Another Try

When Bernie Sanders was the darling of the democrat left, I argued in many posts that his crypto-communist positions were extreme and unworkable, but worst of all, they were rehashed socialist ideas from the 1960s that had been tried repeated in countries around the word—in every case they had failed and brought hardship, shortages, a wrecked economy, and loss of freedom to the people socialists purported to help.

Now, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Professor Jack Stauder, a one-time Marxist who does research in cultural anthropology, has had an epiphany after traveling to 110 countries, researching, among other topics, the impact of socialism on those countries.

Kate Hardiman reports with a direct quote from Stauder:

“I gradually became disenchanted with Marxism by visiting many of the countries that had tried to shape their societies to conform to its doctrines. I was disillusioned by the realities I saw in … socialist countries – the USSR, Eastern Europe, China, Cuba, etc,” Stauder told The College Fix via email.

“I came to recognize that socialism doesn’t work, and that its ‘revolutionary’ imposition inevitably leads to cruelty, injustice and the loss of freedom,” the professor continued.

“I could see the same pattern in the many failed left-wing revolutions of Latin America and elsewhere. By combining actual travel with the historical study of socialism and revolution, I succeeded in disabusing myself of the utopian notions that fatally attract people to leftist ideas.”

Hmmm. All you have to do is spend a little time studying socialism (why not start with present day Venezuela and go back just 15 years) and it's pretty hard no to come to the same conclusion as Professor Stauder. Of course, that's only true if you don't live in the fantasy world of the Left, where utopia is just around the corner if we just give socialism another try.