Socialism Viewed Positively By Americans

[MinutemanCO]

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

[vector7]

53% of Democrats Have a Positive View of Socialism, Gallup Poll Claims

Nov. 30, 2012 7:40am Billy Hallowell
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A Gallup survey released this week is sure to spark some partisan debate. The post-election study found that more than half of Democrats and left-leaning Americans (53 percent) have a positive view of socialism. This is almost identical to the proportion of left-of-center individuals who respond favorably to capitalism (55 percent).

These findings are particularly striking, especially when compared to Republicans’ views on these economic systems. While 72 percent of right-of-center Americans have a favorable opinion of capitalism, only 23 percent share similar sentiments when it comes to socialism.

Many Republicans have dubbed modern-day Democrats “socialists,” a title that is often-times rejected by liberal Americans. While 53 percent certainly doesn’t constitute the entire party, it’s likely that these results will ignite further controversy and renewed claims that liberal Americans have a greater penchant for embracing income redistribution and socialistic tendencies.


Gallup: More Than Half of Democrats Have Positive View of Socialism

On other issues, too, the differences are stark. When it comes to views about big business, 75 percent of Republican and GOP-leaning Americans have a positive image; only 44 percent of Democrats and left-of-center individuals share the same ideal. However, both Republicans (95 percent) and Democrats (94 percent) hold strongly-positive views about small businesses.

Another large-scale issue is the term “the federal government.” While only 27 percent of Republicans react favorably to it, 75 percent of Democrats do. Based on these findings, Gallup summarizes the results as they pertain to the current sociopolitical climate as follows:

The differences between Democrats and Republicans in how they view these terms provide an important window into today’s political realities. Democrats have a more positive image of the federal government than they do of capitalism, by a 20-percentage-point margin, while Republicans are more positive about capitalism than the federal government, by a 45-point margin. This difference is not surprising — particularly given that a Democrat currently occupies the White House — but underscores the divergence in the ways in which Republicans and Democrats look at the appropriate role of the government in relationship to business.

These responses were collected from Nov. 18-19. Respondents were asked, “Would you say you have a positive view or a negative view of the following?” Then, they were presented with seven economic indicators and issues (as seen in the above table).

A random sample of 1,040 American adults ages 18 and older were consulted for the completion of this study. The maximum margin of sampling error is +/-4 percentage points.


Communist Party USA Chairman Vows Cooperation With Democratic Party


The chairman of the National Committee of the Communist Party USA has penned a 2,023-word manifesto making the critical point that American Communists are eager to work with the Democratic Party to advance the modern communist agenda and achieve communist goals.

Communist Party chairman John Bachtell published his essay last week at People’s World, a “daily news website of, for and by the 99% and the direct descendant of the Daily Worker.”

“[L]abor and other key social forces are not about to leave the Democratic Party anytime soon,” Bachtell promised. “They still see Democrats as the most realistic electoral vehicle” to fight against perceived class enemies.

Bachtell, 58, is playing the long political game and he has a strategy, he said.

“First, we are part of building the broadest anti-ultra right alliance possible, uniting the widest array of class (including a section of monopoly), social and democratic forces. This necessarily means working with the Democratic Party,” the communist leader explained.

“Second, our objective is not to build the Democratic Party. At this stage we are about building the broad people’s movement led by labor that utilizes the vehicle of the Democratic Party to advance its agenda,” Bachtell further expounded. “We are about building the movements around the issues roiling wide sections of people that can help shape election contours and debates.”

“[W]e are for building movements in the electoral arena and see engagement in the electoral arena and democratic governance as a vital means to further build movements,” Bachtell also said.

To that end, he claimed, “thousands of trade unionists have been elected” at municipal and local levels of American government. Bachtell did not note a party affiliation of these elected leaders.

The rest of Bachtell’s declaration is mostly a somewhat modernized version of the same, garden-variety communist drivel communists have been spouting since roughly 1840.

Communists and other leftists have experienced “disillusionment with the Democratic Party” because of its “deep connections to Wall Street.” He is still mad at President Bill Clinton for NAFTA and welfare reform.

He’s mad at everyone about an increased number of private schools.

Republicans are an embodiment of caricatured evil for Bachtell.

“While the Republican Party is led by the most reactionary sections of Wall Street capital including the energy extractive sector and military industrial complex, it also consists of extreme right-wing elements including the Tea Party, white supremacists, social conservatives, right-wing evangelicals, climate deniers, anti-reproductive rights groups, etc.,” the communist leader writes.

Bachtell possesses a bachelor’s degree from Antioch College, an obscure, private hothouse of leftism that went defunct in 2008 and was resurrected in 2011 as an unaccredited, private work college.

[vector7]

'Why I vote Democrat’

I vote Democrat because I believe it’s okay if our federal government borrows $85 Billion every single month.


I vote Democrat because I care about the children … but saddling them with trillions of dollars of debt to pay for my bloated leftist government is okay.


I vote Democrat because I believe it’s better to pay billions of dollars to people who hate us rather than drill for our own oil, because it might upset some endangered beetle or gopher.

