Socialists Running for President

Most Americans are so fundamentally ignorant not only about the historic foundations of their own country but about what other political/economic systems entail that many people think conservatives are using hyperbole when they refer to someone as a socialist.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines socialism in the following ways:

1: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods

2 a: a system of society or group living in which there is no private property b: a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state

3: a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done

Think about it. That accurately describes most of the leaders, movers and shakers in the Democrat Party today.

The Democrats usually believe the government should be running companies if not owning them outright. Democrats believe in totally running U.S. agriculture in a style reminiscent of Soviet collectivism. Democrats surf the Commerce Clause of the Constitution as an excuse to regulate anything they please in the business world. Democrats have been fighting a decades-long war against private property in the form of confiscatory taxes on anyone they deem "too rich" and gutting businesses that one generation is "decadent" enough to want pass to the next generation. Democrats routinely bash people who have "too much money," or at least more money than they in their elitist view think they should have. Democrats look at business owners with suspicion and thinly-disguised contempt.

As Brian Darling points out in his recent Human Events column, socialists in congress include more than just Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders.

While Sanders at least has the intellectual honesty to call himself what he is, there is a horde of others who run in a socialist pack while pretending to be for the American way.

Thirty senators would receive an A-, voting with Sanders more than 90% of the time. Those lefties include household names such as Delaware’s Joe Biden, California’s Barbara Boxer, Illinois’s Richard Durbin and Barack Obama, Massachusetts’s John Kerry and Edward Kennedy, and Majority Leader Harry Reid. Seventeen senators, including many perceived moderates, would receive a B in Socialism 101. The saving grace for conservatives, and America, is that 45 senators would miserably fail Socialism 101 because they staunchly oppose the ideals of socialist Sanders.

Another way to look at a senator’s support is to review who co-sponsors his bills. Two bills are particularly revealing in their support -- the creation of a nationalized health care system and the strengthening of the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate and reform the national economy in the name of global-warming prevention. Co-sponsors of that bill include Biden, Boxer, Brown, Cardin, Clinton, Kerry, Kennedy and Obama.

This ought to tell us something. If our representatives are voting like a self-professed socialist most of the time, regardless of what they call themselves, they are socialists.

Socialism is antithetical to the American way, the characteristics of which include freedom, private property rights, self-determination, and personal responsibility.

Socialism is also antithetical to the United States Constitution. The Constitution requires limited government, not all-powerful or all-encompassing government. The Constitution respects property rights. The Constitution recognizes the power and purview of the people. In a sense, socialism is not even legal under our Constitution.

The American people need to realize that there really are socialists in our government, and that what they advocate undermines not only the way this country was designed to operate, it undermines everything that has made this nation the free and successful place it has always been.

I, for one, will not surrender my American birthright on the altar of the convenience of having someone else run my life for me. I don't believe most thinking Americans are up for that, either.