Does Bernie's Democratic Socialism Exist and What Is It?

Democrats love to invent euphemisms that do not accurately describe the terms and the agenda behind the words. Such a term is Democratic Socialism. Bernie Sanders and all his followers promote very loudly Democratic Socialism. Do they know what it is?

All countries that were ruled by the Communist Party were Socialist Democrat Republics but, there was nothing Democratic about them, they were socialist countries where the authoritarian government owned the means of production by force and controlled everything else.

Such governments proclaimed the existence of a scientific socialism, but the country was run poorly by a handful of top Communist Party apparatchiks with their paid henchmen. People did not elect them; they were forced to accept their existence and tyranny at the end of a barrel of a gun or by voting fraud.

Bernie Sanders advocated the “kinder, gentler socialism like Denmark and Sweden” and millions of young Americans believed him, voted for him, and supported his “Democratic Socialism” platform.  

Denmark’s prime minister was unhappy because, although Denmark is a welfare state, they are not socialists. This welfare state is paid for by the entire population in the form of 25 percent sales taxes and income taxes of 60 percent starting at an income of $60,000 per year. The rich people in Scandinavia pay way less taxes than the rich in America. Bernie’s mantra that the rich must pay more to pay for his socialist paradise is ridiculous.

Sen. Rand Paul said that Scandinavian corporations have been paying on average 15 percent less in taxes than the corporations in America in the last twenty years. Just recently U.S. corporate taxes have been lowered to the level of Scandinavian countries.

The Prime Minister said, “Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy.” Scandinavian countries have private property, stock exchanges, and free markets. Calling Scandinavian countries socialist is bad for their business. Their economic freedom indexes are great, i.e., Denmark (10), Iceland (11), Netherlands (16), and Finland (17). I do not recall the former Soviet satellite countries run by dictators having any freedoms at all and the workers did not own any means of production or private property.

Does Democratic Socialism exist? Dinesh D’Souza wrote about Indian socialism which adopted Fabian socialism from England when India became independent in 1947. He wrote, “I grew up under Indian socialism – which I remind you was democratic socialism – and experienced its signature institutions.” D’Souza enumerated such signature institutions: everyday corruption (paying petty bureaucrats a bribe under the table), the ration card (how much sugar and cooking oil a family was allowed to purchase each month), and the seven-year waiting period to get a phone. (Dinesh D’Souza, United States of Socialism, 2020, p. 5)

D’Souza argues correctly that socialism fell because of its economic failures. He cites as examples North Korea vs. South Korea and East Germany vs. West Germany. When East Germany (socialist republic) reunited with West Germany (capitalist federal republic), East Germany had one third of West Germany’s GDP (gross domestic product). South Korea is 20 times richer than North Korea. (United States of Socialism, pp. 4-5)

Mao’s socialism was implemented through fear, deprivation, starvation, and tyranny and Soviet satellite states followed the same playbook to implement their socialism. His Communist Red Guard purged all dissidents. The dissidents were those who spoke loudly against the forced socialism. Vaclav Havel wrote a collective book on dissent, The Power of the Powerless, to point out the marginalized citizens called dissidents.

If so many millions of marginalized citizens, some famous, have escaped socialism and established in capitalism, why are Americans clamoring for socialism, for misery, deprivation, tears, and fear? They do not understand what socialism is. Schools spend little time studying socialism and communism.

Following the example of Mao and other socialist dictators, socialist governments nationalized all factories and confiscated private lands. The bourgeoisie (tradesmen, businessmen) were targeted and their properties were seized.

Mao wrote that he wanted to “destroy the property-owning class by killing at least one landlord in every village via public execution.” A cousin in our family was sent to prison for seven years for owning a nice home. A friend spent seventeen years in a lead mine because he owned a hotel in a mountain resort. Both lived to tell their prison-time stories. One eventually escaped to freedom in the U.S. The other died under socialist oppression.

Socialism is the steppingstone to communism when you won’t own anything, but you will be happy about it and your needs will be met by a benevolent government each day if you obey and behave appropriately. “From each according to his ability; to each according to his needs” is the guiding principle of a communist, classless society.

