Today, news broke that former New York City mayor and prominent billionaire philanthropist Michael Bloomberg is considering tossing his hat into the dystopian ring that is the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primary. The Wall Street Journal <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/michael-bloomberg-preparing-to-enter-2020-democratic-race-11573167459?mod=hp_lead_pos3">quotes</a> a Bloomberg adviser named Howard Wolfson, who suggests that the main reason Bloomberg might jump in is his fear that none of the current 2020 Democrats can defeat President Donald Trump at the ballot box.
<blockquote>
&#8220;Mike believes that Donald Trump represents an unprecedented threat to our nation,&#8221; Mr. Wolfson said.
&#8220;Mike is increasingly concerned that the current field of candidates is not well positioned to [defeat Trump],&#8221; Mr. Wolfson said. &#8220;If Mike runs he would offer a new choice to Democrats built on a unique record running America’s biggest city, building a business from scratch and taking on some of America’s toughest challenges as a high-impact philanthropist.&#8221;
</blockquote>
By all means, Bloomberg should enter the fray if he feels called to do so. But we should not mince words here: There is no chance whatsoever that Bloomberg would successfully win the Democratic presidential nomination if he were to enter the field. And the chief reason for that is very simple. Bloomberg would have no shot because he is a somewhat sane person who would be seeking the presidential nomination of a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-democratic-party-has-become-parody-itself-josh-hammer">fully insane</a> political party.
Bloomberg, who has made a veritable fortune over the course of a lifetime working in the financial services industry, is an ex-Republican who openly identifies as a <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/01/30/bloomberg_we_shouldnt_be_embarrassed_about_capitalism_non-capitalistic_venezuela_is_collapsing.html">capitalist</a>. But he would be seeking the presidential nomination of a political party whose grassroots <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/240725/democrats-positive-socialism-capitalism.aspx">increasingly identify</a> as more socialistic than capitalistic. He would be seeking the presidential nomination of a political party in which the leading sources of disagreement over the course of the past few televised primary debates have been whether the harebrained &#8220;Medicare for All&#8221; nostrums has a bankrupting price tag best estimated at $40 trillion or $50 trillion, and whether it is appropriate to literally eliminate private health insurance for over a hundred million American citizens while implementing that quixotic socialized medicine scheme.
Bloomberg, furthermore, is nothing if not a lifelong friend of the Jewish state of Israel. In 2014, when anti-Israel President Barack Obama oversaw a temporary <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/transportation/213288-obama-defends-israel-flight-ban">U.S. flight ban</a> to Israel amidst the jihadist rocket fire that rained down on the Jewish state that summer from the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-israel-must-destroy-hamas-once-and-all-josh-hammer">Hamas</a>-controlled Gaza Strip, Bloomberg personally <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2014-07-23/why-i-flew-to-israel">flew to Israel</a> solely to demonstrate to his fellow Americans that it was safe to do so. Bloomberg may not be a hardcore <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-the-pro-israel-case-against-u-s-military-aid-to-israel">Caroline Glick-style Zionist</a>, but he is, at minimum, an AIPAC-style pro-Israel advocate. But the modern Democratic Party is no longer an AIPAC-style pro-Israel political party. On the contrary, the 2020 Democrats now shirk AIPAC en masse in favor of obeisance at the sycophantically pro-Palestinian altar of the vehemently anti-Israel group <a href="https://www.creators.com/read/ben-shapiro/10/19/the-j-street-democrats">J Street</a>.
Additionally, it must be noted that Bloomberg, while hardly Orthodox in identification, is nonetheless proudly and publicly Jewish. This too is a problem for the modern Democratic Party, which extols the virtues of Holocaust deniers like Palestinian Authority chieftain Mahmoud Abbas, glorifies Jew-haters like Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and is being rapidly Corbynized into an <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-stark-choice-facing-jewish-democrats-josh-hammer">overtly anti-Semitic</a> political vehicle. It is difficult to see how Bloomberg&#8217;s proud Jewishness counts, in the eyes of today&#8217;s Democratic Party, as anything other than a net negative.
Bloomberg would have no chance for the Democratic presidential nomination were he to formally enter the fray. He is a sane Jew who would be seeking the presidential nomination in a fully insane, socialist, increasingly Jew-hating political party.

Michael Bloomberg.

HAMMER: Michael Bloomberg Would Have No Chance At The Democratic Presidential Nomination

2020 Election

American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)

Anti-Semitism

Capitalism

Democratic Party

Israel

Judaism

Leftism

Michael Bloomberg

Progressivism

People seem shocked that recent polls show millennials are enamored of socialism — an economic system that reasonable and educated Americans have long known is disastrous. They shouldn&#8217;t be; this has been a long time coming.
The latest survey by Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation shows that 70% of millennials are likely to vote socialist. Adding insult to injury, only 57% believe the Declaration of Independence &#8220;better guarantees freedom and equality&#8221; over &#8220;The Communist Manifesto.&#8221; The worst part of this is that it is real, not a parody piece in &#8220;The Onion.&#8221;
Now do you finally believe that our schools and universities, Hollywood and the liberal media are brainwashing our kids? Are you taking this seriously?
I&#8217;m taking it very seriously, which is why I devoted three of the 16 chapters of my just-released book, &#8220;Guilty by Reason of Insanity: Why the Democrats Must Not Win,&#8221; to discussing socialism and capitalism. I cite earlier polls showing this same disturbing trend concerning young people&#8217;s attitudes toward socialism.
A 2015 YouGov poll showed that 43% of Americans between 18 and 29 years of age had a favorable opinion of socialism and preferred it to capitalism. Then, in 2015, a Pew poll found that 69% of those under age 30 would be willing to vote for a socialist for president. Further, a Gallup poll revealed that only 45% of Americans ages 18 to 29 have a positive view of capitalism, while 51% have a positive view of socialism. No offense, but it&#8217;s like a wave of stupid has washed ashore.
Significantly, these kids are not only drawn to socialism but also repelled by capitalism — two distinct but related points. Their attraction to socialism partially stems from their aversion to capitalism. The leftist establishment has bombarded us for decades with socialist propaganda. Former Hillsdale College professor Burton Folsom notes that while America was founded on the idea of preserving individual liberties through limited government, many prominent American history textbook writers are strongly biased against America&#8217;s free market tradition and believe that America must be liberated from predatory capitalists. These teachings have now yielded an abundance of poisonous fruit.
A 2018 study by the National Association of Scholars showed that some 40% of colleges in the United States have no Republican professors. &#8220;The political registration of full-time, Ph.D.-holding professors in top-tier liberal arts colleges is overwhelmingly Democratic,&#8221; writes Mitchell Langbert. &#8220;Indeed, faculty political affiliations at 39 percent of the colleges in my sample are Republican free — having zero Republicans.&#8221; In the other 61% of schools, the ratio is &#8220;absurdly skewed against Republican affiliation and in favor of Democratic affiliation.&#8221;
It is astonishing that an economic system that has enslaved and impoverished nation after nation and was responsible for more than 100 million murders in the 20th century is portrayed as utopian, and that capitalism, which has liberated hundreds of millions from poverty, is depicted as evil.
The left works 24/7 to disseminate its destructive ideas. Chrissy Clark writes for The Federalist that Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, two prominent economics professors from the University of California, Berkeley, have been instrumental in designing economic policy for Democratic presidential hopefuls Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Despite their dubious calculations on such socialistic proposals as &#8220;Medicare for All,&#8221; the liberal media is working hand in hand with them to spread their propaganda — including the oft-repeated canard that the wealthiest Americans have the lowest tax rates. This type of coordinated effort, argues Clark, could &#8220;affect the way young people view economics for the rest of their lives.&#8221;
Here&#8217;s the point: Leftists have to lie to persuade people that socialism works and capitalism is evil. At some point, we must successfully make the case that the left must be judged by its policy failures rather than its supposedly good intentions. Here&#8217;s the other point: Leftists are seemingly more committed to their goals of fundamentally transforming America than conservatives are to preserving it.
One of the purposes of my book is to alert our side as to how urgent our situation has become and how critical the 2020 presidential and congressional elections are for us. Evidence abounds that many Americans are losing sight of the unique gloriousness of America&#8217;s founding ideas. I try to give patriots abundant ammunition to make our case for preserving these ideas and rejecting the insane ideas coming from the left, from socialism, to gender, to race, to abortion, to immigration, to the Constitution and much more.
If we are concerned, as we claim to be, about bequeathing to our children the free and prosperous America we have enjoyed, we better get to work.
David Limbaugh is a writer, author and attorney. His latest book is &#8220;Guilty by Reason of Insanity: Why the Democrats Must Not Win.&#8221; Follow him on Twitter @davidlimbaugh and his website at www.davidlimbaugh.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Bernie Sanders.

LIMBAUGH: Exposing The Fraud Of Socialism

Hollywood

Socialism

PragerU founder Dennis Prager and comedian/podcast host Adam Carolla team up for &#8220;<a href="https://nosafespaces.com/">No Safe Spaces</a>,” a documentary covering the hot topic of political correctness and how it has infected everything from politics to educational institutions to the entertainment industry. From getting speakers banned to harassing public officials, this “woke” crowd is targeting anyone that disagrees with them, and this documentary highlights some of the most egregious examples of bad actors trying to stop free speech.
Prager and Carolla travel the nation, documenting high-profile moments of protest against Conservative speakers. This includes a 2017 speech given by Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro at UC Berkeley, which was violently protested by far-left students and outside Antifa activists who were bent on stopping anyone who supposedly &#8220;offended&#8221; them from engaging in freedom of speech.
The film shines a spotlight on these incidents and does a good job of exposing the bad actors who are trying to do an end-run around of the First Amendment in order to block people they do not like from simply stating their opinion. There is no debate allowed by these hecklers, who only want to stamp out — sometimes literally — the beliefs of others.
The film is well-developed, and moves at an easy pace, interviewing newsmakers, celebrities, authors, educators, and many others who have experienced backlash over their refusal to kowtow to the politically correct. Some of the unforgettable footage burns in your memory. For example, a group of far-left students hold a meeting with one university&#8217;s faculty. When one teacher refuses to pander to their whims, the students take over and overreact.
The most sobering aspect of the film are the personal testimonies of Prager and Carolla. Often, documentary filmmakers are simply observers, but these two have themselves been targeted by the PC crowd. Carolla’s irreverent comedy and Prager’s stand for traditional values have made them both targets of the Left who, at one time, tried to silence them or deplatform them over their views.
Of course, the mainstream media have tried to dismiss &#8220;No Safe Spaces.&#8221; Writing for the AV Club, critic Vadim Rizov <a href="https://film.avclub.com/debate-me-you-coward-takes-movie-form-in-adam-caroll-1839268667" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">opines</a>, &#8220;This isn’t an argument for free speech, it’s just paranoid whining, complete with a roundtable of comics sympathetically agreeing how sad and scary this all is, plus images of the Statue of Liberty with tape over its mouth.&#8221;
This, of course, is echoed by its &#8220;rotten&#8221; status on film rating aggregator website <a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/no_safe_spaces" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Rotten Tomatoes</a>. This has done nothing to stop audiences, where it has a stunning 100 percent rating at the time of this review.  
Fox News <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/no-safe-spaces-free-speech-documentary-box-office-1-screen" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">reports</a> that at its first showing in Phoenix, Arizona, on October 25th, “No Safe Spaces” proved a box office success, producing the “second-highest ever box office gross for a documentary playing on just one screen, according to the movie&#8217;s producers.” Heading into week two of its release, the momentum does not seem to be slowing down, with a distribution expansion planned. 
Despite the mainstream media’s sabotage attempts, “No Safe Spaces” is going to reach more Americans who are fed up with the pandering to college students, Antifa mobs, and woke thinkers who are making conversation, debate, and free speech harder and harder in American life. 
Check out the trailer below:
<iframe title="NO SAFE SPACES Trailer" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TTOQGvXbZY8?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
This article has been revised for clarity.

