The Washington Post: Elizabeth Bruenig: ‘This Is Not Your Grandfather’s Concept of Socialism’

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Source: The Washington Post– U.S. House candidate Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Democratic Socialist, New York

Source: The New Democrat

“After Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s primary win, columnist Elizabeth Bruenig explains why democratic socialism is taking off.”

From The Washington Post

Elizabeth Bruenig, is right that what’s called democratic socialism or social democracy, is not let’s just say it which is communism. The authoritarian-totalitarian wing of socialism. Britain and Sweden, are not North Korea or Cuba, so let’s just put all that into the record and evidence on the table, but that’s not my main point here.

Where I disagree with Liz Bruenig, has to do with where she argues that democratic socialism/social democracy works well in the United Kingdom and Scandinavia, it would automatically work in America. That if we just replaced our federal form of government, our federal republic and replace it with a unitarian big centralized formed of government with a British or Scandinavian, or Anglo or Nordic welfare state, that would automatically work in America, since to works in Britain and Scandinavia. That is where she’s wrong.

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Source: Washington Free Beacon– U.S. House candidate Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Democratic Socialist, New York

It would be like arguing that since America has this liberal capitalist economic system that has produced the largest economy in the world where we’re the only country in the world with at least a 100 million people or more with a per-capita income of 50,000 dollars and one of two countries in the world with at least a 100 million people with a per-capita income of 30,000 dollars or more, Japan being the other, that Britain and Scandinavia, should scrap their democratic socialist models and replace it with a decentralized form of government and a liberal capitalist system, where the people there would have a lot of responsibility, but freedom as well to manage their economic and personal affairs.

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Source: Politico– U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, Democratic Socialist, Socialist Republic of Vermont

We’re not a wealthy country, or a wealthy big country, a wealthy large country, we’re a wealthy huge country. Whatever you want to say about China, America’s per-capita income and living standards are still about eight times greater than China’s. Even when China’s economy passes America’s as the largest in the world, China will still be a developing country where the only people who are doing well in China economically are people who live in their biggest cities, with everyone else in the country and that would be hundreds of millions of people in China living under third-world living conditions.

A big part of the discussion that Democratic Socialists like Senator Bernie Sanders and his followers in and outside of government in America like to leave out or just leave out whether they’re aware of it or not, is that the countries they like to point to as having high living standards under a democratic socialist system, is with Sweden, Norway, and Finland, have very small populations. 5-10 million, with large pieces of land.

Sweden and Finland, are about the size of Turkey physically with a about 1-10th the population. Turkey is a large country with about 75 million people, similar to Iran. And Nordic countries are all large energy producers, oil and gas. Scandinavia, has a democratic socialist economic system, because they can afford it. Lots of money with very people to take care of. Very similar to how the Saudi Kingdom operates in Arabia.

So, if Democratic Socialists really want to scrap the American form of government with our federal system and replace it with a democratic socialist unitarian form of government with a socialist welfare state, maybe they should be pushing to get America off of foreign energy all together and making us completely energy independent. Getting us off foreign oil and gas altogether and producing American alternative energy like solar, but also more American traditional energy like nuclear, oil and gas. Bringing in the financial resources that it would take to fund this big socialist welfare state without having to tax Americans and American businesses to the point that it would make it very difficult to work or run a business in America, because of all the taxes that we would have to pay for Welfare.

 

About Erik Schneider

I use the American Liberal photo as the cover photo for this blog, because that’s exactly what I am. And no, not in the stereotypical, sort of pop culture sense of what an American Liberal is supposed to be. But someone who represents what American liberalism, as well as European liberalism, and perhaps the liberalism of the rest of the world outside of the United States. Liberals are people who believe in defense of liberal democracy, as well as the preservation of liberal democracy. And of course we also believe in liberal democracy with all the individual rights, and other liberal values that come from liberal democracy, the liberal democratic form of government, like equal opportunity, equal rights, equal justice, property rights, individual freedom and freedom of choice for everybody, as well as limited but responsible government, and fiscal responsibility
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