In The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friederich Engels wrote, “There are, besides, eternal truths such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience. (Simon & Schuster, Inc.,1964, p. 92)  

Marx and Engels’ fundamental changes proposed in the Communist Manifesto were adopted in every socialist republic that were Soviet satellites in the 20^th century:

1.      Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.  

2.      A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

3.      Abolition of all rights of inheritance.

4.      Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

5.      Centralization of credit in the hands of the state by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.

6.      Centralization of the means of communications and transport in the hands of the state.

7.      Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state.

8.      Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

9.      Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.

Free education for all children in public schools.

(quotes from Simon & Schuster, Communist Manifesto, 1964, p. 94)

To all Americans who clamor for socialism, remember that your current capitalist way of life will become a distant memory once you adopt socialism. Diana Gabaldon wrote a non-political but fitting metaphor on cherished memories and possessions. “Things you cherish and hold dear are like pearls on a string – cut the knot, they scatter across the floor, rolling into dark corners, never to be found again. So, you move on and eventually forget what the pearls even looked like.”

Once you adopt socialism, you are forced to forget your former life and to accept the new reality of socialism, forgetting what capitalist freedoms looked like.

 

                             

  

Birth Rates in Western Civilization

It seems that Western civilization is breeding itself out of existence by not having enough babies to replace the people who are dying of old age or disease. Birth rates have plummeted across the globe, in many countries across Europe and in the U.S.

Niger has the highest birth rate in the world with 44.5 babies born per 1,000 people per year. United Nations and the World Bank rank countries in a different order. Central Africa appears to be the fastest-growing population region globally. Birth Rate by Country 2026

Vatican City has 4.63 births per 1,000 people per year. The next lowest are Hong Kong (5.43 births), South Korea (5.62), Ukraine (5.75), San Marino (5.92), and Japan (6.65).

There are many reasons why women choose not to have children: a slow economy, dearth of jobs, the costs of raising a child, people choosing to further their careers over a family, older average ages for first-time moms, and the desire to travel and sow one’s wild oats while they are still young.

Governments have given incentives to couples to marry in many forms, i.e. down payment on homes, free childcare, starting motherhood financial packages, baby bonds, free maternity care, free hospital care, and tax deductions per child.

Other countries face overpopulation with problems such as overcrowding, poverty, and overwhelmed health care, low life expectancy, and low education levels.  In such cases the government may pass laws to forbid having more than one child or give incentives to couples to have less children.

Because we have free or inexpensive contraception in western societies and “planned parenthood” which engages in abortions, the replacement population rate is quite low.

The population replacement level is 2.1 children per family. U.S., U.K., and France have a replacement level of 1.5-1.6 babies per family, below replacement value. Perhaps with all the illegals who come here for birth tourism, the birth rate may be slightly higher than the 1.5-1.6 replacement value. Chad and Somalia have the highest replacement value of 5.9 children per family. Which countries have fertility rates above or below the “replacement level”? | Our World in Data

People have more babies in countries where the mortality rate is high, or agriculture is a principal industry. Planning a family there rarely involves any contraception and religious beliefs play an important role as well.

The earliest known document on contraception was found on an Egyptian papyrus from 1850 B.C. which described a concoction made of crocodile dung inserted into the vagina. Strangely, sometimes it worked. The function of the sperm was not discovered until 17th century A.D. Other birth control methods included sticky suppositories made of various strange substances, elephant dung, Egyptian recommendations on a papyrus to drink potions, irrigation with drugs, douching with wine and garlic, and even instructions how to bring about abortions.

Besides the added cost of feeding another mouth when resources were scarce, a papyrus revealed that Egyptian women were worried about the physical results of having multiple pregnancies. The Greeks even used olive oil as a form of contraception by reducing motility of the sperm. The Ebers papyrus from the 16^th century B.C. advised women to use acacia extract and honey as contraception. Interestingly, the mixture contains lactic acid which is considered today a conception-inhibitor.

The Greeks and the Classical Age were in favor of population control via various methods.

