Why are people attracted to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)? A more important question is, why shouldnât they be?
To most people who remember the Soviet Union, the Berlin Wall, the Mariel Boatlift, the Killing Fields of Cambodia, the Cultural Revolution, etc., the idea that anyone could be attracted to socialism makes no sense. It has failed everywhere itâs been tried and has immiserated its peoples.
So why do so many young Americans seem enamored by the sirenâs song of socialism? Perhaps because government has failed them.
The terrorist attacks of 9/11 and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan showed national defense to be lacking, despite trillions of dollars spent. The financial collapse of 2008-2009 followed by a sluggish economy showed that the âtoo big to failâ crowd got bailouts while working stiffs got foreclosed on. The George Floyd riots, pandemic and a flood of illegal immigration showed domestic tranquility to be lacking.
Millennials were promised bright futures for graduating college, only to be crushed by student debt. The Baby Boomers hold the bulk of the wealth in America, and continue to consume like locusts, making housing prices surge as they pay cash on second homes, outbidding young couples on their first homes.
Now, Artificial Intelligence threatens their future jobs, and Social Security will be insolvent in six years.
The constitutional purpose of our government is to establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure liberty.
If youâre in your 30s, itâs fair to ask how thatâs been working out for you.
We should not be surprised. Similar frustration arose with the Republican Party in 2008 when the economy crashed when the housing bubble burst. The rich got bailed out and the working class got foreclosed on â socializing risk while privatizing gain.
When Mitt Romney ran for president in 2012, he was attacked in the Republican primary elections as a âvulture capitalist.â
Many on the right claimed there wasnât a dimeâs worth of difference between the Republican and Democratic parties. They called it the âuniparty,â and attacked the âestablishmentâ as the Tea Party began its takeover of the GOP.
The DSA is using similar language to undermine democrats. Both complained about globalization, free trade agreements that outsourced American jobs, and endless wars.
But, while the Tea Party and Freedom Caucus wanted the GOP to return to its vision of our Constitutional underpinning, the DSA and progressives want to destroy our constitutional underpinning and replace it with a system that has been tried and failed.
While socialism has always been popular on college campuses and among a select group of radicals, it has never caught on in America for a variety of reasons.
First, during a previous era, when America universal military conscription, millions of Americans saw first-hand the evils of communism, whether fighting in Korea or Vietnam, or peering over Checkpoint Charlie. They saw the desperate prisoners of communism put out to sea in leaky boats to escape Cuba and Vietnam or get shot trying to get over the Berlin Wall.
Many of us learned about the evils of communism in school or through documentaries, like the World at War series on PBS. But with the end of the draft, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Warsaw Pact, there has been no evil empire to contrast western values with communism. Hollywood and academia have gladly scrubbed Americaâs collective memory, instead, making Uncle Sam the embodiment of all things evil.
Revisionist historians claim that slavery was a product of capitalism despite predating capitalism by five thousand years. True believers in dialectic materialism might acknowledge that slavery and serfdom were artifacts of feudalism. They might also acknowledge that Adam Smithâs âThe Wealth of Nationsâ was published in 1776 and made the case that free men making contracts freely was far more efficient and profitable than slavery.
But why let facts stand in the way of dogma?
For its part, Republicans have resorted to name calling, confident that the differences between capitalism and socialism are self-evident. The free-market system needs advocates and boosters, men and women willing to debate capitalism versus socialism on college campuses. It needs to argue its ideas often and clearly.
Back in the day, Milton Friedman regularly appeared on college campuses to debate economics with socialist professors. William F. Buckley hosted âFiring Lineâ on PBS, in which communism was debated vis a vis western values. More recently, the late Charlie Kirk carried that mission, albeit with more social issues.
The late Lee Atwater sat down for a 1981 interview and uttered his most infamous quote. He quipped:
âYou start out in 1954 by saying, âNigger, nigger, nigger.â By 1968 you canât say âniggerââthat hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, statesâ rights, and all that stuff, and youâre getting so abstract. Now, youâre talking about cutting taxes, and all these things youâre talking about are totally economic things âŚâ
That tasteless comment may have spoken to Democratic politics in the Old South, but it did not account for nearly 50 years of campuses preaching the evils of capitalism and the collective warmth of socialism. It did not account for the demise of civics and history in public education.
Simply taring Democrats with the DSA brush and calling them communists will work no better than it did when the Democrats tried to scare voters by calling Trump and his supporters fascists. Such labels have lost their power to shock.
Young Americans did not embrace socialism overnight. It took place over 50 years of Republicans taking for granted the self-evident superiority of capitalism, even as it drifted toward crony-capitalism.
Facts, persuasion and showing up are still the best way to beat socialism. Itâs time to stop the name calling and start educating high school and college students about civics, history and comparative economic systems, and publicly debate the DSA ideologues.
Republicans need to get to work. Make the public case for freedom and free markets and make government work for everyone.
Michael Collins retired with 34 years of federal and military service.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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