The Train Wreck of Democrat Socialism

“Communism was never conclusively destroyed, and it was never condemned in some kind of court.”   Vladimir Bukovsky

Without brakes, a train will eventually derail and cause an unimaginable disaster and suffering. Similarly, a free society like the United States which tolerates divergent opinions and groups, will be unable to stop the existence or the activism of communist organizations, groups, and individuals who rebrand themselves as Democrat Socialists who want to fundamentally change America from a constitutional republic to a socialist republic.

Socialist appears to be a much less threatening term than communist, and it is very appealing to half of the country who has slept soundly through American history classes or has been indoctrinated since the 1980s by Howard Zinn’s manufactured version of American history.

Socialism, Democratic Socialism, and Communism are incomprehensible terms and notions to most Americans because they did not study specific details about socialism or communism and how many millions have been killed by the Communists under the ruling of the Communist Party.

Democratic Socialism is a term invented by Democrats who love euphemisms and rebrand old and dangerous ideologies that would benefit their plans for total control of the population that would become dependent on them.

Most Americans adopt the exact words and phrases of the daily MSM broadcast and regurgitate them ad nauseam without really understanding what they are saying, and what they are asking for. Such blatant useful idiot ignorance inevitably leads to New Yorkers voting for a Muslim communist as their Democrat mayoral candidate.

A train that derails causes immediate reaction and alarm. But, once people vote for the pie in sky promises of socialism, communism, Democrat Socialism, the results take years before the oppression of what they voted for rears its ugly head. By then, the possibility of reversal is farfetched. It may take decades to reverse the damage. It is easy to vote for a communist, all you need is a ballot and a ballot box. But you need a revolution to reverse course and undo the damages caused by the Communist Party or the Democrat Party rule.

The Bolshevik activists of the Soviet Union, Germany, England, and America of the 20^th century had fanned across the world to indoctrinate poor farmers, factory workers, and all the useful idiots they found into the wonders and freedoms of the promised land of socialism. The Communist Party was going to give them anything free they desired. When the activists were met with pointed questions and resistance by the populace, those farmers and workers were beaten up and disappeared. It was indoctrination by force and by the promise of murderous violence.

Once the Communist Party was successful in eliminating several monarchies, the socialist republics that replaced those monarchies began to build walls, prisons, and gulags (forced labor camps) to keep their populations in, restricting most of their freedoms.

Sadly today, the new generations of indoctrinated Americans have not been taught about the major failures of Marxist economics and the murder of 100 million innocents at the altar of communism.

Vladimir Bukovsky wrote about the absurd theories of Marx and about his predictions that never came true. The numbers of the “proletariat” actually decreased significantly in the developed capitalist countries. Their living standards have increased and not fallen. Marx was wrong about “super-monopolization.”  Small producers have grown and still do. The “market economy” improved the “means of production.” Socialism destroyed their centralized economies. And who are the “proletarians” of today? Marx wrote about “the crises of over-production every ten years.” It never happened because supply and demand controlled that possibility.

The reality is that the socialist regime and their central planning under the guidance of the Communist Party have never been successful at anything except oppressing the masses, paying them the lowest wages possible, and making their lives a continuous misery for most of the twentieth century. They never supplied enough goods to keep their citizens well fed, happy, warm in winter, with a plentiful supply of water, medications, and other necessities for a decent life. The only ones who lived well were the Communist Party members, their apparatchiks, their informers, the standing army, and the security police.

Despite the constant semantics and euphemisms rebranding communism in a positive light by the Democrat Party and the left, we do not have a proletariat in America, nor workers, we have employees. And we are not a democracy; we are a Constitutional Republic. If we are smart enough, we can keep it, but if we keep following the Democrat Party’s direction, we might all be “Democratic Socialists,” whatever that means.

Final note from RevealedEye: 

"Accepting Socialism is basically admitting you can't compete in the real world. You are saying, 'I'm willing to give up my liberty, my religion, and my dreams as long as the state will take care of me.' Accepting Socialism is accepting failure."

