I&I Editors

If Democrats are going to run in 2020 on a platform of driving the U.S. into socialism, they are likely to get thumped hard at the ballot box. Results of a Monmouth University Poll released this week show that 57 percent of the country says socialism is not compatible with American values. Only 29 percent say it is.

It’s alarming that socialism has penetrated as deeply as it has into our politics. For decades, Americans clearly understood what socialism is, and widely rejected it. And, despite the media’s grade-school infatuation with socialist politicians and policies, maybe they still do. The Monmouth poll found that only 10 percent of Americans hold a positive view of socialism.

Yet every Democratic candidate has to identify as a comrade in the struggle if he or she is to pick up any traction. When Noah Wall from FreedomWorks wrote in the Washington Examiner three months ago that the Democratic Party was in a socialist spiral, he was exactly right.

We need to be clear — and fully honest — about what socialism is. It’s coercion. It’s compulsion. It’s the threat and use of force. It robs its free people of choice and enslaves them. Socialism is anti-liberty, pro-servility, and soul-crushing. Its servants live in misery while those in power live in luxury.

Of course America’s Democrats say that their version of socialism is democratic socialism — not that nasty stuff that’s killed and maimed in Cuba, North Korea, and Venezuela. They want to emulate the systems of Scandinavia.

But Sweden, Norway, and Denmark are not socialist countries. They are welfare states paid for by the market economies of those nations — and the defense budget of the United States.

And they’re not even the welfare states they once were. Sweden has reformed its system because the Swedes realized more than 20 years ago its welfare state was not sustainable. Denmark has also moved to cut dependency on public dollars. Norway could have never supported its welfare programs for decades if it’s economy had not been fed by oil revenue — a stream of dollars that Democrats would cut off if they could because they want to impose a New Green Deal on the world, not just the U.S.

Today’s Democrats, both captured and captivated by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and the appallingly childish Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, aren’t interested in market economies. They want the economy to be centrally controlled — a hallmark of the Soviet Union, Cuba, and China (before modest liberalization arrived and released millions from socialist misery in that country.) Central planning wrecked Venezuela’s economy just as it razed the economies of Eastern European nations that were within the Soviet sphere.

But few learn, which is why Greece and Spain are also casualties of socialism.

A lack of learning could also be fueling the Democrats’ gravitation toward socialism. Young Americans, those from 18 to 34, were more positive toward socialism, and believe in greater portions that it’s compatible with American values, than those in the 35-54 and 55-plus age groups.

The gaps aren’t large, but big enough to support the argument that the education establishment has not just failed students but actually conditioned them to put their faith in a monstrous system.

Young voters aren’t going to sway the 2020 election, but the long-term prospects don’t inspire confidence. Unless change is forced in our schools, a generation of uninformed and misinformed voters could eventually put a socialist in the White House and give socialists control of Congress.

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