Bernie and Democratic Socialism: Ridicule Vs. Reason
Ten years ago, Bernie Sanders stood at Georgetown University and delivered a speech that inserted the phrase "democratic socialism" into the mainstream American conversation. Before that moment, the term was a fringe label. Today, democratic socialists serve in Congress, run major American cities, and are actively recruiting the next generation of voters. This is a shift is worth understanding clearly.
Sanders laid out his vision clearly — Medicare for all, free college, free childcare, free maternity leave, a guaranteed jobs program, and a government war on the fossil fuel industry. What sounded like a wish list then now reads like a blueprint for what the left has been attempting ever since.
There are some major plot holes in that plan, however. The national debt now exceeds thirty-nine trillion dollars. The federal government spends more than seven trillion dollars every year — over a trillion more than it takes in. Social Security and Medicare already face multi-trillion-dollar unfunded liabilities that no one in Washington seems willing to address. There is simply no mathematical way to fund the free-stuff agenda of democratic socialism without printing money on a scale that would destroy every American family with devastating inflation.
Climate fearmongering has also aged poorly. Americans consistently rank climate change near the bottom of their concerns. The billions of taxpayer dollars poured into solar and wind have met the inconvenient fact that the sun sets and the wind stops blowing. The promised (and subsidized) electric vehicle charging infrastructure never materialized.
Now Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are calling for a federal moratorium on data centers, claiming these facilities would harm communities and destroy the environment. This hypocrisy is remarkable from the same people who want to cover thousands of acres in solar panels and forest-clearing wind turbines that also raise electricity prices and drain water resources.
The most alarming development in all of this is not Sanders himself or even AOC. They are known quantities. What should alarm every American is that democratic socialism is now genuinely popular — especially among young voters, most Democrats, and the institutions that shape both. Government schools teach it. Hollywood celebrates it. The seeds of a genuine socialism are sprouting in plain sight.
History has already run the socialist experiment, and we must educate young voters that the results are universally disastrous.
Stay informed and engaged at PhyllisSchlafly.com, and join us again for the Phyllis Schlafly Report.