 

Is Sweden the Beacon of Democratic Socialism?

Why are generations of young Americans enamored with socialism as a better alternative to capitalism when everything in their abundant and privileged lives comes from free market capitalism?

Socialism, the state’s ownership of the means of production, production planning, and distribution, has been repackaged by clever Marxists like Bernie Sanders and AOC under the name of Democratic Socialism, a term borrowed from Sweden to make socialism more attractive and palatable to Marxist useful idiots who do not understand much economics or history, even those with college degrees.

Young generations want to have what 10.29 million (2019) Swedish citizens have – a “robust” welfare for all without any labor effort on their part, they would stay at home and find themselves. What is the economic reality though behind free stuff? Taxpayers must foot the bill through heavier taxation.

Starting in the 1970s, for twenty years Sweden tried to maintain capitalism with a generous welfare state, a “bridging policy,” with disastrous unintended consequences – high inflation, “overheated real estate and financial markets, a negative real rate of interest” followed by a recession and high unemployment.

Lou Perez, a writer, actor, and producer, interviewed two Swedish officials, asking them about their mythical Democratic Socialism. Sweden today is Democratic but not Socialist, he was told. Johan Norberg, a libertarian economist from the Cato Institute, indicated that Sweden is a “capitalist economy based on free market and open trade with a fair among of government redistribution of the proceeds.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcX6BUZlEw4

Sweden experimented with socialism between 1970-1990. “It ended in a spectacular failure. Yet, all of you seem to remember only these 20 years,” said Norberg.  Prior to the experiment, Sweden was quite wealthy as a country due to its decades of competitive capitalist business models, low taxation, remaining neutral during WWII, and probably trading with both sides of the conflict.

The socialist experiment implemented many programs that transformed Sweden in the 1970s into one of “the most advanced welfare society that had ever existed.” Presided over by prime minister Olof Palme, the public sector’s share of GDP increased by 50 percent. The Swedish welfare state established a health insurance system, parents’ allowances for daycare for all, free abortion, free education for six years, five weeks paid vacation, retirement age lowered from 67 to 65, and generous pensions of two-thirds of the highest earning fifteen years of work.

This universal welfare society was a centrally planned economy run by the state which included economic policies, taxation, trade, monetary policy, and fiscal policy. The system in place was financed, owned, and run by the state. The state controlled pension funds and built one million housing units with state-guaranteed loans for a population of eight million. The bureaucracy to oversee all these state-controlled organizations was enormous.

According to Kjell Östberg, for 40 years Sweden was controlled by the social democratic party; it had more than one million members, dominating most of Sweden’s large cities.  The labor force was organized around the blue-collar workers’ union LO, to the tune of 90 percent of the workforce.

Social democrats influenced life from cradle to grave. They held 45-50 percent of the seats in Parliament. In their youth, half of the members of government had belonged to the blue-collar union LO.

Swedish citizens were shaped into equality, socially and economically, by the heavy influence, funding, and control of the state:

-          Young people met at youth associations and dances in People’s Parks, remarkably like the organization of the communist youth in the Soviet bloc

-          Citizens bought apartments in the cooperative housing association called HSB, not unlike the Soviet style

-          Swedes bought food at Konsum and gasoline at the cooperative OK gas stations

-          Workers were trade union members, corporate members of LO

-          Married men were active in the workers’ commune, just like Soviet life

-          Married women were members in the social-democratic women’s organization

-          Families watched movies at the People’s House, produced by studios owned by the workers’ movement,  definitely a déjà vu for those who lived under Soviet socialism

-          Swedes could join study circles facilitated by the Workers’ Educational Association

-          Citizens got their news from the party’s many newspapers

-          Children participated in activities organized by the Young Eagles

-          Retirees joined the PRO organization

-          People were buried by Fonus, the worker’s movement funeral home

-          Abortions were free and on demand

-          All children were enrolled in free public childcare

-          The parents’ insurance gave families seven months of leave from work with full pay from the state insurance ministry; mother and father had to decide how they split the seven months of leave

