Socialism
August 31, 2022 — John Hinderaker
It has been a while since we checked in on Fidel’s socialist paradise. You might think that an utterly failed and discredited regime would inevitably be overthrown, but that hasn’t happened, at least not yet. (See also Venezuela.) Meanwhile, when you think things can’t get worse, the decline continues. Babalublog reports: “After Milk and Beef, Bread Disappears from the Cuban Table.” From the balcony, Yudineya watched dozens of bread and
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July 21, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Socialized medicine has long been a chief goal of the Democratic Party, but it is hard to understand why anyone would voluntarily entrust his family’s health care to the tender mercies of any government, even the most benign. We have tracked the United Kingdom’s experience with socialized medicine in our “Annals of Government Medicine” series, and I wrote here about the current crisis in British dentistry: nine out of ten
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May 15, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Bernie Sanders wants to bring socialized medicine to the U.S. To be fair to Bernie, though, that is probably the position of nearly every Democrat. As a reminder of why socialized medicine (like socialism generally) is one of the worst ideas in world history, here are two stories that happen to be in the news in the U.K. today. First, former Secretary of Health Jeremy Hunt is blowing the whistle
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April 14, 2022 — John Hinderaker
This is the third in a series of essays by David Horowitz on the progressive mind. The first essay is Understanding the Progressive Mind, the second is Progressivism as Criminal Enterprise. Bernie Sanders is the founder of the Progressive Caucus and most popular figure in the Democrat Party. He is also the Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, and therefore a key player in determining how Washington decides to spend
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February 5, 2022 — John Hinderaker
The Babylon Bee made this video that parodies one of popular music’s more detestable songs. This version is much better: “Imagine Communism.” Via InstaPundit.
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December 19, 2021 — John Hinderaker
I didn’t know that there is an election going on in Chile. But there is, and observers say that the Left is favored to retake control of that country, which has seen unprecedented prosperity since it adopted free enterprise policies beginning in the 1980s. Dan Mitchell has the story. Most notable is this animation, which shows the opposite paths taken in recent decades by Chile and Venezuela, formerly one of
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October 28, 2021 — Steven Hayward
Anyone remember the Obama Administration’s lugubrious “Life of Julia” slide show video, promoting their cradle-to-grave socialist vision for a single American woman? It seems to have been scrubbed from the internet, but my favorite part was the segment where Julia “decided to have a child,” with no mention then or after of a thing called a “father.” It seemed to be spontaneous procreation! Well, now the Biden Administration has come
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October 17, 2021 — John Hinderaker
I am so old, I remember when socialists claimed that people would be better off under socialism. What’s weird is not that historical experience has forced socialists to abandon the pretense that socialism is beneficial to anyone outside their ruling elite, but rather, that socialism still exists. A case in point, from a leftist named Carl Beijer: The Left is literally rooting for Biden Breadlines. Also, as someone whose mother
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October 2, 2021 — John Hinderaker
It has been a while since we have checked in on the socialist disaster of Venezuela. For a while it looked as though Maduro’s criminal gang might be driven from office, but the threat has passed and instead, millions of Venezuelans have simply left. Now that country’s socialist government has announced that it is devaluing its currency by (if my arithmetic is correct) one million times: Venezuela on Friday launched
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August 8, 2021 — Steven Hayward
It appears even Venezuelan socialists can figure it out sooner or later: Venezuela Backs Away From Price Controls as Citizens Go Hungry CARACAS, Venezuela—President Nicolás Maduro’s government has begun dismantling price controls, a major policy shift that aims to ease widespread unrest by letting shops sell food at market prices but is worsening Venezuela’s already punishing inflation. . . “Before there was nothing; now there’s everything,” said Jesús Barrios, 36,
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July 13, 2021 — Steven Hayward
As everyone knows, socialism is back big (except in nations that have had it already, like Cuba, Venezuela, California, Seattle, etc). So it is not surprising to see headlines like this: For sustainable finance to work, we will need central planning The holy grail of sustainable finance is figuring out how to distinguish sustainable from unsustainable investments. Get this right, and the public and private sectors have a guide to
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July 11, 2021 — John Hinderaker
Earlier today, demonstrations against Cuba’s Communist dictatorship broke out across the island. The New York Times, long an apologist for Castro’s tyranny, acknowledges the current reality: Shouting “Freedom” and other anti-government slogans, hundreds of Cubans took to the streets in cities around the country on Sunday to protest food and medicine shortages, in a remarkable eruption of discontent not seen in nearly 30 years. Heh. Yes, “Freedom” is an anti-government
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November 22, 2020 — John Hinderaker
Our friend David Horowitz wrote this essay, which he titled “Fighting Words.” It is a call for freedom-loving Americans to fight back against the totalitarian Left. By now it should be obvious – even to conservatives – that we are in a war. It is a conflict that began nearly fifty years ago when the street revolutionaries of the Sixties joined the Democrat Party. Their immediate goal was to help
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July 1, 2020 — John Hinderaker
Seattle’s CHOP is finally being dismantled. After a series of shootings and sexual assaults, and many complaints and lawsuits by victimized citizens, the authorities have had enough. The Seattle Police Department compiled this video that shows some of the violence that characterized CHOP throughout its brief life: It sounds like the process of liberating the captive CHOP zone is going reasonably well, although the police department notes some issues: As
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April 24, 2020 — Scott Johnson
In the course of her short career in Congress Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has surely earned the right to a mocking compilation of her wit and wisdom like Quotations from Chairman LBJ or George W. Bushisms: The Slate Book Of Accidental Wit And Wisdom Of Our 43rd President. If AOC were a target of the left, rather than one of its idiot heroes, the book would be out by now. Quotations from
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March 11, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
As it did in 2016, the Democratic party this year flirted with a socialist presidential candidate, but ultimately rejected him for a pragmatist. Bernie Sanders’s quest for the nomination seems doomed. The party almost certainly will select Joe Biden. The case for nominating Biden was three-fold. First, he was Barack Obama’s vice president. This was probably important to black voters, and it was black voters who carried Biden to victory
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March 10, 2020 — John Hinderaker
Scandinavian history, that is. Bernie Sanders calls himself a socialist and has demonstrated a lifelong devotion to Communist regimes in the USSR, Cuba and Venezuela. But now that he is running for president, he deflects accountability by claiming that by “socialist” he means countries like Sweden and Denmark–countries which are not in fact socialist and which have, in many ways, more conservative policies than we do. Bernie finally was called
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