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ECONOMY COMMENTARY
What to Do About the Growing Popularity of Socialism
Brad Wenstrup / @RepBradWenstrup / August 29, 2018 / 148 Comments
COMMENTARY BY

Brad Wenstrup@RepBradWenstrup
Brad Wenstrup is the U.S. representative for Ohio's second congressional district.

Twenty-eight-year-old democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez jumped into

the national spotlight when she defeated longtime Congressman Joseph Crowley
in the New York Democratic primary in June.

Many view her, along with socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., as carrying the
mantle for a renewed socialist trend in the United States among millennials.
Indeed, socialism enjoys stronger support among millennials than any other
generation today.
What would socialist policies mean for our country’s future?

To me, it’s pretty astounding to realize that a whole generation has grown up for
whom the Soviet Union is just a distant historical memory. They don’t have a
personal memory of when the Soviet Union came crashing down in 1991—
dramatic proof that its socialist system was a dismal failure. They can’t recall the
feeling of national pride over the fact that, in contrast, the free economy of the
United States had succeeded in producing the highest standard of living and
greatest material wealth in world history.

So perhaps it is understandable that for a new generation, the old, empty

promises of socialism seem to carry a new allure.

Socialism by definition is the political and economic theory of social organization

whereby production, distribution, and exchange should be owned and regulated
by the community as a whole. In other words, what is mine is yours and what’s
yours is mine. It holds a strong appeal for many people because it addresses
legitimate concerns over inequity and injustice.

The problem is that, for all its high-minded fairness, socialism doesn’t work. It’s
not just a castle in the air—it’s the promise of a palace that is really built on
quicksand.

You don’t even have to look back to the Soviet Union to see this. Venezuela is
just the latest tragic example of socialism’s devastation.
 At the beginning of the 21st century, Venezuela was one of the top 20 richest
countries in the world. Today, its poverty rate is 87 percent and its inflation rate is
predicted to be approaching 1,000,000 percent. Once, its capital was a tourist
destination with thriving culture. Today, it is the crime capital of the world.
This crisis is the result of the redistributive policies and the systematic destruction
of economic freedom by a current corrupt, elitist administration. As President
Donald Trump said in his first speech to the United Nations General Assembly:
“The problem in Venezuela is not that socialism has been poorly implemented,
but that socialism has been faithfully implemented.”

It’s a sobering reminder that while socialism’s torch bearers may change, the
havoc it wreaks with its hollow promises remains the same.

What we must remember is that America is not immune. As President Ronald

Reagan famously said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from
extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream.” Socialism,
faithfully implemented, could cripple our nation’s peace and prosperity over time
just as it did in Venezuela.

We must continue to speak out boldly—not based on fear, but based on facts.
We must continue to tell the truth, regardless of its popularity. We must continue
to implement policies that unleash the power of our free economy and create
more opportunities for all Americans—like the recently passed Tax Cuts and Jobs
Act with its bipartisan opportunity zones.

It’s my firm belief that, in the marketplace of ideas, freedom will always win out
over socialism on the basis of merit, evidence, and facts—but it cannot win if no
one is making the case.

Let’s continue to stand up and speak out. Let’s make the case.

 148 Comments
 The Daily Signal


MajSam • a day ago
Among many reasons this generation of Americans do not know about the failures of socialism
is our neglect to maintain an education system that teaches the basic 3 R's. Allowing the
teaching profession to become bloated with Liberal/ Left leaning instructors and
administration. When looking at the career path of a teacher, it is easy to understand the
liberal outlook. Most never have an experience in the economic world. In other words 'Talking
about doing is not the same as Doing Doing'. This has to change. Requiring upper level
educators to have a history of capitalistic employment should be considered. Not having this
 experience has lead to the development of ideals.... in this case the wrong ideals for this
Country.
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ConLawyerII MajSam • a day ago

You have named the primary and most egregious reason for this sickening situation.
Kids don't know what they don't know, so it is incumbent upon actual ADULTS properly
educate, train and discipline the succeeding generation. We have far too many
metrosexual squishes and fluffs in our current culture who do not have the stomach or
will for this.
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Veritatis Splendor ConLawyerII • 9 hours ago

I hope you understand this has been going on for 20 to 40 years now. There are
no adults to teach the kids the adults were never taught. Just look at the 30 and
forty year olds in positions of authority now. Check out Dennis Prager and Prager
University on line if you want to see something positive being done.
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Delilah Fleharty ConLawyerII • a day ago

This is very true.
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NITZAKHON MajSam • 12 hours ago

The Left has a LONG GAME, and has been working on this since - at least - Woodrow
Wilson.
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notax1776 NITZAKHON • 10 hours ago