-          Education was “democratized” – nine years of primary education, high school, free teaching materials, free school meals, doubled child benefits payments given to all children up to the age of sixteen and then extended to high school, all universities were run by the state, tuition was free, and students received aid for living expenses (government grants and loans payable within 20 years)

-          Sick pay guaranteed employees 90 percent of their wages

-          Local health centers owned by the state charged 7 SEK ($1) per visit

-          Hospital care was paid by state health insurance

-          Pharmacies and parts of the medical industry were also controlled by the state

-          State communal housing companies built and owned the new units

-          Higher rents were subsidized by the state via a generous housing allowance

Was Sweden Headed Toward Socialism in the 1970s? (jacobinmag.com)

Politicians had established a government ownership of business. The size of the government doubled, its share of the GDP also doubled, taxes increased, and the state regulated everything. For twenty years of heavy socialism, 1970-1990, the wealth of Sweden declined. The experiment with Democratic Socialism failed because “the policies were perverse, unsustainable, and absurd,” wrote the Democrat Socialist Minister of Finance Kjell-Olof Feldt.

To begin the roll back of the socialist welfare state, the size of government was reduced, markets and industries were deregulated, and taxes were decreased; the economy began to flourish again.

Andreas Bergh, economist, stated that “around 1980, the marginal income tax was at its highest, around 90 percent.” Corporations refused to pay such high taxes and moved their income and businesses to other countries. The high tax rates resulted in high loss of tax revenue as corporations found new ways to plan for tax avoidance. Outsourcing and corporate tax evasion became the norm. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcX6BUZlEw4

Johan Norberg said that the Swedish tax system does not “squeeze the rich, it squeezes the poor” because they and the middle class do pay their taxes. They do not move their households to other countries, they do not have tax lawyers, and they do not have huge deductions.

According to Norberg, most income tax payments in Sweden come from payroll tax of 30 percent and local regional income tax also of 30 percent. Both these taxes are flat, not progressive. There are also excise taxes and VAT (ad valorem) tax of 25 percent.

Compare that to the two American payroll taxes, Social Security payroll tax of 12.4 percent and the Medicare payroll tax of 2.9 percent. Our state taxes vary but are much lower and sales taxes are, on the average, no higher than 10 percent. Our federal taxes combined with the state taxes are well below the 60 percent that Swedish citizen pay. We do have excise taxes that are included in the price of a product or service.

The self-identified American democrat socialists conveniently remember only the twenty-year period when Sweden was the most generous socialist welfare state on the planet. It did not go so well for them, and they eventually reversed course.

American democrat socialists want to emulate Sweden’s twenty years of incredible welfare. All blue states have extremely high tax rates and struggle to fund their generous welfare programs, usually taking from the productive and giving to the unproductive and illegal, and expecting to be bailed out by federal grant-in-aid and omnibus bills.

Bruce Bawer, a prolific bestselling author, wrote in 2020, “the fact remains that Swedes are, by nature, collectivist, statist, consensus-oriented, and anti-individualistic – scared to challenge received opinion and eager to join in ostracizing those who do.” Whitewashing the Swedish Nightmare - American Renaissance (amren.com)

 

Radical Democrat Socialism American Style

When the radical socialists in Congress and in the streets of America started giving more and more rhetorical and chanting time to Democratic Socialism, half of America were enchanted, and half of America laughed. Such a construct aimed at re-defining socialism the American way was not to be taken seriously but it was. Young Millennials, egged on by seasoned members of the Communist Party USA, were going to build a better America, a Democrat Socialist America, free of capitalism.

Their explanation was that all the former Communist Party tyrants who obliterated over 100 million of their own people and enslaved the rest for most of the twentieth century were bumbling idiots. These American socialist wannabes who did not understand economics, politics, or knew geography at all, were going to do it better and thus succeed.

