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The Red/Green Axis Is Flexing Its Muscles in the Democratic Party

By Robert Knight

The Democratic Socialists of America, who are riding high with primary victories in several Democratic-run states, have issued a “Workers Deserve More” platform.

It aims to dismantle the American republic, starting with abolishing the U.S. Senate, the Electoral College, and our national borders, and subordinating the president and the Supreme Court to Congress.

Then there is universal ranked-choice voting, public ownership of large companies, free childcare, Medicare for All, cancellation of student loans (to be paid by taxpayers), the transgender agenda, and more benefits for the growing free stuff army.

How do we pay for all this? Who cares? Hit up the billionaires.

The DSA now claims 120,000 members and dozens of public offices. It’s no wonder that so many young people are buying into the DSA and socialism in general.

The public “education” system doesn’t share the shocking, real-world track record of socialism and communism.

This makes young voters sitting ducks for a pitch like this one on the DSA’s website: “Imagine taking a day off from work in a future without capitalism….

“You have no debt. You don’t need health insurance. You don’t pay a mortgage or have a landlord, because comfortable housing is a human right. Your retirement is publicly funded. Food, education, energy, medicine, and transportation aren’t for-profit businesses; they are common goods and utilities.”

Bottom line: You don’t have to grow up or take responsibility for anything. Mommy government will do it all.

The DSA’s pixie dust masks class warfare straight out of the bloody French and Bolshevik revolutions.

To understand what’s going on, it’s helpful to revisit an extraordinary essay drafted 176 years ago in Paris.

In 1850, Frédéric Bastiat published “The Law,” a slam-dunk refutation of “The Communist Manifesto” by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It’s a surprisingly accessible read.

Unlike Marx and Engels, who were atheists, Bastiat agreed with America’s founders, who said rights come from God, not government.

“Three gifts from God precede all human legislation,” Bastiat wrote, citing individuality, liberty, and property—all protected by law.

In a free republic, people cede some liberties to government in return for law and order and protection of life and property.

When a government fails to do this and instead takes money from Peter to pay Paul, it engages in a form of theft that Bastiat labels “plunder.”

A grasping government plunders as much wealth as it can and redistributes it to increase the power and wealth of those doing the transferring, he wrote.

I thought about this when watching Virginia’s Democrats take over Richmond in January. The fake “moderate” Gov. Abigail Spanberger immediately signed a measure to send consumers’ electric bills soaring.

Democrat legislators, meanwhile, voted themselves a $32,000 salary increase, nearly tripling their pay in the name of “the people.”

Bastiat writes that despite socialism’s flowery promises, it is all about “naked greed” and “misconceived philanthropy.”

Concordia University marketing professor Gad Saad calls the latter “suicidal empathy, which is compassion so excessive that it damages the person, group, or society engaging in it.

A prime example would be the Great Society welfare state’s destruction of the black family.

Another would be the Biden administration’s importation of millions of unvetted immigrants, some of whom are now working to destroy America by advocating socialism or Islamism.

Each of these movements, which overlap to form a red/green axis, is using America’s constitutional liberties to attain power.

If they get enough of it, they will tear up that document and replace it with their creed of choice.

Like communism, Sharia Law cannot be squared with the Constitution, especially the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty. Converts from Islam can be punished up to death, as can those convicted of blasphemy.

Women have few or no rights under Sharia, which conflicts with the 14th Amendment’s equal protection guarantee and the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.

Criminal punishments can include amputation or flogging, which would violate the 8th Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Not all Muslim-majority countries impose Sharia Law, but in countries like Iran, run by Islamists, women are forced to wear hijabs or even more concealment in public or face beatings.

How many college kids who run around with signs backing Hamas and Iran while trashing Israel are aware of any of this?

The DSA is stoking hatred of Jews. Its platform calls for “a free Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital” and to “end all military and economic aid to Israel.”

On July 15, nearly half (103) of 212 Democrats voted yes on a House measure to end military aid to Israel. Only one Republican, bill sponsor Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, voted yes as the measure failed by 104-314.

The DSA has a Red Star Caucus, whose members vow to destroy America’s free-market economy and impose communism. Its heroes are New York Islamist/communist Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Sen. Bernie Sanders, Vermont independent, a lifelong communist.

The Red Star Caucus, of which DSA Co-chair Megan Romer is a member, states in its published platform: “We do not believe that capitalism can be reformed into socialism. It must be overthrown and replaced.”

Republicans need to educate American voters before it’s too late. They need to offer a positive agenda and remind people of the bad old Biden days of $5 gas and open borders.

And why America needed--and still needs--to take out Iran's nuclear bomb making capacity once and for all.

They need to make it clear that if Democrats don’t expel the DSA, then voting Democratic at any level is enabling a growing red/green axis that threatens American liberty and prosperity. 

Illustration by Alexander Hunter in The Washington Times.