No Safe Spaces title art

‘No Safe Spaces’ Review – How Far Will Political Correctness Take Us?

academia

Adam Carolla

American History

Constitution

Dennis Prager

On Wednesday’s episode of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” the Daily Wire editor-in-chief talks about a new radical proposal that Elizabeth Warren mentioned at the Democratic primary debate. Video and partial transcript below: 
This is the constant theme from Elizabeth Warren: She&#8217;s either saying stuff that is so radical that it’s impossible to fact-check it because she&#8217;s making moral claims, or she is saying stuff that she herself cannot back up because the data simply do not back it up.
 I mean, here is one of her radical proposals. So Elizabeth Warren is asked about jobs, and Bernie Sanders has already claimed that he wants a universal jobs guarantee, and then you see my boy Andrew Yang, the only person with half a brain onstage, saying Americans don&#8217;t want to work for the federal government. All of that&#8217;s true. 
Then Elizabeth Warren comes in like the Kool-Aid Man, just boom, right through the wall — a very mild-mannered Massachusetts Kool-Aid Man. She is red, so I mean, I guess that works. In any case, Elizabeth Warren explains that what she actually wants to do is force every corporation in America to have 40% of its board elected by the employees of the corporation. That&#8217;s ridiculous. 
You think that I&#8217;m going to let the employees over at The Daily Wire vote on their own wages? You think that&#8217;s a thing where they get a vote? That is not a thing where they get a vote, because if they did get a vote, then they would probably bankrupt the company because you have a collective action problem. In the companies where you do have employees voting on their own wages, effectively speaking, at the major car manufacturers for example, they basically bankrupted the car industry through private unionization and government cram-downs over the course of decades.
You know who knows how to run the corporations? The people who are interested in the profits of the corporation and the business workability of a corporation, not the people who are seeking to suck money out of the corporation in shortsighted fashion. And now, there are private sector unions that are willing to work with employers in sort of cooperatives [and] adversarial fashion — with the tug and pull — but Elizabeth Warren effectively unionizing every business in America is going to be a giant fail. 
And by the way, if you really believe that all employees want to be unionized, you&#8217;re gonna have to explain the 7% private sector unionization rate in this country. It turns out that most employees in this country want to be able to independently negotiate their salaries with the bosses.
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In any case, here&#8217;s Elizabeth Warren:
<blockquote>WARREN: But the principal reason has been bad trade policy. The principal reason has been a bunch of corporations, giant multinational corporations, have been calling the shots on trade — giant multinational corporations that have no loyalty to America. They have no loyalty to American workers, they have no loyalty to American consumers, they have no loyalty to American communities. They are loyal only to their own bottom line. I have a plan to fix that, and it&#8217;s accountable capitalism. It says, &#8220;You want to have one of the giant corporations in America? Then by golly, 40 percent of your board of directors should be elected by your employees.&#8221;</blockquote>
That is an insane violation of freedom of contract. It is an insane violation of freedom of association. Who the hell is Elizabeth Warren to decide how I run my business? She has never made a dollar, not a dollar for me. She has not run my business — not in any way. Not in any way, shape, or form. Warren says something similar later. So Warren actually comes forward and she says she doesn&#8217;t have a beef with billionaires, and then she explains in very much Barack Obama fashion — because Barack Obama actually ripped the speech off from her years ago — she basically says you didn&#8217;t build your business yourself.
<blockquote>WARREN: So I&#8217;m really shocked at the notion that anyone thinks I&#8217;m punitive. Look, I don&#8217;t have a beef with billionaires. My problem is you made a fortune in America. You had a great idea. You got out there and worked for it, good for you. But you built that fortune in America. I guarantee you built it, in part, using workers all of us helped pay to educate. You built it in part getting your goods to market on roads and bridges all of us helped pay for. You built it, at least in part, protected by police and firefighters all of us helped pay the salaries for. </blockquote>
Now, this is the same exact argument that Barack Obama made in 2012. He said, &#8220;You didn&#8217;t build that.&#8221; Except guess what? All of those things are being paid for by the people who create businesses. Who does she think pays taxes in this country? Who pays the income tax in this country? And by the way, the people who are salaried at these corporations, they get paid, they&#8217;re not wage slaves. They&#8217;re getting paid, and they are paying taxes in their neighborhoods. If the corporations disappear, who do you think is going to pay all that local property tax that supports the school? Who do you think is going to pay the police and firefighters? 
<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ben-shapiro-show/id1047335260">Listen to full episodes 0f “The Ben Shapiro Show” on iTunes. </a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-ben-shapiro-show">Watch “The Ben Shapiro Show” on-demand!</a>

Elizabeth Warren

SHAPIRO: Elizabeth Warren’s Latest Plan To Meddle In Your Business

Barack Obama

On Tuesday’s episode of “The Andrew Klavan Show,” Klavan talks about the appalling pro-communist antics happening in the NBA. Video and partial transcript below: 
When I was a kid, we used to wonder: If you&#8217;d dug a hole deep enough, would you come out in China? Well, the National Basketball Association (NBA) is apparently going to try that experiment and find out. 
They started digging after Houston Rockets [General Manager] Daryl Morey tweeted his support for the demonstrators in Hong Kong — the brave men and women fighting to keep their liberty as China slowly closes its iron grip on the formerly free British colony. The NBA apologized for Morey’s righteous tweet. They&#8217;ve apologized, disgustingly, in English and even more disgustingly in Chinese. They started ejecting fans who openly supported freedom in the face of communist tyranny. Morey had to apologize to the Chinese tyrants. Players apologized. Golden State [Warriors] coach Steve Kerr, who is Superman when it comes to attacking the American president, suddenly turned into a mealy-mouthed worm, drawing a comparison between the 65 million Chinese murdered by the communists and something, something, something about America.
It was appalling crap, and now LeBron James — King James — has turned himself into Chairman James with this stupid statement:
<blockquote>JAMES: We all talked about this freedom of speech. Yes, we ought to have freedom of speech, but at times there are ramifications for the negative that can happen. When you&#8217;re not thinking about others, you know, and you’re only thinking about yourself. So, I don&#8217;t believe — I don’t want to get into a word or sentence feud with Daryl Morey, but I believe he wasn&#8217;t educated on the situation at-hand and he spoke. And so many people could have been harmed, not only financially but physically, emotionally, spiritually. So just be careful what we tweet, what we say, and what we do even though, yes, we do have freedom of speech there can be a lot of negatives that come with that, too. </blockquote>
Yeah, James tried to explain that away but it just got worse — and the thing is, I don&#8217;t even want to pick on LeBron. His job is to put a ball through a hoop; He&#8217;s very good at putting balls through hoops — he may be the best putter of balls through hoops since balls were hooped. But I do think the situation &#8230; has besmeared not just him and everyone in the sport, not to mention ever-so-woke ESPN, which suddenly went morally dark on the Chinese subject, and Disney, who owns ESPN and isn&#8217;t about to lose access to that big ol’ Chinese audience for its films. 
And by the way, let&#8217;s not forget the NFL, where all those oh-so-brave Kaepernicks disrespect the American flag. They apologized to China back in 2004 for accidentally airing a &#8230; long image of Tiananmen Square during the Super Bowl halftime show. Same exact thing. 
This situation brings a lot of things into focus and into question. It brings into question celebrity culture. Why does putting a ball through a hoop or reciting lines someone else wrote for you elevate LeBron James — his opinion or Robert De Niro&#8217;s opinion — to relevance? That is corrupting. That attitude is corrupting. It brings into question our reliance on capitalism and free trade for moral guidance. Without the brave and moral hearts of human beings, these systems will operate only on the basis of profit, and that&#8217;s corrupting. 
It brings into question the drive toward globalism. It sounds pretty to say we should all act as one world, but if we don&#8217;t act under truly moral rules as opposed to Chinese rules, then economic and military might will decide what&#8217;s right, and that&#8217;s about as corrupting as you can get. Freedom is the first moral good of politics, because without freedom, every other good is just oppression with a smiley face. If you can&#8217;t choose your own path, and speak your own mind, and spend your own money as you see fit, you&#8217;re nothing. You&#8217;re no one. No matter how much free stuff or law-and-order the state gives you in return for your soul, and no matter how much good the government tells you it is doing with your money.
I support capitalism because it&#8217;s the most free system. I support free trade because it supports capitalism. And it&#8217;s wonderful that capitalism, when it&#8217;s done honestly, raises everyone to a higher economic level. But if you put the economics before the freedom, you become corrupt and that&#8217;s what&#8217;s happened to the NBA and the NFL and Disney and a lot of other people who sold their values for the almighty yuan. No system can do the moral thing for you. Shareholders are not an excuse; cultural sensitivity is not an excuse. No one can demand that you be willing to die for freedom — not everyone&#8217;s a hero. But we can hold you in contempt when you won&#8217;t even speak up for freedom when there are people in the streets of Hong Kong risking everything.
<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-andrew-klavan-show/id1045171376?mt=2">Listen to full episodes of “The Andrew Klavan Show” on iTunes. </a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-andrew-klavan-show">Watch “The Andrew Klavan Show” on-demand!</a>