I vote Democrat because I believe it is okay if liberal activist judges rewrite the Constitution to suit some fringe kooks, who would otherwise never get their agenda past the voters.


I vote Democrat because I believe that corporate America should not be allowed to make profits for themselves or their shareholders. They need to break even and give the rest to the federal government for redistribution.


I vote Democrat because I’m not concerned about millions of babies being aborted, so long as we keep all of the murderers on death row alive.


I vote Democrat because I believe it’s okay if my Nobel Peace Prize winning President uses drones to assassinate people, as long as we don’t use torture.


I vote Democrat because I believe people, who can’t accurately tell us if it will rain on Friday, can predict the polar ice caps will melt away in ten years if I don’t start driving a Chevy Volt.


I vote Democrat because Freedom of Speech is not as important as preventing people from being offended.


I vote Democrat because I believe the oil companies’ profit of 3% on a gallon of gas is obscene, but the federal government taxing that same gallon of gas at 15% isn’t obscene.


I vote Democrat because I believe a moment of silent prayer at the beginning of the school day constitutes government indoctrination and an intrusion on parental authority ….. but
sex education, condom distribution and multiculturalism are all values-neutral.


I vote Democrat because I agonize over threats to the natural environment from CO2, acid rain and toxic waste ….. but I am totally oblivious of the threats to our social environment from pornography, promiscuity and family dissolution.


I vote Democrat because I believe lazy, uneducated stoners should have just as big a say in running our country as entrepreneurs who risk everything and work 70 hours per week.


I vote Democrat because I don’t like guns ….. so no one else should be allowed to own one.


I vote Democrat because I see absolutely no correlation between welfare and the rise of illegitimacy.


I vote Democrat because I see absolutely no correlation between judicial leniency and surging crime rates.


I vote Democrat because I believe you don’t need an ID to vote but you do to buy beer.


I vote Democrat because I believe marriage is obsolete, except for homosexuals.


I vote Democrat because I think AIDS is spread by insufficient funding.


I vote Democrat because I think “fairness” is far more important than freedom.


I vote Democrat because I think an “equal outcome” is far more important than equal opportunity.


I vote democrat because I would rather hide in a class room while others fight for my freedom.


I vote democrat because I’m not smart enough to own a gun and I need someone else to protect me.


I vote democrat because I would rather have free stuff than freedom.


And lastly, I vote Democrat because I’m convinced that government programs are the solution to the human condition, NOT freedom.

[American Patriot]

Why I vote Republican.

Because they are less stupid than Democrats. Not better, just less stupid.

I'm so tired of the politics in this country. I'm sick of the assholes allowing "Sharia Law" to start cropping up in areas in America. I'm sick of the stupid fucks who allowed in all these illegals full of diseases, measles and all the other diseases.

I'm really, really sick of Liberals, Democrats, RINOS, Military-Hating motherfuckers, Marxists, and the fucking gimmegimme crowd.

[Ryan Ruck]

American Socialism’s Day In The Sun

Popularity of the more radical Democrat Sanders is dragging Clinton to left in presidential race

May 31, 2015

Leftwing politicians are in electoral retreat across most of the western world. The one exception is the United States. At 15 per cent in the Democratic polls, Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont, is riding higher than any US socialist since Eugene Debs ran for the White House a century ago.

The fact that Mr Sanders has very little chance of unseating Hillary Clinton is beside the point. His popularity is dragging her leftward. If he flames out, other left-wingers, such as Martin O’Malley, the former governor of Maryland who entered the race at the weekend, are ready to pick up the baton. Elizabeth Warren, the populist Massachusetts senator, will continue to prod Mrs Clinton from outside the field. The more Mrs Clinton adopts their language, the harder it will be for her to reclaim the centre ground next year. Yet she is only following the crowd. A surprisingly large chunk of Democrats are happy to break the US taboo against socialism.

To most students of US politics, the phrase American socialism is an oxymoron — like clean coal or the Bolivian navy. A century ago, Werner Sombart, a German scholar, asked “Why is there no socialism in America?” It was a question that confounded Marxists. As the most advanced capitalistic society, the US was most ripe for a proletarian revolution, according to their teleology.

Yet the US refused to live up to its role. Europe’s finest intellectuals would have done better to have listened to the Irish immigrant in 1893 who on landing at Boston docks proclaimed: “If there’s a government here, I’m agin it.” They might also have read the first three words of the US constitution: “We the people”. For all the crimes committed against Native and black Americans, the US republic came into being without an aristocracy or feudal serfdom. It was born a middle class country with equality of opportunity as its creed. That made it a radically different place to the old world it had left behind.

Such differences are no longer obvious. No one, including Mr Sanders, is talking about nationalising chunks of the US economy. Yet his policies are radical by American standards. He wants a single-payer healthcare system, along the lines of Canada, or the UK. He would abolish tuition fees for instate higher education. He would drive big money out of US politics, redistribute income, mandate paid holidays and increase social security benefits. He would also break up the “too big to fail” Wall Street banks. “Are we prepared to take on the enormous political and economic power of the billionaire class,” asks Mr Sanders, “or do we continue to slide into . . . oligarchy?”

A highly energised minority of Democrats are responding to his message. Mr Sanders raised $1.5m from small donors within 24 hours of his launch in early May. Although Mr Sanders is trailing far behind Mrs Clinton, his support exceeds that of almost any candidate in the Republican field. Is it a temporary protest vote? Or should Mrs Clinton’s donors start to worry?

The answer to the first question will come when Democrats hold their first presidential debate. As a plain talker with an authentic personality, the septuagenarian Mr Sanders could strike an unflattering contrast to Mrs Clinton. Because Mrs Clinton is so strongly associated with dynasty and wealth — the Clintons earned more than $25m in speaking fees since the beginning of 2014 — she will feel all the more need to appropriate Mr Sanders’s rhetoric. But that will risk making her seem even less authentic. A majority of the US public already says they find Mrs Clinton untrustworthy. Mr Sanders will not become the 45th president of the US. But he could fatally wound Mrs Clinton’s chances. So, too, could Mrs Warren.

The answer to the second question is yes — Mr Sanders is no flash in the pan. Socialism found no audience in the US because most Americans felt they were middle class. High rates of social mobility gave most people the sense that their society was exceptional — and rightly so. As Richard Hofstadter, the US historian, said: “It has been our fate as a nation not to have ideologies but to be one.”

That is now in question. As recently as 2008, 63 per cent of Americans identified as upper middle or middle class. That has fallen to 51 per cent. Meanwhile, the share of Americans who self-identify as “working and lower class”, according to Gallup, has risen from 35 per cent to 48 per cent since 2008. Perhaps fittingly, the share of Americans who identify as upper class is 1 per cent. That number hasn’t changed. But the belief that they are rigging the system is now mainstream.

To be clear, I am not forecasting a red dawn in the US. It is hard to imagine even a small portion of Mr Sanders’s agenda being enacted. But the rise of the Democratic left is every bit as real as the Tea Party’s surge among Republicans. Until recently, political scientists talked of “asymmetric polarisation” — meaning Republicans were moving more to the right than Democrats were moving left. Now Democrats are catching up. Meanwhile, more and more Americans profess intolerance for other people’s political beliefs. Elections are generally won in the centre. But it is smaller than it used to be. By US traditions, next year’s election is likely to present an unusually stark clash of ideologies. Whatever else he does from here, Mr Sanders has already ensured that.

[Ryan Ruck]

New Republic Libs Romanticize Stalin

August 27, 2015

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Folks, I saw something that I have to comment on.

You know, this is outside the realm of the presidential race, but it is still right smack-dab in the middle of what we all care about, and that is the future of this country. You know and I know how frustrating it is to try to persuade liberals to abandon liberalism, or to put it another way, you know how hard it is to get liberals to switch to conservatism. One of the things that... I'll give you a couple examples of frustrating things to me.

For example, we had eight years in the 1980s of Ronald Reagan and Ronaldus Magnus and we had eight years of an economic boom. We had eight years of unemployment lowering. We had jobs created. We were just rolling. The Soviet Union was beaten back without firing a shot. It was one of the most incredible eight years in this nation's history, and yet people forgot it, or they were able to be convinced it wasn't real. "It was trickle-down.

"The only thing that happened during the eight years, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer." No, that's what's happening now, folks. Or how about this example? We have all these young people that just want Big Government, they want socialism, and yet you point out to them, "It's never worked anywhere. Show me where it's working! Show me Cuba. Show me the ChiComs. Show me anywhere. Show me Venezuela."

Show them anywhere where it doesn't work, and it doesn't shake them. They still think they can make it work. Very, very frustrating. When facts, when what you can see does not persuade them, what you can make them see? Socialism has never worked, at any time in the world. Marxism, Leninism, has never worked at any time in the world. Not as designed. I mean, it works for the people running it, but it does not work for the proletariat.

It does not work for the hoi polloi. It does not work for the people in the middle class, the lower class. They get shafted each and every time by it. And yet I ran across... You know, the New Republic was bought by one of these Facebook co-founders, and he and his husband are running this thing now. Chris Hughes, I think, is his name. The New Republic used to be on par with National Review.

It was the liberal equivalent of National Review. It was a liberal journal of opinion. It was highly regarded for its quality. Among intellectuals and people interested in opinion journalism, it was a high quality thing. It was really respected. It was looked on with great respect, even though it was filled with liberalism. They had their radicals in there. Michael Kinsley, people like that, used to edit it and write there.

But then it got sold and these new young Facebook guys came in and bought it. Well, the Facebook guy and his husband came in and bought it, and they have remade the whole thing in their own youthful image, and all of the great holdover writers and editors are practically gone now, and they have repopulated it with young people from current Millennial generation, and the magazine still has a leftist slant, a big leftist slant.

But it really has done what it can to destroy any linkage to its past. I still look at it. And The Economist. Because it was one of the magazines I always read as part of show prep in understanding liberalism within intellectually understanding it, to be able to explain to people why it wasn't working, wouldn't work, was bad. The latest edition of The New Republic has a story in it that is entitled: "What If Stalin Had Computers?"

