Leftists and their delusions.
Listen To You Tell Me Texas Friday 8/10/18
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If you want to see the hair on the head of a far-left liberal spontaneously combust, introduce hard facts and figures into your debate with one. Liberals and the immutable laws of math seldom travel together.
A case in point is the rise in the Democratic Party of ‘Democratic Socialism.’ The movement’s patriarch is Bernie Sanders. Its crown princess, at least for now, is 28-year old former bartender Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who, on the strength of her upset win over five-term incumbent Joseph Crowley in the New York Democratic primary, will represent New York’s 14th district when Congress convenes next January. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s surprise political ascendency arises in large measure from the fact that she hasn’t lived long enough to be bothered by knowing anything. Her ignorance – and that of her fellow true believers — allows her to make completely preposterous statements with a totally straight face. She is utterly unburdened by facts.
Socialism has always existed on the fringes of the Democratic Party. To be fair, Republicans have their own nutcase fringe, too. It’s a free country.
But socialism, to an astonishing degree, is going mainstream. Save for the Democratic Party’s highly-rigged primary system, avowed socialist Bernie Sanders could very well have been the party’s nominee in 2016. Socialists are winning adherents on their promises of free college, Social Security expansion, Medicare for All, guaranteed universal employment (at $15 an hour), infrastructure improvement and student loan forgiveness. It’s a cornucopia of free stuff. Economically illiterate voters are lapping it up. (Chalk up another win for American public education.)
The irony is that the massive success of American capitalism is what has made such delusional ideas possible in the first place. Bright-eyed lefties look at America’s wealth – and they look particularly at the wealth amassed by the most talented and successful of us – and they say to themselves, “There’s plenty to go around. Let’s spread it.”
But of course, there isn’t plenty to go around. Wealth can be destroyed as surely as it can be created. Ask the once prosperous citizens of Venezuela.
Ideas may be hard to disprove but math is math. Here it is. Using the most conservative estimates, all of what Bernie and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez are promoting comes to an estimated $42.5 trillion in cost over ten years. But the most generous estimates of federal revenues for the same period (under capitalism, by the way) come to just $44 trillion. In other words, 97 cents of every dollar the government takes in would go to providing free stuff. The rest of the government – including the military – would have to subsist on the remaining three cents.
Clearly not even remotely feasible.
No matter. Ideologically-blinded lefties hate math. Confronting them with it provokes an emotionally overwrought torrent of invective that always includes the word, ‘racist.’ It’s not about the math. They don’t do math. It’s about your hatred for minorities.
In other words, debate isn’t possible so stop trying. You can’t argue with someone whose hair is on fire.
The problem you identify with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders is the same problem generally afflicting most Democrats albeit to a somewhat lesser degree. It is rare to meet a Democrat with a working calculator.
Who REALLY needs a calculator?
Whoever reckons the $8 billion proposed with launch The Space Force.
Being a space buff, Mr. Gleiser knows how little space stuff $8B would buy.
And — though trivial in terms of Space expense — $8B is still NINE zeroes.
“A billion here, a billion there, it all adds up,” as we’re now $20+ TRILLION in the hole.
Debt and deficit are things Republicans worry about A LOT with Democrats are in charge.
To understand economics is enough to refute socialism
Free enterprise capitalism has brought more good and abundance and prosperity to more people around the world than any other economic path.
Socialism at its core is nothing but a belief bound up in hate, jealousy, and envy of others. Ultimately, which history has proved, leads to death and destruction everywhere it has been tried. It is NOT the way to a better society for anyone.
REJECT the Democrats aka democrat socialists and their wrongheaded notions as the above two individuals in your column are proof of the blind leading the blind.
CHOOSE American free enterprise capitalism which is the enlightened course our Founding Fathers set our nation on by our establishment as a Constitutional Republic under God in Freedom. We are the exceptional nation as American Exceptionalism sets us apart being a nation built on the idea of FREEDOM and LIBERTY and the rule of law under God, not of man.
If you cherish your individual freedom and value living in freedom as a nation, the Republicans offer by far the best choice to fulfill the American Dream–which I can proudly say is BACK and very much alive under President Donald J. Trump.
And you can be sure that any claims that Bernie and Oscaio -Cortez make will NEVER be fact checked by the media to the extreme lengths that the President’s claims are subject to.
ABC news is particularly sensitive to any statement the President makes and always quick to point out all perceived discrepancies, yesterday’s news was a typical example. It was pathetic.
I wouldn’t find it so irritating had the media been as “on point” during the Obama administration, instead of being the lap dog, sycophants they were for 8 years. Don’t get me started. HA!
Honestly, I truly had my doubts about a Trump Presidency, and he still causes me to roll my eyes on occasion, but overall I’ve have been very pleased at what he has accomplished despite Congressional foot dragging and the media’s insane, biased, vitriolic hate fest.
Maybe this is why the left tries so hard to erase history because history holds up that socialism does NOT work.
IGNORE Socialists!
Full speed ahead with Space Force!
Gee, Paul, maybe you should take up teaching since my fellow teachers and I are doing such a horrible job and all. Yes, many is the day where I’ve shown the sunny shores of socialism to my students in the hopes that they could leech off of this country…
Brendan, I did not accuse you individually nor would I. However, accusation of dereliction in public education at the macro level is entirely justified. There is overwhelming empirical and anecdotal evidence to conclude that a high percentage of students who graduate high school do so as economic illiterates. Such illiteracy is a fertile breeding ground for the kind of delusional thinking necessary in order to believe that socialism is a viable economic model. It’s not — a fact that has been established in countless attempts by failed states like the USSR and now Venezuela.
It has been my lifelong observation that the people who believe in and promote socialism for the most part have never worked at anything above an entry level in any enterprise that has to generate a profit in order to survive. Bernie Sanders is a prime example. In his nearly eight decades on the planet he has never produced anything, fixed anything or sold anything. (He did dabble as a carpenter after graduating college and he did dabble in making “radical filmstrips” for “distribution to schools.”) Otherwise, Sen. Sanders has worked in government and has been paid via the taxes levied on people who actually work and produce things of economic value.
I have no reason to believe that you are not a fine teacher. But I nevertheless stand by my assertion in the piece that indicts American public education for having failed to educate a large cohort of American students in the basics of economics.