 Khrushchev said back in the 60's they would bury us and they would do it from
within. That is exactly what we are now seeing. Patience and incremental
changes are the strength of that group.
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Randy Stebbins NITZAKHON • 4 hours ago

Which was the decade after Teddy Roosevelt brought "progressivism" onto the
national stage.
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PoeTentiate MajSam • a day ago

The infiltration of a Marxist pov in the all the teaching professions and subsequently
institutions, was intentional.
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coalminerson PoeTentiate • a day ago

In higher education, of course teaching Carl Marx is intentional! Just as teaching
Milton Friedman, John Maynard Keynes, Adam Smith, and Socrates is intentional.
It's called Economic Philosophy.
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Jim coalminerson • 10 hours ago

But the teaching is highly slanted towards Marx with little effort to teach
the good of capitalism, only the alleged or actual failures.
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dantanyan Jim • 10 hours ago

 And it's the fact that one political party is telling the bottom 60% that
'those people doing better than you got where they are by holding you
down.'
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Lynne Hallman dantanyan • 5 hours ago

The left uses identity to turn groups against each other. It is a zero sum
game. Each group is in competition for “a piece of the pie”. Wealth is not
finite like a pie it is infinite. But socialism views wealth as a pie and the
elites maintain their power by claiming that if someone has two pieces it
is their fault you have none. Socialism speaks to the worst in human
nature. Laziness, envy and irresponsibility. It is an evil philosophy! There is
nothing noble or good in it!
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Randy Stebbins Jim • 4 hours ago

No Jim, there is no slant in economics. Simply facts. You do realize that
unfettered capitalism died at the end of the nineteenth century right?
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celtic cross coalminerson • 7 hours ago

Wrong. It's called cultural marxism, and we're being inundated with it.
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Randy Stebbins MajSam • a day ago

The lack of education is indeed a problem. Lack of critical thinking and basic research
skills have resulted in the rise of conspiracy theories. We now have a "President' whose
main source of 'information' is Fox "News." Worse, his enablers (such as Wenstrup) rely
on similar methods to defend him.
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 Jim Randy Stebbins • 10 hours ago
Our last president seemed to listlen only to the voices in his head,
demonstrating a narcissism and sanity level not seen since Hitler moved
nonexistent armies around Europe in the closing days of the war.
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NITZAKHON Randy Stebbins • 8 hours ago

Unlike Barackus who learned about critical things from the media, the same time
everyone else did.
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ImStillaYankee • 15 hours ago

From many of the comments I see all the good little socialicommimarxifascist lemmings are out
& about tonight. It’s really unbelievable that you don’t have a clue about wtf you’re talking
about. You see free college & nationalized health care in other countries without looking at the
big picture. For one, those citizens are taxed into oblivion. For another, their health system
 sucks by comparison. Then there’s the little matter of those countries being smaller than many
U.S. states. Also being ignored is a few of the states that have looked into single payer have
scrapped their plans because it’s just onerously expensive & the result is never BETTER quality
care.
Then there’s the Trump haters. You loved your emperor so much you still yearn for his return,
pretty sad really when the great divider-in-chief tore this country apart like no other leader
ever has. You apparently like our stagnant economy for his 8 year reign thanks to his policies.
You apparently liked & got used to stagnant wages & government telling you what you can eat,
drink, think & say. You’d probably find Venezuela or Cuba much more comfortable.
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dantanyan ImStillaYankee • 10 hours ago

Of course they're out at night. They stay up late 'cause they don't have to go to work
in the morning.
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Straight dantanyan • 3 hours ago

... they don't have to go to work, period ! ObamaCare gave them "free"
healthcare whether they chose to work or not.
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ToSeek ImStillaYankee • 9 hours ago

The economy was improving for at least six years under Obama at pretty much the
same rate it's been improving under Trump. Meanwhile, accounting for inflation wages
have dropped under Trump at the same time corporate profits have soared. But that's
Repubican policy for you. https://www.americanprogres...
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Tom Englebert ToSeek • 9 hours ago

Your "progressive" information is incorrect as usual. Our economy was in
shambles for the entire "great recession" Just look at labor participation rates,
numbers of hours worked, personal income and productivity. The recession
would have been over in less than a year if your hero had done nothing. But BO
said we would never see GDP growth again of 2% and the manufacturing jobs
are gone forever. The fake news said there would be a stock market crash the
day after the election. They were all wrong, all America needs is free market
capitalism, its what we were built on, what we have thrived on, what people
from all over the world want to come here for. Take your stupid socialism and
move out if you don't like it.
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ToSeek Tom Englebert • 7 hours ago