So these are 35-, 40-year-old young people, and what are they doing? The piece is about maybe the Soviet Union was just a couple of generations early. Good grief, if the Soviet Union had our tech knowledge and wizardry, and if the Soviet Union had computers, then the command-and-control economy they were trying could have actually worked!

So here you have young people... We talk about the difficulty in persuading people to give up the romanticism of socialism, and here come this new crop of young people romantically looking at socialism. It always attracts them. Never mind it's never worked. It always attracts a group of people that think they are the ones that can finally do it, pull off a giant command-and-control not just economy, but entire culture.

They believe with incredible vanity that a select few elites can actually create an entire nation and society and culture that is better than anything any free market can create, because they are good people and the free market has bad people in it and cheats. Yeah, scam artists. But they, the good people with their command-and-control techniques, can make sure that the bad people are dealt with and identified and gotten rid of.

And what obviously happens is that the scams and the crooks and so forth end up running the country under socialism. But the point here is, Josef Stalin was a mass murderer. Every Soviet leader, up to Mikhail Gorbachev, could lay claim to being a mass murder to one degree or another. And here come these young kids at the New Republic thinking (summarized), "Oh, my God! Oh, my God! What if? What if Stalin, what if Mao -- oh, my God, what if Gorbachev -- had just had the computers and us that we have today!

"Can you imagine with the data collection and the data mining and the algorithms what beautiful results we could create for people?" So it finally cemented something I know, and that is all of this liberalism, most of it -- all of this dreaming and fantasies -- is all rooted in emotion. There isn't a single element of intellectual application to it.

When you have evidence, thousands of years of evidence all over the place including countries you can look at today and see incontrovertibly it doesn't work, and yet you romanticize about making it work? Every generation seems to have in it these romanticized young people who think they are the ones finally who will have success. "The Soviet Union, they didn't work because didn't have enough money.

"They weren't able stick it out long enough because evils of Reagan. Gorbachev? They tried to assassinate him. But if Gorbachev would have just had 10 more years and our skills at data mining, oh, my God! What a great place it could have been." So it has affirmed for me, folks, that changing these people's minds is not possible because all of this isn't in their heads. This is all emotion.

This fascination with all of this socialism and the fairness and the equality and the abundance, it's all dreams. It's what the environmental movement is. You know, you can pull your hair out trying to tell these people, "Do you realize there isn't any evidence for what you believe?" "What do you mean, no evidence?" "There isn't. It's just computer models!" Just like these hurricane models out there that change every six hours. There's no evidence of global warming. No evidence of man-made. There isn't any.

"Well, but we have the models!"

They want to believe it, they want to believe they can fix it, they want to believe they can. It's all emotion. And skulls full of mush. I mean, it helps to have a skull full of mush combined with this emotion in order to make it stick. That's all. I saw this story, "What if Stalin Had Computers?" and I said, "To hell with it. You know, what am I wasting my time trying to change their minds with facts and intellect for? It's not the way to go about it."

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, let me tell you what would happen, ladies and gentlemen, if Stalin had computers. You know what would happen if Stalin had computers? Stalin would use those computers to track every citizen. He would use those computers to make sure every citizen was following orders and behaving -- and if they weren't, they would end up in his gulag. If Joseph Stalin or any... All you have to do is look at China. If you want to find out what Stalin would have done if he had computers, check the ChiComs.

Check the political prisoner jails in China. Check people who engage in religion that the state disapproves of in China. Check and see what happens to 'em. This is why this is, to me, so absurd. What if...? The assumption that Stalin was a good guy. A mass murderer! The assumption that Stalin is a good guy, and, "My God, if he would have just had us and our brilliant data sets and our data mining capabilities and our computers! Oh, my God, Stalin could have been wonderful."

Stalin was a criminal. Stanley was a deadly, mass-murdering thug and here you have... That is known, that has been demonstrated, that could have been taught to these kids. I say "kids;" they're in their thirties. It's known what Joseph Stalin did. I don't care about the New York Times and their Duranty guy getting a Pulitzer for ignoring the murders. I mean, it's 17 million people minimum that he wiped out, but yet they romanticize him, and they think, "Oh, my God!"

Because, see, they think they're good people, wonderful people, and if they could just make sure Stalin had what they had, if Stalin had them, then, oh! The beauty is in their mind that command-and-control, a few elites, a few really smarter than everybody else elites can create a freer, richer, more productive nation than people exerting their own liberty and free will. And that's the problem.

So I say, "How do you persuade these people?" (chuckles)

Obviously going after them in a typical, mental series of exercises to persuade 'em isn't gonna work 'cause there's nothing mental about that we're doing. They're not... If they really believe this stuff, they're stupid; they're not bright! So it's all emotion. It is a triumph of emotion over common sense that makes them believe that if these murdering-thug dictators only had them and their computer technique and ability and high-tech, advanced data mining and whatever algorithms, you name it, "Think of the good that could be done! Think of the magic that could have been done!"

