In the chest of every liberal, the saying goes, beats the heart of a communist. If true, one wonders what type of heart is beating in the chest of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, an open socialist whose criticism of his own country is as enthusiastic as his praise for totalitarian dictators.
Last week, the Washington Post offered an insight into Sanders’ iron commitment to socialist tyranny with a piece that went “inside” his famous honeymoon to the Soviet Union.
Conclusion: If Sanders isn’t a communist, he imitates one with surpassing skill.
Lots of Vodka
The Post opened its probe into Sanders’past by describing the now-famous, or notorious, video of “bare-chested, towel-draped” Sanders, “sitting at a table lined with vodka bottles, as he sang ‘This Land Is Your Land’ to his hosts in the Soviet Union in the spring of 1988.”
And the Post reported, “as he stood on Soviet soil, Sanders, then 46 years old, criticized the cost of housing and health care in the United States, while lauding the lower prices — but not the quality — of that available in the Soviet Union. Then, at a banquet attended by about 100 people, Sanders blasted the way the United States had intervened in other countries.”
Of course, after he returned, Sanders toned down the anti-American rhetoric and offered this prescription for the American future: “Let’s take the strengths of both systems. Let’s learn from each other.”
Translation: Let’s adopt totalitarian socialism, as the Post revealed in describing the rest of Sanders’ anti-American high jinks.
Sanders, the Post noted, was a “firebrand on foreign affairs, finding much to like in socialist and communist countries,” the nice way of saying Sanders was, in a fact, a communist sympathizer trying to undermine U.S. foreign policy. He was, as a practical matter, an implacable enemy of the United States and firm friend of the Red Empire.
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Cuba, Nicaragua
Having gone to the Soviet Union and discovered the wonders of socialism there, Sanders then went to Nicaragua in 1985 and “hailed the revolution led by Daniel Ortega, which President Ronald Reagan opposed.”
How did the Soviet- and Cuban-backed Nicaraguan tyrant strike Sanders? “I was impressed,” Sanders said, and “I will be attacked by every editorial writer for being a dumb dope.” The word might be dupe, but anyway, R.J. Rummel has estimated that the man who so impressed Sanders led a regime responsible for upwards of 7,000 murders.
Sanders was also a big fan of Fidel Castro, the communist tyrant who wrecked a beautiful, relatively prosperous, even thriving country with the help of mass murderer Che Guevara.
Sanders, meanwhile, was so enthused by the trip that he soon began planning his next foreign venture: a visit to Cuba the following year, during his last month as mayor.
“Under Castro, enormous progress has been made in improving the lives of poor people,” Sanders said before leaving, while noting ‘enormous deficiencies’ in democratic rights. While he failed in his goal to meet Fidel Castro, he returned home with even greater praise than he had for the Soviet Union.
“I did not see a hungry child. I did not see any homeless people,” Sanders told the Burlington Free Press. While Cuba was “not a perfect society,” he said, the country “not only has free health care but very high-quality health care…. The revolution there is far deeper and more profound than I understood it to be. It really is a revolution in terms of values.”
But Sanders likely didn’t know, as Investor’s Business Daily reported when Castro went the way of all flesh, that Cuba’s vaunted healthcare system is not one but three: one with cut-rate care for paying medical tourists, one for the communist elites with top-flight care, and one for regular folks.
Sanders likely saw the facilities for Cuban elite — like mass-murderer Castro.
Those for the Cuban people, the Real Cuba website reported, “lack the most minimum requirements needed to take care of their patients,” and most are “filthy and patients have to bring their own towels, bed sheets, pillows, or they would have to lay down on dirty bare mattresses stained with blood and other body fluids.”
Sanders didn’t much care, apparently, that Castro murdered at least 73,000 Cubans, Rummel has reported, and as many as 141,000.
Sanders called his fellow Americans “intellectually lazy” for opposing socialism.
Photo: AP Images
