By Victor Davis Hanson
Thursday, November 07, 2019
Multiple forms of socialism, from hard Stalinism to
European redistribution, continue to fail.
Russia and China are still struggling with the legacy of
genocidal Communism. Eastern Europe still suffers after decades of
Soviet-imposed socialist chaos.
Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea, and Venezuela are unfree,
poor, and failed states. Baathism — a synonym for pan-Arabic socialism — ruined
the post-war Middle East.
The soft-socialist European Union countries are stagnant
and mostly dependent on the U.S. military for their protection.
In contrast, current American deregulation, tax cuts and
incentives, and record energy production have given the United States the
strongest economy in the world.
So why, then, are two of the top three Democratic
presidential contenders — Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren — either overtly
or implicitly running on socialist agendas? Why are the heartthrobs of American
progressives — Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), Rashida
Tlaib (D., Mich.), and Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) — calling for socialist
redistributionist schemes?
Why do polls show that a majority of American Millennials
have a favorable view of socialism?
There are lots of catalysts for the new socialism.
Massive immigration is changing the demography of the
United States. The number of foreign-born U.S. residents and their children has
been estimated at almost 60 million, or about 1 in 5 U.S. residents. Some 27
percent of California residents were born outside of America.
Many of these immigrants flee from poor areas of Latin
America, Mexico, Africa, and Asia that were wrecked by statism and socialism.
Often, they arrive in the U.S. unaware of economic and political alternatives
to state socialism.
When they reach the U.S. — often without marketable
skills and unable to speak English — many assume that America will simply offer
a far better version of the statism from which they fled. Consequently, many
take for granted that government will provide them an array of social services,
and they become supportive of progressive socialism.
Another culprit for the new socialist craze is the
strange leftward drift of the very wealthy in Silicon Valley, in corporate
America, and on Wall Street.
Some of the new progressive rich feel guilty about their
unprecedented wealth. So they champion redistribution as the sort of medieval
penance that alleviates guilt.
Yet the influential and monied classes usually are so
well off that higher taxes hardly affect them. Instead, redistributionist
taxation hurts the struggling middle classes.
In California, it became hip for wealthy leftists to
promote socialism from their Malibu, Menlo Park, or Mill Valley enclaves —
while still living as privileged capitalists. Meanwhile, it proved nearly
impossible for the middle classes of Stockton and Bakersfield to cope with the
reality of crushing taxes and terrible social services.
From 2008 to 2017, the now-multimillionaire Barack Obama,
first as candidate and then as president, used all sorts of cool socialist
slogans, from “spread the wealth around” and “now is not the time to profit” to
“you didn’t build that” and “at a certain point you’ve made enough money.”
Universities bear much of the blame. Their manipulation
of the federal government to guarantee student loans empowered them to jack up
college costs without any accountability. Liberal college administrators and
faculty did not care much when graduates left campus poorly educated and unable
to market their expensive degrees.
More than 45 million borrowers now struggle with nearly
$1.6 trillion in collective student debt, with climbing interest. That
indebtedness has delayed — or ended — the traditional forces that encourage
conservatism and traditionalism, such as getting married, having children and
buying a home.
Instead, a generation of single, childless, and mostly
urban youth feels cheated that their high-priced degrees did not earn them
competitive salaries. Millions of embittered college graduates will never be
able to pay off what they owe — and want some entity to pay off their debts.
In paradoxical fashion, teenagers were considered savvy
adults who were mature enough to take on gargantuan loans. But they were also
treated like fragile preteens who were warned that the world outside their
campus sanctuaries was downright mean, sexist, racist, homophobic, and unfair.
Finally, doctrinaire Republicans for decades mouthed
orthodoxies of free rather than fair trade. They embraced the idea of creative
destruction of industries, but without worrying about the real-life
consequences for the unemployed in the hollowed out red-state interior.
Add up a lost generation of woke and broke college
graduates, waves of impoverished immigrants without much knowledge of American
economic traditions, wealthy advocates of boutique socialism, and
asleep-at-the-wheel Republicans, and it becomes clear why historically
destructive socialism is suddenly seen as cool.
Regrettably, sometimes the naïve and disaffected must
relearn that their pie-in-the sky socialist medicine is far worse than the
perceived malady of inequality.
And unfortunately, when socialists gain power, they don’t
destroy just themselves. They usually take everyone else down with them as
well.
No comments:
Post a Comment