Plato and Aristotle “advocated limiting the size of families by contraception, abortion, and unwanted infants’ exposure.” 

Hippocrates, the 5^th century B.C. father of Greek medicine, invented an intra-uterine device composed of a lead tube filled with mutton fat, partially introduced via the cervix into the uterus. The foreign body, IUD, prevented pregnancies.

In antiquity both Greeks and Romans desired to control the size of their families. In the 2^nd century A.D., Actios, a gynecologist of Amida (now modern Turkey) proposed the use of washing the male’s member with brine or vinegar, both highly spermicidal.

Believers of the Old and New Testament, ancient Hebrews and early Christians, believed that it was their religious duty to propagate the human species and intercourse was reserved for such duty.

It was not until 1843 that the cellular union of egg and sperm was understood. Surprisingly the ancient, without the benefit of a microscope used methods and “devices” to control the size of their families.

There are many fascinating theories of the ancients and tribal peoples as to how humans are formed. The Hindus blamed the ibis; the Japanese the butterfly and the crane; American Indians the red spoonbill; ancient Teutonic tribes blamed the stork, hence the fairy tale that the stork delivers the babies; Trobriand Islanders believed that children came from the spirit world; Papua and New Guinea believed the eels impregnated women. To avoid pregnancy women had to stay away from such creatures. Some women even wore charms to protect them from unwanted pregnancies and problems in childbirth.

We must remember that civilization is made strong by its people. With a dwindling population, countries become weak and open targets to invasions by others. Rome was sacked by the Visigoths in 410 A.D. because the Visigoths wanted what the Romans had, they did not want to become Romans at all. King Alaric captured and plundered the city. The world was in shock. Rome never recovered; the western empire fell in 476 A.D.

 

 

 

 

 

  

A Memorable Trip to Bulgaria

My parents were wonderful and did the best they could to give me a happy childhood despite the oppressing life surrounding us. They were part of the hard-working, blue-collar proletariat. Not that it would have made that much of a difference had they been college graduates unless they were communist party members. All were paid poorly and had the same living conditions.

Doctors, nurses, lab techs, and other medical professionals could be bribed with “walking-around money” to do their jobs faster and with more interest, otherwise it was the same mantra, “we pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.”  They were the communist regime.

Despite what people thought, not all citizens were communist party members, only a small percentage were allowed inside the “rarefied” world of the Bolsheviks.  You had to have a perfect dossier – poor people who never owned anything, envious losers with a talent for worthless gab of lying and deceiving people, or a criminal who did not mind selling his/her parents out for a dime.

One thing my parents could not give me was vacations because they’ve never been on a vacation themselves. It was way beyond their financial means. The communist party members’ kids always got free vacations in the summer at the Black Sea and skiing in Sinaia, on the then famous international ski slope, free housing, free food, and free travel there.

The rest of us stayed home in summertime or worked and read books, trying to imagine what it would be like to enjoy the Black Sea. Lucky for me, mom’s oldest brother lived on the Black Sea shore, and I got to stay a few times in his family’s apartment. My parents had to come up with the train ticket and a few dollars for the bus and an occasional bottle of “suc,” a type of soda. We had no idea then that Pepsi and Coke existed. That was the extent of my traveling in and out of the country.

Back in the spring1977 we had a horrible earthquake which killed and traumatized many people especially in Bucharest. I was a student at that time and every morning I had to walk past the many collapsed buildings to get to class. It was traumatizing us every day on the way to the university.

My parents decided to take some cash out of their meager savings to send me on a class trip to Sophia, Bulgaria. The bus ride was cheap, and we bought our own food. We did not need a passport nor a visa to travel there – they were communists just like us, but their country had a more humane leader, and the regime was what I called “communism light.” Our communism was on steroids thanks to Ceausescu who pushed us into maximum poverty while they lived in the lap of luxury and excesses.

