Are you still unsure if Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is bleeding red?
Senator Sanders, known for celebrating bread lines, has been championed as a democratic socialist, which is essentially the same thing as regular socialism. However let’s say that democratic socialism is different than what has been practiced in Venezuela or the Soviet Union, the 2020 presidential candidate’s thinking originates to socialism.
If you don’t believe, then look back to these comments in 1976 when a 35-year-old Sanders told the Burlington Free Press:
“I favor the public ownership of utilities, banks and major industries. There is a handful of people sitting at the head of the main banks controlling the destiny of underprivileged nations, the country as well as Vermont’s economy. That is not tolerable. That control cannot be held by them. We need public control over capital; and the capital must be put to use for public need not for the advancement of those who made the investments.”
That’s definitely socialist.
Then here are some more remarks from the same year:
“We have got to begin to deal with the fact that corporations do not have the god-given right to disrupt the lives of their workers or the economic foundation of their towns simply because they wish to move elsewhere to earn a higher rate of profit. In the long run, the problem of the fleeing corporations must be dealt with on the national level by legislation which will bring about the public ownership of the major means of production and their conversion into worker-controlled enterprises.”
He could never run on a platform of nationalizing major industries in 2020, but he can run a platform of demanding big government, like free healthcare and free education, which eventually metastasized into all industries falling under the purview of the state.
People need to understand what socialism is, not the poppycock version of free stuff, equal rights, and more money in your pocket kind.
(h/t Reason)
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