OPINION:
House Democrats played right into the hands of their Republican rivals last week by voting overwhelmingly against a nonbinding resolution condemning socialism.
Democrats have told us repeatedly that they believe in inclusion. Their symbolic tent is big enough to accommodate Marxists, antisemites, racists and every other color of crazy. Still, there is no room for those who oppose an ideology that has brought misery to untold millions over more than a century.
Socialism left a trail of blood across the 20th century, starting with the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 in Russia, National Socialism in Germany, the Chinese socialism of Mao Zedong, the Cuban socialism of Fidel Castro and his successors, North Korean socialism and socialist regimes in Nicaragua, Vietnam and Laos.
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Socialists did not invent tyranny, but they did refine it with confiscation of private property, collective farming, five-year plans, planned famine, slave labor, gulags and killing fields.
It has been conservatively estimated that socialism is responsible for more than 100 million deaths in the past century.
Migration has always been in only one direction. West Germans did not climb the Berlin Wall to live the good life in East Germany. After the Vietnam War, boats did not set sail for Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) from non-socialist states.
Through the Democratic Socialists of America, socialism has planted its flag on these shores.
New York, the District of Columbia and Seattle now have or are about to have socialist mayors. This year, socialists defeated Democratic incumbents in congressional primaries in New York, Colorado and Michigan. Socialists are running for the Senate in Michigan and Florida.
The DSA has a revolutionary platform that includes abolishing the Senate, making the president and Supreme Court appointed, opening the border, allowing noncitizens to vote, providing reparations for slavery, granting statehood to the District of Columbia, guaranteeing a universal income, socializing medicine, providing free college tuition and nationalizing industry.
Instead of taking the opportunity to distance the mainstream Democratic Party from its far-left fringe, congressional Democrats sided with the fringe. All but eight House Democrats voted against the anti-socialism resolution.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, New York Democrat, is threatening to retaliate against two fellow Democrats who sided with Republicans on a procedural vote to bring the resolution to the floor.
Liberals are forever telling us that democracy dies in darkness. That is ironic given that Mr. Jeffries wanted a mantle of night to spread over House Democrats’ stand on the most important issue confronting voters in this election: how they stand on socialism.
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