Now the Democrat Socialist whippersnappers have the chance to build their American-style socialist “paradise” with the newly “elected” duo Biden/Harris. Eighty million Americans genuinely believed that an octogenarian with severe health issues and a 47-year lackluster career in Washington would be the best president for the United States. As Newsweek magazine wrote on its cover on February 16, 2009, “We are all socialists now.”

If you ask most of the resident supporters of socialism, what is democratic socialism, you will get just as many confused looks, lame attempts at definitions, and the lack of understanding of what they support. They want a “socially owned economy,” a “workers’ self-management within a market socialist economy,” and a “decentralized planned socialist economy.” But they have no idea what it means.

Millennials do not understand how a capitalist economy functions, what is the role of capital and profit in the development of a free market economy. They are also highly ignorant of what drove into the ground the mis-managed centralized economies of all the socialist countries of the twentieth century. They could research the economy of Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, and China today but that is too much to ask of such brainwashed generations.

Even though the Communist Party through the Bolshevik activists promised worker self-management and a socially-owned economy, the proletariat was not allowed to manage themselves and received nothing except a meager pay, hard times, starvation, misery, long food lines, shortages of everything, endless rationing, labor exploitation by communist unions called syndicates, and gulags funded by the Communist Party that lorded over them with an iron fist via its Central Committee, the security police, and its highly centralized five-year planning of their devastating economies.

Had these American radical Marxist activists known a smidgen of history, they would have realized that the democratic socialism repackaged lies presented to them in the 21^st century are repeats of those told a century ago by Bolsheviks dispatched around the globe by a well-funded cadre of communists on the payroll of bankers from the U.K. and America.

American students are now scholarly weak, ignorant, and thoroughly indoctrinated. They do not understand that security and prosperity cannot be legislated. You cannot make people equal by force of law, nor can you change their biology. You cannot steal from some and give to others in the name of social and economic justice.

You cannot legislate equal opportunity and equal outcomes. You cannot legislate inequality out of existence. Humans have been unequal since the beginning of time. Wealth and income disparity exist in the socialist economies centralized by the Communist Party and tech oligarchs.

Putting mom and pop stores and restaurants out of business creates more exploitation by large corporations that will function as oligarchies ruled by a centralized political committee of Democrat technocrats and billionaires.

Destroying the middle class is the dream of the Communist Party USA. The middle class is what made America successful and allowed a myriad of opportunities for all Americans to better themselves economically.

Millennials should listen to and learn from those who escaped from the prison of the workers’ socialist “paradise.” We lived under “Democratic Socialism.” It was neither democratic nor did it care about the poor masses. On the contrary, the rulers stole all the wealth and property and put everyone in prison who was considered “bourgeois.” And you were part of the imagined “bourgeoisie” if you owned a home or some land.

Under socialism ruled by the Communist Party, everyone was equally poor, miserable, and exploited with paltry wages, and no opportunity for education and progress. The poor people, that is the proletariat, had no opportunity for the constitutionally guaranteed self-governance; if they tried to demand anything they were promised, they were summarily dispatched to a gulag from which they never returned or worse yet, shot in front of their families to teach them a lesson they will never forget.

Democrat Socialists focus on redistribution of wealth by confiscating from those who worked to build wealth and giving it to those they see as having been exploited for the choices they made in life. D. Hamilton wrote that a “social democratic or democratic socialist America” must protect minorities from “predatory private employers” who focus on profit and “exploit people and the planet.”

To redress this exploitation, he proposes a federal job guarantee, a child trust, and reparations in a race-specific program. It is a welfare, wealth-redistribution scheme which, in his view would address the racial and economic injustice in this country.

To support his federal job guarantee (full employment) idea, Hamilton uses India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Act as an example of promotion of full employment and alleviation of poverty.

Looking at India’s exodus of labor to America’s high-tech jobs and our hiring of Indians (outsourcing) to do jobs that Americans used to do, highly skilled and educated Americans who are now unemployed because of it, it is easy to see that a job guarantee does not alleviate poverty.