LeBron James in China

KLAVAN: Economics Should Never Come Before Freedom

China

Communism

Economy

LeBron James

On Tuesday’s episode of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” Shapiro talks about how Senator Bernie Sanders’ proposed wealth tax goes farther to the Left than even Senator Elizabeth Warren. Video and partial transcript below: 
Bernie is starting to open up his guns — as I suggested he would have to — on Elizabeth Warren. Earlier today, he proposed a super wealth tax, not just a wealth tax, a super wealth tax, in which he would reduce the ability of billionaires to be billionaires. 
He literally tweeted out, [Sanders impression] Billionaires should not exist! Perhaps we should put them on trains to very cold places, you know like Montana or something, and we will build — we won&#8217;t call them gulags, but they will be kind of like gulags, and we&#8217;ll put them there and then they won&#8217;t be billionaires anymore, and we will liquidate the Kulaks and we will unite the workers of the world. 
Bernie Sanders was really going for it. He tweeted out: &#8220;There is no justice when three billionaires are able to own more wealth than the bottom half of the entire country.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
There is no justice when three billionaires are able to own more wealth than the bottom half of the entire country.
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) <a href="https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1176492974877945856?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 24, 2019</a></blockquote>
Well no, there might be justice depending on whether they also employ hundreds of thousands of Americans, made millions of lives better with their products, and engaged in voluntary exchange. So in his new plan, Bernie Sanders is going to go for the super duper wealth tax, and you knew this was coming, right? Elizabeth Warren proposed her 2% wealth tax, which is unconstitutional and would not raise anywhere near the kind of money she&#8217;s talking about. Because you know what wealthy people are very good at? Tax avoidance. Very, very good at it.
In fact, it&#8217;s one of the reasons why you see Democrats say stuff [like], &#8220;Well you remember back in the 1960s when the top tax bracket was 91%?&#8221; Right, and the effective tax rate on rich people was pretty much the same because rich people started taking their money and putting it in places that were not taxable. The tax revenue of the federal government versus the GDP of the United States has basically remained stable since the reduction of war spending after World War II. So that has not really changed. 
But Bernie Sanders is proposing a new wealth tax, a 1% tax on net worth over $32 million every year, 2% from from $50-250 million, 3% from $250-500 million, 4% from $500 million to $1 billion, and 8% on wealth over $10 billion. He says this will raise $4.35 trillion per decade, and then he says this would be used to fund Bernie’s affordable housing plan, universal childcare, and would help fund Medicare For All. That’s sort of a problem considering that Medicare For All is supposed to cost something like $34 trillion, so if he raises $4.35 trillion over the next decade, where is the other $30 trillion is going to come from? But this is Bernie Sanders upping the ante. 
Also, Bernie Sanders is more of a true believer than Elizabeth Warren, and you&#8217;re gonna see him make that case. So just in the last 24 hours, Bernie Sanders is drawing the contrast between Elizabeth Warren and her supposed warm embrace of capitalism and his own love for socialism. Here&#8217;s Bernie saying that people are brainwashed to believe in capitalism, someone says this to him and, of course, he fully agrees. 
[Sanders impression] Even though I have a lake house, and I love pudding, many types of pudding. Pudding is delicious.
<blockquote>AUDIENCE MEMBER: I think that the kind of brainwashing, or the idea at least that I grew up with, is that our definition of success, is like the American dream, and in capitalism, you&#8217;re rewarded for getting everything and just keeping it to yourself and not worrying about everybody else, and that&#8217;s sort of like a psychology that we&#8217;ve all been taught. 
SANDERS: I think Lizzie is exactly right, that a profound — it’s a profound point. </blockquote>
Oh it&#8217;s super profound to believe that capitalism is good. People have been brainwashed to believe that capitalism is good by, you know, the immense prosperity that capitalism has created … I don&#8217;t know how he claims that he is in favor of quote unquote “Democratic Socialism,” Norway, Finland, Sweden-style when he is ripping on capitalism, which provides the entire growth basis for the Nordic countries — as every politician in Norway, Sweden, and Finland will tell you openly. But Bernie is trying to draw a contrast with Elizabeth Warren. 
<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ben-shapiro-show/id1047335260">Listen to full episodes of “The Ben Shapiro Show” on iTunes. </a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-ben-shapiro-show">Watch “The Ben Shapiro Show” on-demand!</a>

Alex Wong/Staff via Getty Images

SHAPIRO: Bernie&#8217;s Plan To Crumble The Billionaire Class

Ben Shapiro

Bernie Sanders

Democratic Socialism

On this week&#8217;s episode of &#8220;The Sunday Special,&#8221; Yaron Brook, the chairman of the board of the Ayn Rand Insitute, explains the misconceptions around altruism and the moral case for capitalism. Video and partial transcript below: 
SHAPIRO: Let&#8217;s talk about the free-market philosophy because when people think of Ayn Rand, particularly in American politics, they tend to think specifically in the economic context. They think, ok greed is good, Gordon Gekko, selfishness is a virtue and they think that that is a villainous conceit — that basically the only way that we can live in a society together is not to be selfish. And particularly they hold this is true in the realm of economics. You make the counter-case. You say selfishness is really the only value in economics that&#8217;s going to forward yourself, and also for the society at large. What&#8217;s the case for selfishness?
BROOK: Well the case of selfishness is that you only have one life and you have a fundamental choice that you have — to live or not to live right. And that every choice should be made around living. That this fundamental alternative shapes your values or your values should be geared towards your survival and survival as a human being, which means survival as a full human with your rational capacity, your spiritual capacity, your capacity to live a complete and full life.
So the argument for self-interest, in the broader sense, is the argument that basically says, you know, it’s your life. It&#8217;s nobody else&#8217;s life. It’s your life. Live it for your own sake — live it to achieve your own personal happiness. And I believe one of the challenges with capitalism is that too many people over — you know really since Adam Smith including Adam Smith — have tried to justify capitalism not from an egoistic perspective, not from a selfish perspective, not from the perspective of individuals pursuing their own happiness — individual pursuing their own values their own rational values — but from the perspective of what it does for society.
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So Adam Smith says, the baker doesn&#8217;t bake the bread for you, he bakes the bread for himself. He&#8217;s being selfish. But we don&#8217;t like selfishness, Adam Smith says. This, we know, it&#8217;s not a virtue, it&#8217;s really deep down a vice. But when you add up all the vices it turns into a virtue. Society is better off if everybody pursues this.
And I&#8217;m like, no, nobody believes that if you add up vices it turns into a virtue. I&#8217;m saying, the baker taking care of himself and his family and feeding them and making a profit for himself: that&#8217;s virtue. Right. And that&#8217;s the moral justification for capitalism. You can&#8217;t justify capitalism from the perspective of, no Gordon Gekko is really greedy but it turns out that if they do that, the world&#8217;s a better place so we&#8217;ll let them do it. Nobody believes you, and nobody is going to allow that to happen. The regulatory state is built around the idea that those greedy selfish businessmen are going to cheat. They&#8217;re going to steal. They&#8217;re all crooks because that&#8217;s what we associate with self-interest. And therefore we have to regulate them and control them.
SHAPIRO: Now this is where I got in trouble with some of the Objectivists — when I was on Dave Rubin&#8217;s show. You&#8217;re talking about capitalism. And one of the things I suggested, as I said, that it effectively has the same consequence as forced altruism. If that actually works you can&#8217;t force altruism from other people because then it loses the actual character of altruism. But more than that, what I was trying to say is that free exchange is — I don&#8217;t get what I want from you, unless I give you something that you want. So the effect is that you get what you want from me. But that&#8217;s only because I&#8217;m also getting what I want from you. So the effect is the same, I think the linguistic kind of approach is different.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/series/sunday-special">Watch &#8220;The Ben Shapiro Show: Sunday Special&#8221; on-demand!</a>

Yaron Brook

Yaron Brook To Ben Shapiro: Here&#8217;s The &#8216;Moral Justification&#8217; For Capitalism

Conservatism

Over the weekend, former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, who positions himself as somewhat of a &#8220;centrist&#8221; within the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/43796/hammer-bernie-sanders-entire-worldview-grotesquely-josh-hammer">increasingly</a> <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/44424/hammer-stark-choice-facing-jewish-democrats-josh-hammer">far-left</a> Democratic Party, spoke at the California Democratic Party convention. In the speech, Hickenlooper, who <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/446660-hickenlooper-calls-medicare-for-all-green-new-deal-massive-government">opposes such massive government intervention programs</a> as &#8220;Medicare for All&#8221; and the &#8220;Green New Deal,&#8221; decided to take a very, very brave stance &#8212; at least as far as 2020 Democratic nomination candidates are concerned. Hickenlooper went so far as to &#8230; wait for it &#8230; come out in opposition to socialism.
Gasp!
And yet, amazingly, the California Democratic Party convention attendees had the audacity to boo Hickenlooper for his very, very brave stance against the most <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/43796/hammer-bernie-sanders-entire-worldview-grotesquely-josh-hammer">immoral</a> and destructive economic worldview ever known to man.
Per <a href="https://www.theblaze.com/news/john-hickenlooper-booed-socialism">TheBlaze</a>:
<blockquote>
While speaking at the California Democratic Party convention, Hickenlooper told the San Francisco crowd that if Democrats want to defeat President Donald Trump in 2020, they will need traditional Democratic values in their corner &#8212; not socialism.
&#8220;If we want to beat Donald Trump and achieve big progressive goals, socialism is not the answer,&#8221; Hickenlooper said.
The denunciation was met with immediate blowback, including a sea of boos lasting more than 30 seconds.
</blockquote>
After the speech, Hickenlooper elaborated to <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/446500-hickenlooper-booed-in-san-francisco-for-denouncing-socialism">The Hill</a>:
<blockquote>
&#8220;If we don&#8217;t draw a clear distinction between Democrats and our candidates and socialism, the Republicans will paint us into a corner that we can&#8217;t get out of. Massive government expansions may not be strictly speaking socialism, but trust me Republicans will make it seem like socialism. In places like Ohio and Michigan and North Carolina and Wisconsin, places we have to win to beat Trump, we&#8217;ll be starting out ten yards behind.&#8221;
</blockquote>
Hickenlooper further elaborated on his opposition to massive governmental intervention in the economy in an <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2019/06/03/daily-202-socialism-is-not-the-answer-john-hickenlooper-discusses-his-sister-souljah-moment-after-boos-in-s-f/5cf41a821ad2e52231e8e927/?utm_term=.6ffd8dbca00e">interview</a> yesterday with The Washington Post:
<blockquote>
&#8220;[&#8216;Medicare for All&#8217; and the &#8216;Green New Deal&#8217;] are the kinds of things that Republicans will try to turn into &#8216;socialism.&#8217; They&#8217;re going to call it &#8216;socialism,&#8217; and they&#8217;re going to say this is taking away the freedom and independence of the individual,&#8221; he added. &#8220;They&#8217;re going to try and twist it in every way they can because that&#8217;s about the only card they&#8217;re left holding as long as they&#8217;re still supporting Trump.&#8221;
</blockquote>
Alas, Democratic Party activists in the year 2019 apparently consider such talk to be anathema. What a time to be alive!
Hickenlooper <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/democratic_nomination_polls/">barely registers in current 2020 Democratic presidential nomination polling</a> and ranks extraordinarily low at election prediction market website <a href="https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/3633/Who-will-win-the-2020-Democratic-presidential-nomination">PredictIt.org</a>.
As the case may be, the California Democratic Party convention is probably reflective of the Party&#8217;s broader electorate. A <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/240725/democrats-positive-socialism-capitalism.aspx">Gallup poll in August 2018</a> amazingly showed that there are more Democrats who support socialism than there are Democrats who support capitalism:
<blockquote>
For the first time in Gallup&#8217;s measurement over the past decade, Democrats have a more positive image of socialism than they do of capitalism. Attitudes toward socialism among Democrats have not changed materially since 2010, with 57% today having a positive view. The major change among Democrats has been a less upbeat attitude toward capitalism, dropping to 47% positive this year &#8212; lower than in any of the three previous measures.
</blockquote>

Democratic Presidential Candidate Booed By San Francisco Crowd For Criticizing Socialism