It's dangerous as it can be, especially when the evidence to the contrary is within their eyesight. They don't even have to study history. It's within their eyesight to see that it doesn't work. Give Castro computers and see what he does with them. He wouldn't know the first thing to do with one. But if he did, if he knew what they were capable of, do you think Castro would use his computers to further enslave people, to further track people, to further punish people?

Damn right he would, exactly as the ChiComs do, because that's the kind of people they are and were.

END TRANSCRIPT

[Ryan Ruck]

Majority of Americans Don't Like Capitalism: YouGov Poll

November 3, 2015

‘The business of America’ may be business but a new YouGov poll for the Legatum Institute shows that Americans aren’t terribly fond of the financial system that is the backbone of our society.

Out of 1,000 Americans polled, 55% believe that in a capitalistic system the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Around 64% surveyed in the UK and 77% of Germans believe the same. Additionally, only 49% of Americans believe that free enterprise is better at lifting people out of poverty than the government, compared with 39% of Britons and 40% of Germans.

The news for business keeps getting worse in the poll. Only 30% of Americans think that what is good for business is good for society generally, and 65% of Americans think that most of the world’s biggest businesses have taken unethical actions like dodging taxes; that view is widely shared by people in the survey, which was conducted in September.

There is an almost universal belief that the world’s biggest businesses have cheated and polluted their way to success – with barely ten per cent of respondents in all seven countries surveyed thinking big businesses are ‘clean’.

It is an interesting time for American capitalism: Even as big financial institutions continue to rebound from the depths of the Great Recession, there is a growing unhappiness with the wealth gap, whether real or perceived. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has made strides at promoting his democratic-socialist message, and even some Republicans are railing against “crony capitalism.” (Sanders’ campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment on the YouGov poll.)

Though these numbers aren’t great, Tim Kane, an economist at the conservative-leaning Hoover Institute, said that economic confidence tends to be based on the business cycle. He cited this survey as confirmation that “the economy is on the wrong track,” something that various polls of Americans also reflect.

Kane also drew attention to one of the other questions in the poll, where a majority of those polled said that poverty and unemployment was a bigger problem than inequality and the presence of some super rich individuals. This answer “reaffirmed his faith” in the public, he said. “As long as everyone is doing well, inequality is really a silly measure.”

[Ryan Ruck]

Millennials Heed The Siren Call Of Socialism

February 7, 2016

The biggest story this election season is not Donald Trump or the fortunes of the two winners in Iowa, the unattractive tag team of Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton. For all their attempts to seem current and contemporary, these candidates – and Trump as well – represent older, more established elements in American life, such as evangelicals, nativists and, in Hillary’s case, the ranks of middle-age women, seniors and public-sector unions.

The biggest and most important development has been the massive support among the new generation of voters for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and his open embrace of socialism. In Iowa’s Democratic caucuses, which ended with Clinton and Sanders in a virtual tie, young people opted for Sanders at an almost inconceivable rate of 84-14. In 2008, Barack Obama won this segment, claiming only a 57 percent majority.

So we are seeing the embrace of an openly socialist septuagenarian by a generation that, within a decade, will dominate our electorate and outnumber baby boomers as soon as 2020. That should put more conventional politicians, and business, on notice. Whether you are a Republican, a free-marketer or, even a Democratic-leaning crony capitalist, be afraid – be very afraid.

Timing right?

For the first time since labor leader and presidential candidate Eugene Debs in the early 20th century, Americans are flocking in big numbers to a politician who rejects the efficacy of capitalism and seeks to create a new, notionally fairer, system. Now, as then, the reason to support socialist ideas – some of which were implemented during the New Deal – lies with the palpable failures of capitalism. Polls of millennials show consistently that economic issues, such as jobs and college debt, are their dominant concerns.

The new generation’s lurch toward socialism would have been unimaginable at any previous moment in the past half century. A recent yougov.com poll found some 36 percent of people ages 18-29 favor socialism compared with barely 39 percent support for capitalism. Support for socialism drops precipitously, to 26 percent, among people ages 30-44, tumbles to 24 percent support among those ages 45 to 64 and hits 15 percent among those over 65.

Another poll, this one from Pew, finds that 43 percent of millennials have positive connotations about the word “socialism,” compared with less than half that level among people over 50.

Perhaps one reason for this divergence lies in memory, or lack of it. Few millennials remember the collapse of the Soviet Union’s “evil empire,” which occurred when the oldest of them were barely out of diapers. In contrast to older generations, who reacted against Soviet-style politics, millennials seem to make little distinction between liberal progressivism and socialism.

Conservative academics, a small but sometimes hardy band, place blame on a lack of teaching about the realities of socialism by generally left-leaning instructors at universities or high schools. Certainly from what I see, at least, few students seem to know about Stalinist and Maoist purges, famines and thought control.