Under the socialism I grew up in, everybody had a job, but it was not worth much economically and it only paid survival wages, way less than minimum wage in America. My people were what Roosevelt called “necessitous men” who were not “free men.” Again, security and prosperity cannot be forced and legislated by politicians, bureaucrats, and philosophers.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that “what socialism means is to guarantee a basic level of dignity. There is no other force, there is no other party, there is no other real ideology . . . that is asserting the minimum elements necessary to lead a dignified American life.”

Asking those who fled the socialist paradise she advocates, at great cost to them and their families, the stories are quite similar.  Living under socialism was starvation, no human dignity, a huge loss of personal freedoms, abject poverty, hunger, lack of necessities, lack of proper medical care, lack of medicines, severe oppression, loss of individuality for the good of the collective, justice for the Communist Party rulers only, and loss of private property and land.

Millennials should listen to those who escaped the socialist “paradise” Ocasio-Cortez promotes from her congressional platform.  Millennials should ignore the political rhetoric coming from highly unenlightened politicians with an agenda.

 

Democracy of the Left

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.   - Alexis de Tocqueville

Athenian Democracy Politician Pericles giving a famous

speech Wikipedia photo

Politicians, their low information voters, and indoctrinated Millennials talk about our endangered democracy when their conservative opponents dare to contradict them. We know, however, that our country is a Constitutional Republic, not a democracy.

According to the legal dictionary, a constitutional republic consists of three branches, executive, judicial, and legislative which divide the power of the government equally, and the head of the state and other officials are elected by the country’s citizens to represent them.  As is often the case, these representatives, once elected, do not represent the interests of their constituents, of the American people, but their own and those of special interest groups who supported their candidacy.

Our country has a Constitution which limits the government’s power if it is followed. Unfortunately, over the years, it has been ignored and re-interpreted many times by the courts. The Supremes have construed our Constitution to mean something else at times in order to fit a pre-decided outcome, i.e., the Obamacare forced insurance which was deemed a tax by Justice Roberts.

Merriam-Webster defines democracy today as “a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives,” or “the practice or principles of social equality.”

Webster’s defined democracy in 1961 as “a form of government in which the supreme power is lodged in the people collectively.” But collectivism breeds communism and chaos.

In the actual etymological definition of democracy, it means “power of the people.” (demos, Greek for populace, and kratos, Greek for power, strength)

There were and are quite a few totalitarian states that used the word “democracy” or “democratic” in the name of their country, i.e., the German Democratic Republic, the former Soviet satellite nation that ruled its people with the help of the dreaded Stasi.

There was nothing democratic about this state and it was visibly obvious by the Berlin Wall built to keep the East Berliners trapped inside the socialist state, away from the free West Berliners.

The lesser known visually was the infamous Iron Curtain, an actual wall with barbed wire which ran for hundreds of miles the length of the former German Democratic Republic. The watch towers made sure any citizen trying to flee, who was not blown up by the land mines placed strategically around the wall, was shot by soldiers armed with machine guns.

Stalin wrote that “There have been times in the history of our Party [Communist] when the opinion of the majority or the momentary interests of the Party conflicted with the fundamental interests of the proletariat. On such occasions Lenin would never hesitate and resolutely took his stand on principle against the majority of the Party…” In other words, he became the benevolent dictator because he knew best what people wanted.

Lenin was clearer, “Soviet socialist democracy is in no way contradictory to one-man rule and dictatorship, a dictator sometimes fulfills the will of the class.”

In communist rhetoric and semantics, Democracy is a very essential word. Communist nations are ‘people’s democratic republics.’ The communist party declares arrogantly that 98 percent or more of its people show up to vote, approving of the communist regime. Never mind that people were forced by fear of disloyalty charges to come to the precinct to vote and that there was only one candidate on the ballot, such candidate having been approved by the communist party and thus having no power to change anything.

