Versión Español
Three events have marked a pushback against the rise of socialism in the United States in recent days. The first is the admonition made by Donald Trump that his country could end up turning into “another Venezuela”; another, a report issued by the White House on the opportunity costs of socialism and, finally, a Miami protest by exiled Cubans shouting “damn communists!” to leaders of the Democratic party, including Nancy Pelosi.
Last weekend Trump said: “The main base of the Democrats has leaned so much to the left, that we would end up like Venezuela. This country would end up like Venezuela.” He suggested that the Democrats want to “massively raise your taxes, and impose socialism in our country.”
He stressed the danger of that happening if Democratic candidates like Andrew Gillum in Florida, or Beto O’Rourke in Texas, win office.
There has already been a rise in a faction of the Democratic party that openly proclaims to be “democratic socialists” and this has led to internal divisions, which were laid bare during the presidential elections.
“I lost because Bernie Sanders promised everyone a pony,” Hillary Clinton declared in her book titled “What happened?”, in which she analyzes why she lost the election to Trump.
The promises of her rival in the primaries, far left-wing Bernie Sanders, appealed to the young people who are heavily indebted by college loans, so that the state emerges as the hero that gives them what they ask for “free.”
This trend is increasingly highlighted, so much so that the White House warned on Tuesday that “socialism is experiencing a return to the American political discourse,” a phenomenon evidenced just two weeks before the November midterm elections.
“Congressional Democrats want to take money from working Americans to fund failed socialist policies,” is the title of a report published on the official White House website, followed by President Trump’s statements: “from the Soviet Union to Cuba and Venezuela, wherever socialism or true Communism has been adopted, what it has provoked is anguish, devastation, and failure.”
This is from a report presented by the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), entitled “Opportunity costs of socialism.” This is an agency that is responsible for advising the president on economic issues.
New paper on The Opportunity Costs of Socialism: https://t.co/Of2KRptUPh via @whitehouse
— CEA (@WhiteHouseCEA) October 23, 2018
Historically, the role of the CEA has been academic and non-partisan. However, CEA Director Kevin Hassett linked politicians from the most progressive wing of the Democratic Party, such as Sanders or Senator Elizabeth Warren, with icons of socialist historical thought such as Vladimir Lenin or Karl Marx because both defend a social-democratic model within a market economy.
The report also maintains that there is “a strong relationship between greater economic freedom and better economic performance.”
200 years after Karl Marx's birth, socialism is making a comeback in America—courtesy of Congressional Democrats, some of whom now wear the label proudly.
Here is what it means for our country: https://t.co/IH390O6cyU
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) October 23, 2018
This prompted the White House to declare the following: “Coinciding with the 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx, socialism is returning to be part of the American political discourse. Detailed political proposals of self-styled socialists are gaining support in Congress and much of the electorate.”
“Initiatives such as universal public health are very much in line with the approaches of socialism,” said Hassett.
During his presidential campaign in 2016, Senator Bernie Sanders proposed government-run healthcare as an active part of his campaign.
However, Hassett indicates that if public health had to be financed through higher taxes, it would cause “a fall in GDP of 9%.”
And the official White House Twitter account announced that, “Politics aside, socialism belongs in the dustbin of history, period.”
Politics aside, socialism belongs in the dustbin of history. Period. https://t.co/IH390O6cyU pic.twitter.com/xjG5oFPxKl
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) October 23, 2018
This explains another incident this week, in which Cuban exiles who fled a socialist system, where the state takes charge of healthcare and all social services, received House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi with shouting and insults, rejecting the growing infiltration by the global socialist movement of the Democratic Party.
Nancy Pelosi was heckled by Cuban Americans while in Miami. Is this behavior a retaliation to the way members of the Left have been acting?
Posted by American Voices on Monday, October 22, 2018
They also accuse the Democrats of having normalized relations with the Castro regime (during the Obama administration).
Indeed, Nancy Pelosi was the one who headed the mission of American diplomats that met with the Castro government in 2015.
So the exiles see Pelosi and the Democratic high command as accomplices of the dictatorship that has subjected its people for more than half a century to deprivation of life, liberty, and property.
