OPINION:
Sen. Bernie Sanders, independent by name but socialist by game, said he hasn’t yet decided on another run for the White House in 2024.
That figures. He barely can decide on a political party. How could he possibly know if he wants to run the country or not?
Sanders says he’s a democratic socialist. But he’s a senator with an “I” for independent.
That’s after he ran as a Democratic Party candidate for the White House in 2016.
That’s after he was a member of the Liberty Union Party, even rising to the position of chairman before quitting in frustration over members’ inactivity.
That’s after he served as a socialist mayor of Burlington, Vermont — after running as an independent.
“Sanders in 1981 defeated Gordon Paquette, Burlington’s five-term Democratic mayor, by just 10 votes,” Vox wrote in 2019. “The then-39-year-old Sanders ran as an independent and, while he didn’t campaign as a socialist, he made no secret of it, either.”
That’s after he founded the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
“How Socialist Is Bernie Sanders?” The New Yorker asked in a March 2020, headline.
Answer: As socialist as he can be without calling himself socialist.
The problem with socialism is it’s built on a lie. It promises equality, but sets up a system where somebody has to ensure all comply with the forced rules to build equality — which in itself establishes a system of inequality.
It promises justice for all; it promises prosperity for all; it promises those who can will gladly take care of those who cannot — or, more to the truth, will not.
It’s roses and sunshine and bubbly in tall glasses for all — until reality hits and the can-dos stop doing because they’re burnt out, tapped out or stripped by government overseers of all resources. Then the infighting begins. Then the chaos comes. Then the rat race for basic human supplies ratchets into high gear.
Then the truth of socialism seeps out and the soul-sucking evil of the system becomes abundantly clear. By then, it’s too late. Economies are destroyed; societies are devastated; government, in desperation, then ramps its controls so as to keep the citizens from panic, crime and, ultimately, death.
Happy days are never here when socialism is around.
But the promise is so alluring to the low-information voter and to the lazy and to the entitled and to the arrogant that socialism never quite dies from the political realm; it only renames itself.
Progressivism is democratic-socialism is socialism is Democrat is socialism is progressivism, and on and on and on.
Enter Bernie Sanders.
He’s the guy who morphs with the times.
He’s a socialist at heart — which is to say, truly, a communist in the end.
But he goes by whatever political tag will get him elected.
“That’s a big — you know, I haven’t made that decision,” Sanders said on “CBS Mornings” when asked about another run for the presidency, The Hill reported.
America doesn’t need any more socialists in office.
But more than that, America really doesn’t need any more socialists in office who can’t even openly admit they’re socialists.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Lockdown: The Socialist Plan To Take Away Your Freedom,” is available by clicking HERE or clicking HERE or CLICKING HERE.
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