Khrushchev had his own definition of democracy – he drew a parallel between “bourgeois democracy” and “people’s democracy.” In the people’s democracy, the electorate and their representatives are entirely beholden to the communist party leaders, the proletariat, peasants, and intellectuals. In the bourgeois democracy, he said, the representatives serve lawyers, bankers, consortiums, monopolies, members of boards, leading corporations, etc.

He said, “Bourgeois democracy is the democracy of the rich. Under it the popular masses are pushed aside from administration; the popular masses cannot take part in the discussion and decision of social and political questions concerning the people as a whole. Thousands of obstacles are raised before the working class of the capitalist countries in order to prevent any of the workers from getting into Parliament or Congress….” (Conquest Without War, 1961, p. 372)

According to socialists/communists the one-party state serves the interests of the proletariat best. (See the disaster that is California, a one-party state) Socialists believe that “Only in undemocratic countries do several parties exist.”

Lenin believed that “The state belongs to the sphere of coercion. It would be madness to renounce coercion, particularly in the epoch of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Stalin explained that under the dictatorship of the proletariat the bourgeoisie would have no universal freedom, no freedom of speech, press, assembly. The state would grant maximum of freedom to the “proletarian strata in town and country and deny even a minimum of freedom to the remnants of the bourgeoisie.”

The dictatorship of the proletariat was “the working-class leadership in the struggle to overthrow the power of capital, to win and consolidate people’s government and build a communist society.” (p. 377)

The Soviet Bolsheviks stated that “It was precisely socialist democracy that enabled the Soviet people to get rid of such ‘freedoms’ as the right to choose one’s exploiter or to be unemployed, the right to starve or to be a hired slave to capital.”

I do remember being extremely hungry under Ceausescu’s socialist democracy and standing in long food lines daily in order to avoid starvation. I am extremely glad that I can choose my employer under capitalism, that there is capital to start new businesses, and there are entrepreneurs with ideas, who know how to start a new enterprise that would hire employees to do the job necessary, not a communist community organizer who has never created anything useful in society except empty words and chaos.

The Bolsheviks described themselves as the defenders of the poor and of the downtrodden. It is how Socialist Democrats portray themselves today.

Alexis de Tocqueville said, “Despotism often presents itself as the repairer of all the ills suffered, the support of just rights, defender of the oppressed, and founder of order.” Millions of survivors of communism would agree with Tocqueville and 100 million of victims of communism validate his assessment.

When Hugo Chavez, the former socialist dictator of Venezuela, cracked down on protesters against his regime, George Ciccariello-Maher, then a professor at Drexel University, defended the state violence against its protesting people as “a radically democratic brutality and dictatorship of the wretched of the earth.”

Rand Paul wrote in his book, The Case Against Socialism, “Oh my… ‘egalitarian brutality’… ‘democratic brutality’ - so much for democratic elections restraining the excesses of socialism.” According to Paul, Ciccariello-Maher tweeted infamously, “All I want for Christmas is White Genocide” and doubled down on his outrageous statement with the explanation “when the whites were massacred during the Haitian revolution, that was a good thing.” (p. 13)

The rhetoric of Socialist Democracy promoted by Bernie Sanders and his pupil, AOC, is growing shriller on the socialist-dominated media’s talking points. It is a rhetoric inflated by ignorance and lack of historical knowledge. Sanders calls for a “higher path, a path of compassion, justice, and love.” He calls it democratic socialism. Is this justice delivered by black-clad Antifa thugs with baseball bats?

Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all of God’s children.” Democrats include in this redistribution of wealth scheme every illegal who walks across our borders, to the detriment of our own citizens, their children, and grandchildren.

Call it what you may, what Democrats and their ignorant followers want through democratic socialism is plain redistribution of wealth, stealing from those who earned it and giving it to those who did not, forced global equality through government theft - not just through excessive taxation but also through theft of private property.

