Editor’s note: Jarrett Stepman’s report from a conference of socialists over Fourth of July weekend in Chicago prompted a huge response from The Daily Signal’s audience. Here’s a sampling.—Ken McIntyre
Dear Daily Signal: Anyone who wants to understand why American political life is so debased should consider what socialist influences have done to our public schools; that’s my response to Jarrett Stepman’s commentary (“I Went to a Socialism Conference. Here Are My 6 Observations).”
The promises are relentlessly upbeat and even humanistic. The reality is always more decay, more mediocrity, more people prevented from reaching their potential.
My thesis is that public schools are the political reality served up billboard-size. Everyone can understand if they bother to look.
For example, public schools claim to teach reading, but we have 50 million functional illiterates. That’s socialism in action, also known as liberalism, progressivism, collectivism, communism.
The claims are always gimmicks to gain more power. The claims are always without sincere intent. This is the part that the ordinary citizen has trouble with: The people at the top promise things they never intend to deliver.
Summary: Commies lie. Expect it.—Bruce Deitrick Price, Virginia Beach, Va.
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Dear Daily Signal: When I was stationed with the Army in West Germany, a friend and I talked with an East German man in, of all places, the German Alps in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
The man had escaped from East Germany and was running from the KGB. His description of life behind the Berlin Wall was not inspiring to us free American soldiers, or the German civilian.
These are the stories the “new” Americans need to hear. There is no benefit to surrendering our liberty and freedoms to a tyrannical government.
There is nothing free without someone paying the cost. Freedom is not free. Look at Arlington National Cemetery.
I was trained in the Army to eliminate communist and socialist fighters. I never imagined I might have to use that training in the land that I love and swore to die for.
Communism is destructive and only beneficial to those who are in control. They are also some of the richest people. What say, Bernie, Obama, Pelosi?
Come what may, I will defend my community and country against any attack on our Constitution and our freedoms.—Gary Sackman
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All communist, Marxist, fascist, socialist teaching in government schools needs to be removed, tenure or not. Best way to do that is to pass a school voucher system like the ones used it Switzerland, so parents can determine which schools educate their kids.
End tenure. End the National Education Association. That should get these people dropped from our schools. Get our kids away from the communists infecting them.
Also, if we can, get President Trump re-elected along with a supermajority of fiscal conservatives in both the House and Senate. We need to return the true American history, all of it, to the classroom from kindergarten to college.
And the Constitution must be stressed in all public schools, not just our military academies, which are currently the only colleges teaching it. We must take back the minds of our young.—Theresa Rodriguez
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Jarrett Stepman’s “observations” are actually a truthful critique of a failed ideal and the people who have the fantasy of making it work somehow.—Randy Eldredge
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They seem to think they can choose between democratic and authoritarian governments. The inevitable result of taking freedom away from large portions of the population to promote “equality” will lead to tyrannical control of all those who resist.—Tom and Lois Yunghans
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I would like to know how the AFL-CIO union thinks that anything to do with open borders helps its membership? That organization is in existence for the sole purpose of representing its members, the working stiffs of the United States.
Cesar Chavez, of farmworkers fame, did not miss the fact in his organizing efforts that illegals undermine the gains he tried to make, since they will always work for less. His group drove them out. Time to take back our unions.
Nice hotel with big bills those socialists were at. They all want to be the commissar, not the manure shoveler.—Timothy Dayton
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Socialism, what a joke. I think it was in 1984 that a client sent me to Milan, Italy. I was put up in a very nice expensive hotel, the Principe di Savoia.
Just checking online, a room for two adults for one night currently starts at £280 ($350) and goes up to £4,000 ($4,999). It’s not basic lodging.
When I was there, an international socialists’ conference was underway at the hotel. I know because I asked the concierge who were all the people in blue Mao jackets and military fatigues milling around in the public spaces.
There were hundreds of them, including someone the bartender told me was Moammar Gadhafi’s brother, enjoying a drink with his very large shillelagh-carrying bodyguard.
Socialists sure know how to choose a good hotel. But then of course, they aren’t paying for it.—Edward Vix
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So these communists want social justice? Well, what about some social justice for those who work and raise families and love God, but who see the family structure being destroyed in the name of socialism?
Who see their religion not only being denigrated but openly attacked without any sort of retribution?
And who see enormous amounts of money they worked to earn confiscated so the government can give it to those who don’t work, those who are trying to destroy all these Americans believe in, and those who support causes these Americans find abhorrent?
What about those who obey the laws being ignored or even excoriated by those who disregard the laws? What about some justice for them?—Maude St. James
Dear Daily Signal: These are cowardly, pampered whiners who have reaped all the benefits of a free, capitalistic society but have taken it all for granted and are now offended by it.
I doubt any of these spoiled malcontents ever had to support themselves, let alone a family. It’s a lot different when you have to work to support yourself and a family than it is when everything you want and need is provided to you by parents.
When you are struggling to provide for yourself and your family and then have others who have no such obligations tell you that you need to provide for millions of others, you start to see things a little differently.