Bulgaria was beautiful and we marveled at the many well-stocked, located below ground restaurants. My guess was that it must have been their way of keeping peace and quiet in the streets at night. Both Romania and Bulgaria were Soviet satellite countries, but Bulgaria had a milder form of communist dictatorship. Bulgarians had better food, their stores were supplied with all necessities, and so were their pharmacies. I realized then how much harder our lives were in Romania with its empty grocery stores and pharmacies.

The most lugubrious part of our short stay in Bulgaria was the ceremonial tomb of Georgi Dimitrov on Prince Alexander of Battenberg Square in Sofia. His embalmed body was on display in the same manner as Lenin’s body is preserved to this day.  Motionless guards in uniform were flanking the entrance.

Built in six days in 1949, the marble mausoleum contained the embalmed body of Georgi Dimitrov, the first leader of Communist Bulgaria. When the second communist leader, Vasil Kolarov, died in 1950, he was buried in the second niche of the east wall. The tomb was destroyed in 1999 by Ivan Kostov’s government, following a contentious public debate. Why would they desecrate a tomb and destroy what was part of their history? It was an effort of the post-communist era to erase as much of communism as possible. The prime minister felt that it was inappropriate to keep since communism “fell” in 1989. Did it really fall? Of course not, it was reorganized under the umbrella of globalism.

The demolition started in August 21, 1999, and, after three failed attempts, the building finally collapsed on the fourth blasting on August 27, 1999.

The mausoleum was completed in such a short period, enough time for Dimitrov’s body to be brought to Sofia from the USSR. In August 1990, Dimitrov’s remains were cremated and the ashes buried in Central Sofia Cemetery.

When I returned home, I narrated in detail this awful part of our visit to my dad, and he exclaimed, “You just cannot easily escape communism, it is like a plague. Even in death the tyrants are mummified and placed in marble palaces while the rest of us freeze and starve.”

A Toddler's Memories of Grandpa's Life Under Communism

My daughter remembers to this day sharp details of her visit to a communist country when she was four and a half years old. Grandpa was so excited to see her for the first time.

Bewildered after 23-hour long flights from Atlanta to New York, to London and to Bucharest, she arrived frazzled, tired, hungry, and thirsty in the Otopeni Airport of 1985 at the height of the brutal communist regime.

She remembers the heavily armed security police at the airport, the long passport lines and the family gathering waiting for us outside of arrivals where the doors were guarded by police with weapons shouting at everybody to stay in line and at her for barely stepping out of the waiting line while holding my hand.

My daddy was overwhelmed and cried tears of happiness while my daughter was shy and scared and hid from everybody at first. After the one-hour ride to my hometown, we all arrived at daddy’s tiny Soviet era apartment which filled quickly with more relatives. There was no food in the pantry, so we had to ride in my cousin’s ratty Dacia car to Maita’s village where all the aunts and cousins had prepared food for all of us. Everything looked foreign to Eileen, but she remembers the fried chicken and fries floating in grease which she liked.

To deal with her fear of the unknown, Eileen listened to Michael Jackson’s cassette tape on her Walkman until the batteries died. Grandpa could not stand seeing his granddaughter weep, so he left with one of my cousins, daddy’s chess player partner, and they searched all day until they found Romanian batteries on the black market. They lasted two hours of play and the acid leaked into the Walkman and ruined it. Eileen was so upset and still remembers the incident as music was her passion. She loved Michael Jackson and his album Thriller.

To take her mind off her ruined Walkman, grandpa and cousin Mircea took us to Lake Snagov where Eileen swam with grandpa in a wooden box pool built on top of the lake's lily pad root system. It was built so because the lake was so choked with roots and other vegetation, some swimmers had become tangled in them and drowned.

The next day, we took a bus downtown and sat by the water fountain in front of the City Hall. It was late spring, hot, and the water was inviting. Eileen jumped into the fountain fully dressed to cool off just like children do in the U.S. It was a mistake that I quickly rectified but it was too late. A group of men dressed in dark suits appeared out of nowhere threatening to arrest us all if I did not control my child. They even threatened her with arrest! The sad part was that she spoke Romanian fluently, but she had no idea what those mean men were talking about. Puscarie (jail) was not a word we taught her at all.