Yet it’s not just ignorance at work here. Millennials are coming up in a very tough economy where opportunity is limited, even for college graduates, with diminishing returns accompanying soaring tuition. Millennials are finding everything harder than their parents did – leaving a record number living at home into their late 20s and earlier 30s, or sheltering with their friends in apartments. Record levels of student debt, twice the average two decades ago, are slowing economic progress. Relieving this indebtedness is one element of Sanders’ appeal.

At the same time, relatively few young people are starting businesses. Being in debt and asset-free does not augur well for the prospect of nurturing appreciation for the creative power of capitalism in the next generation.

A party divided

The rise of support for socialism among millennials is having an immediate impact on the Democratic Party. Many left-leaning Democrats rightfully detest the kind of modulated crony capitalism epitomized by Hillary Clinton. This could precipitate a civil war among major Democratic donors – notably in Silicon Valley – who may embrace progressive views on cultural and environmental issues, but have little interest in having their massive wealth threatened by regulations or hypertaxation.

“They don’t like [Bernie] Sanders at all,” notes San Francisco-based researcher Greg Ferenstein, who has been polling Internet company founders for an upcoming book. Sanders’ emphasis on income redistribution and protecting union privileges and pensions violates the favorite notions of the tech elite. “He’s an egalitarian liberal,” Ferenstein explains, “these people are tech liberals. Equality is a nonissue in Silicon Valley.”

Although maybe not an issue among the tech oligarchs, class and inequality are not “nonissues” for many progressives of all ages. In blue bastions like San Francisco, grass-roots progressives regard tech billionaires, and their employees, with about the same regard evangelicals have for abortionists. To many old-line Bay Area liberals, the tech moguls – with their tax breaks, special employee buses and expensive tastes – are transforming their once-diverse city into an unconscionably expensive, class-ridden enclave. In many ways, as the Who sang, “the new boss” turns out to be as remarkably oppressive as the “old boss.”

This division will become clearer as the Clinton machine, and its media apparatus, go after Sanders. The Vermont senator was better treated before he posed a serious threat. Now that he is challenging the gentry liberal consensus, the mainstream media, increasingly under the sway of tech oligarchs, are mounting increasingly strident attacks on Sanders. These attacks have been led by the Washington Post, owned by Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, whose fortune and sometimes brutal business practices would fare far better under Clinton than Sanders.

Indeed, the defense of crony capitalism is implicit in the Clinton appeal. After all, she is running with funds collected from financial, technology and other crony industries. Some of these same people have also been quite generous toward the Clinton Foundation, Bill and Hillary’s ethically challenged holding company.

Future of capitalism

Some conservatives – particularly given the chaos of the Republican race – might be tempted to revel in the new Democratic lurch to the left, which conceivably could drive the party too far from the mainstream, at least for older generations. But millennials are the future, and, if the GOP retains its reactionary ideas on key social issues – notably the mass expulsion of undocumented immigrants, legalizing marijuana and gay marriage – its chances of reaching millennial voters may be minimal.

Ultimately, the future of capitalism depends on making the system work for the majority of people, including millennials. The current system, frankly, is producing few benefits for the vast majority of Americans, giving the free market a bad name and turning off millennials. Fully half of them, notes a recent Harvard study, already believe the “American Dream” is dead. More than 10 million millennials are outside the system, neither employed nor in education or training, a population that seems ripe for leftist agitation.

Simply put, to change millennial views, capitalism also needs to change from its current trajectory. The predominant system of crony capitalism, most ensconced in blue states like California, clearly favors the already affluent. At the same time, nonsocialists need to do a better job of explaining the past failures of state control; most millennials, as the Reason Foundation has pointed out, do not even associate socialism with a state-centered economy, which most of them say they would strongly oppose.

And, to be sure, there are elements of millennial attitudes that push back against socialist practices. Millennials, for example, tend to distrust all institutions, including government, according to Pew, and half consider themselves independents, far more than in any other generation. They may be alienated from large financial and corporate institutions but may not remain permanently in the tank for ever more intrusive government.

Ultimately, reality, not knowledge, changes attitudes. Until capitalists focus more on jobs and upward mobility, and less on asset inflation, young people have little reason to change their minds. Unless capitalism or its crony offshoots can create a credible future for the young, there’s little reason to expect that this generation will abandon their determination to change the system that, for all its faults, has created more prosperity over time for more people than any other.

[American Patriot]

Socialism... because "I want your shit".

Fuck these little fuckers.

I will take THEIR shit.... just wait.

[vector7]

Companion Threads:

• A Socialist America?
• The Communist Takeover of America: 45 Declared Goals
  
• Unions: Socialist, Progressive, Communist - Taking over America from inside
  

Lets probe the Democrats for Left leaning Socialists views
MAXINE WATERS OUTS THE DEMS SOCIALIST AGENDA

California Democrat, Maxine Waters, gives away the game while grilling John Hofmeister of Shell Oil during the recent Congressional hearings. Representing the 35th district of California.

