Guest Post by John Stossel
Last week, I reported on two myths about socialism. My new video covers three more.
Myth No. 3: Socialism works if it’s “democratic.”
As the Democratic Socialists of America put it, “Society should be run democratically — to meet public needs, not to make profits for a few.”
Sounds nice. If socialists are elected, then we’ll have a more just society.
But Venezuela’s socialists were elected.
Continue reading “Socialism Never Works”
U.S.—An old, failed idea — one that spread countless misery long ago when people were ignorant enough to implement it — has once again been repackaged as a new, progressive idea.
“Wow! This will solve everything!” said an enthusiastic young liberal about an idea proven by history to make everything worse.
Continue reading “Old, Failed Idea Repackaged As New, Progressive Idea”
Guest Post by Walter E. Williams
Senator Bernie Sanders’ call for socialism has resonated among many Americans, particularly young Americans. They’ve fallen prey to the idea of a paradise here on Earth where things are free and there’s little want. But socialists never reveal what turns out to be their true agenda. Let’s look at the kind of statements they used to gain power. You’ll note that all of their slogans before gaining power bore little relation to the facts after they had power.
Guest Post by John Stossel
Sen. Rand Paul just wrote a book, “The Case Against Socialism.”
I thought that case was already decided, since socialist countries failed so spectacularly.
But the idea hasn’t died, especially amongst the young.
“Hitler’s socialism, Stalin’s socialism, Mao’s socialism. You would think people would have recognized it by now,” says Paul in my latest video.
Paul echoes Orwell in likening socialism to “a boot stamping on the human face forever” and warning that it always leads to violence and corruption.
Guest Post by John Stossel
Families will argue this Thanksgiving.
Such arguments have a long tradition.
The Pilgrims had clashing ideas about how to organize their settlement in the New World. The resolution of that debate made the first Thanksgiving possible.
The Pilgrims were religious, united by faith and a powerful desire to start anew, away from religious persecution in the Old World. Each member of the community professed a desire to labor together, on behalf of the whole settlement.
In other words: socialism.
But when they tried that, the Pilgrims almost starved.
International Man: Earlier this year, it became apparent a socialist would win Argentina’s presidential election.
The Argentine peso lost 30% of its value in a single day. The same day, in US dollar terms, the value of the Argentine stock market was cut in half.
Doug, you spend a lot of time in Argentina and the Southern Cone. What’s your take on the situation? Is Argentina headed for another currency collapse?
Doug Casey: Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was elected vice president and Alberto Fernández was elected president in the October 27 election. They basically destroyed the incumbent Mauricio Macri.
It’s a real pity because Macri is a decent human being whose heart was is in the right place politically and economically. But he was too timid. He did too little too late. Typical of “conservatives” everywhere, he didn’t make a moral argument to the populace. He made no effort to pull the corrupt fascist welfare state out by its roots, explaining why it’s destructive and why the state is the cause, not the cure, of the country’s problems. Instead, he just made some marginal improvements around the edges, and made things more comfortable for the Peronists now that they’re back in office.
Continue reading “Doug Casey on What Happens When Socialists Win Elections”
Guest Post by Martin Armstrong
Socialism is dying because other people’s money is running out. Yes, we see that socialism is rising in its extreme actions from climate change being usurped to justify the confiscation of wealth and control of the economy. It is also prevalent in the rise of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in the USA and the Labour Party in the UK.
This is the final rally of socialism before the crash. It is more akin to the final Phase Transition of a market as it makes its fatal high like the Dot.com Bubble, 1929, or Tokyo 1989.
Guest Post by Martin Armstrong
This is a very clever way of excusing the core issue. The Democrats preach raising taxes and then sell loopholes to the big corporations. The bankers donated to Hillary — not to Trump. This is a clever campaign assuming, as always, the people (the great unwashed) are just stupid.
Continue reading “Playing with the Facts to Fool the Majority”
U.S.—The nation’s Democratic leaders announced Tuesday they are reversing course on Trump’s proposed border wall, since “it will keep people in once we switch to socialism.”
“We thought the border wall was a bad, racist idea,” said Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “But then this light bulb turned on over my head. It was actually just a light bulb though, not an actual idea, which was disappointing. But that got me thinking about trying to have an idea. And I got an idea: when we switch to socialism, everyone’s gonna try to run away. But what if there’s a big, solid object along the border? Then they can’t run away. I mean, they could try to climb, but we could shoot them.”
Guest Post by Walter E. Williams
Presidential contenders are in a battle to out give one another. Senator Elizabeth Warren proposes a whopping $50,000 per student college loan forgiveness. Senator Bernie Sanders proposes free health care for all Americans plus illegal aliens. Most Democratic presidential candidates promise free stuff that includes free college, universal income, “Medicare for All” and debt forgiveness.
Guest Post by Daniel DiMartino
The first time I couldn’t buy food at the grocery store, I was 15 years old. It was 2014 in Caracas, Venezuela, and I had spent more than an hour in line waiting. When I got to the register, I noticed I had forgotten my ID that day. Without the ID, the government rationing system would not let the supermarket sell my family the full quota of food we needed. It was four days until the government allowed me to buy more.
This was fairly normal for me. All my life, I lived under socialism in Venezuela until I left and came to the United States as a student in 2016. Because the regime in charge imposed price controls and nationalized the most important private industries, production plummeted. No wonder I had to wait hours in lines to buy simple products such as toothpaste or flour.
And the shortages went far beyond the supermarket.
Guest Post by Pat Buchanan
After reading an especially radical platform agreed upon by the British Labor Party, one Tory wag described it as “the longest suicide note in history.”
The phrase comes to mind on reading of the resolution calling for a Green New Deal, advanced by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and endorsed by at least five of the major Democratic candidates for president.
The Green New Deal is designed to recall the halcyon days of the 1930s, when, so the story goes, FDR came to Washington to enact the historic reforms that rescued America from the Great Depression.
Only that story is more than a small myth.
Guest Post by Jim Kunstler
And so the Democratic Party has gone and hoisted the flag of “socialism” on the mizzenmast of its foundering hulk as it sets sail for the edge of the world. Bad call by a ship without a captain, and I’ll tell you why. Socialism was the response to a particular set of circumstances in time that drove the rise of industrial societies. Those circumstances are going, going, gone.
The suspicion of industry’s dreadful effects on the human condition first sparked in the public imagination with William Blake’s poem “Jerusalem” in 1804 and its reference to England’s newly-built “dark satanic mills.” Industry at the grand scale overturned everyday life in the Euro-American “West” by the mid-19th century, and introduced a new kind of squalor for the masses, arguably worse than their former status as peasants.