Send these spoiled brats to Cuba for a year or two, with no money from home. Have them live like the average Cuban does. Let them see firsthand how Cuba treats its political critics. Let them feel how Cuba treats those in mobs who wear masks and protest their government.
If it’s so bad here, all they have to do is leave. Cuba is only 90 miles off the Florida coast. And Canada isn’t that far away and you can get there by car.—Drew Page
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Thank you for the disintegration of our children’s lives. We now have a conundrum of young people who know nothing about what they are supporting.
We
need to get government out of our schools and facilities of higher education
and place it into the hands of people above age 60 to return us to American
values.—Karin Callaway, Florida
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It is important to remember that the ideal population of the earth for “sustainability” is 500 million, according to the greenies. So we need open borders to permit the socialist destruction to encompass the world and kill 7 billion people, to get the population down to a sustainable level.—Charles Smith, Evansville, Ind.
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If they get everything they are wishing for and they succeed in making our country a s—hole, it would certainly solve the border crisis.—James Dalian
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The contemporary left is now a tool of the globalist feudal-financier elite. Hey, a one world, police state, surveillance government was good for Hitler and good for Marx, so what’s the beef between the two?
You got yer scientific socialism, you got yer national socialism. Socialism, man, it’s what’s for dinner.—Walter Alter
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They most assuredly have mommy and daddy issues. Proverbs 29:15 says: A child that get his own way brings shame to his mother.
I bet the majority of these people cannot even change a tire, let alone run a country. Ridiculous.—Bobby Redondo
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The Scandinavian countries are not socialist at all. They are capitalist welfare states: pure capitalism with high tax rates to support a wide and deep social welfare system.
In theory, a good idea. Only people who don’t know the definition of “socialist” would think they are; they are not.—Jack Lehr
Dear Daily Signal: It’s hard to believe this is happening in the United States.
Years ago, socialists were shunned in our society. But now with the millennials—poorly educated in the history of socialism, and blind to its ruinous outcomes—gaining positions of power in our government and embracing socialism as if it were akin to social media, we face a terrible menace in the near term.—Gordon Miller
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Socialism has never been primarily about its failed economic system. It’s about government having control of you and your life.
Socialists want the control that is possessed only by God himself. That’s why it will always fail. When you go against God, you always lose.—Brian Artzberger
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In other words, those who have created nothing want to destroy what others have created.—Peter Raymond
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We need to distinguish between socialism as a form of government versus socialism as a form of public policy. Canada and Sweden are democratic countries like the U.S., with developed socialized public programs (“socialized” health care and so on).—Bryce Narveson
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The definition of insanity is … —John Paparella
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So if they think they want to be socialists, aka communists, then treat them to a taste of it. When they go protest or play Antifa, have the police go out and gather them all up, put them in jail with no court date, and leave them there for six months or so.
Feed them about a 1,000 calorie-a-day meal, with mostly bread and only water to drink, no coffee. If someone doesn’t like it, separate that person from the others, move him or her from the jail to someplace else for an attitude adjustment.
That is a good beginning on how socialism works.—Jeff Pearson
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Ironic and fitting that so many wore bandanas around their mouths. The first thing Marxists crush is free speech. Were their world to become our reality, their conference to voice whatever criticisms they might have would disappear by fiat.—Paul Johnson
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The culture in America today has lost common sense. The left has taken over the public school system and the mainstream media, so many people simply don’t hear much more than the utopian ideas they are selling.
Many don’t even know what made America a great nation in the first place. This generation has never had to deal with hard times. They’ve always had it handed to them, so they think socialism is simply a good option.
If nobody teaches them, don’t expect them to learn without making the same mistakes of those who have chosen the socialist path to poverty.—Wes Potts
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How can people be so ignorant and not see what is happening in socialist/communist countries? This country needs a war, left vs right. Let’s sort this out once and for all.—Dalton Bullitt
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Vermont should be provided to the new socialists. Then they can move there and set up their new country/reservation. America would be 49 states and Americans would treat them as a nation that reflects Cuba or Vietnam.
They would certainly be relieved of this lousy, old-white-guy club of mean and cruel capitalists. When any of these cuties try to cross back over our border, no can do.—Urie Wallick
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Jarrett Stepman’s article leads me to a happy place, in three steps:
1. Show article to wife.
2. Get credit card and OK from wife.
3. Go to GunBroker.com and hit “buy it now” until my fingers cramp.
All kidding aside, this keeps up and at some point there’s gonna be a SHTF moment and only one of the ideologies survives.
The road America is on diverges ahead and, as Robert Frost said, we will choose a path. Whether that choice is through a great awakening or apathy or bloodshed cannot yet be seen.
The path we are currently on—growing debt, growing social programs, less restrictive immigration, not enforcing existing laws (immigration, drugs, voting), ignoring the Constitution in creating and enforcing new laws (firearms, property rights)—heads toward a cliff.—Neil Christie