Bernie Sanders created a lot of disgust when he
praised Fidel Castro, the Communist dictator of Cuba. Yuri Pérez posted
the comment that got the attention of the public in Yes,
Bernie Sanders, Castro's literacy program was 'a bad thing:.
. . . a militarized state has guaranteed the Castro dynasty’s
power over half a century — not, as Sanders asserted
in his 1997 book, because "he
educated their kids, gave their kids health care, totally transformed the
society."
In a CNN article posted by NBC, Sanders
says 'it's unfair to simply say everything is bad' with Fidel Castro's Cuba, Paul LeBlanc and Dan Merica wrote:
Buzzfeed
reported during the 2016
election that Sanders said at the same time that America was "very, very
mistaken about" the Cuban people's desire to revolt against Castro because
Americans "forgot that he educated their kids, gave their kids health
care, totally transformed the society."
Sanders’ comments about education and healthcare
got most of the attention, and, rightfully, pushback.
However, the final part of the statement
praising Castro for totally transforming Cuban society didn’t get nearly enough
attention, if any. But it should have, because of what it says about Bernie
Sanders, and of socialism.
So let me correct that. A government that has
the power to “totally transform the society” from the top down, by government
force, is a totalitarian state. This is Sanders. He seeks political power so as
to impose on 330 million Americans his brand of socialism. Anyone who believes
that an entire society and everyone in it is his to “transform” according to
his vision of what the ideal society looks like is a full-blown sociopath. This
puts Sanders in the terrible company of such recent utopians as Stalin, Hitler,
Mao ZeDong, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Hugo Chavez, and of course Castro. Sanders may
be a minor leaguer compared to these major league monsters. But he is cut from
the same mold.
For most of his career as an Independent
Democratic Socialist, and now a Democrat for presidential purposes, Sanders is
in the process of capturing a large swath of the Democratic Party. Even if he
doesn’t get the 2020 presidential nomination, he will have redefined the
Democratic Party in a new and dangerous way, aligning it more with undiluted
socialism than welfare statism. We need to take Sanders seriously, and at his
own word. Ideas matter. Words matter. They have predictable consequences in
real life. We’ve seen his political sociopathy before.
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