Let’s put this anti-Democratic Socialist nonsense in some perspective.
The predominant fact about the U.S. is that after banishing the robber barons and somewhat equalizing things, we’ve gone from a dangerous inegalitatian society to an insanely unequal one in decades.
That kind of inequality isn’t good, even for the wealthy.
In the U.S., we’ve seen not only leftist groups complaining of the inequality, but groups like the Tea Party and MAGA complaining that our system is no longer working for them. Strip away the social policy issues like women’s health, gender, and racism, and their complaint has been that there’s an elite making out like bandits off us. That’s what I see, too! (But, no, I don’t believe that elite buggers children in a pizza joint.) They just get bamboozled into thinking it’s the welfare cheats or the immigrants stealing from them, not corporations – or that putting a wealthy con man in the White House will somehow improve things.
What is this socialist stuff, anyway? It got a bad rap in the 20th Century: the Russian Revolution scared businessfolk; and Russia under Stalin turned very, very ugly.
But in the 19th Century it was a Christian concept, mostly! Many groups in the U.S. and the U.K. tried cooperatives and Christian communities. There were a surprisingly wide variety of Christian Socialist groups who saw socialism as an actively Christian concept. Many argued that the economic relationships created by industrial capitalism were themselves morally defective because they violated the Christian conception of community.
Why not? Jesus lived that way. Jesus celebrated the poor and understood the debilitating effect on a man’s heart of having vast wealth, or He wouldn’t have so picturesquely described the difficulty a rich man would have reaching the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus told us to welcome the poorest among us – not to poison and cheat each other to make outlandish profits.
Yeah, then socialism got preached (but not practiced) by hostile nations. It got mixed in with Russia’s national interests. Russians wanted to bury us and talked a communist game, so communism – socialism – seemed traitorous.
Contemporary Democratic Socialists are not evil, as our Vice-President Vance says. They’re tapping into a long Christian-based ethical tradition. They’re also not dangerous to “Democrats.” They’re speaking the terrible secret both political parties don’t want us hearing: that both, despite definite differences, have participated in the disequalization of our once nation. With them alternating or sharing control of out nation during the past century, this debilitating inequality grow on their watch?
They all make or acquiesce in the many governmental decisions that pave the way: tax cuts for the rich; freeing corporations from restrictions that protect our health or pocketbooks; the absolute certainty that universal health care, as practiced happily in every other nation, is simply unthinkable. Yo! That’s because vast money can be made by insurers and middle men (and middle women) that wouldn’t be available in a government run health service devoted to treating people, not profit.
Democratic Socialists are speaking some truths that vast corporate behemoths wish we wouldn’t notice. Donald Trump is personally an unfortunate president, undermining our military, our government, and our relations with other countries; but he’s part of the same circus we’ve watched for decades.
Some folks like to ask themselves what Jesus would do. Well, it’s easier to see him as a Democratic Socialist questioning genocide than wearing a MAGA hat.
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[The above column appeared on the 6th of September, 2026, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper’s website, and will be up presently on KRWG’s website. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM ]
