Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez: 'Capitalism Won't Always Exist' (A very revealing interview)
Frontpage Mag ^ | 07/19/2018 | Matthew Vadum

Posted on 07/19/2018 8:29:48 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

​Democrat giant-slayer and soon-to-be Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came close to saying she supports abolishing the free enterprise system and the precious economic freedoms on which it is based that have made America wealthy beyond its founders’ wildest dreams.

The so-called democratic socialist Ocasio-Cortez whom DNC Chairman Tom Perez hails as “the future of our party,” breezily dismissed the current strength of the U.S. economy, claiming unemployment is low only because Americans are working two jobs. 

Capitalism is a fleeting phenomenon, she told PBS in an astounding display of historical ignorance that would no doubt endear her to anti-American conspiracy theorist Naomi Klein.

I do think that right now, when we have this no-holds-barred Wild West hypercapitalism, what that means is profit at any cost. Capitalism has not always existed in the world, and it will not always exist in the world. When this country started, we did not operate on a capitalist economy.

Asked if democratic socialism, the system to which Ocasio-Cortez claims allegiance, “calls for an end to capitalism,” the candidate said:

“Ultimately, we are marching towards progress on this issue. I do think that we are going to see an evolution in our economic system of an unprecedented degree, and it’s hard to say what direction that that takes … ”

The interviewer interjected: “It sounds like you are skeptical that capitalism is going to continue to be the right answer.”

“Yeah, I think it’s, um, I think it’s, I think it’s at least a question,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “I think it’s absolutely a question.”

At Legal Insurrection, William A. Jacobson marveled at the candidate’s radicalism.

“There you have it. The hottest star in the Democrat universe will not commit to a continuation of capitalism under her Democratic Socialist political world view. That’s the headline.”

But it shouldn’t be the headline. This fraud called democratic socialism is nothing new.

As I’ve written before, democratic socialism is a profoundly dishonest euphemism calculated to make the horrors of communism more palatable. Karl Marx regarded socialism as a necessary way station on the road to the supposed utopia of communism. A socialist is merely a communist who isn’t in a revolutionary rush.

Socialists and communists “all want government or the collective to be master. They all subscribe to bad, un-American ideas, are all in the same ideological camp, and all tend to believe that the ends justify the means. In ideological terms, there is no bright line or safe harbor that neatly separates socialism from communism. They overlap and blend into each other.”

So of course Ocasio-Cortez isn’t committed to the truly revolutionary economic system that has liberated billions of human beings. She prefers the sclerotic, repressive system that murdered hundreds of millions of people in the twentieth century in the pursuit of absurd social justice abstractions.

The evidence of the power of capitalism to do good and effect positive outcomes is overwhelming and irrefutable. As Gayle Smith, then the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said of world poverty rates in 2016:

I think everyone in the room knows that this is a moment of extraordinary progress. Over the last 30 years, extreme poverty has been cut in half. Boys and girls are enrolling in primary school at nearly equal rates, and there are half as many children out of school today as there were 15 years ago.

Ocasio-Cortez’s ignorance aside, the radical leftist upstart’s unexpected primary trouncing of a key member of the House Democratic leadership is sending shockwaves through the Democratic Party establishment.

Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member and first-time candidate Ocasio-Cortez, 28, slaughtered ten-term incumbent U.S. Rep. Joe Crowley, 56, in the primary election June 26 for the 14th congressional district in New York City. Crowley is chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, the fourth-highest leadership position among House Democrats and had been a leading contender to become House Speaker if Democrats regained control of that chamber. Ocasio-Cortez, who previously worked as an organizer for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential bid, won by a margin of 57.5 percent to 42.5 percent.

The photogenic Ocasio-Cortez beat Crowley by running on an extreme-left utopian fantasy platform of abolishing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, expanding Medicare to everyone, providing free college education, guaranteeing jobs for all, as well as a $15 an hour federal minimum wage.

