A Rose By Any Other Name...

All of the Democrat candidates for president have been proposing socialist prescriptions for America, but why go with a come lately when you can vote the real thing.  Bernie Sanders has been a socialist since he first ran as a mayor in of Burlington, Vermont in the mid 1970s.  I have a friend who was an original Bernie Bro back in the day.  Even then they were dreaming of "throwing up people against the wall" when the revolution came.  My friend, of course, has repented of these ideas, but sadly, Bernie has not.  But if you are a fan of socialist dictators, vote for Bernie.

Bernie was recently interviewed by 60 Minutes in which he said that everything Fidel Castro did wasn't bad. That's true enough, I guess. And Hitler built the Autobahns and instituted a 40 hour work week. But in both cases, these are not why we loathe these regimes. First, both regimes restricted liberty and were massively authoritarian. Second, when people disagreed with the leaders, both regimes resorted to killing people on an industrial scale. Indeed, this has been the main trademark of all socialist regimes, including the Soviet Union, Communist China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Cuba, or...well...wherever socialism has been tried.  Socialists see it as a feature, not a bug.

Sanders, and the compliant media, are now trying to sell socialism as "Democratic Socialism," but as Dave Ball makes clear at the American Thinker today in an article entitled Rebranding Socialism As Democratic Socialism, it is still socialism, and it still stinks.

As we approach this year’s elections, the purveyors of socialism have tried to rebrand their product by calling it “democratic socialism.” The sales force and marketing department of democratic socialism, the Democratic Party, and the mainstream media, are plying a new fairy tale that democratic socialism is nothing like socialism. No siree, nothing like it, they sing in chorus. The chorus, however, is badly out of tune. Democratic socialism is not the wonderland of inclusiveness, social justice, equality, and happiness it is advertised to be. It will not end human exploitation and it will not save the planet. It is still socialism, just with a new name. Socialism has never worked for any nation and it will not work in this country, even with a new name.

Please go read about Sanders' policy proposals, and realize that if he gets even one of these proposals through, we will lose a great deal of freedom to determine how we live our lives. Sanders says he opposes authoritarian regimes, and yet what he proposes are authoritarian policies. Whether you call it Democratic Socialism, or Communism, or Fascism, it is all the same, and it isn't good for you. Indeed, as Dennis Prager says today at Townhall.com:

First, truth is not a left-wing value. As I have said and written ever since studying communism and the left in graduate school at the Columbia University Russian Institute, truth is a liberal value and a conservative value, but it is not a left-wing value.

What does this mean? It means that whatever Sanders says about his proposals, you should probably take it with a grain of salt. And since the entire Democratic politician class has become enthralled with Socialism you really can't believe a word they say. Vote for them at your own risk, literally.