KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON is the roving correspondent for National Review and the author of THE SMALLEST MINORITY: INDEPENDENT THINKING IN AN AGE OF MOB POLITICS.
Posted on 02/09/2020 6:14:10 AM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
Iain Murray grew up reading and writing by candlelight, not because he lived in premodern times but because he lived under democratic socialism.
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and other contemporary American advocates of democratic socialism lean heavily on the democratic part, which is at least in part a matter of marketing. To take their talk of democratic principle seriously requires forgetfulness and credulousness: During the last great uprising of democratic socialism in the English-speaking world — in the United Kingdom in the 1970s, where young Iain Murray, now a fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, was doing his homework by the light of coals and candles.
In the United States, Noam Chomsky dismissed reports of Pol Pot’s genocide as right-wing propaganda; later, young Bernie Sanders and his new bride would honeymoon in the Soviet Union even as the Communist Party bosses were creating a new and more modern gestapo to put down democrats and dissidents.
But the socialism that reduced the United Kingdom from world power to intermittently pre-industrial backwater in the post-war era was thoroughly democratic.
Conservatives understand the case against socialism. But in a moment of ascendant populism, making the case for keeping democracy in a very small box — recognizing the difference between useful democratic procedures and a more general majoritarian democratic ethos — can be difficult. Those who have made a cult of “We the People” have left themselves without a very plausible moral or political basis for telling Them the People to go jump in a lake when they demand immoral and destructive policies.
But it was the people who ruined the United Kingdom with socialism in the 1970s, and it is the people who threaten to do the same thing to these United States today.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON is the roving correspondent for National Review and the author of THE SMALLEST MINORITY: INDEPENDENT THINKING IN AN AGE OF MOB POLITICS.
Good essay.
It has been the limits on government power which made the United States the greatest and most powerful nation on earth.
Was it Mencken who said Democracy is giving the people what they want. Good and hard.
These idiots who think they want socialism would be in for a very unpleasant reality should they ever get what they want. Can they not see Venezuela? Which is only the most recent example...
A lot of people think Sanders is just a crazy old coot. He is. But he's also dangerous in that he has so many followers.
As Churchill said:
Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.
And yet, as some quirk of human nature, people never seem to learn.
they conveniently dismiss it as not being the kind of socialism that we would adopt here in America. Even Bernie dismisses it, and says the socialism he is talking about is the socialism that exists in Sweden & Denmark.
Denmark Tells Bernie Sanders It's Had Enough Of His 'Socialist' Slurs
Is Sweden Socialist? No, but...
Sadly Bernie's followers are too lazy to find what the truth really is, even in these countries that make modest economic advances, but have also stymied real economic growth.
Because the people who never learn are steadfast in indoctrinating others into their shared stupidity. They gravitate towards positions where they can do so.
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“At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child — miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless. Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats.” P. J. O’Rourke.
Swap socialism for liberalism and it still works.
L
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