Ocasio-Cortez is a confirmed ignoramus. In one media interview the newly anointed leftist folk hero seemed to confuse ICE with the CIA.

ICE’s “extrajudicial nature is baked into the structure of the agency and that is why they are able to get away with black sites at our border with the separation of our children,” she said during a journey into fact-free paranoia on CNN June 27.

Ocasio-Cortez has called for the abolition of U.S. borders. The politician told an Al-Jazeera spinoff that foreign citizens, border crossers, and illegal aliens ought to enjoy a “right of passage” into the United States.

She explained:

I think that immigration should be safe. I think that we should grant people a safe and documented right of passage. Republicans try all these scare tactics. And they go ‘Oh, open borders.’ Because they’re trying to incite fear. But what we really need to do is demilitarize a lot of what’s going on in terms of the detention of people, which has been happening for a very long time by the way.

The harebrained, politically suicidal promise to abolish ICE is too crazy even for Bernie Sanders who refuses to endorse it. Polling suggests the idea is political poison among Democrat voters.

And contrary to media propaganda, the idea that the DSA is only now “taking over” the Democratic Party is false: it took over the party long ago. The group’s members already largely control the party through various Democrat-related organizations. Virtually every member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, co-founded by the DSA in 1991, is already a member of the DSA, according to DiscoverTheNetworks

DSA, a small-c communist group, is on the rise because the Left is in revolt against the Trump administration and perhaps because Bernie Sanders popularized the “democratic socialist” label, taking away much of the stigma traditionally associated with socialism. Trump Derangement Syndrome has pushed DSA membership nationwide to the reported 45,000-mark.

The far-left CPC has 79 members in the House and one in the Senate (Bernie Sanders).

What is happening now is that DSAers from outside the formal party structure are causing a huge media stink by tossing out Democrat office-holders in insurgent primary campaigns. DSAers have been succeeding at the state and local level but they haven’t been knocking off Democrat office-holders in large numbers at the national level. 

In fact, Ocasio-Cortez is the only DSA-endorsed candidate to take out a sitting congressman. So while her victory is important and is clearly helping her shape party policy, it’s not quite the watershed event leftists build it up to be. It is more like an excuse, or permission, from the party’s radical electoral base to get even more radical.

The destruction of capitalism is what the crazies in the Democrats’ base have wanted for years.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez aims to give them what they want.

Ocasio-Cortez’s ignorance aside, the radical leftist upstart’s unexpected primary trouncing of a key member of the House Democratic leadership is sending shockwaves through the Democratic Party establishment.

Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member and first-time candidate Ocasio-Cortez, 28, slaughtered ten-term incumbent U.S. Rep. Joe Crowley, 56, in the primary election June 26 for the 14th congressional district in New York City. Crowley is chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, the fourth-highest leadership position among House Democrats and had been a leading contender to become House Speaker if Democrats regained control of that chamber. Ocasio-Cortez, who previously worked as an organizer for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential bid, won by a margin of 57.5 percent to 42.5 percent.

The photogenic Ocasio-Cortez beat Crowley by running on an extreme-left utopian fantasy platform of abolishing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, expanding Medicare to everyone, providing free college education, guaranteeing jobs for all, as well as a $15 an hour federal minimum wage.

Ocasio-Cortez is a confirmed ignoramus. In one media interview the newly anointed leftist folk hero seemed to confuse ICE with the CIA.

ICE’s “extrajudicial nature is baked into the structure of the agency and that is why they are able to get away with black sites at our border with the separation of our children,” she said during a journey into fact-free paranoia on CNN June 27.

Ocasio-Cortez has called for the abolition of U.S. borders. The politician told an Al-Jazeera spinoff that foreign citizens, border crossers, and illegal aliens ought to enjoy a “right of passage” into the United States.

She explained:

I think that immigration should be safe. I think that we should grant people a safe and documented right of passage. Republicans try all these scare tactics. And they go ‘Oh, open borders.’ Because they’re trying to incite fear. But what we really need to do is demilitarize a lot of what’s going on in terms of the detention of people, which has been happening for a very long time by the way.