Obama: Under my plan energy prices would naturally skyrocket

The Manchurian President IN EARLY 2008 OBAMA REVEALED HE WOULD CUT AMERICA'S MILITARY DEFENSE SYSTEMS SLOW DEVELOPMENT OF OUR COMBAT SYSTEMS AND NEGOTIATE DIRECTLY WITH RUSSIA TO ACHIEVE DEEP CUTS IN DISMANTLING OUR NUCLEAR ARSENALS Uploaded on Feb 16, 2008 http://www.youtube.com/embed/dl32Y7wDVDs

Who is Barack Obama?

By Mondo Frazier

There are so many things the public does not know about the man who sits in the White House. Who is Barack Obama? In my search to find out the answers I embarked on a journey that has lasted three years and counting -- and nearly made my head explode.

As usual, when Obama is the subject, Americans can't count on the progressives in the Corporate Mainstream Media (CMM) for much help. So, what's one to do? The foreign press proved helpful. Therefore, gleaned from the foreign press: a few stories which didn't rate any coverage from the U.S. CMM.

In 2005, then-Senator Barack Obama went on a mission to Russia with Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN). The newly-minted U.S. senator was invited to be part of a Russian fact-finding tour that inspected a nuclear weapons site in Perm, Siberia. The base Lugar and Obama visited was where mobile launch missiles were being destroyed under the Cooperative Threat Reduction program (CTR), which also went by the name of the Nunn-Lugar program.

What happened next -- after the inspections were over -- was at the time reported by several foreign news sources but was never reported in the USA by the CMM. The Russians detained Obama and Lugar for three hours at the airport, demanding to examine both Obama's and Lugar's passports and search their plane. Some sources reported that the Russians accused Barack Obama of being a spy.

RUSSIANS PUBLISHED AN ARTICLE IN DECEMBER 2008
Obama starts World War III in Crimea



December 26, 2008...

The Left's Destruction of America From Within

[Ryan Ruck]

Millennials Were Asked Whether Bush or Stalin Killed More People

October 24, 2016

Young Americans are stunningly ignorant of the tragic history of Communism. A new study found that millennials and the youngest generation (Generation Z) are unfamiliar with past Communist leaders, underestimate the number of people killed under Communism, and support the collectivist ideas of Bernie Sanders. Terrifyingly, almost a third of millennials think more people were killed under President George W. Bush than under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

"One of the concerns the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation has had since its establishment is that an emerging generation of Americans have little understanding of the collectivist system and its dark history,"declared Marion Smith, executive director of the organization, which sponsored the report on U.S. attitudes toward socialism.

Unfortunately, this Report, which we intend to release on an annual basis, confirms this worrisome impression," Smith concluded.

Indeed, the report — compiled by research and data firm YouGov — paints a dark picture of young Americans' attitudes about collectivism.

More than a quarter of Americans (26 percent) and almost a full third of millennials (32 percent) said that more people were killed under George W. Bush than Joseph Stalin.

This is, quite frankly, absurd. Under Stalin, the Soviet Union suffered an estimated 56 to 62 million "unnatural deaths," with 34 to 49 million directly linked to the dictator. Under Bush, 6,648 U.S. service members died, and the number of Iraqis who died has been variously estimated at 112,114, 122,644, 151,000, and even 655,000. Even the highest number for Bush is roughly 700,000, while the lowest for Stalin would be 34 million.

Such stunning historical ignorance also emerges when Americans estimate the number of people killed by Communist regimes. A vast majority (75 percent) place the number below the accurate figure of 100 million. A full 80 percent of millennials underestimated the victims of Communism, and 88 percent of Generation Z did so. In other words, the younger generations are growing up without an accurate picture of the sins of collectivism.

Indeed, many millennials are unfamiliar with Communist leaders, such as Mao Zedong (of whom 42 percent admitted ignorance), Che Guevara (40 percent), Lenin (33 percent), and Stalin (18 percent). The report also listed current Russian President Vladimir Putin (18 percent), although he likely is not an ideologue or a Communist. Among millennials who did know Lenin, a full 25 percent had a favorable opinion of him.

Perhaps tied to this historical ignorance, younger Americans have sharply different views of Communism and socialism than their parents. Only half of millennials (55 percent) said Communism was and still is a problem, while a full 80 percent of Baby Boomers said so, along with 91 percent of elderly Americans.

Over half (57 percent) of Americans overall had a "very unfavorable" view of Communism, although that view is held by only 37 percent of millennials and 38 percent of the youngest generation.

Perhaps revealing the influence of Bernie Sanders, nearly half of Generation Z (45 percent) said they would vote for a socialist, while 21 percent would be open to voting for a communist. Only 42 percent of millennials had a favorable view of capitalism, verses 54 percent of Baby Boomers (and, interestingly, 47 percent of Generation Z).

Younger Americans proved less likely to agree with the capitalist ideas of Milton Friedman than with Bernie Sanders. Only 55 percent of Generation Z and 58 percent of millennials agreed with Friedman, while 71 percent of Generation Z and the same percentage of millennials agreed with Sanders.

The survey was conducted online, among 2,300 respondents above the age of 16.

"This report clearly reveals a need for educating our youth on the dangerous implications of socialist ideals," Smith declared. "We will continue to work with educators to build curriculum to address this important need."

