The most striking thing about Bernie Sanders' socialist agenda is the dictatorial strain. "It is immoral and wrong," he says (yells), that there is more wealth in the hands of some Americans than in most others, and he is the man to redistribute it.
The next most striking thing about it is how how closely this confiscatory and redistributionist agenda meshes with that of every other Democrat on the stage. That includes James Webb, who indicated support for amnesty and Obamacare for illegals, two of the most powerful engines of confiscatory, redistributionst and, bonus, globalist change. Webb rather naively tells Sanders his "revolution" isn't going to come, but, gosh, hate to tell you, it already did, and with a bang, 80-odd years ago in FDR's New Socialist Deal. Ever since, and with few exceptions, the Democrat and Republican Parties both have driven the socialist agenda forward, even if we are not supposed to notice ever. Thus, Sanders's open socialism is not alien or terrifying to many Americans (which, in itself, is pretty alien and terrifying, if you ask me). Then again, even Sanders continues to fool with labels as a coy media finds its comfort zone in calling him a Self-Described Socialist -- as if.
Below is a relevant but superficial exchange from last night's CNN Democrat debate. Notice the fuzzy-warm and deceptive means by which Sanders cloaks government confiscation of wealth (think: health! babies! "fairness"! Sweden! Denmark! Norway!), When in response Anderson Cooper brings up Sanders' honeymoon in the Soviet Union, affinity for the Sandinistas, and disavowal of capitalism, Sanders dodges the question altogether. He doesn't even have a canned response.
One word about Sanders' ridiculous and creaky invocation of Scandanavia the model. It is as antique as Sanders' Soviet honeymoon. These avowedly "multicultural" countries are right now before out eyes imploding due precisely to socialist core policies that have turned their peoples into wage-slaves to sharia-importing Muslim immmigrant blocs with no good end in sight. A perilously similar process of colonization, largely by Hispanic Central and South America immigrant masses (plus a rapidly growing Muslim immigrant bloc) is under way here. Not that this No. 1 existential threat came up in the whole debate. But about that polar ice cap ...
COOPER: Senator Sanders. A Gallup poll says half the country would not put a socialist in the White House. You call yourself a democratic socialist. How can any kind of socialist win a general election in the United States?
SANDERS: Well, we're gonna win because first, we're gonna explain what democratic socialism is.
And what democratic socialism is about is saying that it is immoral and wrong that the top one-tenth of 1 percent in this country own almost 90 percent -- almost -- own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. That it is wrong, today, in a rigged economy, that 57 percent of all new income is going to the top 1 percent.
That when you look around the world, you see every other major country providing health care to all people as a right, except the United States. You see every other major country saying to moms that, when you have a baby, we're not gonna separate you from your newborn baby, because we are going to have -- we are gonna have medical and family paid leave, like every other country on Earth.
Those are some of the principles that I believe in, and I think we should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people.
(APPLAUSE)
COOPER: Denmark is a country that has a population -- Denmark is a country that has a population of 5.6 million people. The question is really about electability here, and that's what I'm trying to get at.
You -- the -- the Republican attack ad against you in a general election -- it writes itself. You supported the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. You honeymooned in the Soviet Union. And just this weekend, you said you're not a capitalist.
Doesn't -- doesn't that ad write itself?
SANDERS: Well, first of all, let's look at the facts. The facts that are very simple. Republicans win when there is a low voter turnout, and that is what happened last November.
Sixty-three percent of the American people didn't vote, Anderson. Eighty percent of young people didn't vote. We are bringing out huge turnouts, and creating excitement all over this country.
Democrats at the White House on down will win, when there is excitement and a large voter turnout, and that is what this campaign is doing.
COOPER: You don't consider yourself a capitalist, though?
SANDERS: Do I consider myself part of the casino capitalist process by which so few have so much and so many have so little by which Wall Street's greed and recklessness wrecked this economy? No, I don't.
I believe in a society where all people do well. Not just a handful of billionaires.
(APPLAUSE)