Bernie Sanders

The mainstream media is cock-a-hoop after CNBC-parent NBC and Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal reveal a new national poll that shows notjust Trump being beaten in 2nd place by Ben Carson (who is currently on a book tour) but also shows Marco Rubio surging (from 4% to 11%) if one wanted to spin it that way. Softly-spoken Carson, with 29% of the GOP primary voters polled, is ahead of Trump (23%) for the first time in the campaign, tripling his support since July (and as WSJ reports is the first Republican to top 50% when voters 2nd and 3rd choice are combined). On the other side of the scale, Bush's support is collapsing as Cruz and Rubio accelerate.

The desire to take the American public out of the “of the people, by the people, for the people” business can minimally be traced back to the Vietnam War, to the moment when a citizen’s army began voting with its feet and antiwar sentiment grew to startling proportions not just on the home front, but inside a military in the field.  It was then that the high command began to fear the actual disintegration of the U.S. Army. From that moment on, the urge to demobilize the American people and send them to Disney World would only grow.

Bernie Sanders supporters seem to be everywhere. 49% of Democrats now have a favorable view towards socialism. This is scary. And sad. No matter how it is wrapped, socialism is still the belief that we can raise people out of poverty by taking money out of the hands of those who have learned how to produce. And it has never worked. Socialism always fails because at some point people realize they don’t have to work as hard to get the same amount of stuff. It takes all the incentive away to really succeed.

What’s refreshing about Trump is the directness with which he expresses his psychopathy. For example, candidates such as Hillary Clinton sugar-coat theirpsychopathy, or even find ways to get their interviewers to join eagerly in their expressions of it (camaraderie with power-holders), but they don’t say such blatant things as (to paraphrase Trump here), “After we raped them — which we shouldn’t have done — we should have stolen from them, and we should still be  stealing from them.”

European leaders talk about two things these days; preserving European values by taking in Muslim migrants and integrating Muslim migrants into Europe by getting them to adopt European values. It does not occur to them that their plan to save European values depends on killing European values.

If Bernie Sanders really believes that socialism is the solution, then he is misguided – even though his criticism of oligarchic cronyism is justified. Socialists believe that the society is just one “organic body” and as with all such entities resources are used indiscriminately by the organism so as to support its various functions, organs, faculties, etc., never mind who produces and who consumes the resources; those are for the whole system to use as is needed: “From each according to his/her ability, to each according to his/her need!” Trouble is some of the people will have to decide about all this.  It is not automatic, contrary to what Marxists think. And here is where the politicians and their appointed bureaucrats enter the picture.

If you are seeking more freedom and prosperity, ask yourself if that is what you will get by voting for any of the current candidates. If you are seeking to reclaim the moral high ground the United States may have once had, ask yourself if these policies will do just that. Remember, not everyone is an idiot, a Republican, or an apathetic sheeple. Some of us simply disagree with Bernie’s economics and solutions.

America is a nation divided, not only upon the means we should use to attain our ends in the world, but upon the ends themselves.

What if the U.S. had not invaded Iraq in 2003? How would things be different in the Middle East today? Was Iraq, in the words of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, the "worst foreign policy blunder" in American history? Let's take a big-picture tour of the Middle East and try to answer those questions. But first, a request: after each paragraph that follows, could you make sure to add the question “What could possibly go wrong?”

"The United States is in decline. While not all major shocks to the system will be devastating, when the right one comes along, the outcome may be dramatic." Once upon a time America fought a great war to rid the world of the Nazis, but now we have become just like them.

Other than glad-handing and managing whatever undeclared wars he's been let in on, President Sanders won't change anything important because he can't change anything important. Neither can any other president. Political theater is just that--theater. Fans of Obama learned the hard way that hope and change are quietly dumped the moment you enter the Imperial Presidency.

Whoever get elected in 2016 is going to face a crisis every bit as terrible as the crisis of 1860, only this time when the country blows it could come from a dozen different directions and be a lot harder to fix than the secession of Dixieland.

Bernie Sanders’s entry into the presidential race has sparked a nationwide conversation about socialism and its potential to remedy the real and perceived pathologies suffered by Americans. The underlying problem with socialists like Bernie Sanders is that they do not actually believe (or understand) in economics at all. As Ludwig von Mises himself has pointed out, socialism is not an economic theory — it is a theory of redistribution.

"There are so many fault lines that the nation seems consumed by a conflict of all against all... there is an inevitable “revolution” coming because our politics, culture, education, economics and even philanthropy are so polarized that the country can no longer resolve its differences."