Going to meet my mamaia (grandma) at the farm was fun for my daughter because she liked her great-grandma and played at the water pump in the yard with all the animals underfoot and the clucking hens. Like mother, like daughter, we both love animals.

I took her to the creek in the middle of the village where I used to play as a child and catch fish, frogs, and leeches. She walked right in, fully dressed and started to play in the water. It was not deep but still teeming with life.

That creek is no longer there today - it had been diverted around the village because the local Communist Party decided that it was too expensive to build a solid bridge over the creek to eventually asphalt the road crossing it.

Eileen remembers the daily drive for six weeks to the Communist Party resort retreat, passing by village after village, with homes flanking the highway, thirty miles away where, as a U.S. citizen, I could buy food for three adults and one child in U.S. dollars. I did not want daddy to spend all his time daily for six weeks standing in line just to provide us with food instead of visiting and enjoying each other’s company.

We took Eileen to the church where her dad and I got married seven years before and the marriage house where we received official marriage licenses from the Communist Party. They did not sanction just the church wedding; we had to do an official bureaucratic ceremony as well. She played in the beautiful yard and picked a few wildflowers. Decades after communism fell, that beautiful building was in terrible need of restoration, surrounded by a garden overcome by weeds and wildflowers.

St. John’s Orthodox Cathedral, on the other hand, had been restored to its original splendor and six thousand other churches had been built around the country since the “fall of communism.” (It did not really fall, it transformed into globalism, a new form of communism.) The new churches angered the hard-core communists who supported the vile police state. They wanted to build more communist schools with the money, not churches. 

It amazes me to this day, four decades later, how many random details my daughter still remembers from our trip to Romania during communism:

1. She missed her Disney cartoons and Barbie dolls.

2. She was hot everywhere. 

3. People were sad and smelled bad.

4. Roads were bumpy and rough.

5. Everything was colored brown.

6. People never smiled.

7. She was scared of men in uniforms with guns who yelled at people.

8. Apartments were so small.

9. She was scared to swim in the very dark Black Sea.

10. She loved playing in Lake Snagov.

        

-  

-                       

-            

-            

-            

-           

S

=

 

 

Taking Things for Granted Is Part of Life

How many things and people do we take for granted in life? And once they are gone, we miss them dearly and wish that we could go back in time to develop a larger appreciation for what we missed. But days continue to roll carefully and neatly into the ball of time, never to unravel again.

While rioting against the capitalist system, young people want to destroy the society which gives all of us necessities like clean water, plenty of good and affordable food, and shelter. They burn and loot the neighborhoods of poor people, often destroying their ability to feed and shelter their families. Electricity, heating, and hot water are things that these rioters take for granted and do not think about the consequences of having to survive without them.

People take for granted the ability to walk, to run, to swim, to exercise, to breathe without oxygen or medication. They are gifts that we never appreciate enough. Nor do we appreciate good health until it’s strained or endangered.

We take for granted friends, families, and loved ones. We have less time to spend with them and, when their support and companionship are gone, we realize how much we have lost because we were too busy to make time. We take for granted daily comforts and the small joys of life as if they will exist forever.

We never appreciate the freedom to make choices, to pursue an education, to travel, to have a job because we do not know how other people in the world live or whether they have the simplest joy of drinking clean water and having a place to sleep without the danger of being robbed by humans or attacked by wild animals.

We take for granted that our environment is safe and, when natural disasters strike, we are saddened by fear and loss, by the sudden destruction of what we used to call safe. We realized at that moment that the threat of natural disasters was not part of our lives, but it existed, nevertheless.  People in Venezuela were struck by two back-to-back earthquakes, and their lives became a nightmare. They thought Mother Nature would always be placid.

A near miss on the road and a close brush with a dangerous animal in the ocean or in the wilderness leaves us with a reeling horror because we took our lives and safety for granted.

Simple pleasures like feeling the warmth of sunlight, hearing the chirping of birds in the woods, watching the cotton clouds move in the blue sky, having a cup of tea on the porch on a frosty morning are often ignored in the rush of life.

