Does anyone in their right mind believe that humans can significantly alter the climate or provide a host of social benefits to the entire population in the United States within ten years? Does anyone believe that gross polluters like Russia, China, India, and third-world emerging nations will set aside fossil fuel to their disadvantage while the United States imposes draconian measures on its people?

So, if not even the authors of this socialist wish list believe that we will have unicorns and self-licking lollipops in ten years, why did they propose this non-binding resolution and why are they crying foul now that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell plans to bring it up for a vote in the Senate – forcing Senators to record their position for posterity?

Why?

On its face, the legislation titled “Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal,” is not only unrealistic, impossible to fund, but un-American in its impositions which deeply impact the freedoms of all Americans. But, no matter, its real purpose is not to immediately change the environment and culture of the United States, its purpose is to shift the Overton Window leftward.

Subjects, like the replacement of our capitalist system with socialism, which were once unthinkable in normal conversations, are now becoming topics of discussion in the mainstream media. Just a decade ago, almost no one in the general population, outside of radical activists, would have suggested that some version of socialism is an acceptable moral or economic equivalent of capitalism.

It’s not "that" socialism…

The younger generation has little familiarity with socialism other than what they have been taught, or should I say indoctrinated, in school by progressive instructors. They create semantic excuses for the name, pointing out that we are talking about “economic socialism” or "democratic" not Marxist socialism – the kind that leads to totalitarian governments, mass misery, death, decay, and the destruction of societies. Certainly not the type of Venezuelan socialism that saw one of the world’s most vibrant economies decimated in less than a decade in the name of “the people.” Certainly not the type of socialism that saw the Castro brothers execute or imprison dissidents while the country continued to decay into a previous century, These are the same people who tell you that the government is not going to seize the means of production and private property, never mentioning the de facto takeover with rules, regulations, and confiscatory taxation. You may own something, but effectively you will be renting your assets from the government and producing what is required by the latest centrally-planned economy.

But the truth is that socialism is socialism. With socialism, the endpoint is more socialism or communism to the point where the government must implement stricter and stricter rules and regulations at the point of a gun to prevent the eventual revolutionary overthrow that is certain to come in an uncertain future when everyone is equally miserable. With capitalism, at least the endpoint is more capitalism and more freedom.

What is it really?

Explain to me what you would call a system where the government controls the economy through a demonstrably phony need to save the planet from an emergency nobody can detect without phony computer models? Or controls individuals through the provision, denial, or delay of their healthcare? Or manages the population’s behavior and food intake for the health of the system? If that is not socialism, where the needs of the collective outweigh the needs of the individual, what might it be?

Max Planck, the eminent Nobel Prize Laureate and physicist maintained that “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” It is the same thing with socialism.

It has been decades since those who have directly experienced the ravages of communism have died off or aged out of the power structure. The newer generations having no direct experience with the past horrors and are inclined to believe the revisionist history taught by “trusted” teachers who themselves are inexperienced or ignorant of the very political systems they teach.

One might consider that the political puppet-masters are capitalizing on human nature and selling socialism to the youth of America as the cool way of rebelling against their parent’s generation in a way that provides them with peer acceptance and social opportunities. Ask most any young person to define capitalism, socialism, and communism – and the results will amaze you. They will deride capitalism and describe socialism in terms of its benevolent effects on society – that is, they will describe the promises of socialism and ignore the historic reality of death, destruction, and near-universal misery. They cannot explain how it is that the leadership of socialist and communist countries become billionaires and live like royalty while people starve outside their gates and high walls.

Bottom line…

One need only look at California to see that its citizens suffer confiscatory taxes and pay more for everything that is labeled "green"– and yet the only thing that appears to have changed is the number of illegal aliens who are said to become future democrats. People are leaving the state and eroding the tax base – leaving the remaining citizens to support the importation of more people in need of housing, employment, medical care, and education. It is not a sustainable system. So where will you go when the entire United States is run like California.

Claim that it will never happen. Think again – that’s exactly what most Californian’s believed a few decades ago. Want to see it for yourself? Just read any of the current high school history texts to see a version of history that is unbelievable. A history where the Founders of this nation are slave-owning misogynists steeped in patriarchal white privilege. You will hardly recognize your country.

We are so screwed.

-- steve