On June 30, another proud member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), not the Democrat Party, 29-year-old Melat Kiros, defeated a so-called moderate, establishment Democrat in a Democrat Party primary election.
Far-left socialists beating mainstream Democrats is not an aberration nor an anomaly. It is an alarming trend that continues to gain momentum.
So far, this primary season, radical democratic socialists have upset several formidable incumbents and/or candidates endorsed and supported by the Democrat Party’s political arm—the Democratic National Committee—in California, Pennsylvania, Maine, New York, the District of Columbia, and now, Colorado.
The geographic location of the most recent DSA triumph matters. Colorado is deep within the heralded heartland. Colorado, aside from loony liberals in places like Aspen, is supposed to be immune from anti-American, democratic socialism. But such is not the case these days.
To be clear, Kiros’s opponent, 15-term incumbent U.S. Democrat Rep. Diana DeGette (CO-1), deserves to be described as “dumb” because she assumed that embracing some, but not all, of the super-progressive policies that have become the de facto agenda of the DSA would warrant another term in Congress.
Since 1997, DeGette’s policy posture has become more progressive. She has embraced climate alarmism. She is anti-ICE and pro-gun control. She even served on the prosecution during the second impeachment trial of President Trump.
Alas, for DeGette, none of that mattered. She is not officially on board the democratic socialist bandwagon. Thus, she had to go.
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Her replacement, who is virtually assured of winning the midterm election, is a shameless democratic socialist who earns the title “dimwitted” based upon her advocacy of tyrannical, stupid, and failed policies that, if enacted, would doom the glorious American experiment to the dustbin/ash heap of history.
Here is just a small sample of what Kiros says she will support in the U.S. Congress. Medicare for All, the abolishment of ICE, zero military aid to Israel, universal childcare, universal eldercare, federal housing and rent assistance, free college, free preschool, publicly owned utilities, open borders, mass amnesty, a Trans Bill of Rights, draconian gun control measures, a national moratorium on the development of AI data centers, the “democratization” of AI, the Green New Deal, and a rapid transition “to a zero-emissions energy grid.”
For those who voted for Kiros and other democratic socialists over the past decade, there is one big problem standing in the way of that ambitious agenda: the reality that the national debt is $39.4 trillion and rising every second.
The reason that the national debt has ballooned to this unfathomable number is simple: for too long, the federal government has spent more money than it collects in taxes.
This year, the federal government has spent approximately $7.2 trillion, but it has raised only $5.7 trillion in total tax revenue. The rest is being borrowed/printed, which devalues the dollar and disproportionately harms middle- and working-class Americans.
Despite the less-than-stellar state of the federal budget, which includes annual debt service payments exceeding $1 trillion for the first time, the DSA and Kiros shrug this off with a simple slogan: tax the rich.
Unashamedly, Kiros pretends that an “Ultra-Millionaire Tax on net worth above $50 million” coupled with a 50 percent corporate income tax rate will generate enough revenue to fund the DSA revolution.
Of course, these taxes will mostly fall on small-business owners and what is left of the middle class. Family farms and businesses will perish. The bucks for the corporate hike will be passed onto consumers in the form of higher prices.
Alas, this is all trivial. The sheer amount of revenue needed to fund something as audacious as the Green New Deal, which is only part of the DSA platform, could be in the realm of $100 trillion for the first decade!
It also bears noting that the Green New Deal, billed as “a jobs and justice-centered plan to decarbonize the U.S. economy within ten years,” would bring our modern civilization to a grinding halt.
Were the Green New Deal to become the law of the land, which is exactly what DSA superstar U.S. Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) is devoted to doing, access to reliable electricity would become a luxury. Consumer choice would be superseded by government coercion. Unencumbered travel in a gasoline-powered automobile would be too bad for the climate; such is why the DSA promotes “free” public mass transit so fervently.
The Green New Deal/DSA agenda not only satisfies the desires of climate alarmists, Big Green lobbyists, and those who are experts at micromanaging the lives of others because they are so smart. It also contains mass appeal for those who fall for the snake-oil pitch of socialism that sounds too good to be true because it is too good to be true: free stuff from the benevolent government that made the rich finally pay their “fair share.”
Promising people a universal basic income, even if they don’t feel like working, is an affront to the American spirit. So is making someone like me, who worked multiple jobs to pay off my college loans, foot the bill for others who don’t feel like meeting their obligations.
Long story short, the DSA’s radical agenda does not pass the constitutional, economic, or moral smell test.
Regardless, democratic socialism is rising for two main reasons, in my mind.
First, too many Americans don’t comprehend the abstract economic argument against it, namely “there is no such thing as a free lunch.” They have been brainwashed in public schools by radical teachers that socialism is economically viable. I experienced this phenomenon on many occasions during my years as a high school social studies teacher in Illinois and South Carolina. I can only imagine how much worse it has become in the years since I retired.
Second, and perhaps more poignantly, given the fact that we are on the cusp of celebrating America’s 250th birthday, way too many Americans, young and old, have lost their moral compass. Their sense of virtue is askew.
Deep in their hearts, they fundamentally know that socialism is wrong because taking from one to give to another is theft. It is stealing, immoral, unjustified, and as un-American as it gets.
Chris Talgo (ctalgo@heartland.org) is editorial director at The Heartland Institute.
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