Most European countries took the Republican route. Their economies were
far slower to recover than the US's.
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ImStillaYankee ToSeek • 6 hours ago

You really don’t know wtf you’re talking about. The precise reason they’ve
been so damn slow to recover is because they took the
socialicommimarxifascist route. Same as Japan did in the 90’s to 2000’s.
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 Howes Design Service ImStillaYankee • 5 hours ago
Which one is it? Socialist, Communist, Marxist, or Facist? All wildly
different ideologies but discerning their difference would take a modicum
of intelligence to parse (which is a commodity the right wing doesn't often
trade in, probably because they are terrified of socialicommimarxifascist
higher educators).
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MNIce Howes Design Service • an hour ago

You are incorrect in your characterization of Socialism, Communism,
Marxism and Fascism as "wildly different." They have key features in
common: a central administrative state exerting considerable command
and control over the economy, and promises to provide for housing,
education and health care out of the public treasury. They generally
promote utopian visions of how wonderful society would be if only the
people would give The State their full allegiance and let it have full
control, but in practice it never works out that way. Generally, they are
restrictive of individual liberty as well, and demand that government be
regarded as the supreme force in society rather than God or family. The
only difference between these ideologies is in the degree to which they
express the various characteristics described above.
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ImStillaYankee Howes Design Service • 5 hours ago

You must be a new troll as I’ve been using the term here (and elsewhere)
for years. If you had just half a brain you’d already know that some of you
pieces of sh8 are socialist, some communist, etc. some are a combination
of 2 or more while still others slip like the slimy weasels you are from one
ideology to another depending on what day it is.
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Lynne Hallman ToSeek • 5 hours ago

I suggest you seek information and learn something rather than just
repeating the leftist media lies!
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ToSeek Lynne Hallman • 5 hours ago

The biggest difference between the US reaction and the European one is
that the US had a stimulus, while the EU resorted to austerity (which was
 what the Republicans mostly wanted to do). Austerity didn't work. The
stimulus wasn't great, either, but it was better than doing
nothing. http://www.aei.org/publicat...
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MNIce ToSeek • an hour ago

Except for Greece and Spain (who rejected "austerity" measures), the EU
recovered from the economic downturn well before the United States.
Germany's economic growth has been quite substantial despite having to
help cover for the fiscal irresponsibility of Greece and Spain.
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ToSeek MNIce • an hour ago

Can you provide any support for that? I can provide plenty of support for
just the opposite (though Germany - as you note - seems to be an
exception):

https://www.huffingtonpost....
https://www.stlouisfed.org/...
http://www.aei.org/publicat...
https://www.weforum.org/age...
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Randy Stebbins ToSeek • 4 hours ago

The "stimulus' was also short circuited by a fiscally 'responsible' GOP
Congress......
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MNIce Randy Stebbins • an hour ago

The stimulus had two years to work. The only people who saw any benefit
were the bankers and certain contractors with connections to the
Democrat Party.
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 celtic cross ToSeek • 7 hours ago
BO, the marxist, was an economic wonder alright....He almost managed to bring
down the greatest country God ever created, but he couldn't push fat arse
Killary over the finish line. (Thank God.) And then Trump was elected, and the
economy, almost immediately, took off like a rocket. Try telling your lie
somewhere else; we're not buying.
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ToSeek celtic cross • 7 hours ago

Get your head out from your nether regions and look at the facts. If you
can find even ONE economic indicator that changed direction in a good
way from Obama to Trump, I will take back everything I said. But you can't
because there aren't any. The only ones that have changed are for the
worse: the annual deficit and inflation, both of which have soared under
Trump.

And don't forget that the Great Recession started under a REPUBLICAN
president. Obama inherited an economic crisis - he didn't create it.
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 celtic cross ToSeek • 6 hours ago
If you weren't all arse, I'd suggest you pull yours out of your leftist nether
region. Progressive/socialist/marxists like BO have no business running
this great country, and useful idiots who vote for politicians like BO have
no business voting. Just sit back and let Trump get us out of BO's
mess...and MAGA.
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Randy Stebbins celtic cross • 4 hours ago

HELSINKI!
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ToSeek celtic cross • 5 hours ago

As usual, when a right-winger knows the facts aren't on their side, they
just call names. So never mind - when you want a discussion based on
reality, let me know.
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Lynne Hallman ToSeek • 5 hours ago

I do believe you started the name calling so get off your high horse. You
ask for data where is yours? You don’t have any and like a true leftist you
deflect and spout meaningless drivel. Obama doubled the debt not Trump!
And the Fed just kept printing money to keep the economy from
collapsing.
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ToSeek Lynne Hallman • 4 hours ago

