientist.
Nothing saddens me more than the indoctrination of the college students, their professors and elitists that look down their noses to the plebes while assuaging their elitist guilt. It’s being pushed by the elites but the gullible are starting to latch onto this dangerous “utopian” road painted with fake flowers. Socialism is now romanticized to be this “us vs them” uprising of people who THINK they have an egalitarian conscience.
Socialism is nothing more than a fig leaf for communism. Tender all of our choices and hard work to the government? The nanny state will take care of us? It always devolves into totalitarianism. Hence the Venezuelas of our world. One of my clients who was originally from Poland, came to the States in the ’70’s and became an American citizen. I asked her, “What makes you love America?”. Her answer: ” I love the “can-do” spirit of Americans!” I ask, when the Berlin Wall fell which way were people moving? Those who follow this DSA road are nothing but gullible suckers. I truly feel sorry for them, but I also fear them. The road to socialism is Gad Saad’s coined saying “Suicidal Empathy”.
If this movement doesn’t go the way of the Tea Party and gains momentum, our country is doomed to become like the malcontent French: A sclerotic shell of a once proud country. I know what I’m talking about: I was born in France, love the country, am happy to visit my relatives, but am a proud and grateful American citizen.
One of my clients was originally from Poland, came to the States in the ’70’s and became an American citizen. I asked her, “What makes you love America?”. Her answer: ” I love the
“can-do” spirit of Americans!” That “can-do” spirit will tragically dwindle to a vague memory if we continue down this socialist road.
Turley: “Socialism is now the rage on the left.”
That probably is why they want to pack the Supreme Court until it looks and sounds like The View.
Of course, nearly the majority of the dupes, dopes, and dummies are compelled to love communism, socialism, and islamism. They’ve been programmed by the public schools and the colleges and universities which are today 99% run by Far-Leftist scoundrels. They are now mostly Leftist Indoctrination Entities (aka “LIEs”). The LIEs have programmed the youth of America to crave communism, socialism, and islamism. The LIE assemply lines continue to chrurn out new dupes, dopes, and dummies. In time, they will be the majority of the people in America. “Bad money drives out good,” as the saying goes.
AfrObongo: “Old men clinging to power.”
American Reality: Americans taking back their country from illegal alien invaders.
Perhaps Marx was right after all: “History repeats itself, first as a tragedy, second as a farce.
Many of us have familes, loved ones, careers, and purpose in life. Those on the Left have none of these. They are infertile, empty, lack personal drive and are envious of others who succeded where they failed for lack of effort and self-respect. In the end socialism is a contempt for the self, hoisting onto another personal responsibility.
Over the past hundred years, there have been more than two dozen attempts to build a socialist society. It has been tried in the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Albania, Poland, Vietnam, Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia, North Korea, Hungary, China, East Germany, Cuba, Tanzania, Benin, Laos, Algeria, South Yemen, Somalia, the Congo, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Mozambique, Angola, Nicaragua and Venezuela, among others. All of these attempts have ended in varying degrees of failure. How can an idea, which has failed so many times, in so many different variants and so many radically different settings, still be so popular? It is because socialists have successfully managed to distance themselves from those examples.
Just as ironically, the enthusiasm of Western intellectuals for China began to fade when the most murderous period was over… Western intellectuals had lavishly heaped praise on China when millions of Chinese people were starving or worked to death in forced labour camps. But when a programme of relative liberalisation lifted millions of people out of poverty, those intellectuals were conspicuous by their silence. Market-based reform programmes, no matter how successful, will never inspire pilgrimages.
from:
Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies
https://www.amazon.com/Socialism-Failed-Idea-That-Never/dp/0255367708/
But what experience and history teach is this, – that peoples and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.
– Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, “Lectures on the Philosophy of History”
“It is because socialists have successfully managed to distance themselves from those examples.”
They achieved that distancing by using, among others, this anti-intellectual tactic:
Socialism is good in theory. But in the past, it was implemented by bad people. This time, we have better people.
This time will be different. No it won’t.
How do you know? Ever lived a socialist country?
Socialism is good in theory. But in the past, it was implemented by bad people. This time, we have better people.
Son of Fulgencio Batista responds:
Roberto Batista: In my eyes, my father’s government had two stages: from 1952 to 1954, after the coup, he was a dictator with absolute power. However, in 1954 they elected him president, and although it is true that the opposition did not participate in the elections, there were senators and representatives of the opposition in the Cuban Chambers, and he reestablished the Constitution of 1940 with all the necessary guarantees. That is acknowledged. It was in this very fruitful period that he launched Cuba into its greatest known prosperity.
###
Estovir: Capitalism launched Cuba into the legendary Latin American country for which it is remembered prior to Fidel Castro destroying it.
###
Yaiza Santos: You do not shy away from controversy. For example, regarding Batista’s alleged corruption, you concede: “Did he abuse power so much, embezzle public money? Corrupt, tyrant? My son’s heart makes me think that, at home, he was a great father, understanding, home-loving and very tender. However, his inner strength could have played a trick on him and he perhaps went beyond the limits of what was constitutionally allowed.”
Roberto Batista: My father was a born entrepreneur, a man of great inner strength, and this led him to commit that coup. Sometimes the boundaries were crossed, but it must be taken into account that, in that Cuba, there were very disturbing elements, sabotage in the cities, attacks, an opposition that continuously advocated against the Government, so a completely desperate public order was created. In a Cuba that had practically already entered a civil war, outrages were committed on both sides. But it was never true, as Bohemia magazine went on to say and later denied, that my father had caused 20,000 deaths. Between one side and the other, no more than a thousand deaths were caused, and that too is proven.
Yaiza Santos: Why is communism still being respected?
Roberto Batista: That is believed by fools. After seeing the horror of Cuba, 62 years of a totalitarian, repressive and cruel dictatorship, plus Maduro’s Bolivarian Bolsheviks, who can believe that communism can be something beneficial for a country, since the only thing it brings is misery and lack of respect for others? As much as they camouflage things, at the moment of truth they are regimes called to the most absolute failure.
April 30, 2021
https://translatingcuba.com/my-fathers-two-great-mistakes-the-1952-coup-detat-and-freeing-fidel-castro-in-1956/
Democrats have engendered within Americans a contempt for each other, a disrespect for life itself.
Estovir,
“They are infertile, empty, lack personal drive and are envious of others who succeded where they failed for lack of effort and self-respect.”
That is the part that I think is their lack of some kind of drive, ambition, meaning in their empty life. Rather, they want someone else to do the work for them, to include thinking, then do it themselves. I cannot imagine living a life in which someone else is in control.