Posted on April
17, 2016
Bernie’s Bull
Socialism is the antonym of honesty
by
Daniel
Clark
Seldom are presidential polling results as consistent
over time and among different polling organizations as they are in concluding that
the American people think Bernie Sanders is honest. That's the general perception of the
Vermont senator, even among Republicans, but why? Is it just because people don’t see some
unhinged, frothing blowhard hollering “Lyin’ Bernie”
every five minutes on TV?
Many conservatives have made the mistake of crediting
Sanders with being honest about his socialist ideology, as opposed to Hillary
Clinton and the rest of their party, who have traditionally shunned the S-word
as if it had head lice. In fact, Sanders
himself hedges by calling his belief “democratic socialism,” as if that were
somehow philosophically different. To
the degree to which he embraces the socialist label, it’s only because he sees
nothing to be gained by hiding it. That
does not mean he is a characteristically honest man, as anybody should know,
from the simple fact that socialism and honesty are mutually exclusive
categories.
The
centerpiece of Sanders’ campaign is his promise to provide free public college
education, funded by a new tax that would be levied on Wall Street financial
transactions. Actually, his plan only
calls for the federal government to provide two thirds of the tuition funding,
while mandating that the states supply the rest. He shows no concern for where the states
might get the money, nor would he allow them to reduce their liability through
cost containment. Rather, his plan requires
that annual per-pupil spending be equal to or greater than it had been the
previous year. Thus, he actually plans
to make college more expensive once it’s free.
The tax, then, would only have to produce 67 percent of
the needed revenue, but it’s highly unlikely that it would do even that. After all, it would suppress economic
activity by design. Whatever amount was
collected through the financial transactions tax would be mitigated by
decreases in revenues from other federal taxes.
Ultimately, the price of “free college tuition” would be increases in
federal deficit spending throughout the duration of the program, combined with
crushing amounts of federally mandated deficit spending by participating
states.
One might ask how Sanders can force state governments
to contribute all that funding. He
can’t. If the states don’t want to take
on that burden, they may simply decline to participate in the program. Because the plan only applies to in-state
tuition, a student in a non-participating state could not avail himself of the
“free” college in another state. It is
likely that few states, if any, would opt to participate, in which case few if any
students would ever receive this “free” government service. How adequately has Honest Bernie explained
any of this?
The theme of the Sanders campaign has been his charge
that the economy is “rigged” – but what is socialism if not the rigging of the
economy? The opposite of a rigged
economy is a free market, also known as capitalism. Tea Party conservatives decry the “too big to
fail” bailouts because they made the market less free. Sanders’ objection, if he were honest, would
be that the government was rigging the economy on behalf of the wrong people,
not that he has a problem with the general proposition that the economy should
be rigged.
Sanders vows to bring manufacturing jobs back to
America, even though that’s exactly the kind of work that socialists
characterize as exploitative and cruel.
If manufacturing jobs began returning in significant numbers, President
Bernie would chase them away faster than you can fall asleep reading
Dickens. Sanders’ public hand-wringing
over job losses is belied by the callousness with which he promotes onerous
regulations and taxes. His “climate
change” obsession, for example, is anti-industrial to its core.
As if that weren’t proof enough, Sanders tells us how
he perceives the manufacturing sector when he weirdly complains that there are
too many brands of deodorant on the market, and that this is why there are
starving children in the world. If he
thinks the manufacture of a product is a misapplication of funds, then how
sincere can his pleas on behalf of The Workers be?
Socialism is the antonym of honesty. This must be so, because socialists would
never be allowed to implement their philosophy if they presented it
forthrightly to the people. To credit
Sanders with honesty just for calling himself a socialist is no different from
calling the chairman of the Liars’ Club an honest man, just because he admits
to being a liar.
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