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| Democratic socialist Senator Bernie Sanders speaks during a campaign rally for Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, who is running for the Democratic nomination for a U.S. Senate seat, in Minneapolis last week. Tim Evans/ |
When Democratic Socialists Take Over
Their purpose in trashing institutions isn’t to enhance democracy.
Some may be tempted to look at the revolutionary designs of democratic socialists and give them credit for being honest about their plans. But we shouldn’t believe them.
Their basic argument is that they need to burn down American traditions like an independent judiciary, the separation of powers and free enterprise to achieve a more pure democracy. But after tearing down the institutions that protect unpopular minorities, safeguard individual liberty and diffuse political and economic power, history says they’ll destroy political freedom, too.
As for specific items in the current agenda for the U.S., a Journal editorial notes:
The Democratic Socialists of America are gaining strength in the Democratic Party, so it behooves voters to know what they’d do with political power. We know they want a “future without capitalism,” as their latest policy document avers. But most Americans may not know they also want to rewrite the U.S. Constitution.
The left has long targeted the Electoral College because it thwarts the ability of the most populous states to dominate presidential elections. But in its latest manifesto, “Workers Deserve More,” the DSA says it wants to “replace the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.” It also wants to “abolish the Senate.”
One is led to believe that there will be a great democratic renaissance as the people rule directly through the House, but a recent experiment in democratic socialism suggests the results would be entirely undemocratic. In the summer of 2024 even our friends at Harvard and the New York Times had to acknowledge that things had not worked out as one might have hoped. Julie Turkewitz reported for the Times:
A generation ago, a charismatic former military officer swept into the highest office in Venezuela on a promise to deliver a more inclusive democracy, a system for the common man that would transfer the levers of power from the political elite to the people.
That man was Hugo Chávez, who in a democratic vote rode a wave of discontent into the presidential palace in 1999, eventually founding what he called the country’s socialist revolution.
But 25 years later, Mr. Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro, oversees an authoritarian regime that jails dissidents, tortures enemies, censors the media — and has just claimed victory in an election that opponents say was blatantly manipulated, contrary to the will of the people…
Venezuela is now internationally isolated, reeling from a decade-long economic crisis and suffering from a gaping emotional wound: the loss of millions of citizens who have fled abroad.
Steve Levitsky, an expert on democracy at Harvard University, called Sunday’s vote “one of the most egregious electoral frauds in modern Latin American history.”
But the socialists promised they were going to be democratic! They also promised attacks on business owners and that there would be government-run grocery markets. These promises were kept. Twenty years after the Democratic socialists took power, CBS News reported in 2019:
Citizens picking food out of discarded garbage bags. A mother mourning the death of her infant, lost to malnutrition and malaria. A young boy uses paper currency to weave a makeshift purse, simply because inflation has rendered cash practically worthless.
These are some of the scenes witnessed by CBS News’ Adriana Diaz and her team as they walked through the streets of Caracas, Venezuela…
Perhaps most affecting are the scenes of families wracked by poverty and death. The child mortality rate in Venezuela has increased 140 percent, compared to 2008 levels. Diaz spoke with Nairobi Sortaga, whose infant son died in February from malnutrition and meningitis, weighing only 13 pounds at 1-year-old. Inside her impoverished home, an empty cupboard contained a small bag of lentils to feed Sortaga and her two daughters.
“It’s not my fault,” she said, wiping away tears.
No, it was not. But it’s important to blame the American leftists who somehow found nice things to say about the regime. A number of them advised Bernie Sanders the last time he ran for president.
Of course Mr. Sanders deserves as much blame as any American for the disgraceful support he offered to Democratic socialism’s chief thug. In January 2003, as Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez was cracking down on regime opponents, he was thrilled to receive support from a few extremists in the U.S. Congress. Pascal Fletcher reported for Reuters:
Chavez on Sunday read out a Jan 9 letter of support sent by 19 U.S. Congress members recognizing him as the legitimately elected president of Venezuela.
“If Abraham Lincoln or George Washington were alive and here today, they would be on our side,” he said.
In their letter, the 19 members of the U.S. House of Representatives – 18 Democrats and one independent – told Chavez they strongly opposed attempts to remove him from office and condemned Bush administration officials who appeared to support the short-lived coup against him in April.
The authors of the letter included Reps. John Conyers of Michigan, Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois, Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas and independent Rep. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
In 2006, Mr. Sanders engineered another public-relations coup for Venezuela’s government by arranging a deal with regime-owned Citgo to provide subsidized heating oil in Vermont. Whatever it cost the Venezuelan government was surely worth the propaganda value. Mr. Sanders helped the regime embarrass the U.S. government, which had been trying to alert the world to the rising authoritarianism and economic destruction occurring in Caracas.
Don’t ever let Bernie Sanders and his acolytes pretend that Chávez was not their kind of Democratic socialist.
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In a Related Story
Mamdani vs. American Justice
Marxists have always loved a good show trial, and New York City’s Democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani is no exception. The mayor’s appeal to the non-authority of the International Criminal Court, which holds no jurisdiction over the U.S., is not a plea for justice. It’s an expression of confidence that his preferred venue will render the opposite.
“Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal,” says Mr. Mamdani about the Israeli prime minister in a recent video. The mayor then harangues his way through a long list of claims, but doesn’t label a single one of them as an allegation.
The mayor continues his screed: “Anyone with their eyes, with their heart, with their conscience should recognize the devastation he has wrought and understand that he belongs before a court of law. As I’ve said I agree with the ICC that Benjamin Netanyahu should be arrested and tried for his crimes, as I do for anyone else charged by the ICC.” Again, no use of the word alleged, which makes one wonder why the mayor thinks there’s any need for a trial. He’s obviously already made up his mind.
The ideologue who now governs New York City has already pronounced guilt, but like so many Marxists before him he wants the formality of a judicial process to clothe his targeting of the accused in something that looks like legitimacy, but is not.
The recent track record shows why the mayor can be confident that the ICC process will not be legitimate. A Journal editorial recently noted:
After months of burying the accusations, and more than two years of dithering, the International Criminal Court at last fired its prosecutor, Karim Khan. The court’s governing body found Friday that he had committed “serious misconduct and serious breach of duty” relating to sexual-assault allegations, which Mr. Khan denies…
After learning of the allegations against him, Mr. Khan cut short his Gaza investigation, stunning his own ICC staff—as well as many foreign leaders to whom he had given assurances—by denying Israel due process.
Instead of meeting with the Israelis and reviewing their evidence, or completing a full investigation, Mr. Khan rushed to CNN to announce his pursuit of arrest warrants. All of this departed from established procedure, but it got Mr. Khan ahead of the allegations.
The gambit held until these columns and a few others broke news of the allegations and whistleblower report. Mr. Khan then suggested it was all a foreign (read: Israeli) plot to intimidate him, never mind that the alleged victim, Sarah Hishan, is a Malaysian Muslim ICC lawyer who supports the anti-Israel prosecution… the ICC case against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been marred beyond saving. Any U.S. court would have tossed it for prosecutorial misconduct.
But not the ICC.
Mayor Mamdani’s resistance to U.S. law is not because he doesn’t trust the American justice system. It’s because he does. What use to the advancement of his political agenda is a court system that provides justice?
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James Freeman is the co-author of “The Cost: Trump, China and American Revival” and also the co-author of “Borrowed Time: Two Centuries of Booms, Busts and Bailouts at Citi.”
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