Democrat socialists also want the erasure of our borders, the destruction of our sovereignty. The Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 provided the basis of the modern state system and of the concept of territorial sovereignty. The treaty brought an end to endless European wars between different factions and principalities.

As Tocqueville said, “Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom… The subjection of individuals will increase amongst democratic nations, not only in the same proportion as their equality, but in the same proportion as their ignorance.”

Note: If you research Athenian democracy on Wikipedia, you will find 48 different types of democracies – anticipatory, Athenian, authoritarian, cellular, consensus, cosmopolitan, defensive, deliberative, direct, economic, electronic, empowered, ethnic, grassroots, guided, inclusive, industrial, interactive, Jacksonian, liberal, illiberal, liquid, media, multiparty, new, non-partisan, participatory, people’s, pluralist, popular, radical, representative, religious, Buddhist, Christian, Islamic, Jewish, Mormon, sectarian, semi, semi-direct, social, socialist, sovereign, Soviet, substantive, totalitarian, and workplace.

What Do Bernie’s Millennials Know About Socialism?

A former communist prison under dictator Ceausescu
Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015

Recently Bernie Sanders was asked the following question during a townhall meeting in Manchester, New Hampshire, by a Harvard student, Samantha Frankel-Popell, whose father had fled the former Soviet Union.

“My father’s family left Soviet Russia in 1979 fleeing from some of the very same socialist policies that you seem eager to implement in this country.” She followed up with the question, “How do you rectify your notion of Democratic socialism with the failures of socialism in nearly every country that has tried it?”

Bernie replied, "Thank you for asking that question,” before continuing with a question himself. “Is it your assumption that I supported or believe in authoritarian communism that existed in the Soviet Union? I don’t. I never have, and I opposed it. I believe in a vigorous democracy." https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bernie-sanders-socialism-harvard-student

He cleverly tried to skirt her question by denying that he promotes soviet style socialism. Yet a video exists of him praising Soviet socialism/communism and its achievements: the public transportation system, the clean and artsy metro stations with crystal chandeliers, cheap tickets to museums and concerts, and the infamous “cultural palaces” of the young pioneers, with total indoctrination by the communist party apparatchiks. https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=youtube+video+bernie+sanders+praising+soviet+accomplishments&view=detail&mid=50A4BDC800730CFFF75F50A4BDC800730CFFF75F&FORM=VIRE

I rode the public transportation system a younger Bernie Sanders is praising. The buses were old, rickety, with holes in the floorboard, allowing for choking fumes to come in. The trams, metro trains, trolleybuses, and rusty railroad trains were smelly and filled-to-capacity.  Riders were squashed like sardines.

Few could afford to purchase or own cars. It wasn’t just coming up with the money to buy an overpriced domestic vehicle and being placed on the long waiting list for years. It also depended on how well you were scored or regarded by the local Communist Party and the local Economic Police which made sure that nobody owned anything in excess of what they needed in order to be more easily controlled.

Schools gave grades for students’ behavior each semester and parents were chastised publicly in front of other parents if their children behaved in any un-socialist/un-communist way that strayed from the communist party’s collectivist rules of brainwashing.

No matter how you try to repackage socialism, Bernie, or how the liberals controlling the web twist the definition of socialism in order to confuse the useful idiots, in Marxist theory socialism is a transition state between the overthrow of capitalism and the implementation of communism. Democrat socialism is the P.C. definition of a system that robs people of initiative, independence, their worth, their wealth, and their creativity.

Using Nordic countries as examples of successful models of socialism is dishonest if not a flat-out lie. The means of production are not owned by the government in these countries, as is the case under socialism, they are owned by private companies. The government is socialistic in nature as it hands out generous welfare to the masses, welfare derived from heavy taxation of private companies and citizens.

Under socialism (see Cuba, North Korea, and Venezuela), the proletariat masses have no choice but to accept the crumbs that trickle down from the benevolent government ruled with an iron fist by the Central Committee of the Communist Party.

