A case for Democratic-Socialist tourism

OPINION:

A few weeks ago, I was talking to a millennial acquaintance of mine. She admittedly got through college without taking any courses in history or economics. Her advanced degree is in something called Gender Studies. She did have one course called Gender-Based Income Inequality.

That’s as close as she got to economic theory. Armed with that background, she has declared herself to be a Democratic-Socialist. I made the mistake of pointing out that — with the possible exception of Scandinavian countries — most nation’s adopting socialism and its communist cousins have been colossal economic failures.

Her come-back to this line of argument is that Communist China is one of the most prosperous nations in the world and is outperforming the United States in many economic areas. I was in the process of trying to explain that China is communist only in name and in the suppression of human rights, but she had to move on to another customer. She is a waitress — there apparently isn’t a market for experts in gender studies.

There are thousands of people flocking to Democratic Socialism as a ticket out of living in Mom’s basement. Republicans and middle-of-the road Democrats would be wise to debunk this ignorance-based movement before it gains further momentum. Sen. Bernie Sanders is the patriarch of the Democratic-Socialists. He has been on the government dole since the early ’70s in some way or other.

When you have lived off the taxpayers for decades, government money looks pretty good. Since his college days, Mr. Sanders has embraced every radical cause available. Mr. Sanders is a poster child for the old adage: “Nothing is impossible for a man who doesn’t know what he is doing.”

Given the fact that history and economics are largely lost on the impressionable minds of young millennials, I have a suggestion. The Republican National Committee should sponsor three trips to socialist paradises.

A week-long tour of Cuba and Venezuela should be instructive. Venezuela’s form of Democratic Socialism is the oil-fueled creation of the late Hugo Chavez. It was the socialist mecca for the vision of “free stuff” for the masses until the price of oil dropped to its current level. Then the goodies stopped coming. Since few people had a proper incentive to open other forms of production and commerce, the nation had no economic fall back and the economy collapsed.

In July, the inflation rate peaked at a million percent. Water is scarce, electricity is rationed daily, and normal commerce has come to a halt. Admittedly, there is Socialist equality — everyone is miserable — except for corrupt government bureaucrats who can still afford to send their kids to schools overseas and eat at what few restaurants that are still open.

Social Democrats who are brave enough to venture to Cuba are well advised to take a supply of surgical masks. That nation has been held up by leftists for decades as a model of Socialist medical care, but it has recently experienced an outbreak of Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever. It is a disease eliminated in most of the civilized world. The victims who survive can be secure in the knowledge that what care they do get get is free.

For those young Democratic-Socialists with an African bent, Zimbabwe offers a new twist on a Socialist utopia. When it was called Rhodesia, Zimbabwe was one of the breadbaskets of the African continent. When the leftist majority of Robert Mugabe took over, they mostly expropriated the farmland from the white residents and gave it to poor black urban residents with no farming experience.

Predictably, the economy collapsed and inflation rose to near Venezuelan rates. Mr. Mugabe was recently ousted and the new government is trying to repair the worst of the damage, but Democratic-Socialist tourists can still view the ruins if they hurry.

Not all potential Democratic-Socialist recruits will be able to avail themselves of trips to paradise. The Republicans and sane Democratic Party operatives would do well to sponsor some documentary programs on Socialism in these three counties. They might also consider doing one each on the Soviet experience with collectivism and the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

This is history largely forgotten among the the rising generation that will eventually run the country someday. The Hippies and Yippies of the ’60s largely grew away from Socialist ideals and became the Yuppies of the ’80s, but they largely had the advantage of a functional secondary school and college education system. In too many cases today, the likes of Bernie Sanders are running the asylums.

• Gary Anderson lectures at the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs.