Bernie Sanders, fascist

Young people, or at least young white people, are feeling the Bern. Seventy-four-year-old Sen. Bernie Sanders, self-proclaimed democratic socialist from Vermont, elected as an independent, is energizing the youth of Nevada and America by his campaign for president. Does this mean socialism is the wave of the future?

Socialism is defined as government ownership of the means of production. Bernie is not that kind of socialist, although he did spend his honeymoon in the Soviet Union. Sanders’s platform would sharply increase taxes and regulations on the wealthy, restrict their rights to be involved in the political process, unleash a trust-busting attack on their “concentrated wealth,” and generally make their lives miserable because they rigged the economy.

Sanders proclaims the money confiscated from “wealthy speculators” would be spent by government bureaucrats to pay for many wonderful things. There would be free health care for all, free college tuition, free food, rent and so much more. No one who owns or runs a company would be able to earn more than four times what the lowliest janitor makes. The minimum wage would double. Unisex bathrooms will fill the land with gender neutral flushing. Feeling the Bern means believing in a state-funded utopia.

Bernie’s socialism is not the outright ownership of the means of production, but rather keeps private property in form, but removes the substance by taking many property rights away. This form of socialism is called fascism. Fascism replaces free-market-production-for consumption with production-for- state-dictated-outcomes. Fascism is not necessarily racist. Japan and Italy were fascist states but not nearly as racist as Germany was. American liberal fascism is outwardly antiracist, publicly condemning discrimination against blacks, Hispanics, women and LGBTAQ. White heterosexual males and Asians, not so much. Liberal domestic fascism appears as a relatively mild soft shoe fascism, cleverly cloaking its coercive nature in PC bromides. Who could be against the children, after all? Shouldn’t life be fair? We just want reasonable, common sense solutions!

Sen. Sanders was in charge of Veterans Administration oversight. He denied the problems with delays in providing veterans the care they needed until the deaths and coverups were publicized. Sanders will never admit long wait times are a systemic problem with government-provided health care. He would rather someone else die first.

Bernie says America should be like Denmark. Hillary Clinton shot back that America is not Denmark. But the real issue is that Denmark is no longer Denmark. The Scandinavian countries became semi-socialist in the 1930s and Bernie still believes they are. Northern European countries have greatly deregulated and privatized their economies. If Bernie were honest, he would point to Spain, France, Portugal, Italy and Greece as the most socialist countries in Europe today. They all feature enormous debt, high unemployment and social unrest.

But why look to Europe, when there are two excellent examples right in our backyard? Look to Cuba and Venezuela to see how socialism works. Cuba at least can claim the U.S. embargo helps keep them poor. But America buys billions of barrels of oil from Venezuela. Milton Friedman said that if you put the government in charge of the Sahara desert, in 10 years it would run out of sand. Venezuela under Chavez style socialism proves him right. Venezuela has gone from a wealthy oil producing nation to a country that has literally run out of toilet paper in a little more than a decade.

Hopefully, millennials will see socialism is a failed 20th century idea. The 21st century cries out for liberty instead.