Posted on 07/08/2015 4:22:34 AM PDT by expat_panama
With avowed socialist Bernie Sanders making waves across the country by seriously challenging Hillary Clinton in some states, it's time to ask the question: is Sanders an outlier? Or a harbinger of things to come?
Socialism has always lurked on the fringes of American politics. Even during the Depression, when many young Americans gave up on capitalism and became Communists or socialists, their numbers were comparatively small.
But the indoctrination of the young has been so successful that one fears for the future of America. A Pew poll in 2011 found 49% of 18- to 29-year-olds having a positive view of socialism, with only 43% holding a negative view. Even more disturbing, just 46% of the young have a positive view of capitalism, while 47% hold a negative view.
Couple that with low-information voters who don't know what a socialist is, anyway, and you have the phenomenon of Bernie Sanders.
Many Democrats who aren't as far-left as Sanders worry that the Vermont senator is pushing the party too far.
Politico:
It’s usually Democrats who play this game — as they did with Republican challengers to Mitt Romney in 2012, or with fringe characters like Todd Aiken. Now, it’s Republicans seeking to use the Sanders surge to portray Democrats as radical and out of touch.
And that’s making many Democrats nervous, said Joe Trippi, who ran Vermonter Howard Dean’s campaign in 2004.
“We can’t lose the presidency. We can’t take a risk by nominating somebody outside the comfort zone. That’s what’s driving the inevitable-ness” of Clinton, said Trippi, speaking about the party establishment’s thinking.
Sanders is unlikely to tone it down for the long-term good of his newly adopted party.
“Bernie is saying what he believes. He’s unlikely to run for president again, and ...
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Yet if this is so, why is it that a certain Mr. Donald Trump has gain popular interest all of a sudden?
want to know what the usa’s economy, government, and society could be like? Look at Argentina
the question should be “are socialists ready to shed their own blood for their cause?”
Whoa, we see a huge drop and then turn right around in rising volume to close up a percent! So the 'buy on the dip' folks sure called yesterday's action, maybe that will apply to today's omen/futures that see stocks plunging -0.96%. Traders also see metals down -0.89% after yesterday's new lows for gold'n'silver (now @ $1,155.70 and $15.07).
Econ reports:
7:00 AM MBA Mortgage Index
10:30 AM Crude Inventories
2:00 PM FOMC Minutes
3:00 PM Consumer Credit
.....Or maybe, just maybe the idea of a strong southern border hits a high note.
Never mind that support for gay marriage, gun control, abortion etc. LOL
What support? LOL.
I sense folks are more or less center-right but do not want to reveal it because they are afraid of being of possible shamming.
All the proof you would ever need has been repeatedly provided but in your Obomabot-like devotion to the new “one” you haven’t had the courage to even look.
You morons are on your own.
want to know what the usa’s economy, government, and society could be like? Look at Argentina
Or Greece.
Just stating the facts.
Or another country that could be heading towards a “1929” like crash is:
Agreed. I also sense that most folks regard pollsters as leftwing. This greatly affects the veracity of their answers, or whether they will even talk to pollsters at all.
Nobody wants to risk being labeled a `racist sexist fascist bigot homophobe gun nut’.
“Just a few questions, sir. First, do you own guns, how many do you own, and why do you own them?”
Thanks for the ping.
We are thrashing about in the swirling waters the sweet-singing socialist sirens lured us into…
http://www.mythweb.com/odyssey/book12.html
Like Odysseus, we cling to a branch of the tree of liberty.
“Brave Helios, wake up your steeds. Bring the warmth the countryside needs.”
Socialism Is Legal Plunder…(Bastiat)
Debates in the House of Representatives on the First Report on Public Credit 9–18 February 1790
James Jackson (Ga.)
But it is doubted with me whether a permanent funded debt is beneficial or not to any country.
The same effect must be produced that has taken place in other nations; it must either bring on a national bankruptcy or annihilate her existence as an independent empire. Hence I contend, sir, that a funding system, in this country, will be highly dangerous to the welfare of the republic; it may, for a moment, raise our credit and increase the circulation, by multiplying a new species of currency; but it must, in times afterward, settle upon our posterity a burthen which they can neither bear nor relieve themselves from. It will establish a precedent in America that may, and in all probability will, be pursued by the sovereign authority until it brings upon us that ruin which it has never failed to bring, or is inevitably bringing, upon all the nations of the earth who have had the temerity to make the experiment.
http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/875
Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain, US
PIGS are US
I am seeing this as a trendily where the becoming desperate voter is becoming all too aware of the risks of capitalism, especially as shown by the entertainment, media, academia and politicos. Unlike years past where there have been robust recoveries from recessions that have cheered the ‘body politic’, we have a snail-like recovery with an ever-increasing government burden of the new health care and regulatory intervention.
Then we have the siren song of the green socialist fields across the road. Like anything new (at least over here), it appears to be shiny and desirable against the current ennui of moving in the same current direction. Other than the usual non-mainstream conservative voices, no one is speaking truth to the populace that socialism in the real world has ALWAYS ended up with greater wealth stratification, lower economic growth, higher institutional unemployment and stagnation in entrepreneurial enterprises.
Like the late 1970s, we have an administration which is constantly ignoring real world problems in favor of idealogical priorities. Jimmy Carter has never looked so good as he does in comparison to Barrack Obama and he knows it! We do need a ‘Happy Conservative Warrior’ like Ron Reagan and I see several candidates in the field that I think can do the job.
What will be difficult, and so different than the 1980s, is the almost solid wall of socialist thought in the groups defined above. In those years conservatives could talk on campuses, there were movies and TV shows that celebrated American Values and even many politicos of the left still valued the American Dream.
Please pray for our country and ask God to give us the strength to help ourselves heal!
And we weren’t so innocent, either, when we voted for that plan at the end of the first meeting. We didn’t do it just because we believed that the drippy, old guff they spewed was good. We had another reason, but the guff helped us to hide it from our neighbors and from ourselves. The guff gave us a chance to pass off as virtue something that we’d be ashamed to admit otherwise.
There wasn’t a man voting for it who didn’t think that under a setup of this kind he’d muscle in on the profits of the men abler than himself. There wasn’t a man rich and smart enough but that he didn’t think that somebody was richer and smarter, and this plan would give him a share of his better’s wealth and brain.
But while he was thinking that he’d get unearned benefits from the men above, he forgot about the men below who’d get unearned benefits, too. He forgot about all his inferiors who’d rush to drain him just as he hoped to drain his superiors. The worker who liked the idea that his need entitled him to a limousine like his boss’s, forgot that every bum and beggar on earth would come howling that their need entitled them to an icebox like his own.
That was our real motive when we voted – that was the truth of it – but we didn’t like to think it, so the less we liked it, the louder we yelled about our love for the common good.
(Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand)
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