We take for granted the ability to shower, to stand without feeling vertigo, to dress comfortably in clean clothes folded nicely in a drawer, smelling like soap and the summer wind.

Taking things for granted is part of life but we should stop and reconsider before it’s too late.

 

 

America and Soccer Fans Are the Best

Soccer in America has not caught on or amassed a huge fan base comparable to the beloved American football and baseball even though officials claim that there are 136 million soccer fans in North America.

European fans of soccer’s World Cup and Federation International de Football Association (FIFA) changed how Americans view soccer and how Europeans and other foreign nationals view America.

For decades, the mainstream press in Europe and in America always portrayed America as a violent and horrible place to visit and Americans as bumbling, uncultured, uneducated, loud, and mean spirited. Not anymore!

The 2026 World Cup became the biggest free advertising platform for the beauty of America and its lovely people. FIFA estimates that the Men’s World Cup attracted an audience of 3.5 billion people from the estimated 3.5-5 billion fans globally in South America, Africa, Australia, the Middle East, and Europe.

The Scots, with their large army of fans in kilts and bag pipe players, and the Viking fans with their rowing chants became the biggest free advertisers for America on social media platforms.

The Scots emptied bars of beer in Boston and Miami. The cheering for their team was infectious. They were happy that their team made it to the World Cup after 28 years. Many fans spent their lives’ savings coming to America for this event and were quite happy about it as a once in a lifetime occasion.

The Orange Legion, made up of passionate Dutch supporters has brought the Orange Bus to every European Championship and every World Cup since 1970s, sending the bus by ship to reach their destinations.

The Orange Bus is the central point of the Dutch rallies and has traveled to South Africa, Brazil, and Qatar. It arrived in America in Galveston and then traveled north to Houston. The fan group is known for high-energy marches, 2.5 miles or longer, and synchronized dancing.

The Vikings fans with their orange bus and the Scots who traveled across America from Boston, following their teams, taught Americans how to be devoted, highly entertaining and synchronized fans.

Once the bagpipes left the Boston area, the song, No Scotland, No Party, became the siren call of other game locations.

What did the European fans find out about America?

American people smile to strangers, are fun, friendly, welcoming, and happy.

America is vast and beautiful with majestic landscapes and long roads.

American healthcare is the best they have ever encountered.

American food is delicious and as varied as its diverse population. Portions are much larger than European ones. Buffets are everywhere. Waffle House serves food at 2 a.m. Yeast rolls and bagels are delicious.

Buc-ee’s is the best and largest gas station they have ever seen and the stores and restrooms are immaculately clean.

Parking lots are plentiful and found adjacent to the places Americans go to shop and eat, not miles away from a venue.

Americans love their cars and drive miles and miles to their favorite restaurants and stores. I am one of those Americans who used to drive 67 miles to a favorite mall and restaurant in the south.

America is young when compared to senescent Europe, but it showcases many well-preserved historical places, museums, amazing parks like the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone, and natural wonders with archeological sites.

More Americans own homes than Europeans do and Airbnb houses brought many international fans together.

European fans enjoyed American life in general and American hospitality, including that of police officers.

Novelties like the Bass Pro Shops and the ice machines were on the list of things Europeans loved.  I am not sure how much hunting and fishing there is in Europe. But, if you ask for ice, you are eventually offered two cubes per glass with an irritated face. They believe drinking anything cold is not good for your health.

European fans happily discovered that air conditioning is present everywhere and people do not develop pneumonia or sore throats from A/C like Europeans believe. Unlike Europe where electricity is expensive on purpose “to save the planet,” Americans can afford to run their air conditioners and other appliances at the same time, without short-circuiting the entire block.

The moral of the story about all the free and positive advertising America received? Never trust the mainstream media! People with similar cultures have more in common than the talking heads are allowed to think and speak. Americans are a proud and friendly people who love sports and a good party.

 

 

 

  

Electricity Was a Luxury under Communist Rule

Today, when I enter a public building or store where the lighting is dim, I am immediately transported to the depressing life we lived under communist rule. The immediate reaction is to exit the building.