California

John Hickenlooper

San Francisco

Some Americans have much higher income and wealth than others. Former President Barack Obama explained, &#8220;I do think at a certain point you&#8217;ve made enough money.&#8221; An adviser to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who has a Twitter account called &#8220;Every Billionaire Is A Policy Failure&#8221; tweeted, &#8220;My goal for this year is to get a moderator to ask &#8216;Is it morally appropriate for anyone to be a billionaire?'&#8221; Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Elizabeth Warren, in calling for a wealth tax, complained, &#8220;The rich and powerful are taking so much for themselves and leaving so little for everyone else.&#8221;
These people would have an argument if there were piles of money on the ground called income, with billionaires and millionaires surreptitiously getting to those piles first and taking their unfair shares. In that case, corrective public policy would require a redistribution of the income, wherein the ill-gotten gains of the few would be taken and returned to their rightful owners. The same could be said if there were a dealer of dollars who &#8212; because of his being a racist, sexist, multinationalist and maybe a Republican &#8212; didn&#8217;t deal the dollars fairly. If he dealt millions to some and mere crumbs to others, decent public policy would demand a re-dealing of the dollars, or what some call income redistribution.
You say, &#8220;Williams, that&#8217;s lunacy.&#8221; You&#8217;re right. In a free society, people earn income by serving their fellow man. Here&#8217;s an example: I mow your lawn, and you pay me $40. Then I go to my grocer and demand two six-packs of beer and 3 pounds of steak. In effect, the grocer says, &#8220;Williams, you are asking your fellow man to serve you by giving you beer and steak. What did you do to serve your fellow man?&#8221; My response is, &#8220;I mowed his lawn.&#8221; The grocer says, &#8220;Prove it.&#8221; That&#8217;s when I produce the $40. We can think of the, say, two $20 bills as certificates of performance &#8212; proof that I served my fellow man.
A system that requires that one serve his fellow man to have a claim on what he produces is far more moral than a system without such a requirement. For example, Congress can tell me, &#8220;Williams, you don&#8217;t have to get out in that hot sun to mow a lawn to have a claim on what your fellow man produces. Just vote for me, and through the tax code, I will take some of what your fellow man produces and give it to you.&#8221;
Let&#8217;s look at a few multibillionaires to see whether they have served their fellow man well. Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, with a net worth over $90 billion, is the second-richest person in the world. He didn&#8217;t acquire that wealth through violence. Millions of people around the world voluntarily plunked down money to buy Microsoft products. That explains the great wealth of people such as Gates. They discovered what their fellow man wanted and didn&#8217;t have, and they found out ways to effectively produce it. Their fellow man voluntarily gave them dollars. If Gates and others had followed President Obama&#8217;s advice that &#8220;at a certain point&#8221; they&#8217;d &#8220;made enough money&#8221; and shut down their companies when they had earned their first billion or two, mankind wouldn&#8217;t have most of the technological development we enjoy today.
Take a look at the website <a href="http://tinyurl.com/yd6mme37">Billionaire Mailing List&#8217;s</a> list of current billionaires. On it, you will find people who have made great contributions to society. Way down on the list is Gordon Earle Moore &#8212; co-founder of Intel. He has a net worth of $6 billion. In 1968, Moore developed and marketed the integrated circuit, or microchip, which is responsible for thousands of today&#8217;s innovations, such as MRIs, advances in satellite technology and your desktop computer. Though Moore has benefited immensely from his development and marketing of the microchip, his benefit pales in comparison with how our nation and the world have benefited in terms of lives improved and saved by the host of technological innovations made possible by the microchip.
The only people who benefit from class warfare are politicians and the elite; they get our money and control our lives. Plus, we just might ask ourselves: Where is a society headed that holds its most productive members up to ridicule and scorn and makes mascots out of its least productive and most parasitic members?
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

WILLIAMS: Is Income Inequality Fair?

Taxes

The progressive base has become so radical in their proposals that even Elizabeth Warren is now defending capitalism, albeit with a few qualifiers, reports <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/elizabeth-warren-defends-capitalism-as-a-force-for-good-splitting-with-ocasio-cortez">Fox News</a>.
Speaking on MSNBC&#8217;s &#8220;Morning Joe&#8221; on Wednesday, Elizabeth Warren actually said that capitalism is a &#8220;force for good,&#8221; admitting that she supports markets so long as they have rules put in place to protect from theft. She likened this to being a &#8220;cop on the beat.&#8221;
&#8220;I believe in markets, I see the benefits that markets can produce,&#8221; <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/card/warren-capitalism-i-believe-markets-markets-without-rules-are-theft-n982836" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">she said</a> on the program. &#8220;When there&#8217;s a cop on the beat, those markets start to work again.&#8221;
Warren said that this &#8220;cop on the beat&#8221; forces banks to better their profit models, creating a superior product that makes customers happy and does not cheat people. However, she claimed that capitalism has gone wrong at certain points in history.
&#8220;Banks, in that case, are forced to develop their profit models, not on cheating people, but on actually offering a better product,&#8221; the senator from Massachusetts said. &#8220;I think it also, when it doesn&#8217;t work, it&#8217;s been a force for bad, but that&#8217;s been true of every form of government that we can identify. We&#8217;ve gotten it right sometimes, and we&#8217;ve gotten it wrong sometimes. When you let markets work with rules and with people on the beat to enforce those rules, we can produce a lot of wealth in this country.&#8221;
That even Warren has allowed herself to utter some words of affection toward capitalism proves that Democrats are beginning to understand that the radical ideas posed in the Green New Deal will not play well on the 2020 ticket. In fact, when Ocasio-Cortez proposed the Green New Deal, Warren only said she supports the &#8220;idea&#8221; of it.
&#8220;Senator Warren has been a longtime advocate of aggressively addressing climate change and shifting toward renewables, and supports the idea of a Green New Deal to ambitiously tackle our climate crisis, economic inequality, and racial injustice,&#8221; a representative for the senator said at the time.
None of this means, however, Warren will be shifting to the center-left in order to snag the 2020 nomination; she has full-throated endorsed other radical proposals, such as slavery reparations.
&#8220;We must confront the dark history of slavery and government-sanctioned discrimination in this country that has had many consequences including undermining the ability of Black families to build wealth in America for generations,&#8221; Warren <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-warren/senator-elizabeth-warren-backs-reparations-for-black-americans-idUSKCN1QA2WF">said in a statement to Reuters</a> this past February. &#8220;Black families have had a much steeper hill to climb &#8211; and we need systemic, structural changes to address that.&#8221;
As noted by Fox News, Warren&#8217;s recent rhetoric in favor of capitalism may be an attempt to pivot away from recent comments made by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who denounced the economic system as morally bankrupt.
&#8220;The most important thing is the concentration of capital and it means that we seek and prioritize profit and the accumulation of money above all else and we seek it at any human and environmental cost,&#8221; Ocasio-Cortez said at an SXSW conference. &#8220;That is what that means. To me that ideology is not sustainable and cannot be redeemed. What we are reckoning with are the consequences of putting profit above everything else in society.&#8221;

Elizabeth Warren: Capitalism A ‘Force For Good’

During a recent Young America&#8217;s Foundation (YAF) speaking event at George Washington University, Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro took on one self-described &#8220;socialist&#8221; student&#8217;s attempt to explain the positive differences of socialism over capitalism and ended up refuting central premises of the student&#8217;s argument.
&#8220;Let&#8217;s say you own a pencil factory; I&#8217;m a worker in that pencil factory,&#8221; the student begins in the question and answer period of the January 17 event, video clips of which the student organization posted online (below). &#8220;You can have all the machinery, you can buy all the raw materials you want, but without me, and presumably many others like me, to assemble the pencils, all you would have is a pile of wood, yellow paint, graphite, rubber, and aluminum. That wouldn&#8217;t be worth anything. And that is worth less than the pencil when you try to sell it. And yet all of that value added by labor, apart from the wages you give me &#8212; which, if we&#8217;re being honest, there is a major power imbalance in our ability to negotiate that&#8212;&#8221;
&#8220;If all that putting the pencil together requires is basic use of your prefrontal cortex,&#8221; Shapiro interjects, &#8220;then, yes, your labor is alienable at lower rates than if you were a doctor. That&#8217;s not the fault of the person who owns the machinery.&#8221;
&#8220;But if you didn&#8217;t have workers like me at your pencil factory, and you were just one man&#8212;&#8221; the student responds.
&#8220;But I do,&#8221; Shapiro points out. &#8220;I have millions of people who are willing to do that voluntarily for me.&#8221;
The student eventually tries to distill his point more concisely. &#8220;If you were just one person trying to assemble a pencil. You&#8217;re not going to get very far. You need workers,&#8221; he says. &#8220;Capital needs labor infinitely more than labor needs capital. That&#8217;s why you have labor cooperatives, where the workers are the ones&#8212;&#8221;
&#8220;I fundamentally disagree on the distinction between capital and labor,&#8221; says Shapiro, zeroing in on a key premise of the student&#8217;s socialist &#8220;cooperative&#8221; argument. &#8220;Capital is just a term for money. If you&#8217;re talking about money, money does not grow from the ground. Money only has value because it was traded for labor at one point, or the products of labor. So, if I take my money and I buy machinery, I have invested my labor in doing that because I didn&#8217;t get the money from nowhere. Even if I got it from my parents, my parents didn&#8217;t get it from nowhere. The people who built the machines required me to trade something of value to them in order for me to obtain the machines. The people who invented the machines required people to pay them in order to get the patent for that machine so they can build the machine.&#8221;
Shapiro then points out the biggest &#8220;problem&#8221; he sees in the student&#8217;s vision of the &#8220;cooperative&#8221; system thus far: &#8220;The problem that I&#8217;m seeing in what you&#8217;re saying is you&#8217;ve still failed &#8212; if what you&#8217;re talking about is a system of volunteerism &#8212; you still have not named one area in which we disagree, and yet you&#8217;re telling me that you&#8217;re a socialist and I&#8217;m a free-marketer. One of us has got this wildly wrong &#8212; and I&#8217;m pretty sure it&#8217;s not me.&#8221;
The student offers his explanation of the differences between the two economic systems. &#8220;The differentiation I and many others like me draw between socialism and capitalism is that, under capitalism, when you as the owner of the factory, you give me a wage &#8230; all the additional profit &#8212; made from selling the pencils or whatever good you produce &#8212; above what is reinvested into the company ultimately goes to you or the investors who own shares in the means of production. Under socialism, those people [who own shares in the company] are the workers. And the example I give again is cooperative enterprise.&#8221;
But Shapiro rejects that final premise. &#8220;No, those are people who are investing the risk,&#8221; he says of shareholders. &#8220;So if they carry the risk, then they get the benefit. The owner of the factory carries the risk; therefore, he gets the benefit.&#8221;
Shapiro then applies the argument to the student&#8217;s pencil factory example: &#8220;The workers in the company you mentioned, if that company were to go bankrupt, they would carry the risk as well as the benefit. If that company goes bankrupt, and this guy has to pay off all of his debts, the worker may lose his job, but he&#8217;s not the one who&#8217;s going to incur the debt of having gone bankrupt. If you incur risk, then you&#8217;re the one who pays the downside. The worker does not pay the downside. It is the investor who pays the downside, who invested in all the machinery, who sunk millions of dollars into making your labor productive. Because guess what your labor is without that machinery? Gunk. Nothing. You don&#8217;t have the pencils to put together &#8212; you don&#8217;t got the wood, you don&#8217;t got the paint, you don&#8217;t got the rubber, you don&#8217;t got the metal, you&#8217;ve got nothing. You&#8217;re sitting there, standing outside twiddling your thumbs.&#8221;
&#8220;Who do you think put more in?&#8221; Shapiro asks. &#8220;The guy who spent millions of dollars buying all the machinery, leasing the place, making sure there was a management structure, doing the LLC formation, making sure all the tax code was in compliance &#8212; or you because you can stick a piece of graphite into a piece of wood?&#8221;
Watch the exchange below via YAF:
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
THE BEN WE LOVE: &#8220;I fundamentally disagree&#8230;&#8221;<a href="https://twitter.com/benshapiro?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BenShapiro</a> is on in this MUST-SEE new video &#10549;&#65039;<a href="https://twitter.com/realDailyWire?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@realDailyWire</a> <a href="https://t.co/ctYdolwPfB">pic.twitter.com/ctYdolwPfB</a>
&#8212; YAF (@yaf) <a href="https://twitter.com/yaf/status/1089530970267516928?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 27, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="embed tweet"></div>
asdf

