Larry Kudlow is the director of the president’s National Economic Council (NEC). Speaking on February 28 at the 2019 Conservative Political Action Conference, he suggested that socialism should be “put on trial.” To his very friendly audience, he thundered: “I want it challenged. I want it debated. I want it rebutted. I want to convict socialism.” He has history on his side that socialism should indeed be convicted of serious crimes against civilization.
Kudlow got introduced to socialism’s opposite — free enterprise — while serving in the Reagan administration (1981-1989). Leaning more heavily to the right ever since, he endorsed Donald Trump for president when many GOP leftists and middle-of-the-roaders were running for cover. An outspoken champion of building a border wall, Kudlow’s appointment by President Trump to lead the NEC has been supported by freedom-loving Americans.
When speaking to the CPAC gathering, Kudlow singled out for deserved criticism the Green New Deal sponsored by Representative Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY.) and Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.) The comprehensive program suggested by the two Democratic Socialists would, insisted Kudlow, “literally knock out energy, transportation, airlines, jobs, and business, and cost the nation $75 trillion.“ Like numerous other realists, he pointed to devastated Venezuela for an example of what socialism does to a nation.
Addressing the growing number of socialist partisans who claim their schemes could be paid for by soaking rich Americans who aren’t taxed “enough,” Kudlow pointed out that “the top 10 percent of income earners already pays nearly 70 percent of all taxes while the bottom 50 percent pays a measly 3 percent.” He then asked, “Who pays the bulk of taxes?” He wryly responded to his own question: “Successful people.”
Aware that many young Americans have been lured into favoring socialism, the NEC director knows that the programs they seek would be convicted of serious crimes if put on trial. Columnist Don Feder obviously agrees and is equally opposed to what the millennials are choosing and Democratic Socialists are backing. He looks back at America’s history and notes, “The last Democratic President who believed in the free market was Grover Cleveland [who served the nation prior to the dawn of the 20th Century].
“Socialism is rising,” warns Feder, “but so are ignorance, stupidity, greed and envy.” This shouldn’t be, he insists, during a time when economic growth is significantly higher, employment is at its best level ever, and take-home pay has risen to new heights. If anyone needs a lesson in what socialism does, Feder suggests looking at Venezuela where that once bastion of prosperity now rivals Germany in the 1920s “with people literally starving to death, a mass exodus of the truly desperate, and demonstrators being shot in the streets.”
If America’s rising number of socialist-leaning millennials had been exposed to honest history, they would know that socialism always invites misery and degenerates into totalitarianism — as it did in the nations overrun by communism. There’s a lesson to be learned in awareness that USSR stood for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
Honest history would teach truth seekers that socialism’s failures lead to totalitarianism. One of history’s more famous socialists, English playwright George Bernard Shaw, shocked even his confreres when he stated in his book, An Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism:
Under Socialism, you would not be allowed to be poor. You would be forcibly fed, clothed, lodged, taught, and employed whether you liked it or not. If it were discovered that you had not the character and industry enough to be worth all this trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly manner; but whilst you were permitted to live you would have to live well.
Shaw didn’t back away from the inevitable outcome of socialism. And while most of today’s Americans give it an “unfavorable” rating according to a recent poll conducted by Zogby Analytics, ignorance about its consequences is growing. The 2018 elections suggest that many Americans — especially the youth — are being snared with its rosy promises and haven’t learned about its dire consequences. Kudlow, Feder, this writer, and others hope to reverse the frightening trend.
John F. McManus is president emeritus of The John Birch Society.