My entire childhood, grandma’s house, six miles from the biggest refinery in the south, was illuminated by an anemic oil lamp. Years later, their village finally got electricity.

A 40 W bulb was dangling from the ceiling, too weak and inefficient to even light up grandma’s small bedroom. Things and people inside looked yellow and sickly.

The six-mile road from the city to the village remained a gravel road until the communists were dethroned. The rickety bus we traveled on to see grandma had a large hole in the floorboard and fumes and dust billowed inside. There was no running water and no septic tank, just an outhouse. We pumped water from a well.

We did not complain because there was nobody to complain to, the Communist Party bureaucrats ran everything, with the greatest ineptitude. They provided sporadically our electricity, water, hot water, gas, steam heat, food, health care, and concrete apartment housing in which we were forced to live. Their rules and governance were neither efficient nor humane.

When I left in late 1970s, people were desperate to escape the life of misery they endured under the boot of the Communist Party’s socialist republic regime, but few were able to. I considered myself lucky to leave even though I left behind everything I loved, my parents, my family, and my friends.

When people thought that life could not get any harder, it did. The dictator decided in 1981 that Romanians should sacrifice more and live by the light of candles and oil lamps - electricity was cut off daily at sunset. If people had refrigerators, food inside spoiled. Elevators for high rise apartments (nine stories) stopped between floors when the power was cut off, and the unlucky riders were left stranded inside.

In 1981 Ceausescu’s regime also invented a new program called “rational illumination.” According to this irrational program, a two-bedroom apartment could only have one 40 W bulb. An energy snitch was assigned to each bloc entry to check apartments for violators. If the bulb was 60W, a fine was given on the spot. TVs could only run two hours a day. The programs were not great, but it was the interdiction that angered the population.

This forced rationing of energy intensified in 1984-1985. It was bad enough that people had to ration food, water, gas, hot water, steam for heat, and even space, but energy? While the people tripped in the dark, Romania, a major producer of oil and gas, was exporting energy elsewhere so the country could pay its debt to the west.

Without electricity life was even harder in wintertime. Heating with steam was minimal at best. People slept with their clothes on. Windows were covered with comforters to stop the frigid air from coming in. The room temperature was 45 Fahrenheit, and people had to wash with freezing water, dress in darkness, and travel to work on streets without lights. The regime touted on its national radio the “bright accomplishments of socialism.”

Ever the survivalists, people bought large bags of candles and built a reserve in their closets. Students studied by candlelight or oil lamps inherited from their grandmas.

The bizarre situation of living in a modern city in high-rise apartments with elevators that did not work and older people stuck in their apartments because they were unable to climb stairs daily, was best described by the coined phrase “blindman’s Sunday.”

The communist system was so irrational that people kept mostly in darkness could watch their dear leader, during the two hours of television allowed, dedicate energy from power plants and hydropower plants for export while Romanians stayed in darkness and their food spoiled in refrigerators in the heat of summer. In winter, window sills became their refrigerators but had to fight the clever crows.

Restaurants and cafeterias were permitted to have three items on the menu. It is unclear why there were only three since the atheists did not believe in the Trinity. Food portions were weighed in grams and people were assigned specific caloric daily values according to the exertion in their professions. Customers ate in semi-darkness.

It is hard to imagine electricity as a luxury good or service, but it was. We take electricity for granted in this country, cheap and easily available energy. Considering the massive development of energy-gobbling data centers, we should not.

As Romania has proven, electricity was a luxury which the police state gave and took away as it pleased. One communist dictator kept twenty-three million humans in darkness for years, with light from candles, while exporting their energy abroad.

The moral of the story is, stay away from socialism, communism, and any other ism that guarantees free everything because there is no such thing as free, someone has to pay for it. 

Remember that there is no such thing as democratic socialism, it’s a Democrat Party invention, but there is socialism. The goal of socialism is communism. Communists lie and never deliver on their empty promises. Communism never ends well when their reign of misery and poverty grips peoples’ lives.