WATCH: Ben Shapiro Dismantles Socialist&#8217;s Arguments In Under 4 Minutes

Young America's Foundation

On January 1, 2019, socialist leaders around Latin America congratulated the repressive Communist government of Cuba on its 60th anniversary. They were reportedly briefly joined by the Vatican News Service.
The Vatican News Service, which<a href="https://www.vaticannews.va/en/about-us.html"> describes itself</a> as &#8220;the new information system of the Holy See,&#8221; reportedly offered a tweet (which was quickly removed) with a seeming tribute to honor the Cuban revolution:
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
La página DEL VATICANO publicó un homenaje a los 60 años de la monarquía cubana. Lo borraron a las pocas horas pero nosotros somos más rápidos. 
Juan Pablo II se retuerce en su tumba. <a href="https://t.co/nvS2smzilm">pic.twitter.com/nvS2smzilm</a>
&#8212; Trava y liberula(@anarcomenemismo) <a href="https://twitter.com/anarcomenemismo/status/1080582986146418688?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 2, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
As <a href="https://pjmedia.com/faith/vatican-news-paid-tribute-to-60th-anniversary-of-cuban-revolution-in-deleted-post/">PJ Media reports</a>, the Google Translate English version of the message reads:
<blockquote>
The Cuban Revolution celebrated its 60th anniversary this January 1, 2019. On the island, the historic anniversary was celebrated with a ceremony in Santiago de Cuba, in the cemetery of Santa Ifigenia, where Fidel Castro is buried, who died on November 25, 2016. To the main national forces on January 10, 1959, the dictator Fulgencio Batista fled 26 months of guerrilla war led by brothers Fidel and Raul Castro. From Santiago, Fidel Castro proclaimed the beginning of the revolution the victory of the counterculture.
</blockquote>
PJ Media notes, &#8220;Following the revolution, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Revolution">the new Cuban government</a> declared itself officially atheist and nationalized all property held by religious organizations, including the Catholic Church. Before Castro&#8217;s assault on the Church, more than 90 percent of Cubans were Catholic. Hundreds of them, including a bishop, were permanently expelled from the nation.&#8221;
Latin American socialist leaders tweeted their congratulations to Cuba&#8217;s government; Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro tweeted: &#8220;We commemorate the anniversary of the triumph of the Cuban Revolution led by Commander Fidel Castro. 60 years of sacrifices, struggles and blockade. There is the heroic Cuban people, an example of resistance and dignity to the world. Long Live Cuba!&#8221;
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Conmemoramos el aniversario del triunfo de la Revolución Cubana liderada por el Comandante Fidel Castro. 60 años de sacrificios, luchas y bloqueo; allí está el heroico pueblo cubano, ejemplo de resistencia y dignidad ante el mundo. ¡Viva Cuba! <a href="https://t.co/IENRE0zJIx">https://t.co/IENRE0zJIx</a> <a href="https://t.co/5EXhvkR69q">pic.twitter.com/5EXhvkR69q</a>
&#8212; Nicolás Maduro (@NicolasMaduro) <a href="https://twitter.com/NicolasMaduro/status/1080103741032931330?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 1, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
Bolivia&#8217;s Evo Morales echoed: &#8220;We salute the victory of Bro. Commandant. Fidel Castro and the valiant Cuban people on the proimperialist dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.&#8221;
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Como hoy, 1959, con el triunfo de la Revolución Cubana, nació la luz de esperanza y voluntad invencible por la liberación de los pueblos. Saludamos victoria del Hno. Cmdte. Fidel Castro y el valeroso pueblo cubano sobre la dictadura proimperialista de Fulgencio Batista <a href="https://t.co/Jfb3PlBeU2">pic.twitter.com/Jfb3PlBeU2</a>
&#8212; Evo Morales Ayma (@evoespueblo) <a href="https://twitter.com/evoespueblo/status/1080069256908341248?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 1, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
As Paul Kengor noted in the <a href="http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/fidel-castros-war-on-religion">National Catholic Register</a> when Cuban dictator and founder of the Communist regime Fidel Castro died in 2016:
<blockquote>
From the moment that Castro took hold in January 1959, churches were in trouble. The regime quickly launched a propaganda campaign against the faithful, describing Catholics as &#8220;social scum.&#8221; By the late 1960s, Christmas was banned on the island. Churches were shut down. Priests and their parishioners were silenced, arrested or placed under tight surveillance, with every word of every service or homily monitored by government church-watchers infiltrating the pews. Any criticism, especially of the Marxist regime, was very dangerous. One could not be a member of the Communist Party in Cuba (the only party legally permitted, including for any government jobs) without professing a belief in atheism.
</blockquote>
In February 2018, as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/democracy-post/wp/2018/02/02/pope-francis-is-giving-in-to-the-chinese-communist-party/?utm_term=.ea07fe07de2d">The Washington Post</a> reported, &#8220;the Vatican <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/29/world/asia/china-catholics-vatican.html">asked two underground Chinese bishops</a> to step down in favor of their Beijing-approved counterparts, one of whom the church in Rome had already excommunicated. Then yesterday, the Vatican indicated it would recognize the legitimacy of <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/pope-francis-to-bow-to-china-with-concession-on-bishops-1517507751">seven Communist Party-approved bishops</a>.&#8221;
In 2016, after a priest in northern France was murdered by followers of Islamic State, Pope Francis seemingly <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/pope-francis-urges-poles-to-embrace-migrants-on-final-day-of-visit-1469963264">slammed capitalism</a>, insisting that the inspiration for terrorism was a world economy that worshiped the &#8220;god of money &#8230; Terrorism grows when there is no other option, and as long as the world economy has at its center the god of money and not the person. This is fundamental terrorism, against all humanity.&#8221;
Francis&#8217; <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2016/03/11/against-the-catholic-grain-pope-francis-trumpets-socialism-over-capitalism/#7b7d787e42d3">views on capitalism</a> were noted in Forbes in 2016:
<blockquote>
Pope Francis has made his social and economic tendencies clear since the early days of his pontificate. In his 2013 apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis criticizes the notion that reducing the disproportionately-high income tax burden on high-income earners can stimulate investment and economic growth as a &#8220;crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system.&#8221; For the Holy Father, inequality is the &#8220;root of social ills,&#8221; though he fails to explain precisely why a society of unequal wealth but a relatively high standard of living would somehow be less reflective of Gospel values than a society that shares equally in poverty.
</blockquote>

Vatican News Website Reportedly Offered Repressive Cuban Government Congratulations On Its 60th Anniversary

