For the first time in America’s history, the 2020 election will be a choice between capitalism and socialism as our future way of life. Most voters may think it’s still all about who will be President or the majority party in the House and Senate. But election results will more so determine whether we remain a free-market capitalist society or embrace the failed, oppressive socialist movement with which many Americans seem to be enamored.
Who could have predicted that America would ever be flirting with socialism? Yet, here we are, less than three decades from the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, with millions of citizens being duped by the empty promises of socialist advocates. In a 2016 Gallup poll, 55% of respondents 18 – 29 said they hold a positive view of socialism. A 2017 YouGov poll asked millennials whether they would prefer to live in a capitalist, socialist, fascist, or communist nation, with 44% answering socialist. Nearly one-third of 22-37 year-old Americans responded to a Maru-Blue study by saying their political leaning was toward socialism. None of these polls defined socialism, leaving the question of whether our younger generation understands what socialism really is.
The deception is almost entirely from the Democratic Party. This is the party that once was a legitimate alternative to the GOP in debating labor, social, and economic issues. But they have abandoned these practical advocacies. Now, with openly socialist candidates, the ideological center of the Democratic Party has shifted to the far left in just the last few years. They are sugar-coating the philosophy by calling it “democratic socialism” as if it is just a spin-off of democracy. This has misled the hearts and minds of easily impressionable Americans who haven’t lived through the cold war or studied history seriously.
The tempting fruits of Medicare for all, guaranteed income, and free college tuition seem like heaven on earth. The leftists conveniently disregard the inability of a socialist government to produce prosperity and its reliance on oppression to control economic objectives. They neglect to mention how a socialist government dictates terms of life, education, career choices, family autonomy, travel, associations, and political dialogue. We need to look no further than the ongoing starvation and chaos in Venezuela or the present upheaval in Hong Kong to see clearly the “success” of socialism.
The history of American capitalism is not without faults and missteps, but it is what made this nation the greatest in the history of mankind. We who have observed and experienced the hopelessness of socialism must somehow help others see through its facade. The new generation of voters who have not lived through the threat of an encroaching “evil empire” and who give little attention to modern-day oppressive governments must be convinced that warning about socialism is not a “new McCarthyism.”
Listen carefully to what the 20-plus Democratic presidential candidates are proposing. It doesn’t take a political science major to perceive they are promoting socialism as the new direction for our country. A Democratic-majority congress and/or a Democrat in the White House will swing the door wide open for America’s rush to abandon capitalism. Make the next eighteen months a period of close attention to the voices and actions of our political candidates. Seriously consider what is at stake for you, your children, and your grandchildren.