One of the biggest stories — and surprises — of the 2016 election was the success of the Democrat presidential hopeful Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
An avowed and outspoken Socialist, Sanders was not even a Democrat before deciding to run for the party’s nomination. And though we now know that the Democrat party leadership conspired with candidate Hillary Clinton to deny him the nomination, it is still astonishing to realize how close he came to winning it.
His success with Democrat Party voters, especially the younger ones, seems to signal a shift in American values and beliefs — a shift from which it may be difficult, if not impossible, to recover.
Why do I say that? One word: Socialism.
Garry Kasparov is a former chess world champion and perhaps the greatest chess grandmaster of all time. He is also Russian. He grew up under the oppression of the Soviet Union. He understands the practical effects of Socialism. Something Senator Sanders and many Democrats today apparently do not.
In 2016, Kasparov wrote this on his Facebook page: “Socialism sounds great in speech soundbites and on Facebook, but please keep it there. In practice, it corrodes not only the economy but the human spirit itself, and the ambition and achievement that made modern capitalism possible and brought billions of people out of poverty. Talking about Socialism is a huge luxury, a luxury that was paid for by the successes of capitalism.”
In another article, Kasparov continued his debunking of the glories of Socialism, based on his personal experience. He wrote: “A society that relies too heavily on redistributing wealth eventually runs out of wealth to redistribute.” He then warned, “Once you give power to the government, it’s nearly impossible to get it back, and it will be used in ways you cannot expect.”
For these reasons, the word “Socialist” was anathema in American politics for decades. Even those who believed in Socialist principles adamantly denied it when confronted. All of that changed with the 2016 campaign of Bernie Sanders.
It was a little alarming to see how many college youth flocked to the Sanders campaign. That tells me that they do not understand the implications of Socialism and the impact it could have on their lives.
Of course, that’s understandable. The Open Syllabus Project did a huge study and determined that Karl Marx’s “Communist Manifesto” has been taught more than any other text on college campuses over the last decade. Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and Vladimir Lenin’s “What is to be Done” were also very popular classroom texts.
The Bible? The foundational book of western society? It didn’t even make the list.
So if you were amused by what you saw in the run-up to the 2016 general election, or if you’ve been disgusted by the shocking upheaval in the Democrat Party during the 2018 elections, I have only one thing to say to you: FOCUS! Change is in the air in these United States. And it does not appear to be a good change. It is the kind of change that threatens our way of life and demands our intercession before God on behalf of our nation. And it demands our civic participation.