The harebrained, politically suicidal promise to abolish ICE is too crazy even for Bernie Sanders who refuses to endorse it. Polling suggests the idea is political poison among Democrat voters.

And contrary to media propaganda, the idea that the DSA is only now “taking over” the Democratic Party is false: it took over the party long ago. The group’s members already largely control the party through various Democrat-related organizations. Virtually every member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, co-founded by the DSA in 1991, is already a member of the DSA, according to DiscoverTheNetworks

DSA, a small-c communist group, is on the rise because the Left is in revolt against the Trump administration and perhaps because Bernie Sanders popularized the “democratic socialist” label, taking away much of the stigma traditionally associated with socialism. Trump Derangement Syndrome has pushed DSA membership nationwide to the reported 45,000-mark.

The far-left CPC has 79 members in the House and one in the Senate (Bernie Sanders).

What is happening now is that DSAers from outside the formal party structure are causing a huge media stink by tossing out Democrat office-holders in insurgent primary campaigns. DSAers have been succeeding at the state and local level but they haven’t been knocking off Democrat office-holders in large numbers at the national level. 

In fact, Ocasio-Cortez is the only DSA-endorsed candidate to take out a sitting congressman. So while her victory is important and is clearly helping her shape party policy, it’s not quite the watershed event leftists build it up to be. It is more like an excuse, or permission, from the party’s radical electoral base to get even more radical.

The destruction of capitalism is what the crazies in the Democrats’ base have wanted for years.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez aims to give them what they want.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; News/Current Events; Philosophy; Politics/Elections; US: New York; US: Vermont
KEYWORDS: berniesanders; capitalism; congress; medicareforall; newyork; ocasiocorte; ocasiocortez; socialism; vermont
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-72 next last
To: Aria

RE: Will she be their pet socialist or will they squash her like a cockroach?

Unfortunately, this is NOT a statewide or even a city wide race. It is a congressional district race and her constituents are mostly sympathetic to socialism. Suffice it to say that a Republican does not have a chance at winning here.

You WILL see her in DC come 2019.


41 posted on 07/19/2018 9:06:48 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 38 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

Neither will your popularity, hon.


42 posted on 07/19/2018 9:08:06 AM PDT by bgill (CDC site, "We don't know how people are infected with Ebola.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind
Image and video hosting by TinyPic
43 posted on 07/19/2018 9:08:38 AM PDT by broken_clock (Go Trump!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: TADSLOS

She’s a cupid stunt.


44 posted on 07/19/2018 9:12:50 AM PDT by LydiaLong
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 18 | View Replies]

To: HiTech RedNeck

You didn’t answer my question. You went off on a special-snowflake virtue-signalling rant.

I repeat my question.

Would the ChiComs be producing goods to ship to the United States if the United States wasn’t giving them money in return for those goods?

It’s a yes or no question.


45 posted on 07/19/2018 9:14:10 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum (<img src="http://i.imgur.com/WukZwJP.gif" width=600><p>https://i.imgur.com/zXSEP5Z.gif)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 40 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

Voters should be very afraid of this woman’s ideals.


46 posted on 07/19/2018 9:14:18 AM PDT by ThomasMore (ISLAM is the Whore of Babylon!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

In reality (yes, I know it’s a concept that liberals
have a hard time grasping.) this crazy eyed moron has
only won the NOMINATION of her party. She is not and
will not become a congressperson, no matter how annointed
she is by the fawning liberal media.


47 posted on 07/19/2018 9:15:26 AM PDT by tet68 ( " We would not die in that man's company, that fears his fellowship to die with us...." Henry V.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: E. Pluribus Unum
Dumb Hogg Dumber Cortez
48 posted on 07/19/2018 9:16:24 AM PDT by FrankR (IF it wasn't for the "F-word", and it's deritives, the left would have no message at all.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

[ Capitalism has not always existed in the world, and it will not always exist in the world. ]

Ogg confused... Ogg give animal skins to Thag.... Thag give pointy stick to Ogg... good trade!!! But crazy socialist hate system Thag and Ogg have....

