Ken Berwitz
Venezuela IsSocialist, Senator Sanders. Any Questions?
Socialism: Like a skyscraper crane about to topple in highwinds, Venezuela is teetering on the brink of a horrific economic collapse. Itwas brought on by one thing: socialism, taken to the hilt.
Yet incredibly, neither Bernie Sanders nor his voters makethis connection.
It\’s worrisome that so many Americans see socialism in afavorable light these days. A May 2015 YouGov poll showed that socialism wasviewed favored favorably by 43% of Democrats, while a June 2015 Gallup pollshowed that 47% of Americans would vote for a socialist.
It points to a collective loss of memory. After all, it\’sbeen decades since the fact that the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet empirecollapsed. As chess champion Garry Kasparov has noted in “Winter Is Coming,” there have been no truth commissions or victory parades to institutionalize themonstrous idea\’s discreditation and demise. In fact, the idea seems to beresurging in the U.S. Democratic Party, even with examples of its failurescontinuing, the latest example being Venezuela.
That reality of socialism and its horrific results is mockedby Sanders himself, who denies it has anything to do with his own ideas. “Imyself don\’t use the word socialism,” he told a University of Vermont studentpublication in 1976 “because people have been brainwashed into thinkingsocialism automatically means slave-labor camps, dictatorship and lack offreedom of speech.”
Brainwashed? The very word comes from socialistindoctrination practices. Sanders\’ flip dismissal of those realities reminds usof a quote from Nobel Prize winner and author of “The Gulag Archipelago” Aleksander Solzhenitsyn: “Or do they refuse to see?” Yes, Sanders and his followers refuse.
Today Venezuela, with the world\’s largest oil reserves is,believe it or not, importing oil. It\’s a perfect illustration of Nobel-winningeconomist Milton Friedman\’s well known saying that if the Sahara took upsocialism, there would soon be a shortage of sand.
That\’s the part of socialism Bernie Sanders doesn\’t want totalk about. It\’s the same wherever it\’s tried. Voters fall for it over andover, and all it brings is failure. Sanders is only continuing the con. When ishe going to be called on it?
