The newest U.S. House of Representatives caucus to receive formal approval has been revealed: The House Anti-Socialism Caucus.
Congressman Chris Stewart (R-UT) announced in February via press release that he intended to form the new caucus.
“Socialism is a folly,” Stewart said. “Not only is it doomed to fail wherever it rears its head, it leaves a wake of destruction in lives and freedoms lost. So much time has passed from the fall of the Iron Curtain that many have internalized — or never experienced— [s]ocialism’s ultimate price. If we fail to recall those dangerous times, the primitive appeal of socialism will advance and infect our institutions.”
Stewart’s February press release further noted the age gap between those who seem sympathetic to socialism and those who do not.
Socialism’s swift rise as the preferred alternative to capitalism among American’s youth is alarming. Recent polling shows 53% of American millennials favoring a socialist society to a capitalist one, compared to only a quarter of Americans over age 55. This is generally attributed to the [oldest] generation’s direct experience with this failed experiment.
Last week, Stewart received the formal blessing of the House to create the Anti-Socialism Caucus. He tweeted, “Just received approval from the House for the formation of the Anti-Socialism Caucus. This caucus will defend individual liberty & free markets and highlight the dark history of socialism.”
According to a statement made from Stewart to Nate Madden of Blaze Media, the new caucus has seven original members: Republican Reps. Brad Wenstrup (OH), Guy Reschenthaler (PA), Rob Bishop (UT), Bill Flores (TX), Vicky Hartzler (MO), Roger Williams (TX), and Ralph Norman (SC).
As Fox News notes, the time for the formation of such a caucus truly is now:
Ideas such as “Medicare-for-all” and the Green New Deal — a massive government intervention to combat climate change and income inequality — have quickly gone from fringe ideas to litmus tests for Democratic presidential candidates. Meanwhile, self-described “democratic socialists” like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) have floated tax rates as high as 70 percent for rich Americans.
A Fox News poll conducted in January showed that a higher percentage of Democrats polled (40%) supported a move away from capitalism and toward socialism than did those who would oppose such a move (34%).
As The Daily Wire’s Ryan Saavedra reported in February, moreover, many of the same young Democrats seeking to make the party more socialist are also seeking to make the party more anti-Israel (if not outright anti-Semitic):
A trio of far-left Democrats are normalizing blatant anti-Semitism in the Democratic Party as leaders in the party idly stand by and refuse to condemn their actions and statements.
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) — all new members of Congress — have all defended anti-Semites or espoused anti-Semitic positions over the last several months. …
Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, and Tlaib belong to Justice Democrats, a federal political action committee, which far-left Vox describes as “a left-wing group whose mission is to drag the Democratic Party left by making life miserable for incumbents…threatening them with progressive primary challengers.”