Cuba

The Vatican

On Wednesday evening, Tucker Carlson delivered a 15-minute monologue on his Fox News program regarding the future of economics and politics in the United States. In that monologue, Carlson accurately bemoaned the current state of the American soul &#8211; rising suicide rates and overdose rates, declining levels of family generation, declining ties that bind us together. He then attributed that hole in the soul to bad policy, both political and economic.
There&#8217;s no question that America has pursued bad policy for years &#8211; and that some of that policy has undermined family dynamics. The welfare state, to take an obvious example, has skewed incentive structures for millions of Americans, making it easier for them to break apart their families and raise children in solitude rather than in the comfort and stability of a two-parent married household. When government attempts to solve the ills of individuals, it all too often destroys the incentives that support responsible behavior.
But Carlson seems to attribute America&#8217;s troubles not to government interventionism, but to government non-interventionism. Typically, conservatism has argued that if you live in a free society in which you have not been targeted unfairly, your failures are your own. For Carlson, however, the very freedom of our society leads to the unhappiness so many of us feel. Carlson seems to suggest that our system itself is to blame for individual shortcomings, and that collective restructuring of free institutions will alleviate and cure those shortcomings. This is simply not reflective of conservatism, or of founding ideology.
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Carlson&#8217;s monologue was ostensibly about the failure of Republican elites to understand the populist revolt underway across the globe. Carlson explains:
<blockquote>
 What kind of country will be it be then? How do we want our grandchildren to live? These are the only questions that matter. The answer used to be obvious. The overriding goal for America is more prosperity, meaning cheaper consumer goods. But is that still true? Does anyone still believe that cheaper iPhones, or more Amazon deliveries of plastic garbage from China are going to make us happy? They haven&#8217;t so far. A lot of Americans are drowning in stuff. And yet drug addiction and suicide are depopulating large parts of the country. Anyone who thinks the health of a nation can be summed up in GDP is an idiot.
</blockquote>
This, of course, is eminently true. And our answer used to be that meaning wasn&#8217;t supposed to be found in stuff at all &#8211; but that didn&#8217;t obviate the desire for or usefulness of that stuff. Supply and demand economics has powered most of the world&#8217;s human beings out of extreme poverty, and led to the richest society in human history. It has allowed us to live longer, in bigger houses, in more comfort. It has meant fewer dead children and more living parents. If we&#8217;ve blown that advantage, that&#8217;s our own fault. Traditional conservatives recognized that the role of economics is to provide prosperity &#8211; to raise the GDP. The role of a social fabric and a value system is to provide meaning.
Carlson, though, conflates the two. Economics should provide meaning. How? Through jobs. Here&#8217;s how Carlson works this magic:
<blockquote>
The goal for America is both simpler and more elusive than mere prosperity. It&#8217;s happiness. There are a lot of ingredients in being happy: Dignity. Purpose. Self-control. Independence. Above all, deep relationships with other people. Those are the things that you want for your children. They&#8217;re what our leaders should want for us, and would want if they cared.
</blockquote>
Here&#8217;s where Carlson goes wildly wrong. The goal for America wasn&#8217;t happiness. It was the pursuit of happiness &#8212; the framework of freedom that allows us to pursue happiness. I do want dignity and purpose and self-control and independence for my children &#8211; so, presumably, do you. But I don&#8217;t find dignity, purpose, self-control and independence for my children in policy generated by political leadership. I teach my children that they have been given innate dignity by God, that their purpose lies in acting in accordance with virtue, that self-control is both a quality of character and productive mode of entrepreneurship, and that independence must be cultivated so that we can act with dignity and purpose in the world. At no point would I suggest that my child&#8217;s sense of purpose or dignity ought to come from government intervention, or that lack of purpose or dignity can be attributed to free trade with Mexico.
But that&#8217;s where Carlson goes &#8211; and naturally, finds limited government wanting. After all, if politics is the universal solution to our problems, and it doesn&#8217;t solve our problems, we&#8217;re doing it wrong. What&#8217;s more, our leaders are maliciously harming us by calling for free economies that generate cheaper, better goods and more stuff:
<blockquote>
But our leaders don&#8217;t care. We are ruled by mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to the people they rule&#8230;One of the biggest lies our leaders tell us that you can separate economics from everything else that matters. Economics is a topic for public debate. Family and faith and culture, meanwhile, those are personal matters. Both parties believe this.
</blockquote>
No, both parties don&#8217;t believe this. The Democratic Party believes that the economy should be structured from the top down so as to maximize particular social outcomes. The Republican Party used to believe, anyway, that economic choices ought to be just as private as family, faith and culture &#8211; that we ought to be free to make our own choices &#8212; and that family, faith and culture must be cherished by the public at large. 
But according to Carlson, both parties have embraced the idea of free trade and limited regulation as a solution to problems of the soul &#8211; and thus both parties have come up empty. The Democratic Party, Carlson says, is &#8220;functionally libertarian&#8221; &#8211; a perfectly incredible contention given the fact that the current new wave in the Democratic Party has called for universal healthcare, universal free college tuition, universal basic income, forced paid maternity leave, massive environmental regulation, and a tax structure that would remove a heavy majority of income from Americans of all income quintiles.
The Republican Party, Carlson says, is dominated by social conservatives who complain that the American family is collapsing, but neglect to blame the market for family breakdown. Carlson says:
<blockquote>
The idea that families are being crushed by market forces seems never to occur to them. They refuse to consider it. Questioning markets feels like apostasy Both sides miss the obvious point: Culture and economics are inseparably intertwined. Certain economic systems allow families to thrive.
</blockquote>
This is true. The economic systems that allow families to thrive are the same economic systems that allow all human beings to thrive: free markets. Family formation hasn&#8217;t been improved in Europe thanks to government interventionism. Socialism in the Soviet Union didn&#8217;t help family creation and stability. The decline of families in America has nothing to do with capitalism. Families have been crushed by individual decisions by individual human beings, by cultural forces militating against religious virtue and in favor of radical redefinition of human relationships, and by governmental intervention that has skewed incentives. The social safety has grown to epic proportions as the family has collapsed. Jobs have not disappeared at the rate that families have come apart &#8211; in fact, far from it. Cultural decay and government do-goodism are a dangerous combination.
But Carlson generally neglects cultural decay altogether as a factor in family decline. Instead, he blames both the welfare state and trade policy &#8211; as though tariffs aren&#8217;t merely an indirect form of wealth redistribution. Carlson argues that the pathologies of &#8220;inner city Baltimore in the 1980s&#8221; looks a lot like the pathologies of rural America today &#8211; a comparison that is undeniably true. But he then blames importation of foreign labor for that problem, and argues that wage stagnation is the chief driver of this problem:
<blockquote>
Here&#8217;s a big part of the answer: male wages declined. Manufacturing, a male-dominated industry, all but disappeared over the course of a generation. All that remained in many places were the schools and the hospitals, both traditional employers of women. In many places, women suddenly made more than men.
</blockquote>
There are several problems with these claims. First, manufacturing has not disappeared &#8211; it&#8217;s remained stable, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2014/05/11/if-us-manufacturing-hasnt-declined-then-we-dont-have-to-explain-the-decline-of-us-manufacturing/#2ace6bcf3d87">while the rest of our economy has grown</a>. Second, wages have not stagnated in the United States in material terms &#8211; far from it. While wages have declined on an inflation-adjusted basis, that&#8217;s not true in terms of what you can buy for the same wage &#8211; in other words, what we actually care about when we get a paycheck. Furthermore, <a href="https://www.cato.org/projects/humanprogress/cost-of-living">non-wage benefits have expanded dramatically</a> since 1979 &#8211; they now amount to between thirty and forty percent of earnings. Wage growth has largely paralleled productivity growth in the United States for decades. The middle class in the United States hasn&#8217;t disappeared &#8211; it&#8217;s become mostly upper middle class (30 percent of Americans were upper middle class in 2014 as opposed to 12 percent in 1979).
Carlson goes on to complain that women now earn more than men &#8211; and says that this is the reason for family breakdown. He states:
<blockquote>
In many places, women suddenly made more than men. Now, before you applaud this as a victory for feminism, consider the effects. Study after study has shown that when men make less than women, women generally don&#8217;t want to marry them. Maybe they should want to marry them, but they don&#8217;t. Over big populations, this causes a drop in marriage, a spike in out-of-wedlock births, and all the familiar disasters that inevitably follow &#8212; more drug and alcohol abuse, higher incarceration rates, fewer families formed in the next generation. This isn&#8217;t speculation. This is not propaganda from the evangelicals. It&#8217;s social science. We know it&#8217;s true. Rich people know it best of all. That&#8217;s why they get married before they have kids. That model works. But increasingly, marriage is a luxury only the affluent in America can afford.
</blockquote>
It may be true that artificially boosting male wages makes them more attractive to women. Presumably, artificially boosting women&#8217;s looks would make them more attractive to men, too. But it&#8217;s a stretch to suggest that percentage of births to single mothers has exponentially increased from near zero in 1950 among whites to 36 percent as of 2014 thanks to rising female wages; female and male incomes are <a href="http://www.aei.org/publication/the-gender-wage-gap-myth/">close to parity</a> when adjusted for hours worked, career choice, and time in the workforce. It&#8217;s difficult to imagine large masses of women sleeping with men they&#8217;d be interested in marrying, getting pregnant, then taking a look at his paycheck and deciding to bear the child and toss the man out of disdain for his earning potential. Single motherhood is a result of irresponsible decisionmaking, or decisionmaking without consequences, not well-considered economic arguments.
Furthermore, suggesting that rich people get married because they are rich is mistaking correlation for causation. Rich people aren&#8217;t getting married before they have kids because they&#8217;re rich and thus can afford a fancy wedding. They&#8217;re rich because either they or their parents made the virtuous and responsible choice not to have kids before they get married. The spate of single motherhood isn&#8217;t happening due to outside pressure &#8212; single moms aren&#8217;t being forced to sleep with men to whom they aren&#8217;t married and then bear children, nor are men being forced to knock up and abandon the mothers of their children. Rich people aren&#8217;t privileged in individual choice about when to get married and have kids. Everyone is capable of such decisions.
Yet according to Carlson, it&#8217;s the fault of the rich that poorer people aren&#8217;t getting married:
<blockquote>
And yet, and here&#8217;s the bewildering and infuriating part, those very same affluent married people, the ones making virtually all the decisions in our society, are doing pretty much nothing to help the people below them get and stay married. Rich people are happy to fight malaria in Congo. But working to raise men&#8217;s wages in Dayton or Detroit? That&#8217;s crazy.
</blockquote>
Rich people are giving enormous amounts of charity within the United States &#8211; as David French points out, Americans gave over $410 billion in charity in 2017, with just 6 percent going to international charities. And here&#8217;s the thing: charity isn&#8217;t going to cause people to get married. Neither will welfare. Neither will trade policy. How many couples do you know who are just waiting to get married until President Trump slaps a steel tariff on China and the local factory reopens? Marriage has declined because values have declined.
And Carlson, briefly, seems to agree with this point, at least:
<blockquote>
For our ruling class, more investment banking is always the answer. They teach us it&#8217;s more virtuous to devote your life to some soulless corporation than it is to raise your own kids. Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook wrote an entire book about this. Sandberg explained that our first duty is to shareholders, above our own children. No surprise there. Sandberg herself is one of America&#8217;s biggest shareholders. Propaganda like this has made her rich.
</blockquote>
This is correct. But the problem isn&#8217;t that we need to crack down on investment banking or cut better trade deals or redistribute income from investment banking to riveting. It&#8217;s that we need to change our values.
But Carlson doesn&#8217;t stay there. He goes right back to railing against the free market, as though it&#8217;s responsible for family breakdown. He blasts payday lenders, without suggesting exactly how people are supposed to get the rent money on short notice without a government interventionism that breeds dependency &#8211; and a dependency that breeds irresponsibility and yes, more single motherhood. Instead, Carlson rants:
<blockquote>
We&#8217;re OK with that? We shouldn&#8217;t be. Libertarians tell us that&#8217;s how markets work &#8212; consenting adults making voluntary decisions about how to live their lives. OK. But it&#8217;s also disgusting. If you care about America, you ought to oppose the exploitation of Americans, whether it&#8217;s happening in the inner city or on Wall Street.
</blockquote>
Calling consensual activity exploitation is paternalism, no matter how you slice it. And while Carlson decries drug legalization thanks to the deleterious effects of drug use, he doesn&#8217;t propose an actual solution. Carlson attributes the quest for marijuana legalization to greed and apathy, but the war on drugs has been a massive failure, jailing thousands of people for voluntary exchanges while failing to lower rates of drug use, and spending trillions to do it.
Now, not all of Carlson&#8217;s policy prescriptions are wrong. His point about taxing investment income at the same rates as earnings isn&#8217;t wrong, for example. But his general conclusion about what ails America is wrong. Here&#8217;s that conclusion:
<blockquote>
Republican leaders will have to acknowledge that market capitalism is not a religion. Market capitalism is a tool, like a staple gun or a toaster. You&#8217;d have to be a fool to worship it. Our system was created by human beings for the benefit of human beings. We do not exist to serve markets. Just the opposite. Any economic system that weakens and destroys families is not worth having. A system like that is the enemy of a healthy society. 
</blockquote>
This is a complete misread of market capitalism. It is not a tool. It is not a &#8220;creation&#8221; of a centralized decisionmaking process. It is a reality of free and voluntary interactions among human beings. It is an outgrowth of the unique value of each individual, and of each individual&#8217;s right to use his labor as he sees fit, and to alienate that labor in exchange for the labor of someone else. And markets don&#8217;t exist to &#8220;serve us.&#8221; They exist to allow us to act in liberty.
Market capitalism isn&#8217;t one choice among many; it&#8217;s not a value neutral proposition. Pretending it is is a road to centralization of power. If you think economics is a tool to wield like a stapler, you&#8217;re closer to Bernie Sanders than to anything remotely resembling founding philosophy.
And market capitalism has not destroyed our social fabric. Lack of values did that. If market capitalism exacerbated that problem through materialism and consumerism, that&#8217;s because we chose to make it so. The fault lies not in the invisible hand, but in us. The sooner we realize that, the sooner we&#8217;ll start taking the steps to rebuild the institutions that undergirded our free and prosperous society in the first place.
For further reference, here&#8217;s the Sunday Special I did with Tucker on many of these topics:
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Tucker Carlson Claims Market Capitalism Has Undermined American Society. He&#8217;s Wrong.

