Dakota Beacon

On Saturday, Bernie Sanders made great headway toward capturing the Democrat Party’s nomination for president, garnering 47.1% of the total votes in Nevada.    Should we be nervous?  

Sanders bills himself as a socialist and always has.  He sees nothing to be afraid of. He sees nothing to worry about with communism, either.  He says he doesn’t like “authoritarianism” but yet sees the Cuban government as “not all bad”.  Is he right? Should we consider Cuba’s ongoing experiment a “success”?  

This is shaping up as the crucial question for this year’s presidential election year.  Let’s look at some of these domestic issues and check out Sanders’ assumptions.

Sanders loves to cite the great healthcare provided in Cuba.  (Cuba seems to be his go-to example of what is good.) How great is healthcare in Cuba, anyway?  Well, Michael Moore thought it was a great model for us.  He is both right and wrong. He’s right if he refers to the “upper deck” of Cuban medicine.  The elites - important government officials, foreigners, the occasional oligarch, perhaps, these people see that bright, glowing, example of great Cuban health care.  It is true that Cuban doctors are among the best. It is true that a Michael Moore could go there for treatment. He can afford their top-tier medical care. It’s a magnet for people who seek cosmetic surgery or other elective procedures and have the money.  Medicine is a money-maker for the Cuban regime, in fact, highly valued. Not to be wasted on the poor, however. It’s not for people not in the privileged class. They don’t even use the same hospitals or clinics. If you are in the lower economic class and you need to go to a hospital, beware.  It has been suggested that you would be better off at home. If you do use one, you are required to bring your own bedsheets, toilet paper, your own food, your own soap, towels and light bulbs. (And don’t expect doctors not to reuse latex gloves, either - they cost money.)

Doctors are strictly controlled.   They are not paid well by Western standards.  When they travel abroad they are kept under close surveillance and, like defectors from the old Soviet Union, are found screaming for help in airports to avoid being sent back home; unmarried doctors are not allowed out of the country, this in order to discourage them from bolting.  So, if it’s so great, why don’t they want to return to Cuba?ecause it is like every other Communist regime - the people are not free to leave because the truth would get out, because they would never return to that regime.  

What about child care?  Bernie wants to provide cradle-to-grave care.  Well, I wouldn’t put my child in the care of a Communist system.  Why is child care so important to these people? Two reasons: the lesser one is that a two-income family provides a larger tax.  The greater one is that indoctrination begins before a child can be “infected” with the ideas of freedom, before he can possibly learn anything about George Washington.  Before he can learn anything good about America. While it is still possible to instill in him an acceptance of authoritarianism. All Communist countries excel in providing daycare and getting kids away from their parents as soon as possible.  All authoritarians with an eye to their future want to control what children learn.  Stalin did.  Mao did.  Hitler did.  

It is the same for Castro’s wonderful “literacy” program.  Sanders blathers on as though Cubans were all uneducated, illiterate bumpkins . . . until Castro came along and brought the light.  He brought them “literacy”. In truth, literacy was relatively high in Cuba prior to the revolution.  But it was important to Castro that everyone, without exception, be able to read his propaganda. How can you indoctrinate people if they can’t read your posters?  How can you control them if they can’t read your rules? Now, if Bernie Sanders is truly interested in the literacy rate in America, there are places he could go for answers right here at home.  Marva Collins, whom I featured in one of our February Saturday Specials, could have provided the answer in Chicago.  She had no failures. There are lots of people who could give the answer to that problem (including myself).  And Marva Collins did everything she did without a dime of public money. But then, she wasn’t serving the state, she was serving the students.  No one should be taken in by this flimsy “literacy” argument.

There is a reason why for over 60 years ordinary citizens, literate citizens, young and old, have fled Cuba.  It is the same reason people risked being shot and left to die, hanging on the barbed wire of the Berlin Wall.  It is the same reason they were shot at by the government agencies. The people will risk death to escape the system and the government fears their escape, for with that the truth becomes known.  Better the short-term bad press of a corpse hanging on barbed wire or a raft of drowned Cubans than the re-telling over and over of the truth.  Why don’t other kinds of countries have this problem? Good question. You can figure out the answer.  

There is no excuse for Bernie Sanders whitewashing the criminal Cuban regime.  Anyone who is out there supporting this Communist for president needs to check on the condition of their own morals.  No one with any sense of morality - I’m not talking about religion here, just normal decency - has any business supporting Bernie Sanders. Sanders is selling you a lie.  If he must try to tell us about all the good in the Castro regime we know already he has nothing to offer. If  Cuba is an example of what he can do for us, we don’t want him and we certainly don't need him.

We can find fault - lots of fault - with Donald Trump.  So much that I could not vote for him in 2016. I still think what we needed was a philosophical conservative, someone who actually understands and values of the Founding and the Constitution.  A person without this is handicapped when it comes to important kinds of decisions and lacks discernment or profound understanding of the bigger picture or the long game of political activity. His shortcomings, regardless of how frustrating and annoying they may be to many of us, his irritating habits of tweeting every five minutes about anything or nothing, his childish commentary, and the overbearing nature of some of his adherents, all pale beside the risks involved with promoting a Communist.  

We can all opt for Communism.  There are several Communist countries, some not that far away.  They all welcome Americans, pretty much, if those Americans want to renounce their  American freedom.  Cuba would be delighted to invite Americans to emigrate there. And those with a lot of money might not even notice much difference, except for the squalid poverty around their feet.  If you don’t like a warm climate, there is still China or North Korea. There is no need to impose this rotten and failed concept on those of us who value freedom. Many have observed, as did Rafael Cruz, that Communism would be far worse for us than for the people of Cuba.  The reason? Because there would be no United States to give us hope and a place to escape to.  

Sanders calls himself a “socialist”.  But Sanders would take over the health care business, the landlord business, the education business, transportation.  He wants to redistribute the wealth. He believes that the state should take care of everyone. The problem is this. The state is us.  Just as it is in Cuba. There is no such thing as a magical wizard who produces this universal, all-encompassing care for free. It is all paid for by the poorest, no matter how it is portrayed by people like Castro or Sanders.  All the wealth of any nation is the product of the work of the people, not a product of the state. He has admitted that he expects that Wall Street would take a severe downturn if he were elected.  He seems to like that idea.  Never mind the working people whose retirement is tied to Wall Street.  They don't matter in the big picutre.  Just cogs in the wheel.  Show me the difference between Sanders and the Castros of the world. The late Minnesota Congressman Al Quie once said, "If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, it must be a duck."  Sanders looks like a duck.  He says he doesn’t “like” authoritarianism. But how else can you take somethng from one person and gift it to another person?  Perhaps Lenin didn’t like authoritarianism - he just wanted forced equality. “Forced”, of course, is the operative word, because true economic equality can never exist. The appearance, however, can be forced upon a people. It is never genuine - there are always the necessary “haves”, the government officials who do the forcing.  But Communism cannot exist without the force, without the authoritarianism.  That is why, throughout history, throughout the world, it has never even tried to work without force.  If you disagree, just show me the country where Communism is freely followed by the people, where people are free to dissent or to leave.

Is it authoritarian to tell people they cannot keep their health insurance?  Is it authoritarian to tell landlords what they can rent their properties out for?  Is it authoritarian to dictate what must be accomplished in order to achieve the appearance of equality?  Bernie stands for these ideas.  Oh, and they'll only cost some $60 trillion.  Should we be nervous? 

Walter Williams, American commentator and economist, has a far more intelligent and cogent argument to make.  Please take a few minutes to hear him out.

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