By Kevin D. Williamson
Friday, February 14, 2020
Paul Krugman writes:
Bernie Sanders isn’t actually a
socialist in any normal sense of the term. He doesn’t want to nationalize our
major industries and replace markets with central planning; he has expressed
admiration, not for Venezuela, but for Denmark.
Three sentences (two joined by semicolon), three
thoughts:
1.
Bernie Sanders calls himself a socialist. He has
for a long time. He has been affiliated with other socialists and socialist
institutions over the years. At some point, we should take the man at his word.
Paul Krugman says Bernie Sanders is not a socialist. Bernie Sanders says Bernie
Sanders is a socialist. Maybe Bernie Sanders has a say in that.
2.
Senator Sanders does want to nationalize some
major industries, health care prominent among them. He also proposes to enact
political controls over other key industries, such as media
and banking,
that would amount to something close to nationalization. He would subject media
companies’ business decisions to political control and would have the federal
government own and operate banks.
3.
Senator Sanders has expressed admiration for
Venezuela. It is simply untrue to write, as Professor Krugman does, that he has
not. Then-Representative Sanders went as far as to sign
a letter of support for Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez in 2003. And the
policies that Sanders proposes are not actually very much like Denmark’s, while
his promise of “revolution” is familiar stuff from the experience of Venezuela
and other similar cases.
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