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Posted on 12/19/2017 9:40:08 PM PST by Kaslin
It's a puzzle. Over the last decade, Venezuela has supplanted Cuba as the Shangri-La of the American left. Not long ago, self-declared socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders insisted that the American dream was more achievable in the Bolivarian Republic than in America. A string of Hollywood luminaries made the pilgrimage to visit the socialist Mecca to say ponderous and stupid things.
Today, the praise is more muted, because events have illuminated that stupidity. The government recently advised its citizens to eat their pet rabbits. Inflation in Venezuela is reminiscent of Weimar Germany. Roughly 85 percent of Venezuelan companies have stopped production to one extent or another, in the most oil-rich country in the world.
And yet, socialism is arguably more popular -- in theory -- than at any time in American history, particularly among young people. A Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation poll last November found that 42 percent of young people support capitalism, but 44 percent prefer socialism for a socioeconomic system.
Why the disconnect? For conservatives of my ilk, the most obvious answer is that, for the left, socialism itself is never to blame. One of my favorite guilty pleasures is the Socialist Party of Great Britain's Twitter feed, which insists daily that the socialist ideal has never been tarnished by real-world socialists. A tweet permanently affixed to the top of their page reads: "Are you about to tell us 'Socialism was tried in Russia' or 'Look at Venezuela' etc? It has NEVER EXISTED! It comes AFTER global capitalism!"
Even mainstream liberals don't like to concede any points in socialism's disfavor. The late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was a murderer and a tyrant. So was the late Cuban communist Fidel Castro. Pinochet helped his country transition to democracy. Castro, who killed more people, left his country as a police state. But while Pinochet is a demonic figure in the liberal imagination, Castro's status is far more complicated. He is still a hero to many.
For the last decade, the New York Times has covered the socialism of both Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez and his successor, Nicolas Maduro, with the same sophisticated nuance it long applied to Cuba. Over the weekend, it ran a heart-wrenching story on how Venezuela's poor children are dying from starvation. But the culpability of Chavism, Venezuela's brand of socialism, is something the reader has to bring to the page. Such passive detachment between cause (in this case, socialist policies) and effect (mass misery and starvation) is rarely found when the Times reports on, say, Republican economic policy.
The disconnect between socialism's record and its invincible appeal also stems from leftists' denial of what it really entails. Thus, Tony Blair, the former prime minister of Great Britain, dragged the Labor Party away from its official socialist dogma about the need for the "common ownership of the means of production."
"Socialism for me," Blair said, "was never about nationalization or the power of the state, not just about economics or even politics. It is a moral purpose to life, a set of values, a belief in society, in cooperation, in achieving together what we cannot achieve alone."
That's why he rejected socialism in favor of what he called "social-ism."
Similarly, Bernie bros focus on social solidarity rather than political economy.
But even this watered down spirit of "we're all in it together" -- whether you call it socialism or nationalism -- can do enormous damage. It is very hard to reconcile with democracy and the rule of law, unless there's a dire national crisis, and even then it may cause grave damage.
I don't want America to be Denmark. But at least Denmark recognizes that social democracy requires democracy, free speech and the rule of law to keep it from turning into Venezuela on the Baltic. I wouldn't be so concerned about the rising support for socialism among young people in the United States, save for the fact that it's been accompanied by a modest decline in support for democracy, too.
Yeah......We call it the aptly named.....”Bernezuela”
ACADEMIA brainwashed GENERATIONS of CHILDREN. The DEPARTMENT of EDUCATION needs to go.
These people need to go to live in a former Soviet Republic for some amount of time..and then get back to me......
Kick the tires before you buy....Live in a socialist experiment for 5 years...and experience the death of hope that would otherwise fuel the human soul.
Sean Penn et al...shut up.....you have never lived it.
This childish world view will NOT bring anyone to Utopia.....the Berkeley-ite, Whole Foods, Eddie Bauer Edition of Slacktivism, where Interesting Man-Buns and Dietary Preferences proscribe Social Order....where spoiled children pontificate from Barista-levels of existentialism...all at the same time..but with no means to connect the dots that need to be connected
Herein lies the destructiveness of socialism. To begin, and as an aside, Tony Blair lived at 10 Downing Street, had private chauffeurs and chefs, and was fawned over by the public. He now travels back and forth from the UK to the US, and gives periodic lectures at Yale - for I'm sure a significant sum. Even if he made nothing, it still remains part of his charmed life - one which very few others will ever experience.
Most, if not all ‘socialist and socialism leaders’ live the same kinds of charmed lives. They are ‘above’ the rest of society, while they talk about ‘all of us being in this together’. They lead lives of stature and separateness from the rest of society, and their need to be distinguished from others has been fulfilled - but they want us to live as a homogeneous indistinguishable mass of humanity, beneath them.
The fact is that socialism steals the individuality of people. Distinguishing ourselves as individuals is a basic and essential human need. Not only is it important to us as individuals, but it drives individual accomplishment and thus contributions to society as a whole. It's fundamentally important, and every single attempt to suppress it has led to disaster. We have a fundamental and in my view God-given right to self-determination. Many of us, me included, would rather die than live in a commune-type of existence. We value our anonymity and privacy, our ability to leave the world for awhile and live apart. We need to feel we've made individual and unique contributions to the world with our lives, whether that be by what we do for our families, or what we accomplish in our professions or in our charity to others.
We aren't all in this together via government. When we are all together, it is because we came together as individuals, retaining our individuality, and giving to each other as individuals.
‘’Socialism is the slow road to serfdom’’. Frederich Von Hayek.
Because people, especially in large groups, are stupid. This is why cities and large towns vote rat.
Bill Whittle has a Utube video of the fate of animals, the zoo, pets in Venezuela. Check it out.
I remember a survival axiom. All fur bearing animals are edible.
Nuf said.
Kids have been brainwashed by Marxist teachers.
Suggestion. Conservative group with the wherewithal, should start a “summer camp” or a cruise or sabbatical, in which socialism is practiced. See how fast the kids write home begging the folks to let them come home.
Socialism is Communism without guns.
"...The late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was a murderer and a tyrant..."
Says the author. I consider him a great man, and God willing his example of helicopter rides for commies will come to fruition in our country, too.
Hardcore socialists/communists are construing Venezuela as a _CAPITALIST_ country, and using it as an example of why capitalism is so bad.
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