[vector7]

So sad.

[Ryan Ruck]

[Volk]

Exactly the empty headed romantic utopianism that was prevalent in 19th century Russia among the intellectuals, and only the reactionary Tsar and his government stood between the egg headed elites and a bright and shining paradise right here on Earth.... But it ended in oceans of blood spilled by these same God-fighting fanatics

[American Patriot]

A day will come when either America succumbs to this mentality, or it rises up to fight us, stronger than we expect and bloodshed will become the norm.

Either way, people will die on both sides of the political fence. Some will die rapidly. Others will be tortured by their own existence.

[Ryan Ruck]

Thomas Sowell Warns U.S. May Not Resist Siren Song Of Socialism: 'I Wouldn't Bet On It'

March 5, 2019

Thomas Sowell, a living legend in the field of economics, says he fears the U.S. may eventually succumb to the siren song of socialism.

The author of “Basic Economics,” “The Vision of the Anointed,” “The Quest for Cosmic Justice” and numerous other books said the U.S. may very well go down a path of financial ruin due to “wonderful-sounding” rhetoric.

Mr. Sowell, a Marxist in his youth, made the remarks Tuesday while appearing with Fox Business Network’s David Asman.

“I do have a great fear that, in the long run, we may not make it,” Mr. Sowell said. “I hate to say that. The one thing that keeps me from being despairing is that we don’t know. There are so many things that we can’t possibly know. And so, we may make it, but I wouldn’t bet on it.”

The author said that time and time again, people adopt willful ignorance regarding socialism’s track record around the world

“So many people today, including in the leading universities, don’t pay much attention to evidence,” he said. “When you see people starving in Venezuela and fleeing into neighboring countries and realize that this is a country that once had the world’s largest oil reserves, you realize that they’ve ruined a very good prospect with ideas that sounded good but didn’t turn out well.

[vector7]

Ocasio-Cortez Is Tired Of "Working All The Time"

Published on Mar 14, 2019

[Ryan Ruck]

1 In 3 Millennials See Communism As Favorable, Survey Finds

October 28, 2019

A growing number of Millennials show support for communism and socialism, a survey from the Victims of Communism found.

The survey, conducted by the Victims of Communism and polled by the research and data firm YouGov, found that 70% of Millennials are likely to vote socialist and that one in three Millennials perceive communism as “favorable.” The survey is part of the Victims of Communism’s report “U.S. Attitudes Toward Socialism, Communism, and Collectivism,” which polled 2,100 people in the United States who were 16 and older with a margin of error of +/- 2.4%.

A little over half of the Millennials polled said the Declaration of Independence “guarantees freedom and equality” better than the Communist Manifesto.

“The historical amnesia about the dangers of communism and socialism is on full display in this year’s report,” said Marion Smith, executive director of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

“When we don’t educate our youngest generations about the historical truth of 100 million victims murdered at the hands of communist regimes over the past century, we shouldn’t be surprised at their willingness to embrace Marxist ideas,” Smith added. “We need to redouble our efforts to educate America’s youth about the history of communist regimes and the dangers of socialism today.”

Millennials polled also said they consider President Donald Trump the “biggest threat to world peace,” rating Trump as more dangerous to world peace than Russian President Vladimir Putin, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, or Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Ten percent of Millennials said Trump is “responsible for more deaths and human rights abuses” than mass-murder and Russian leader Joseph Stalin or notorious German dictator Adolf Hitler.

[vector7]

Companion Threads:

• GOP, RNC to rebrand Democrats as 'Socialists'
  
• Socialism in America

Schumer: Yes, Party Will Unite Behind a Socialist



Leah Barkoukis
Posted: Feb 12, 2020 4:05 PM

While there is still a long way to go in the Democratic primary, New Hampshire's results prompted three candidates to drop out of the race, painting a stark reality for Establishment Democrats—Sen. Bernie Sanders—a socialist—is the new frontrunner.

Despite reservations among some Democratic lawmakers about Bernie Sanders's political ideology, the party's leadership insisted Tuesday they will be united in supporting whomever becomes the presidential nominee.

Speaking in a joint press conference with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer responded to a question about how comfortable the party will be with a Democratic socialist at the top of the ticket.

"Primaries are primaries, and there're always lots of sturm und drang," Schumer said. "You will see in a few months Democrats will be strongly united together, and we will be focused like a laser on beating Donald Trump. The enthusiasm that you last saw in 2008 to elect Barack Obama, you will see among Democrats this summer and fall to get Donald Trump out of office."

Pelosi said the House of Representatives will help bring the Democratic presidential nominee across the finish line.

"We in the house feel we set a model for how to win elections by winning in the most gerrymandered, voter suppressed political arena you could ever put together," she said. "So we think we are an engine that can help us win that election whoever our nominee is."

View: https://twitter.com/SteveGuest/status/1227294907036991496

[vector7]

Democrats Copying Communists Playbook Discussed By Tucker Carlson & Terrie Turchie (4:09)

https://youtu.be/xzkEJNMw6Kk