Tag: DSA

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ideological culture international affairs

This Stage of Democratic Socialism

DSA, socialism, CCP, China

A nearly 1200-word article at The Epoch Times exploring linkages between the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and what DSA members call “Chinese socialism” reminds me of two concepts:

  1. “Useful idiot”; and
  2. What happens to socialism after communism fails.

The article is more exploratory than incendiary. Only a few DSA activists have taken part in the party’s China Working Group, visited China, or signed a public statement in support of the “continued survival of Chinese socialism.”

These “democratic socialists” qualify as “useful idiots” because they do not seem to realize that “Chinese socialism” — called “socialism with Chinese characteristics” by the Chinese themselves — is not democratic. The government is run by the Communist Party, a single entity, no competition allowed.

Why would people who insist on calling themselves “democratic” support this?

Because, as with all democratic socialists, at some point one is required to choose between the two ways of doing government. If you call yourself “socialist,” you’ve committed yourself, and you will have to choose tyranny at some point, or give up the socialist idea.

Democratic socialists in America are certainly useful to the Chinazis. And they are idiots. Thus the old term for moon-eyed westerners supporting Asian anti-democratic regimes carries on, still applicable after all these years.

But remember that China is not run as a centrally planned economy. It’s run like a fascist state, with party members working within businesses, only occasionally taking full control and ousting (even executing) owners and entrepreneurs and “uncooperative” managers . . . when the State requires. Just as did the National Socialist Party during Germany’s “Third Reich” period. As Peter Drucker sagely noticed, “Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion.”

Democratic socialists may think they are not fascists, but fascism is indeed what they are pushing in America . . . and applauding when seen in China. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture partisanship

Socialist Idiocracy

Democratic Party,Zohran Mamdani, socialism, DSA, Congress, capitalism

Old School Democrats are losing it.

Losing the young and, therefore, control of the direction of their party . . . to the Democratic Socialist of America.

Do they understand the dangers?

While it is expected that Republicans — such as Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) — would object to the rise of socialist agitation in the Democratic Party, getting Democratic leaders to object to the new radicalism has not proved quite so easy.

But James Carville, the strategist behind Bill Clinton’s victorious presidential runs three decades ago, is speaking out.

“What I would tell a Democratic socialist — ‘If you hate the Democratic brand so much, why use our words? Go call yourself something else. Call yourself the Socialists of America,” he said. “Don’t use our name. Make up your own name.”

The Fox News report elaborated, “Carville argued that the DSA’s values and policy positions, including defunding the police, do not align with those of the Democratic Party.”

Now, Carville’s not really in any position to demand that the ersatz “Democratic Socialists” strike the “Democratic” from their name. The Democratic Party — the party of Jackson and Van Buren as well as of Wilson and FDR — does not have a monopoly on the term. It is not Democratic® or Democratic™. And what with how Democrats in the Democratic Party are now scarcely committed to democratic processes at all — remember the stealing of Bernie Sanders’ nominations, or selecting a new presidential candidate without one vote of party regulars? — maybe the term should be up for grabs.

But not by socialists. 

Why? Carville called the hyper-successful and self-designated socialist “streamer” Hasan Piker an “idiot,” and his listeners “left-wing idiots.”

Yet they cannot call themselves “Idiot Socialists of America,” can they?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture Popular too much government

Socialism Is Anti-Democracy

NPC, socialism, democracy, freedom

Common sense politics must peer beneath the superficial attractions of “democratic socialism.”

In “Civil Liberties and Socialism Don’t Mix,” Matthew Harwood explains why those who call themselves democratic socialists may “say they believe in civil liberties” nevertheless “will always be hostile to individual freedom.”

In this short Reason piece, Mr. Harwood starts out by showing that socialism cannot merely be “a more generous welfare state along Nordic lines.” For “socialism” to remain distinct socialists must offer a Unique Selling Proposition. You cannot plausibly push a “new” philosophy and stick to pushing the old liberal stand-bys of private property and markets.

Their own pretensions force them back to central planning, to economic planning for all by a few.

Which is not democratic, of course. It goes far further, to anti-majoritarian.

Actual economic planning requires micromanagement. Harwood quotes socialist economist and luminary Robert Heilbroner, who expresses this requirement as “the necessity to intervene deeply, and probably ruthlessly, into the economy in order to establish the socialist order in the first place.”  

But it cannot stop there. Once established, a socialist state must feel a “need to continue a policy of painful intervention” to adjust to “the constricting limits of the environment.”

“Democratic socialism is not freedom,” Harwood concludes. “It is authority paternalistically dressed up in the language of liberation and wielded on behalf of that fuzzy abstraction, ‘the people,’ regardless of what flesh and blood individuals want.”

Sure, democratic socialists may hope that majorities will allow their elites to plan for everybody. 

But once that handoff is made, the power obtained, then the tyranny.

Inescapably.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob

 

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Categories
crime and punishment ideological culture insider corruption media and media people

Socialist Saboteurs Infiltrate

Stuart Karaffa, socialism, DSA, Democratic Socialist,Project Veritas, James O’Keefe

Once upon a time, people who worried about communists infiltrating the government were often dismissed as paranoid. 

“Sure, commies under every bed! Right!”

Communists in the State Department or wherever generally weren’t caught on tape boasting that they were Soviet agents and part of the Resist Truman or Resist Eisenhower movement. Allen Funt did not expose Alger Hiss. But now we have this social-media thing happening. And we have members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) caught on tape touting their illicit exploits as federal employees.

Project Veritas is a conservative group* that conducts hidden-camera interviews with lefty activists. In one of Veritas’s recent exposes, several DSA members confess to abusing their government positions in order to impede Trump Administration policies, including any even slightly pro-market policies. The goal is to “f*ck sh*t up,” as one rebel summarizes.

Several of the Resisters boast that “we can’t really get fired.” That’s probably almost true; they’re federal bureaucrats. But DOJ paralegal Allison Hrabar and others may find that their license to chill is about to expire. 

Hrabar was in the news a few months back for helping chase Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen from a restaurant. Now she has admitted using government resources to dredge up the home address of a DC lobbyist she wanted to target. Address in hand, she and several DSA comrades swooped down on the residence to hold a harassing protest. 

Not quite how taxpayer dollars are supposed to be deployed.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe, whom I know and like, has done enormous good with his undercover stings of ACORN and others. Last year’s failed effort against the Washington Post is the exception. Had Project Veritas succeeded in slipping this false accusation into the newspaper, the result would have been to publicize a harmful lie, not show the truth (per his group’s name.

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