She is a MORON!


49 posted on 07/19/2018 9:19:48 AM PDT by GraceG ("Q is not a Cult, you can safely leave at any time, unlike Islam")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

The democrat socialists are still fundraising. What does that tell you?
If they succeed they will just steal wealth instead.


50 posted on 07/19/2018 9:23:13 AM PDT by outofsalt (If history teaches us anything, it's that history rarely teaches us anything.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: painter

This is an entirely racial election. Ideas have zero to do with the outcome. Crowley was crushed because he is white, and for no other reason.

The 20th century was the century of ideology. The 21st is the century of the blood.


51 posted on 07/19/2018 9:24:26 AM PDT by Jim Noble (p)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies]

To: painter

This is an entirely racial election. Ideas have zero to do with the outcome. Crowley was crushed because he is white, and for no other reason.

The 20th century was the century of ideology. The 21st is the century of the blood.


52 posted on 07/19/2018 9:24:38 AM PDT by Jim Noble (p)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies]

To: E. Pluribus Unum

She’s actually not entirely wrong. Marx and Engel said that Socialism is “end stage of Capitalism.”


53 posted on 07/19/2018 9:25:10 AM PDT by nikos1121
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: nikos1121

“What do you think the Russians talk about in their Councils of State — Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do.” - Arthur Jensen (Network)


54 posted on 07/19/2018 9:27:32 AM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 53 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind
I do think that right now, when we have this no-holds-barred Wild West hypercapitalism, what that means is profit at any cost. Capitalism has not always existed in the world, and it will not always exist in the world. When this country started, we did not operate on a capitalist economy.

Perhaps capitalism has not always existed but some on the oldest examples of writing are sales ledgers. So, capitalism has existed as long as recorded history.

Wild West hypercapitalism, let us call it by its usual name; ‘the black market’, only exist where capitalism is out lawed such as communist states.

What kind of history was this woman taught? One of the primary reasons this country exist is to establish a nation where people were free to trade freely without government interference. Alexander Hamilton was a smuggler and black marketer (or as she would say a hypercapitalist)

55 posted on 07/19/2018 9:41:25 AM PDT by Pontiac (The welfare state must fail because it is contrary to human nature and diminishes the human spirit.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind
When this country started, we did not operate on a capitalist economy.,

That's true!

After the first year of Socialism the Pilgrims were dying and starving so they switched to a more free enterprise based system and SURVIVED!!! Its history. Not taught in the government run academies though.

56 posted on 07/19/2018 9:44:08 AM PDT by Don Corleone (Nothing makes the delusional more furious than truth.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Jim Noble
The 20th century was the century of ideology. The 21st is the century of the blood.

The "Resurgence of Tribalism" will the the name given to this epoch in American history.

57 posted on 07/19/2018 9:48:22 AM PDT by Turbo Pig (To close with and destroy....)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 51 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

When she gives 90% of her income away every month then I might consider her argument simply because she is putting her money where her mouth is. Till then; nah.

I could never get behind what she says; just that I would give it due consideration if she practiced what she preaches. We all know Bernie Sanders if a big fat liar with his 3 luxury homes.


58 posted on 07/19/2018 10:09:49 AM PDT by Boomer (Leftism is the Mental/Moral Equivalent of End Stage Cancer)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: outofsalt

“Capitalism is the application of reason to the problem of scarcity.” -—The Artful Dilettante

That said,capitalism will be around for a very long time.


59 posted on 07/19/2018 10:14:05 AM PDT by huckfillary
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 50 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

How ignorant is Alexandria? Haven’t we always had individuals who bought and sold their own wares?


60 posted on 07/19/2018 10:15:00 AM PDT by abclily
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-72 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson