Socialism Has Never Worked and Never Will Ever

Discussion on Socialism 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Welcome in to a brand new episode of The Truth. Behind the truth. My name is Jonathan Prell, and as always, we certainly appreciate your time. Sorry, I'm a little late with this episode, but I had a few health issues last week that had to be dealt with. But all is good now, and we're up and running and we are ready to go. But before we get to our topic for this episode, we do have an update on a previous episode that we did. And that previous episode was called Not in My Locker Room, which dealt with the issue of biological males playing in girls and women's sports. If you haven't heard that one yet, again, it's called Not in My Locker Room. You can go back and listen to that and it might make some of this a little bit more clear. But the update is the Supreme Court today came out with a monumental ruling that basically upholds state's ban on biological males playing girls and women's sports. Now, the margin was surprising to me as far as the justices. The margin was six to three, six in favor, three against. We can certainly figure out what three were against this. And the reason I was surprised about this is because, like I said in the initial episode, I don't know why we're even talking about this. I don't know why it's even an issue, the idea of biological males competing athletically against girls and women. I would have thought for sure that, well, actually, what it finally took was a Supreme Court decision. But what I'm surprised at is that it wasn't a 9-0 decision. I'm surprised that there were actually three justices that dissented and decided not to go with that. However, that doesn't clear up the issue. One thing that is not clear in reading the ruling, while the Supreme Court upheld any state who has a ban on that, they also didn't say that that is the law of the land. So what we're not sure about is whether or not states can choose to ignore that decision and do what they want to do or not. So that's gonna be something that's gonna be coming to a head here probably fairly soon. Um, it kind of looks like the way it's written that basically the states have the right to say no to biological males. But they also have the right to say, well, not so fast. We're gonna have some other criteria. So we're just gonna kind of have to wait and see how that plays out. But that was a big, big ruling today by the Supreme Court, and we will keep an eye on that and maybe have another update on that at another time. But today's topic we're gonna get to. One of the things that is happening around the country right now that I think has so many people concerned is this mass uprising of socialism. And it's getting to a point where not only does it need to be discussed, it's getting kind of scary. And I think it's really time for us to pump the brakes on socialism and really look at this and find out exactly what is going on here. Because we've seen so many of these ultra-left candidates who identify as socialists winning these primary elections over the last few weeks. In particular, there was one in New York where this woman, my oh my, this woman not only is a socialist, she claims to be a communist as well and is a big fan of Marxism, Karl Marx, Lenin, and all of that. In fact, she has criticized the New York public library system before for not having enough information or books about Marxism and communism and things like that. So, how she won a primary, I have no idea. And then you have one in Colorado. This woman recently came out and refused to denounce there was an attack, a very violent attack on Jews in Boulder, Colorado recently. And she refuses, even now, to come out and say that that is a pure act of anti-Semitism, which it is, but she refuses to call it that. Now, she has walked back some of that, and even the candidate in New York has said, well, you know, I was younger before I got into politics, and I don't necessarily feel the same way now. Well, you know what? That wasn't too long ago, because she's pretty young, that one in New York. I can't remember her name, forgive me, but uh uh the one in uh in Colorado, I believe her name is Kurios, but she hasn't been at this very long. So whatever old posts they have found that she is trying to delete, by the way, she's deleted a lot of them up to this point, but she hasn't been able to get to all of them. And she says that she's changed her stance on an awful lot of that and needs a chance to be able to make her case. I say, why? What are we supposed to believe? See, this is one of the problems with these people. They say this, and they say this publicly for years, or in some cases, even decades. And then when they actually want to do something with that, like run for federal office, they have to walk all of that back and say, well, that was a different point in my life. We're seeing that in Maine, too, with Graham Platner. This guy is just a flat out nightmare. A flat out nightmare. And he has walked back everything that he has ever said and done. And this guy is clearly a white supremacist, he's an anti-Semite, he's a misogynist, and every other adjective that you want to equate with him, he is. Only to come out now and say, Yeah, you know, that was a rough time of my life. I had some issues. Uh, I was I was angry then, I'm not angry anymore. At one time, he had a Nazi tattoo on his chest. He still has the tattoo, but it's been covered up, it's been changed a little bit and modified. And he said that was a mistake. He didn't even know what it was when he got it. Well, it was one of the worst Nazi tattoos that anybody could ever have, worse than a swastika. It was a prison camp tattoo that were worn by the guards at the concentration camps. So for this guy to say, I don't know. But anyway, so what we're seeing is we're seeing all these people now walking this back. And my question there would be: what are we as voters supposed to believe? Plattner has spent years saying this stuff. These two other candidates, since they have burst on to the national political scene, which hasn't been very long, they're already walking back things that they have said and done and things that they participated in in the past. So, in my mind, anyway, that creates a question: well, who are you then really? Are you really a socialist? Or are you just saying that to get the attention, to get people to talk about you? So you're gonna lead every newscast? But do you not really believe that? You're just saying that to get the votes, or are you really a firm believer in that? And you don't want to come out and admit that because you don't want to hurt your chances of being elected. So what is it? How are we to know? And voters, it is gonna be incumbent on voters to figure out whether these people are telling the truth or not, telling the truth about their beliefs or telling the truth about what they are walking back. And I think that's gonna create all kinds of problems for the American electorate, especially as we get closer to 2028, because socialists are coming out of the woodwork and they're winning these primaries, people. I don't know how they're doing it. I would certainly like to know from the people who are electing them. What are you thinking? What is going through your mind that makes you want to support somebody with that kind of an ideal? That's what I want to know. Do these people really don't know what socialism is? Do they think it's something different, which means it's kind of cool, or is it anything, anything other than what Donald Trump represents? I kind of think it's the latter rather than the former. But, you know, time will tell, but it is something that we're paying attention to. We've been paying attention to it now for a number of years. And let's Bernie Sanders is a great example of this. Bernie Sanders, in my opinion, you may love Bernie Sanders. That's fine. I think he's an interesting old guy. Uh he's he's great to listen to. He really is. I don't agree with a single thing that comes out of his mouth, but he's great to listen to and he certainly is passionate. Where he loses credibility with me is that I think he is somewhat of a hypocrite. In that he, his whole platform has been, even when he ran for president and he was a Democratic candidate going against Hillary Clinton in 2016, he blames millionaires and billionaires for everything and thinks that they're getting the benefit of everything, and the taxpayers are getting nothing. They're left holding the bag. Millionaires and billionaires. Well, what I find hypocritical about that is that Bernie Sanders himself is a multimillionaire. So what is it, Bernie? What do you believe? What's accurate here? What are we to believe about you and the candidates that you are supporting? You know, New York, I mean, this young woman who won her primary, what was it last week or the week before? I mean, New York already has its problems with their mayor Zoran Mandani. I mean, this guy is a piece of work. He and when you listen to him, it is really, really scary. One of the things that he's already implemented is a big rent freeze in New York. And people are already saying that that rent freeze over the next couple of years is going to cause a major shortage and major problems with the New York City housing market. It's crazy that he believes these things. He doesn't believe in private landownership. None of them do. None of the socialists do. They know private land ownership. Well, here's a guy. He also talks a lot about the millionaires and the billionaires. Mom Donnie does. And then he talks about the people look, those of you living up in your $5 million penthouse apartments thinking you're going to get a tax break. Well, you're not. We're coming for you next. Well, you know where he lives? He lives in the Soho area, which is very upscale. And I think it's, you know, just off Manhattan. And he lives in one of these high-rise $5 million condos. Is he going to give up his home? I don't know. But this guy is uh some of the things that he's talking about, this rent freeze. Anyway, getting back to that, um, developers are not going to want to develop anything. In fact, this is going to force more and more companies, big companies. Now you're talking about developers and construction companies, material companies, and things like that, that are probably going to leave New York and start a headquarters somewhere else because they don't want to be a part of that. I mean, this rent freeze, nobody's going to be able to make any money. And I just don't see the inventory being there in New York City over the next couple of years when that rent freeze really takes hold. And that's just the start of what he wants to do. But the socialism idea, I really cannot remember a time in my life when this was such a major topic. I mean, I do vaguely remember in the 60s all the hubbub with the communists, you know, that were in our government. And socialism and communism, by the way, go hand in hand. And I do remember that, you know, where they were accusing people in our government, people like J. Edgar Hoover and a lot of senators and congresspeople were accusing various people in this country of being communists. Maybe they were, maybe they weren't, but but that's the only thing that I remember since then, since that has stopped, I don't recall any accurate conversations, or any conversations really, about socialism. But my question is, has socialism, because it has been around forever, has socialism worked anywhere around the world? And I guess the answer depends on what is meant by socialism or pure socialism, because the term is used to describe very different economic and political systems. Countries that have what they call full state socialism, that's where the government owns or controls most of the economy, have generally struggled to produce sustained prosperity and innovations. Now, countries that have free market economies layered with extensive social welfare programs have been generally much more successful. And countries that have been more successful, every time you hear people talking about socialism and how it hasn't worked anywhere, people say, well, what about the Nordic countries? What about Sweden? What about Denmark? What about Norway? Finland? They're doing just fine there. Well, not necessarily. They are not purely socialist countries. They are free market economies with aspects of social welfare programs. And they have been very, very successful. But when you talk about countries that are based on pure socialism, you know what they are. You know, you've got the Soviet Union. They've been dealing with this forever. And it eventually, the whole economy in Russia completely collapsed in 1991. We all remember that. It just completely went away and it's never recovered. And this war in Ukraine that they've been going at now for a few years is not doing their economy any good at all. Russia is hurting right now. And for Putin to stand there and blow his whistle and say, I'm still the strong one, well, he's not. In fact, he very easily could be on his way out, either through elections, maybe some kind of an overthrow, or maybe one of his own people just decides, you know what, I cannot take any more of this guy, and he's gonna pull out his service weapon and take him out. I mean, you could see something like that. But you you've also seen this in Cuba. And Cuba, if you've seen the pictures over the years, universal health care and high literacy rates are often cited as achievements, but the country has actually experienced decades of very, very low economic growth, huge shortages of basic goods, including food, and limited, if any, really, political freedoms. You also have that kind of a system in Venezuela, but Venezuela is one of those nations that's not fully socialist. They have some free market aspects to their economy, but they're still hurting. Their dependence on oil revenues and corruption and international sanctions play important roles there. So it's not all good in Venezuela. We've heard all the stories about Venezuela, but Venezuela is a country that probably could rebound. If they got decent leadership now that Maduro's gone, if they got some decent leadership in Venezuela, they can probably still keep some of their socialist ideas as long as they keep their free market economy going. So that would not be a bad thing. Venezuela, they're going to be interesting to watch over the next several years because they could come out of this really smelling like a rose and showing other countries, certainly not the United States, because socialism has no home here in the United States. Everything that we have built over the last 250 years, which by the way, you know, this Saturday is our 250th birthday as a country, the whole thing has been designed to prevent those things, going back the entire 250 years. But another country that is very, very hard-lined is North Korea, one of the world's most centrally planned economies, marked by chronic food insecurity, very low living standards, they have very strict political control. Now, when you're talking about, and I'm sure that some of you are saying, well, what about China? Okay, now, China, that is a different bird altogether, because China, I guess, would probably be the closest thing to a hybrid model that we have out there. China officially describes its system as socialism, but with Chinese characteristics. And they've been doing that since about the late 1970s. They have introduced extensive market reforms while retaining state ownership in key sectors. In other words, the government hangs on to the things that they want to hang on to, and of course, their one-party political rule. Now, these reforms have been somewhat successful in lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty, though the country continues to face all kinds of challenges related to inequality, to demographics, debt, and uh massive restrictions based on political freedoms. And I think that's the thing. The core of the socialist platform is one that cannot work here in the United States. And it hasn't worked anywhere. It hasn't worked in Russia, it hasn't worked in North Korea, it hasn't worked in Venezuela. And I don't think it's working all that well in China either. It's never worked and it never will. If you are a pure socialist economy. Now, you put a hybrid in there and you start adopting free market economy policies. Maybe you can make some headway, but in the United States, we're not about that at all. We're not going to let the government control anything. And that's what these far-left candidates are doing. They don't want you to be able to own your home and the land that your home sits on. How ridiculous is that? You can own the structure that you live in, but the land that it sits on you can't own. And you're probably going to have to pay some kind of a lease in order to keep that land. Well, what if the home is paid off? The mortgage is paid off, yet you still have to pay for the land. See, that's never going to fly here in the United States. And we're not going to give government that much control. I think the American electorate has pretty much determined that, even though there's a lot of debate on both sides, there's a lot of craziness on both sides of the aisle. But I just don't think that this country, the American people, are not just going to lay down and let the government take over. And that's what they do in these socialist countries. They control everything. You know, Zoran Mamdani in New York, he Wants free grocery stores. He wants government-run grocery stores. He's got a plan to build two of them over the next couple of years at a cost of, I believe, it's around $35 million per grocery store. You know, that is not a new idea. There have been government grocery stores or government-owned grocery stores in certain cities in the United States. And guess how they've done? Miserable failures. It's never worked. Just like socialism itself, it's never worked. You run into supply chain problems. More often than not, the shelves are going to have far fewer items than an abundance of items. It's very difficult in these towns to survive where they have these grocery stores. And Mom Donnie, that's one of the things that he wants to do in New York. And I just don't see that happening. I just don't see the American people going for that. Now, I think economists, at least the ones that I listen to quite regularly, would probably agree on several, I guess maybe call them broad conclusions, that fully centralized socialist economies have generally not matched. In other words, they don't work. They have not matched the long-term economic performance of market-based economies, and they have often been associated with shortages, inefficiency, and limited political freedoms. Mixed economies combining market capitalism with varying levels of government regulation and social welfare have produced the strongest combination of economic growth, innovation, and living standards. But again, you're talking about the government having a bigger hand in everything that we're doing as opposed to removing that hand. And I just don't see any part of socialism working in the United States just for that reason. So the debate today, the way I see it anyway, is usually not capitalism versus socialism, but rather how much government involvement is appropriate in certain things like health care, education, pensions, labor protections, and other parts of the economy. Healthcare, in particular, the healthcare system in this country right now is completely broken. What people have to pay for medications and procedures is absolutely ridiculous. And even though we have healthcare insurance, most of us do anyway, or they have some available, it is still ridiculously expensive. Case in point, one of the reasons that I was delayed for a week coming back is because I had to have some uh uh I have spinal stenosis. I've already had two back surgeries and I'm still having major problems. And I went in because my doctors suggested doing an injection, two injections, on uh the left side of my back, my lower back. And I agreed to do that. You know, they're steroid injections. I I had done it before with one of my previous surgeries, and it didn't really do any good, but I'm in so much pain, I'll try anything at this point. Um, so I went ahead and did it, and it worked for a while. I mean, it gave me, well, I should say it worked for a day and a half. I mean, literally a day and a half. By the third day, I was back to where I was before the injections. But the stunning thing about those injections, when I got the bill in the mail for this thing, now keep in mind, these were two small injections that only take a matter of seconds to give you. I mean, you lay down on the table, they do one, they say you're gonna feel a pinch, you feel the pinch, they move a couple things around, then they say you're gonna feel another pinch. A few seconds later, you're done, you're out of there. Over $4,000 that cost. Now, thank goodness my insurance picked up a lot of that, but $4,000 for something that took just a matter of seconds and only a few CCs of medication. And it really does seem like today that from a healthcare standpoint, the medications that we take now, and by the way, let me just stop right there and let you know that I have, if you could look at our medicine cabinet, you would be stunned at the amount of medications that I have to take. Every time we go out of town, or I have to take all my medicines. And if we're visiting family, you know, and I get unpacked and I have to set up a place on a counter where I have to put out my medicine because I've got, I have stuff I have to take early in the morning, I have stuff I have to take in the afternoon, then I have stuff that I have to take at night. And every single time somebody walks in and sees all that sitting there, they say, My God, what is all that for? And I sometimes wonder myself, I find it very, very frustrating to have to be on that many medications. But I wonder, and I'm not seemingly getting any better in certain regards, so am I just flat out over-medicated? Is a lot of the medications that I take completely unnecessary? The only one that I think is necessary, there's only one, and it's because I have blood clot issues, so I take eloquist. And I need that. I'm gonna have to take eloquence for the rest of my life. But all the other stuff that I take, I'm really not so sure that I need it. But healthcare is ridiculous. These um these weight loss injections, you know, that you're getting now, things like Zet bound, uh, you know, the, you know, what do they call the GELP1 terzepatites or, you know, whatever, but those things are ridiculously expensive. Ridiculously expensive. And it's very difficult sometimes, but not all insurance companies are gonna cover that. And then you have other diseases that are also very expensive, diabetes, of course, cancer, I mean, you know, heart disease, but it it it just costs so much money because there's so much money in it. And I think that's a problem for healthcare. And I really think that something with healthcare has to be done. And I would not be opposed to some kind of a government regulation that doesn't put the government in control of health care, but that at least gave us some valuable options that make sense. Because some of the options that are available out there right now, they don't necessarily make a lot of sense. There are a lot of people in this country that are still on Obamacare. Which, you know, my brother retired a couple of years ago and he had to be in Obamacare for a while. But now the problem with Obamacare is they have just identified a tremendous amount of fraud with regard to Obamacare. We have over one million people, one million people in this country who are participating in Obamacare that do not have a social security number. The lack of a social security number for that kind of help is a big, big red flag for fraud. It's huge. So there we are. But the only thing that I would implore people to do is before you blindly go in to a voting booth, before you give that person your vote, know who they are. Know who they are. And don't just use the sound bites on the news to help you determine who they are. You're gonna have to do research on these people. You're gonna have to go back to when they were saying these things, you know, when they were younger. And you're you're you're really gonna have to weigh what's going on here. You have to know the if you still want to vote for them, vote for them if you believe that they are the ones. But, you know, like we talked about at the beginning of the episode, is this really something that is going to be changing in this country? Is socialism becoming more of an option for us? Or is it just because Trump derangement syndrome is so rampant that everybody is like anything but what we have now, anything but what we have now, I'm willing to give a shot. Well, I'm not, because it doesn't make any sense. So all I ask is that you do your homework before you cast your ballot for these people. Know who the heck it is you're voting for. And we also have to figure out a way to remind them we don't work for them. We don't necessarily have to live our lives the way they tell us to, which is a prominent feature of socialism. No, they work for us. We vote them into office. So technically, we are their board of directors. And just like any good employer, if you've got somebody out there that you've entrusted with this responsibility and they fall flat on their face or they seem to be doing everything for their own gain and nothing for you, get rid of them. Fire them. You're out of here. We need to do more of that, too. You know, you you you may like an incumbent, and you can do this, and it doesn't matter whether you're a Republican, a Democrat, or whatever. You can do it in the primary. You know, in the general election, you generally have to, well, in, you know, in the primaries, you have to vote your party. So now even that is changing somewhat in some states, which I don't completely agree with, but you know, it is it is kind of changing. But you do have an option that there will be probably multiple Democratic candidates, multiple Republican candidates. And the problem is what's mudding the waters right now is that you have these socialists and these communists who are disguising themselves as Democrats simply to get elected. And when they are elected, I think there's a very good chance that's when we're gonna find out who these people really are. But we need to own our part in this. The American people. We need to own our part. We need to know who these people are. We don't judge a person based on sound bites, and certainly don't judge a candidate based on political campaign commercials. My gosh, those things are the biggest waste of time. I was in radio for 30 years, and there was only one thing that I refused to do. And as part of your job being on air, you have a responsibility to spend a couple of hours every day after or before your shift doing commercials, you know, that that have to go on the station. And I refused for 30 years to do any commercial for any political candidate or any issue, even though, in some cases, some of these people were very, very good friends of mine. But I wouldn't do it. I would not do a commercial for them because whatever the script is, it's gonna be laced with half-truths. The photography is gonna be the most unflattering photography that you can see. So I just refused. And and it was a contentious part of my career. That almost cost me my career a couple of times because I flat out refused. And in one case, it was for somebody running for Congress in Indiana who was a very, very good friend of mine. And his camp called me and said, Hey, we want you to do his commercial. Will you do it? And I said, I will not. And they said, Why? You two are great friends. I said, and that's exactly why I'm not gonna do it. So even with the people that you know and you like, just because they're an incumbent doesn't mean they're doing a good job. They might have done a good job at one point, but especially these politicians who make a career out of politics, and you're talking about somebody who's been in that position for years and years and years, and maybe even decades and decades, uh, you know, that's part of what Susan Collins in Maine is running into now with Graham Plattener, is that is it they really want him, or are they just so fatigued on Susan Collins? Well, I say in that case, in the state of Maine, the devil is the one that you know. So I don't know, take that however you want to take that. But you have to be really, really careful. And it's incumbent on us to know who the heck these people are. Because if socialism means comprehensive government ownership of everything and central planning, it's not gonna work in this country. So we need to be careful. And I would really like, if I could just figure out, I just want to talk to one of these people, not who I don't want to talk to any of the candidates who identify as socialists, but I would like to talk to some of the voters who are intrigued by these people and have decided to give them their support. Why are you giving them their support? I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it. You are free to do whatever you want, support whoever you want. I just want to know your rationale behind it. What are you basing that on? Are you basing that on a tremendous amount of research? Or do you not really understand what socialism is? And you're only going by what you read on social media from people who are like-minded. That's frightening. We have to get out of that. So anyway, you know, we're gonna be hearing a lot more about that. We're gonna be hearing a lot more about these Supreme Court decisions as well, and we will do future updates on that. But uh, you know, in the meantime, we're just gonna keep plugging away and we're just gonna keep talking about these issues and see if there's anything that you and I together can do. Because that's at the end of the day, that's our responsibility. That's that's our part in a free society. We need to hold our leaders accountable. And if they're not willing to be accountable, they have to go. And that's why we have elections. We need to do a better job with those elections. That's gonna wrap it up for this edition of The Truth Behind the Truth. Thank you for tuning in. I'm Jonathan Prell, and we'll see you next week.