Salaries are very small and everything must be subsidized by the government which in turn rations everything, food, toilet paper, electricity, water, and everything else Millennials take for granted in this country, not realizing that their abundant lifestyle is provided by the laws of supply and demand of free market capitalism.

I was a child under socialism and a young pioneer.  Membership was not voluntary; we were forced to be pioneers as part of our school curriculum. We attended plays, puppet shows, and movies that glorified the dear leader and his wife or taught us how to be good little socialists/communists. The cultural palaces for art, music, and theater, were organized places to keep young pioneers on the right track to communism.

The cost of entertainment was free or minimal, as Bernie Sanders said, $1.50. But $1.50 may have been cheap to the mind of an American like Bernie Sanders, but it was a deceptive cost since socialist/communist salaries determined by the government ran on the average $50 per month depending on the occupation. Miners, for example, were paid a little more as their jobs were very dangerous.

Bernie, I can tell you with 100 percent certainty that life under socialism and communism was miserable. There is a good reason why there are so many of us who fled socialism/communism at great risk to our lives, leaving everything dear behind, family and wealth, to escape to the “free” west, specifically to the United States. Nobody in his right mind runs away from a good situation.

People are not free under socialism, Bernie. The government keeps the population imprisoned within its borders with barbed wire and soldiers armed to the teeth and ordered to shoot anyone who tries to escape across the border.

Socialists and communists were not very good environmental conservationists. Towns and nearby rivers were so heavily polluted that it only took a small spark to set a river on fire. The soot fell thick on everything and the laundry drying on the line turned from white to grey in mere hours.

The young pioneer clubs, Bernie, were indoctrination mills that raised compliant citizens and future communists. Schools and universities were places of heavy indoctrination and grooming for conformity. Universities were free but places were limited, and the progeny of the higher placed communist elites were admitted first.

Everyone was paid equally, there was no incentive to excel, and to be the best. There was no middle class at all, only the working class and the communist elites. Theater, puppetry shows, television, and movies were all subsidized by the government and had to meet their standards and criteria for communist indoctrination.

Soviet metro was and still is beautiful, with works of art but was built at the expense of cheap labor and exploitation of the proletariat who was told that they owned everything collectively. Nobody could demand a piece of this ownership ever, lest they be arrested for bourgeois demands and democracy having gone to their heads.

According to PraegerU, Bernie Sanders the socialist won more votes from Millennials during the presidential primary than Donald Trump and Hillary combined.

“The majority of Millennials (those born between 1981 and 1996) identify as socialist.

Nearly 70% of Millennials support a government-funded, “Medicare-for-all” healthcare system. Our kids and grandkids aren’t learning that America is a land of opportunity, a defender of freedom around the world, and a source of pride. Instead, they’re being taught that America is a land built on racism and imperialist oppression.” And more than 50% of Millennials also support the radical “Green New Deal,” which is neither new, nor green, and not a deal for any free society with a thriving economy, it is global communism.
https://secure.giveworks.net/prageru/national_petition_to_re/GOP7151

Bernie Marcus, the co-founder of Home Depot, spoke against socialism and explained how the free market system has lifted so many people out of poverty.

He said, “Young people especially have been indoctrinated into believing that free enterprise is immoral because it enriches the greedy and depresses the poor. Even the word ‘capitalism’ is not politically correct to use, but the reality is that the free market system has created the biggest middle class population in the world and, while some may say socialism is well-intentioned, the fact is it robs people of their independence, their dignity, and their finances leading to government dependence, suppression of ideas, and lower standards of living for those under its thumb.https://therightscoop.com/it-pains-me-to-see-people-in-this-country-glorifying-socialism-co-founder-of-home-depot-speaks-out-against-socialism/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRightScoop+%28The+Right+Scoop%29

And, should you still heed Bernie Sanders’ praise of socialism and decide to vote for his manufactured Democrat Socialism, be prepared to eat “zebras and peacocks” from the zoo because socialist central planning has not worked very well in all the countries in which it has been tried, most recently in Venezuela.