{UAH} BERNIE SANDERS, THE GOD WHO FAILED

Bernie Sanders, the god who failed

by Washington Examiner

April 09, 2020 12:00 AM

 

Before ending his second run for president on Wednesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders was a beacon of false hope to those who lack any memory of socialism’s immense human cost.

He helped people believe, for a time, that there is a simple answer to all of life’s problems and that it resides in a powerful central government.

Sanders did one thing further: He also demonstrated that, as radical as it has become, the Democratic Party of 2020 is not as ready for socialism as it once seemed.

In the 19th century, socialism was viewed by many as a potential alternative to the Old World’s stagnant dynastic monarchies. It promised to abolish primitive institutions such as arbitrary rule, slavery, and colonialism. The people of that era had an excuse for believing such promises. But the people of the 21st century have no such excuse because the laboratory of history has tested socialism and found it wanting in almost every respect.

Everywhere, it promised equality and delivered brutality. It promised to end slavery but instead universalized it. It promised to end colonialism but established puppet regimes on nearly every continent. It promised plenty and delivered scarcity. (By the way, senator, bread lines are the result of scarcity, not of fairness.) Socialism promised, as George Orwell eloquently put it, “better wages and shorter hours and nobody bossing you about.” Yet its legacy will forever be the many genocides and murderous misgovernance that would be impossible without a fanatical commitment to central planning.

This, incidentally, is why socialist governments must always censor information, even the internet, to the extent possible. The survival of socialism depends on keeping people mostly in the dark, unaware of the truth.

This is also the case with the “democratic socialism” Sanders preaches, which turns out to be something of a misnomer. It is no coincidence that every tin-pot communist dictatorship called itself a “democratic republic.” This makes more sense when you realize that dictatorship and democracy are perfectly compatible under socialism. To the socialist, “democracy” does not signify a popular right to vote or the right to choose a system of government or economy. In fact, socialism cannot ever allow such choices. Rather, for the socialist, the Greek-derived word “democratic” refers to the “empowerment” of “the people” through other means, such as forcible expropriation of others’ property and businesses and liberation from traditional institutions that supposedly oppress the people — you know, the family, culture, national identity, and religion. Only everything people hold dear.

In short, “democratic socialism” is not “democratic” the way normal people understand the word. "Democratic socialists" want to empower you, good and hard; no, you don’t get any say in the matter, and, when they are done, you will be so empowered and liberated that there probably won’t be any need or chance for more elections. For further details, ask a Venezuelan.

By the late 20th century, Sanders was still a true socialist believer. Even during this year’s race, he could not bring himself to retract his previous praise for Fidel Castro. You have to admire his dogmatism, as this arguably cost him the Democratic nomination.

Sanders scoffed this spring when Michael Bloomberg called him a “communist,” but it is worth noting that socialism and communism were synonyms to Karl Marx. The Soviets were the first to distinguish the two, regarding communism as the true fulfillment of socialism, something the Soviets never reached. Ironically, in modern parlance, this distinction has nearly been reversed. Today, we are ever in search of that perfect socialism that avoids all of the pitfalls of communism. And guess what: That doesn’t exist either.

In Joe Biden, Democrats have chosen a deeply flawed, liberal candidate. But he is within the social-democratic tradition of their party, a tradition of regulated free markets and generous welfare states that is not at all like democratic socialism. The malignant socialist revolutionaries, who have historically worked to co-opt, undermine, and destroy social democracy movements, will just have to wait for another day and hope the public becomes dumb enough eventually.

EM         -> { Trump for 2020 }

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