In part one of this discussion of Dinesh D’Souza’s book “United States of Socialism,” he points out that the left now controls our educational institutions, our media and entertainment industry, many large corporations, and has even made inroads within the religious establishment.
The left has been able to re-package socialism in terms of identity politics, dividing America so that it becomes easier to conquer, making this new brand of socialism appealing to the average American. The recent midterm election is a classic example of that. D’Souza was correct in his thoughts on this subject, in his book published in 2020. Prager University released its findings in mid-November that 63% of voters ages 18 to 29 voted for the left’s agenda, which favors socialism, open borders, student loan forgiveness, higher taxes, and late-term abortion.
What D’Souza’s book points out about Identity Socialism is that its doctrine exploits diversity to eliminate diversity. It eliminates the human personality, the idea is to absorb everyone into an amorphous mass, except for those on top. The political elites will be rich, in charge, and free to do whatever they want. In the process, D’Souza says the socialist left will exclude its opponents from the debate, enforcing a foreign and alien ideology on the American people, and making them look and feel like foreigners in their own country. We see this in the latest social media revelations on censorship.
D’Souza calls socialists everywhere liars, thugs, gangsters, and thieves, who get their way by using propaganda that appeals to man’s baser instincts while getting rich themselves. He points out that American socialists do not point to the Nordic countries for the ideal socialist societies. They no longer love the Soviet Union and Communist China. It is Venezuela and its division socialism that American socialists want.
Bill Ayers, former violent member of the Weather Underground, the man who jump-started Barack Obama’s political career has been the teacher of so many. Ayers learned his form of ideal socialism from Hugo Chavez, the late dictator of Venezuela. Chavez took over the oil industry, ran the companies into the ground, and then began to confiscate land and property. D’Souza points out that Chavez re-wrote the constitution to eliminate civil liberties and confiscated guns.
In Venezuela, as in America, “public servants,” become rich, D’Souza maintains and notes that the top people in the Venezuelan government live in the style of the richest people in the world. As for Chavez’s family, it owns seventeen country estates, totaling more than 100,000 acres. Before his death, Forbes named Chavez one of the four hundred richest people in the world.
According to our Founding Fathers, America’s heritage teaches property rights – the fruit of the labor of the person – are “people” rights. Socialists say property rights are the enemy of the people. With that in mind, D’Souza says Socialism teaches its followers to believe that those that are successful have somehow stolen their wealth from them and from all of society. This creates a combination of envy and entitlement among the masses.
D’Souza exposes how the socialist left label American entrepreneurs as being greedy and selfish, precisely what they are themselves, but which gives them the license to join in looting those who have accumulated any savings, whether it is equity in their home, their retirement savings or retirement plan, medical account, even blasting Medicare by “spreading around the wealth” for “Medicare for all.”
D’Souza makes it very plain and direct that today’s American socialists are an insidious lot. There is no question that they are doing their best to tear down America. They focus on our children, new arrivals in America, and inner-city Blacks. They do their best to sell that our nation’s history and its future is bleak, dismal, dark and foreboding. That everything is the fault of American, our most successful entrepreneurs, and those leaders that earlier generations respected and almost deified, one might say. D’Souza says the message of the socialist is to hate America and tear everything down and put them in power.
Former slave Frederick Douglass, who became an admirer of President Abraham Lincoln and fiercely pro-American, is hated by the socialists, D’Souza contends because he became an advocate for black success without government programs. After the Civil War ended, Douglass was asked, “What should be done with the slaves?” His response, “Do nothing with us! You’re doing with us has already played mischief with us. Do nothing with us…if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs. Let him alone!”
D’Souza does not pull any punches when it comes to American Socialists and how they want to steal our money for themselves. For starters, he points out that Michael Moore has made over $50 million making documentaries that bash capitalism. That Bernie Sanders and his wife are multi-millionaires and own three homes, including a lakefront summer pad, and that Elizabeth Warren has accumulated $12 million bashing free markets while passing herself off as Native American.
And, no, he did not forget the Clintons, the Obamas, and The Bidens. He points out the Clintons got money from many directions. They sold pardons, siphoned off charitable donations intended for poor Haitians, and by former President Bill Clinton getting exorbitant fees from Moscow allies while his wife was U.S. Secretary of State. According to D’Souza, the Clintons have made more than $200 million since leaving office.
For a President, whose salary was $400,000 annually, Obama has done exceedingly well. He and Michelle own a $2.5 million Chicago home, a D.C. home worth $8 million, and a $12 million beachfront property on Martha’s Vineyard, the book’s author maintains.
Biden, whom he refers to as “Middle Class,” owns a 12,000 square foot home in McLean, Virginia, with a gym and sauna and parking for twenty cars. He also owns a beach house in Delaware to complement his 7,000 square foot lakeside home, D’Souza reports. On top of that, he says that Biden’s son has become a multi-millionaire by trading on his father’s political name and connections, making money from the governments of Ukraine and Communist China, among others.
Bottom line, Socialism is good business for those at the top of the proverbial food chain. It is the socialists that are greedy, selfish, hypocritical, and who are feeding off the wealth of society, while reviling the free market system.