I've provided plenty of links to support my claims when appropriate. Yes,
Obama doubled the national debt, and Trump is well on his way to
increasing it by the same amount if he keeps at this pace - and he doesn't
have the excuse of a shattered economy.
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celtic cross ToSeek • 2 hours ago

I'm a counter-puncher, cupcake. If you want to compare locations of arses,
I oblige by pointing out that you are a full-body arse, therefore no need for
an extraction suggestion.
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ToSeek celtic cross • an hour ago

Except there's nothing behind your punches except hot air. If you want to
argue based on evidence, I'll argue. If you want to name-call, I've got
better things to do. Goodbye.
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 celtic cross ToSeek • an hour ago
Good riddance.
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ImStillaYankee ToSeek • 7 hours ago

That’s not even a good lie. Maybe Pravda would say something so ignorant. The emperor
saw growth as high as 2.2% ONCE in 8 years then, like with EVERY SINGLE economic &
employment report during his 8 year reign they would revise the numbers downward in
a couple of months so his simpleton lemmings like yourself wouldn’t notice. He even
looked America in the eye & said “the days of 3% growth are over.1-2% is the new
norm.” I don’t know where you get your economic ‘information’ from but Media Matters
& The Daily Kos aren’t ‘up there’ on the truth meter.
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 ToSeek ImStillaYankee • 7 hours ago
Bull. There were 11 quarters under Obama with 2.2% growth or better
( https://www.statista.com/st... ).
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ImStillaYankee ToSeek • 6 hours ago

And every single one was revised downward by .5 to .75 after 30-90 days.
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ToSeek ImStillaYankee • 4 hours ago

I'm showing the revised statistics, not the original one (except for Trump's latest
quarter, which was just revised to 4.2% from 4.1%, but the chart I link to doesn't
reflect that since it was put out earlier).
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ImStillaYankee ToSeek • 6 hours ago

Btw, that site is using what they call ‘real gdp’ which is actually a made up thing
as they’re basing it off inflation rate as well & the emperor consistently
UNDERreported inflation for 8 years so those 3-5% growth years is smoke &
mirrors. Just read his lips, he’s the one who said it (about never seeing gdp above
2-3%)—not me & there have only been 1 thing he hasn’t lied about, “I will
fundamentally transform America”.
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David Lisk ToSeek • 4 hours ago

Ok, I'll play. Using this site, lets really look at the numbers. According to this site
and taking into account real GDP (which accounts for inflation) 15 of 25 quarters
between Q1 2011 and Q1 2017 were at less than 2% GDP growth. Of those 15, 5
(or 33.33%) experienced less than 1% GDP growth with 3 of them being negative
(or experiencing deflation).
Now, does that sound like a booming economy? I don't think we've seen numbers
like that since the Great Depression!
Keep in mind also that we're talking about the last 6 yrs of the Obama
administration.
Would you like to debate the Obama administrations abysmal record on foreign
policy next?
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ToSeek David Lisk • 4 hours ago

Well, it was the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression - what do you
expect? But, yes, I won't deny that it was a slow recovery, but it was still a
recovery. And Democrats still have a better record on GDP growth than
Republicans ( https://www.bloomberg.com/v... ).

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Marie Mc CRITICAL LIFE LESSON ."Do you know how to catch wild pigs?"..
There was a chemistry professor in a large college that had some exchange students in the class. One day
while the class was in the lab, the professor noticed one young man, an exchange student, who kept
rubbing his back and stretching as if his back hurt.
The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in
his back. He had been shot while fighting communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow
his country's government and install a new communist regime. In the midst of his story, he looked at the
professor and asked a strange question. He asked: "Do you know how to catch wild pigs?"
The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said that it was no joke.
"You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find
it and begin to come every day to eat the free food".
"When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are
used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another
side of the fence". "They get used to that and start to eat again.
You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side". "The pigs, which are
used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat that free corn again. You then slam the gate on
them and catch the whole herd".
"Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are
caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to
forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity."
The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening in America . The
government keeps pushing us toward Communism/Socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the
form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tax exemptions, tobacco
subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), welfare entitlements, medicine, drugs, etc.,
while we continually lose our freedoms, just a little at a time as the government forces us to participate in
many of these programs whether or not we want to.
One should always remember two truths: There is no such thing as a free lunch, and you can never hire
someone to provide a service for you cheaper than you can do it yourself. If you see that all of this
wonderful government "help" is a problem confronting the future of democracy in America, you might want
to share this with your friends.
God help us all when the gate slams shut!

Quote for today: "The problems we face today are there because the people who work for a living are now
outnumbered by those that vote for a living."

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