Vermont Senator and self-styled “democratic socialist” Bernie Sanders is ramping up his 2020 campaign with promises of bringing the welfare state to the United States. Andrew Klavan explains the appeal of Sen. Sanders, but also where his promises fall short on Monday’s episode of “The Andrew Klavan Show.” Transcript and video below.
Trump’s demeanor is out there, and there’s just no question. You compare him to other presidents we’ve had, certainly recently, certainly since WW2. He’s just really different. He’s a real character. He’s an enormous weird, wild character. Some of the stuff he says I don’t like, some of the ways he behaves I don’t like. But at CPAC and now, he’s making sense. Now let’s take a look at the opposition. Let’s take a look at Bernie Sanders, who doesn’t talk like that. Who talks kind of in a normal, especially for a New Yorker, talks in a kinda normal way. He’s on Seth Meyers, and Seth is setting him up. The audience is applauding everything he says. So let’s listen to Bernie’s speech:
Bernie Sanders: I never used the word left. Yeah I am a democratic socialist. So that’s the way it is. But the issues we talk about, is it left to say that in this country we should have a minimum wage that is a living wage? Is it left to say that everybody should have healthcare as a right, that we should expand social security because so many of our people can’t make it, elderly people can’t make it on twelve, thirteen thousand dollars a year? Is it left to say that we have to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and create millions and millions of jobs? Is it left to say that we have to address the crisis of climate change or that we have to deal with criminal justice reform or immigration reform. We have to deal with sexism, racism, and homophobia. I don’t think those are left issues! I think sometimes the media makes a bigger deal about it. I think in fact on all of the issues and more, sensible gun safety legislation. I think you have the strong majority of the American people saying “Yeah, I agree with that!”
You know, it is interesting because to some degree he is probably right. To some degree, if you say to people “should there be a minimum wage? Should we have free healthcare? Should we have more social security?” Something that the Democrats didn’t run on it, but are moving to do it. Here’s why he’s just a tiny bit right, things are so good and people don’t know where that goodness comes from. We stand on the shoulders of giants and think that we are flying. We stand in this wealthy country with all the gizmos, all the things we do. You can call up the culture of the universe, with a keyboard. People who were born after a certain time don’t know how that happened! It happened because there was freedom and incentive, and guys sat in their garage and said, “Hey, you know maybe we can make a computer.” They dropped out of college! These guys weren’t educated by people who thought they were experts. These guys made this stuff themselves and they became billionaires. Now Bill Gates is one of the great philanthropists in the world. You may not like what he is giving to but he is giving his money away.
Who wants to stop them? Socialists. And they only want to stop them because they can’t imagine the future.
Socialism is always about stealing the stuff that people made in the past. You notice you ask Alexandria Occasional-Cortex “How are you going to pay for that?” She says “How do we pay for wars?!” you know, she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know where that money comes from. It came from capitalism, it came from people being free enough to create that incredible wealth. Stop capitalism and you stop the wealth, and you don’t know the things that are coming.
So Bernie is talking. First of all, he calls himself a “democratic socialist.” This guy is a communist. This is the guy who praised Castro, who praised the Soviet Union, honeymooned in the Soviet Union. We have the clip about breadlines, listen to this:
Bernie Sanders: You know it’s funny sometimes, American journalists talk about how bad a country is because people are lining up for food, that’s a good thing! In other countries people don’t line up for food, the rich get the food and the poor starve to death.
Breadlines are a good thing. That’s Bernie Sanders’ America. That is Bernie Sanders’ future. He doesn’t know, he thinks, “How can I pillage the wealth of the past to give stuff to everybody?” instead of thinking, “Let’s have the risk and the excitement and the freedom of the future and people have more stuff than you’ve ever seen before.” It’s just because he hasn’t seen it before, he can’t imagine it. He doesn’t think it’s there. Socialism is all about the past. It’s all about pillaging the past. You know it used to be that socialism was the takeover of the means of production, right? And then spread the wealth and give the wealth to whoever needs it or wants it. That didn’t work because when you take over the means of production the government ruins everything, they can’t run stuff. So the companies failed and the Soviet Union — you start at first, you modernize everything and then, of course, it all collapsed. But now they don’t do that anymore, now they say “let’s have free market societies and then we’ll just steal all the money.” It just takes a little longer.