A conservative of a certain age might say: \u201cNo, he\u2019s a fad. Socialism is yesterday! Marx is dead, the American economic behemoth rolled over and flattened him. Socialism is an antique idea that rocks with age. America is about the future, not the past.\u201d<\/p>\n
I disagree. It\u2019s back because it\u2019s new again.<\/p>\n
For so many, 2008 shattered faith in the system\u2014in its fairness, usefulness and efficacy, even in its ability to endure.<\/p>\n
As for the young, let\u2019s say you\u2019re 20 or 30, meaning you\u2019ll be voting for a long time. What in your formative years would have taught you about the excellence of free markets, low taxes, \u201ca friendly business climate\u201d? A teacher in public high school? Maybe one\u2014the faculty-lounge eccentric who boycotted the union meetings. And who in our colleges teaches the virtues of capitalism?<\/p>\n
If you are 20 or 30 you probably see capitalism in terms of two dramatic themes. The first was the crash of \u201908, in which heedless, irresponsible operators in business and government kited the system and scrammed. The second is income inequality. Why are some people richer than the richest kings and so many poor as serfs? Is that what capitalism gives you? Then maybe we should rethink this!<\/p>\n
And Mr. Sanders makes it sound so easy. We\u2019re rich, he says; we can do this with a few taxes. It is soft Marxism. And it\u2019s not socialism now, it\u2019s \u201cdemocratic socialism\u201d like they have in Europe. You\u2019ve been to Europe. Aside from its refugee crisis and some EU problems, it\u2019s a great place\u2014a big welfare state that\u2019s wealthy! The French take three-hour lunches.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I was about to say that younger Americans’ illiteracy about the history of socialism was a failure of the American educational system…<\/p>\n
…but I stopped myself. \u00a0To the teachers unions and most of academia, it’s a feature, not a bug.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
OK, conservatism had a good night, and the Trump bubble got deflated ever so slightly, maybe. But the scariest thing to come out of Iowa is that a whole lot of people consider socialism an acceptable alternative. Peggy Noonan: A conservative of a certain age might say: \u201cNo, he\u2019s a fad. Socialism is yesterday! Marx […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-capitalism-v-socialism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57395"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57396,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57395\/revisions\/57396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}