Now that Bernie Sanders (I. Rolling Stone) is well on his way to getting the Democratic nomination for President it is worth reflecting on what Senator Sanders really stands for. It sure isn’t freedom and opportunity for all. If you want to see an apologist for authoritarians and dictators, a good place to start would be–Senator Sanders.
Let’s go right to the source, which is to say, Senator Sanders himself. Take a look at the video below.
Keep this video in mind when Sanders and his friends start to pretend that there is anything more than a semantic difference between “democratic socialism” and socialism. They are one and the same.
Not only that, the countries that Sanders points to as models of “democratic socialism”–namely the Scandinavian countries–are anything but. They are more capitalist than the U.S. Not to put too fine a point on it, their policies tend to be far more friendly to free markets than are public policies in the U.S. For instance, they have school choice, and their tax systems are far less progressive than in the U.S. In the Scandinavian countries, the middle class actually pays for government benefits, unlike the U.S. For example, in the U.S., the top quintile of income tax filers pays about 95% of all income taxes. The top half pays about 97% of all income taxes. That’s worth thinking about the next time Sanders goes on one of his rants about the evil rich.
JFB
This guy is really scary.