Tucker Carlson

One of democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders&#8217; favorite examples of the kind of beneficent high-taxing, welfare-heavy countries the U.S. should aspire to be is letting down leftists again. Not only is it not really the socialist utopia Bernie described, it&#8217;s not treating foreigners in a very &#8220;open borders&#8221; kind of way &#8212; especially not criminal foreigners.
&#8220;The Danish parliament has approved funding for a plan to hold foreign criminals on a tiny island, despite criticism from the UN and local opposition,&#8221; <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/20/denmark-passes-plan-to-send-foreign-criminals-to-tiny-island">The Guardian</a> reports.
The initiative, passed Thursday, will send about 100 foreign migrants who have fulfilled their jail sentences but cannot be deported because of fears of persecution upon returning to their homelands, to the seven-acre island of Lindholm, which is used as &#8220;a laboratory and crematorium by scientists researching swine flu, rabies and other contagious diseases.&#8221; The island&#8217;s experimental uses are so notorious that a ferry to the island is nicknamed &#8220;Virus.&#8221;
&#8220;A centre for people convicted of crimes ranging from murder and rape to less serious offences is to be established in 2021 and will cost 759m krone (£92m),&#8221; The Guardian reports. Funding for the &#8220;laboratory and crematorium&#8221; island relocation plan was included in the federal government&#8217;s 2019 budget approved Thursday.
The plan was passed despite opposition from the U.N. and some local politicians in part because of strong support from residents near the Jutland detention center, who say the presence of foreign criminals makes them feel unsafe. Meanwhile, residents of the area where the ferry to Lindholm departs fear that the new plan will hurt tourism, on which the area&#8217;s economy largely depends.
The plan allows residents of the island to leave during the day, but requires them to report where they are going to officials and return in the evening.
As The Guardian notes, the controversial criminal foreigner solution is part of Denmark&#8217;s &#8220;increasingly tough stance on immigration,&#8221; which follows a pattern seen in increasingly more European countries amid continued waves of migrants from the Middle East and North Africa, most of whom are Muslim.
While Sanders has often cited Denmark and its extensive welfare program as a model for the U.S., as the <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/michel-kellygagnon/denmark-not-socialist_b_9011652.html">Huffington Post</a> explained in 2016 and 2017, the country isn&#8217;t really as socialist or successful as Sanders would have his supporters believe.
&#8220;Denmark still qualifies as a market economy today despite its high taxes and large welfare state for a number of important reasons,&#8221; writes HuffPost&#8217;s Michel Kelly-Gagnon. &#8220;As Brøns-Petersen points out, property rights are well-protected, the currency is sound, international trade is relatively free, and the regulation of business, labour, and credit is light. There are few restrictions on hiring and firing, there&#8217;s no legislated minimum wage, and taxpayers are not called upon to bail out their banks.&#8221;
It&#8217;s no surprise then that Denmark actually scores pretty highly on various economic freedom indexes. Its supposedly robust welfare state, part of the reason so many migrants have flooded in in recent years, is &#8220;more of a rickety derelict than a solid structure,&#8221; Kelly-Gagnon notes. &#8220;Successive governments have had to repeatedly reform the system, scaling back its benefits.&#8221;

Leftist Darling Denmark To Send Foreign Criminals To Little Island Used For Medical Research

Denmark

Prison

Pope Francis allegedly told left-wing propagandist Michael Moore that capitalism is &#8220;sin&#8221; during their private meeting last month.
Michael Moore is an avowed socialist who has spent his entire career promoting pro-abortion politicians. Both socialism and abortion are condemned as intrinsic evils in the Catholic Church that deprive humans of their dignity. While the Church has criticized usury and capitalism&#8217;s occasioned abuse of workers in the mindless pursuit of profit, it has never expressly condemned the economic system with the same forceful language as it has socialism and communism. And yet, of all the sins that Pope Francis could have lectured Michael Moore about, he allegedly chose to affirm him in his socialist principles.
Speaking with &#8220;Late-Night&#8221; host Seth Meyers on Thursday, the Academy Award-winning filmmaker <a href="https://www.cnsnews.com/blog/susan-jones/pope-told-michael-moore-capitalism-sin">recounted the exchange </a>he had with the head of the Catholic Church, a Church he has had no affiliation with since his youth. According to Moore, it was Pope Francis who sought the meeting, not himself.
<blockquote>
I went to the weekly audience, and then he asked to speak to me privately. It was an amazing moment, and I asked him if I could ask him a question. And he said, &#8216;Yes.&#8217;
And I said, &#8216;Do you believe that an economic system that benefits the few, the wealthy at the expense of the many is a sin?&#8217; And he said to me, &#8216;Si&#8217; in Italian. And I said, &#8216;So you believe capitalism, the kinda &#8212; the capitalism we have now is a sin?&#8217; He goes, &#8216;Yes, it is.&#8217; He said, &#8216;The poor must always come first.&#8217;
</blockquote>
Following that, Pope Francis allegedly revealed himself as a fan of Michael Moore&#8217;s, encouraging him to make more movies, which push socialism (condemned by the Church) and promote pro-abortion politicians like Barack Obama (also condemned by the Church).
<blockquote>
And then he grabbed my hand and he said, &#8216;Please, pray for me.&#8217; And I said, &#8220;I will, and please pray for me. And he said, &#8216;No, you have to make more movies.&#8217; And I&#8217;m like, &#8216;I just wanted a prayer.&#8217; He&#8217;s like, &#8220;No, you go back to &#8212; you go back work.&#8217; He has a sense of humor.
</blockquote>
Being that Michael Moore has expressly declared himself a fallen-away Catholic who disagrees with Church teaching on same-sex marriage, transgenderism, economics, and <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6141839/Michael-Moores-ex-wife-sues-claims-duped-movie-profits.html">now divorce</a>, it seems strangely odd for the Pope to tell him to &#8220;go back to work&#8221; as opposed to advising that he go to confession, receive the sacraments again, or actually study Church teaching to understand it better.
Of course, Michael Moore could very well be lying (as he often does), but the alleged encounter fits Pope Francis&#8217; profile. Earlier this year, the Holy Father was alleged to have said <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/28831/its-lie-no-pope-francis-did-not-abolish-hell-paul-bois">in private that hell does not exist</a>.
According to the 93-year-old Eugenio Scalfari, an atheist journalist at the leftist publication La Repubblica, Pope Francis apparently &#8220;abolished&#8221; hell by adopting the heretical doctrine of annihilation &#8212; the idea that unrepentant souls simply cease to exist after death rather than eternal damnation.
&#8220;They are not punished, those who repent obtain the forgiveness of God and enter the rank of souls who contemplate him, but those who do not repent and cannot therefore be forgiven disappear,&#8221; Scalfari alleges Pope Francis said.
&#8220;There is no hell, there is the disappearance of sinful souls,&#8221; he allegedly added
As time goes by, stories like Scalfari&#8217;s and Moore&#8217;s seem all the more credible.
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Pope Francis Allegedly Told Michael Moore (A Socialist) That Capitalism Is Sin

Catholic Church

Michael Moore

Pope Francis

Jair Bolsonaro, the frontrunner for the Brazilian presidential election, is warning against Iranian interference in the upcoming runoff election. 
Fox News national security and foreign policy expert Walid Phares tweeted last week that the State Department and democracy agencies are paying close attention to the Brazilian presidential elections while the intelligence community is monitoring Iran and Venezuela for &#8220;nefarious activities inside Brazil, especially since the assassination attempt&#8221; on Bolsonaro at a rally in September.
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
The <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/US?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#US</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/StateDept?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@StateDept</a> and democracy agencies are monitoring the Presidential election in <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Brazil?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Brazil</a> &amp; the intelligence community is monitoring <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Iran?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Iran</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Venezuela?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Venezuela</a> nefarious activities inside Brazil, especially since the assassination attempt on <a href="https://twitter.com/jairbolsonaro?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@jairbolsonaro</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/jairbolsonaro?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#jairbolsonaro</a><a href="https://twitter.com/FoxNews?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@FoxNews</a>
&#8212; Walid Phares (@WalidPhares) <a href="https://twitter.com/WalidPhares/status/1051550791444652036?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 14, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>
When asked about Phares&#8217;s tweets <a href="https://jornalhoraextra.com.br/entrevista/entrevista-jair-bolsonaro-2/">in an interview with a Brazilian news outlet</a>, Bolsonaro said he is aware of &#8220;Iran&#8217;s interference and passed the information along to the authorities,&#8221; adding &#8220;[t]here is a lot of geopolitical interest in Brazilian elections.&#8221;
In the past, Bolsonaro pushed for legislation that would require the machines to print voting receipts &#8212;<a href="https://qz.com/1416512/bolsonaro-questions-brazils-voting-machines-especially-if-he-loses/"> an idea endorsed by experts</a> who say voting machines not connected to the internet can still be hacked.
Throughout his campaign, Bolsonaro has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/11/brazil-venezuela-jair-bolsonaro-workers-party">warned</a> against Brazil &#8212; the world&#8217;s fifth largest country &#8212; taking &#8220;the path&#8221; of socialist Venezuela, which is currently facing an <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/36022/venezuela-maduro-enjoys-major-salary-increase-250-paul-bois">economic</a> and <a href="https://www.apnews.com/d4e050fc4fe741369928b2468694a16e">hunger crisis</a>.
Last week, Bolsonaro&#8217;s son Eduardo &#8212; who is also an elected official but often acts as a surrogate for his father &#8212;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-10/brazil-to-shun-venezuela-and-embrace-israel-bolsonaro-son-says"> said that if he father won</a>, Brazil should sever ties with Venezuela and distance itself from Iran.
&#8220;You need to play tough with Venezuela. It&#8217;ll be a 180 degree-change in relation to Venezuela,&#8221; Eduardo said in an interview with Brasilia. &#8220;I wouldn&#8217;t recognize the Venezuelan government.&#8221;
Of Iran, Eduardo said: &#8220;Pro-Iranian position? It&#8217;ll change.&#8221;
Eduardo reportedly gave the interview in his office with displays of pro-gun and pro-life slogans and miniature statues of Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump.
Bolsonaro is a 63-year-old congressman, a retired captain in the Brazilian Army, and a self-described conservative Catholic who is married to an evangelical Christian. Bolsonaro is extremely popular in Brazil in large part for his strong opposition to socialism and promise to curb crime in a country that suffered<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/10/world/americas/brazil-murder-rate-record.html"> 63,880 murders in 2017</a>.
The pro-America candidate has spoken positively of President Donald Trump and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/36117/7-things-you-need-know-about-trump-brazil-who-kassy-dillon">received the nicknames</a> &#8220;Trump of Brazil&#8221; and &#8220;Trump of the tropics.&#8221;
Bolsonaro placed first in the first election on October 7, with 46% of the vote, just short of the 50% required to prevent a run-off. 
The financial sector is enthusiastic about the effect Bolsonaro would have on Brazil&#8217;s economy due to his support for capitalism and his delegation of economic matters to his trusted advisor, Paulo Guedes, an economist that graduated from the University of Chicago. <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/as-jair-bolsonaro-heads-for-a-second-round-vote-fears-rise-over-whats-next-for-brazil">According to The New Yorker</a>, after Bolsonaro finished in first place during the first election, the stock market jumped 6%.
Bolsonaro will face Fernando Haddad of the Workers Party on October 28, who received 29% of the vote. Haddad was the replacement for Luiz Inacio Lula De Silva &#8212; the former president who is serving a 12-year jail term for corruption &#8212; after the electoral ruled De Silva could not run for the presidency from prison.
Currently, Bolsonaro <a href="https://www.oantagonista.com/brasil/exclusivo-bolsonaro-609-x-391-haddad-crusoe/?__twitter_impression=true">is leading the polls</a> by as much as 21 points.

