How Can Bernie Sanders Happen in America?
A number of pundits have recently argued that younger voters, especially those under 30, are less inclined to be bothered when they hear the word “socialism,” since they have no firsthand memory of the Cold War.To some extent, this must be true. Those who weren’t alive during socialism’s cruelest catastrophes — or even its many banal failures — will be less put off by the idea. Then again, if a presidential candidate were praising the excellent public transportation system of the Third Reich or going on about the some alleged benefit to American slavery, they would rightly be chased from the public square forever even though the vast majority of voters have no firsthand knowledge of the Holocaust or slavery. Anti-Semitism and racism haven’t disappeared, and neither has Marx, sadly.“Fascism is remembered as a crime,” John Hayward correctly points out. “Communism is treated like a mistake.” I’d add that capitalism is judged by its few failures and socialism by its few success. Sanders will never praise the “literary literacy programs” of any non-tyranny. But if I’ve learned anything from Twitter — or perhaps, more accurately, if Twitter has solidified any of my existing suspicions— it’s that academia is teeming with hard-left apologists. There are plenty of fantastic historians out there, of course, but many of loudest academics, the ones media often relies on, are either apologists for socialism or socialists themselves.Most educated Americans have not only seen movies depicting the Holocaust, but they’ve seen the horrifying real-life pictures of that genocide. How many of Americans have looked at pictures of the Ukrainian famine? Or the Great Leap Forward? How many Americans have ever even heard of those events?Maoism was responsible for 50 million or more deaths, and Stalinism another 20 or 30 million, but I can’t think of a single important American novel or film depicting those holocausts. Offhand I can recall one American movie that seriously portrayed the inhumanity of collectivism — The Killing Fields, though one hopes there are at least some others I’ve forgotten. That movie is now 36 years old.No, Bernie isn’t Stalin. He claims to be a democratic socialist. I get it. But there’s an array of good reasons no one says, “Hey, let’s give democratic fascism a shot.” There are just as many good reasons not to normalize socialism. At their core, both ideologies are authoritarian. The only difference is that academics and our cultural stewards have whitewashed one of them.
Woman who fled a communist country fears for America's future if socialism prevails
Monalisa Foster didn’t know bananas were supposed to be yellow. The bananas she ate were green.It wasn’t her fault. She grew up in Nicolae Ceaușescu’s communist Romania, where food was scarce and people waited in line for rations. Now, especially with the presidential election coming up, Monalisa worries that the U.S. could be headed down the same path with socialism.She writes a story based on her childhood in the short story Pretending to Sleep. She’s seen and heard things in America that remind her of her childhood in a communist country. And she’s terrified.People who root for Bernie Sanders’ socialism think it’s “the kind of socialism that comes out of your dorm room bong where you sit around stoned thinking that somehow, magically, human nature is going to change and all of a sudden people are going to just give you stuff because you want it.”What they really want is called theft. “They think that socialism is what private charity is. It’s radically different because it’s one thing when I reach into my own pocket to make the world better. It’s quite another when I reach into somebody else’s.” It isn’t just taking care of everybody and having good feelings.There’s no such thing as a free lunch. “Free food means that somebody has to provide it. So now I’ve made a slave out of the farmer and the trucker and the butcher,” Monalisa says. “And free healthcare has made slaves out of the doctors and nurses and the people that make your medicine. Free education says you’ve made slaves out of the teachers. So every time you put free this or free that you are actually taking away somebody else’s freedom because nothing is free.”
The Democratic Cold War on Christianity Heating Up
The Culture Wars of the last 30 years are slowly evolving into a Silent Cold War with leftist Democrats openly engaging on every front Christians and Christian-leaning companies and organizations. Do not be misled: this is a clash between two worldviews: a Western, Judeo-Christian worldview and a Marxist, secular-humanist worldview. If you read the end of the book (the Bible), you will find out which side wins, but there will be a world of hurt and turmoil before we reach that point where the King establishes His earthly Kingdom.
One of the great unknowns in terms of the future electorate is the effect the Democrats’ increasingly radical anti-faith stance will have on its voting coalition.Black and Hispanic Democrats tend to be far more religious than the white Democrats who are driving the party’s agenda. Will this alliance hold as the party increasingly kowtows to vocal anti-Christian Marxists? Will these voters start to defect as Democrats intensify their open war on people of faith?These questions arose this week when the sad story emerged that Chick-fil-A would no longer support three mainstream Christian-based charities; the Salvation Army, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and the Paul Anderson Youth Home, all under the auspices that they are anti-LGBTQ.Like the Salvation Army, Chick-fil-A never expected to find itself on the frontline in Democrats open war against Christianity. But, they were there nonetheless, and surrendering ground against these enemies was a mistake. The only way liberals will back off the attacks against Chick-fil-A is if the company heartily endorses and celebrates the full LGBTQ agenda. In other words, they expect either the destruction or total surrender of their religious foes.They elevated their attacks far beyond the usual slanderous name calling, which is really what put Chick-fil-A on the defensive. The fast food chain was under assault in every Democratic-controlled area and institution in the country. Democratic mayors in many key cities, to include Boston, Chicago, San Antonio, Buffalo, and San Jose worked to either prevent the restaurant from opening in the city or at its airport, or planned to drive it out. No doubt, Democrat governors would be the next to take up the fight. That they were all trigged by a chicken restaurant shows the powerful counter-cultural force its very existence conveyed.Democrats can no longer hide their contempt and hatred towards those who “cling to religion” and believe that the Bible is God’s word and means what it says. That’s really the rub. Liberals hate the Bible and they know if they can force people to compromise on Biblical teaching, Christianity will lose its effectiveness as a countercultural force.