The great hope is that we as a country get to have the debate we’ve been denied for years: does one party get to embrace, coddle and promote socialism without electoral consequences?

As the Democratic establishment’s panic grows while watching Comrade Sanders continue to win primaries, caucuses, and delegates, it’s looking increasingly likely that Sanders could be the Democratic Party’s nominee for president. The meltdown is humorous to watch as even the establishment’s collaborators in the media realize how bad things could go with the Vermont socialist at the top of the ticket.

Bernie Sanders wants a revolution, pure and simple. That’s no secret. He vocally and unabashedly promotes an upheaval of American traditions and institutions.

He is a self-avowed democratic socialist; of course, no one is entirely sure what that means, leaving aside the obvious fact he’s trying to obfuscate about who he is and what he really believes.

His supporters try to explain that Sanders is not really into the Venezuela type of socialism, but more the Denmark type. Yet despite the semantics, the fact is his ideas are disturbingly similar to the platforms of the Communist autocrats he simultaneously admires while claiming he denounces authoritarianism.

Yet on the debate stage in Nevada last week, Sanders rebuked former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg for suggesting he is a Communist. Why the separation? Why not just embrace it if that’s what he truly believes?

He’s been open about his Communist sympathies in the past, even acknowledging that it was fine for people to call him a Communist. But now that he’s legitimately in the running to be the nominee for the Democratic Party, perhaps he’s realized electing a Communist into the White House is still not palatable for most Americans.

Most people over the age of 40 still remember the global Cold War as America led the fight against Communism’s encroachment. My parent’s generation certainly remembers ducking and covering under their desks as school children as if that would save them from a nuclear explosion.

So let’s forget the absurd mental gymnastics. In his own words, Sanders has identified, praised, and encouraged Communism.

Take for example his recent “60 Minutes” interview, in which he stated that not everything about Castro’s reign of terror in Cuba was bad. Why? Because Castro taught kids to read and gave them health care. I mean, Castro also slaughtered, tortured, and exiled countless numbers of his own people. But, by golly, Cuban kids were able to read the propaganda explaining why their parents had to be imprisoned and shot.

The concerns with Sanders are not just that his policies are ridiculous, from Green New Deal to socialized healthcare to a litany of other pie-in-the-sky ideas for which he has no serious plan to fund. Sure, he claims he’s going to fund it all by taxing Wall Street, stock trades, the wealthy, everything that moves (kidding, but only sort of) and cutting defense spending by over 100 percent (not kidding), but there’s not enough Monopoly money in the world to fund his idiotic plans. The concern should really be that none of his ideas have anything to do with the American tradition and are, in fact, deeply un-American.

But if you think about it, Sanders’ rise in many ways was inevitable. The Left’s long march through our educational system, which has resulted in deep dishonesty about socialism and Communism and indoctrinated generations with socialist ideas and a loathing of America, set the stage for Sanders.

Let the irony of that sink in: the success of the Democratic Party establishment in taking over the education system brought Sanders upon them. His rise threatens to undo them and I hope it results in all of them tearing themselves to shreds.

Sanders is what happens when you indoctrinate youth in the idea that there is nothing to love about their country. Sanders is what happens when teachers spew hatred for the institutions and traditions that have made America great, when schools promote “diversity” and “intersectionality” over unity, and states create havens for radical and anti-American ideas that have transformed college and university campuses from places that promote free inquiry into indoctrination centers

Every thinking American knows exactly how we got here. The Democratic establishment has only itself to blame. The Democratic Party’s powers-that-be should stop pretending like they didn’t see it coming. The great hope is that we as a country get to have the debate we’ve been denied for years: does one party get to embrace, coddle and promote socialism without electoral consequences? I sincerely hope not but we will find out this November.