Right-Wing Brazilian Presidential Candidate Warns Against Iranian Influence In Election

Brazil

Iran

Venezuela

The following is satirical.
The United Nations has taken time off from sending Peacekeepers to enslave women in the Congo and abuse children on the Ivory Coast and run prostitute rings in Bosnia to warn us all that climate change is going to destroy the world again. The UN&#8217;s Committee on Screaming Over Unbelievable Disasters &#8212; or UNSOUND &#8212; has announced that, because of climate change, we must dismantle capitalism worldwide or everyone will die. If we do dismantle capitalism everyone will still die, but they&#8217;ll die with a lot less money.
The U.N. says that because of climate change, there will soon be heat waves, rainstorms and floods. These will be much worse than the heat waves, rainstorms and floods we have now because there&#8217;ll be no capitalism so everyone will be poor. Now you can see why climate change is so bad.
Now, many people have grown dubious of predictions of climate disaster because they&#8217;re simply tired of Al Gore, dressed in nothing but a towel, chasing masseuses around his hotel room while screaming, &#8220;The world is going to end so touch me now!&#8221; But the U.N. says their latest prediction of disaster is much worse than their previous predictions of disaster because they are predicting a much worse disaster so when it doesn&#8217;t happen it&#8217;ll be much worse than the other disasters that didn&#8217;t happen in the past.
Still, there can be little doubt that the climate is changing and that everyone will die in a spectacular fiery cataclysm just as soon as one of these climate predictions turns out to be correct. How can we avoid this horrifying yet visually stunning fate? Well, the models show that if we get rid of all fossil fuels within four years, we could actually stave off the apocalypse. Then we would be able to proudly tell our great grandchildren: &#8220;We&#8217;ve saved the planet so you can live horrible primitive lives in a socialist hell-scape.&#8221;
Or we can say screw it, and let the little rugrats fend for themselves.
I&#8217;m for that.

KLAVAN: U.N. Predicts World Will End Again [Satire]

Climate Change

Global Warming

Satire

United Nations

Last week, we <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/34789/not-onion-peta-frees-animal-crackers-cages-ashe-schow">brought you the charming story of how People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals</a> &#8220;freed&#8221; the animals bound in metal cages on the front cover of the &#8220;animal crackers&#8221; box. The absolutely, worthless victory was hailed as a &#8220;step forward&#8221; for the animal rights movement, even though children who consume animal crackers are still, technically, eating animals.
This week, we discover that the new &#8220;cage free&#8221; box is still &#8220;problematic,&#8221;<a href="https://www.vox.com/first-person/2018/8/28/17779830/animal-crackers-box-redesign-peta"> according to left-leaning explainer site, Vox</a>, because those cracker animals are still subject to the oppressive forces of capitalism that crush their pathetic, graham cracker heads under the boot of corporate profit.
No, really.
Daisy Alioto, apparently writing for Karl Marx, says that &#8220;the symbolic significance of changing the animal cracker box design does little to dismantle the elements of capitalism that exploit animals, people, and the environment.&#8221;
The box was meant to spark &#8220;joy,&#8221; Alioto says, acknowledging that she&#8217;s related to the box&#8217;s original designer. But in these dark, oppressive times, she is reminded of little other than the caged humans, subject to the whims of profiteering corporations, when she stares at the happy animals now freed from their paper prisons.
She instead compares her shame at knowing her family contributed to the oppression of graham cracker animals to the plight of the Metropolitan Museum of Art when it reconsidered an erotic painting of a young girl by the artist Balthus in light of changing notions of consent, and child exploitation. Because, of course, that&#8217;s precisely the comparison to make.
Fortunately, Mondelez, the company that makes animal crackers, seems uninterested in making any further changes to their box to depict their animals clad in drab green, and carrying around Little Red Books, free to share in the riches of a worker&#8217;s paradise, probably because zoo animals don&#8217;t seem to <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2017/08/17/venezuelas-starving-people-are-now-eating-the-zoo-animals-the-parisians-had-the-german-excuse/">fare well under socialism</a>.

VOX: Just Uncaging Fake Animals On A Cracker Box Isn&#8217;t Enough. You Must Dismantle Capitalism.

Vermont Democratic candidate for governor Christine Hallquist admitted Wednesday morning, after bashing capitalism, that she has no idea what socialism is, insisting that she is not &#8220;big on labels.&#8221;
Appearing on CNN&#8217;s &#8220;New Day&#8221; with host John Berman one day after becoming America&#8217;s first transgender governor nominee, Hallquist bemoaned capitalism, despite capitalism&#8217;s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/14525/5-statistics-showing-how-capitalism-solves-poverty-aaron-bandler">track record</a> of lifting billions out of poverty.
&#8220;Well, you know, I&#8217;m not a person that&#8217;s big on labels because I&#8217;ve found labels are used to separate people,&#8221; Hallquist told Berman. &#8220;You know, I look at the platform of a living wage and health care for all, that&#8217;s called civilized society. I don&#8217;t even know how that became socialism &#8230; let&#8217;s be a civilized society.&#8221;
Berman responded by asking: &#8220;Do you support capitalism?&#8221;
&#8220;Obviously the long history of measuring ourselves by increasing gross domestic product is a flawed measure because that just encourages consumption, and we can see what consumption is doing to our world,&#8221; Hallquist said, without offering any further explanation.
Berman continued by pressing Hallquist into stating whether or not she aligned more closely with socialism or capitalism, saying, &#8220;It does sound like you look more favorably &#8230; on the ideas behind socialism.&#8221;
&#8220;Well, yes, and I&#8217;m not sure I even know what socialism is,&#8221; Hallquist responded. &#8220;So I just don&#8217;t have the background to answer that question.&#8221;
WATCH:
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Vermont Democratic Candidate for Governor: &#8220;I&#8217;m not sure I even know what socialism is.&#8221; <a href="https://t.co/4GBqzifiES">pic.twitter.com/4GBqzifiES</a>
&#8212; Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) <a href="https://twitter.com/RealSaavedra/status/1029771330625753088?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 15, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>

WATCH: Democratic Governor Nominee Doesn&#8217;t Know What Socialism Is

Poverty is no mystery, and it&#8217;s easily avoidable. The poverty line that the Census Bureau used in 2016 for a single person was an income of $12,486 that year. For a two-person household, it was $16,072, and for a four-person household, it was $24,755. To beat those poverty thresholds is fairly simple. Here&#8217;s the road map: Complete high school; get a job, any kind of a job; get married before having children; and be a law-abiding citizen.
How about some numbers? A single person taking a minimum wage job would earn an annual income of $15,080. A married couple would earn $30,160. By the way, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, less than 4 percent of hourly workers in 2016 were paid the minimum wage. That means that over 96 percent of workers earned more than the minimum wage. Not surprising is the fact that among both black and white married couples, the poverty rate is in the single digits. Most poverty is in female-headed households.
Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders&#8217; presidential campaign garnered considerable appeal from millennials. These young people see socialism as superior to free market capitalism. Capitalism doesn&#8217;t do well in popularity polls, despite the fact that it has eliminated many of mankind&#8217;s worst problems, such as pestilence and gross hunger and poverty. One of the reasons is that capitalism is always evaluated against the nonexistent, non-realizable utopias of socialism or communism. Any earthly system, when compared with a utopia, will not fare well. Indeed, socialism sounds good but, when practiced, leads to disaster. Those disasters have been experienced in countries such as the USSR, China, most African nations and, most recently, Venezuela. When these disasters are pointed out, the excuse is inadequacies of socialist leaders rather than socialism itself. For the ordinary person, free market capitalism, with all of its warts, is superior to any system yet devised to deal with our everyday needs and desires.
Here are a couple of questions: Does an act clearly immoral when done privately become moral when done collectively? Does legality or majority consensus establish morality? Before you answer, consider that slavery was legal; South African apartheid was legal; the horrendous Stalinist, Nazi and Maoist purges were legal. Clearly, the fact of legality or a majority consensus cannot establish morality.
You might ask, &#8220;If you&#8217;re so smart, Williams, what establishes morality?&#8221; That&#8217;s easy, and you tell me when I make the wrong step. My initial premise is that we own ourselves. You are your private property, and I am mine. Self-ownership reveals what&#8217;s moral and immoral. Rape is immoral because it violates private property. So is murder and any other initiation of violence. Most people probably agree with me that rape and murder are immoral, but what about theft? Some Americans would have a problem deciding whether theft is moral or immoral.
Let&#8217;s first define what theft is. A fairly good working definition of theft is the taking by force of one person&#8217;s property and the giving of it to another to whom it does not belong. Most Americans think that doing that is OK as long as it&#8217;s done by government. We think that it is OK for Congress to take the earnings of one American to give to another American in the form of agricultural subsidies, business bailouts, aid for higher education, food stamps, welfare and other such activities that make up at least two-thirds of the federal budget. If I took some of your earnings to give to a poor person, I&#8217;d go to jail. If a congressman did the same thing, he&#8217;d be praised.
People tend to love a powerful government. Quite naturally, a big, powerful government tends to draw into it people with bloated egos, people who think they know more than everyone else and have little hesitance in coercing their fellow man. Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek explained why corruption is rife in government: &#8220;In government, the scum rises to the top.&#8221;
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

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Capitalism

Articles tagged with Capitalism

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Tucker Carlson Claims Market Capitalism Has Undermined American Society. He’s Wrong.

Leftist Darling Denmark To Send Foreign Criminals To Little Island Used For Medical Research

Pope Francis Allegedly Told Michael Moore (A Socialist) That Capitalism Is Sin

Right-Wing Brazilian Presidential Candidate Warns Against Iranian Influence In Election

KLAVAN: U.N. Predicts World Will End Again [Satire]

VOX: Just Uncaging Fake Animals On A Cracker Box Isn’t Enough. You Must Dismantle Capitalism.

WATCH: Democratic Governor Nominee Doesn’t Know What Socialism Is

WILLIAMS: Some Ideas To Think About