The World sees today front and center Socialism at its best and worst. Best: the European brand — “Socialism Lite.” Worst: Venezuela. Before we discuss the two and their differences, let’s define Socialism.
Socialism: “a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole. (in Marxist theory) a transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of communism.”
The Venezuelan type of Socialism is the extreme version in which true Marxism that came to be in Russia 100 years ago and was called Communism. France today has what many call “Socialism Lite,” or “Democratic Socialism,” or “Socialist Democracy.” Both types have one thing in common: they reject capitalism and a free market economy that gives everyone equal rights to participate in production and consumption according to their needs. Hard core Socialists (Communists) want to eliminate it all together while others (Socialists Lite) want the government to control it.
The Venezuelan version is the 21st Century expression of Russian Communism, the Chinese version of totalitarianism, and Cuban repression. Venezuelans call their political structure a democracy, but its implementation in the nation has been with total disregard for the human rights of their citizens and brutal repression of individuality. Their version of Socialism according to many is actually a disguised dictatorship, created, implemented, and maintained in modern Venezuela by the late Hugo Chavez. At the heart of the Venezuelan dictatorship is the government’s disdain and total rejection of private property and rights afforded by citizen ownership of anything. What many in America do not realize is that though Venezuelans today are literally starving to death, (it is reported that the average Venezuelan weight loss is 20 pounds over the last year) it sits on the richest oil reserves in the Western Hemisphere and some say the World. Venezuela’s problem is not its poverty. It is its government.
So what about Socialism for the rest of the world? European countries and even the United States have watched the totalitarian version of Socialism failing in Venezuela. Europeans have installed and are operating the “Lite” version of it called “Democratic Socialism,” and many in the U.S. want to install it here, led by the likes of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and other prominent Democrats and Independents. They shun a label of “Socialism” for their preferred political ideology, but the nature of what they feel is better for the United States includes the abolition of true capitalism — a mainstay of Socialists.
But those who want a Socialist American state do not recognize the facts of current or past socialist failures. Globalists simply ignore facts. Examples: in Venezuela, scarcity, inflation and unemployment are the direct consequences of this way of governing, and it leads to repression and dictatorship when citizens try to rise against it. Cuba? Does anyone in the U.S. really believe the brutal dictatorship of the Castro brothers has been better for Cubans than capitalism? I’ll answer my own question: as crazy as it seems, yes, there ARE Americans who think Cubans have it better!
What about “Socialism Lite” in Europe? For decades, Social Democrats have been the main political party in Europe and have shaped the societies of almost all their countries, while in the United States, the Democrat Party has been promoting and implementing similar policies since the 1930s. But now the political landscape has changed. The Socialist Party of France took just 6.2 percent of the vote and fifth place. Meanwhile, English Laborer supporters are undergoing an internal crisis of deep character, the Spanish socialists struggle to maintain second place and something similar is going on in Germany and Scandinavia. Parties of the populist right, extreme left and even some liberals are rising against socialism in all its forms. T he left have done worse in all the most recent free elections carried out in Latin America, with no signs of greater influence in Asia or Africa.
Socialists created a model of government that, based on very high taxes, intended to transfer the wealth of those who have more toward those who have the least. They tried to accomplish this by creating the so-called welfare state, in which health, education, pensions and sometimes even 
housing became benefits offered by the government. In Europe, markets are controlled and regulated by governments. Controls have been in place for years regarding production. (The U.S. is seeing some of that today) In European nations, the size and expenditures of governments have been growing, resulting in colossal debt and severe economic crises that have been increasingly ineffective in providing the services they promise to offer, and undermine the rights and values of a free society.
Here’s the big problem: Socialists like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren can point us to NOT ONE Socialist state on Earth that is working today, or one from the past that has worked. Inevitably the lack of free market capitalism that is controlled totally by supply and demand from citizens who have democratic options, causes any/all Socialist governments to collapse. And almost always those collapses have been brutal and always at the expense of the weakest and most needy of those societies.
In the U.S., the Liberal Left Media are almost ALL proponents of the Socialist philosophy. No, we do not hear them promote that fact by name on air, in news stories or newspaper stories or editorials. But they support and promote it by their constant attacks on the wealthy, American corporations, and through false racist narratives. Their disdain for Americans and their belief that Americans are not smart enough to discern the differences between governments, the historical successes of true capitalism in the United States, and their belief that Americans need “someone” or “some group” to tell them what is best, fuels their need to promote socialist philosophy in disguised fashion to the nation. By doing so in the way they do, they show not only their personal and corporate propensity for political transition to socialism in the U.S., they reveal the elitism that drives their narrative of “we know more than you do” to every American. (And they have the audacity to call President Trump a narcissist!)
I don’t think American voters today understand that the welfare state implemented and promoted by Barack Obama in his two terms in the U.S. is a failed experiment. But the discomfort felt is obvious when looking at the negative consequences of immense, ineffective and exploitative socialist governments in the World today and in history. It explains why moderate socialists are suffering heavy losses in elections across the World. Even with the understanding of these failures that happen in EVERY Socialist reconstruction in World history may not be enough to stem the tide of a united liberal left front in American — led by some leftist liberals, socialist media, and even some immigrant spokespersons — to convert our free market capitalistic society and government to the Socialism Lite program in Europe. Middle Americans and all Conservatives can no longer take for granted that American media will paint an objective news picture of the pitfalls and universal failures of these governments. Americans must take control of that narrative. We must all do our part to educate our children, other family members, and those Americans in our circles of influence to the fatal dangers of Socialism.
Isn’t it ironic that almost every European country has already made moves from the left toward center away from their Socialist governments? Yet American Socialist political hacks still point to the European process as a successful replacement for America’s government.
If we don’t take control of this, while I do not think we will become a Venezuela, I can see a United States that dabbles with Socialism Lite and we begin to see the pitfalls of a Socialist political system: high unemployment, runaway inflation, horrible interest rates, massive degradation of our healthcare system, corporations headed overseas en masse, etc. Heading that way depends totally on who Americans listen to in the next decade.
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