Sen. Bernie Sanders, the improbable current front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, is lying to the American people when he tell us that “democratic socialism” simply means he wants to give the vast majority of Americans new opportunities to succeed and wants millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share of taxes.
In fact, my extensive research on comments Sanders has made going back decades shows he has warmly embraced not just socialism but communism, and praised tyrannical dictatorships that have trashed the freedoms Americans enjoy under the Bill of Rights that are part of our Constitution.
Sanders is not just another liberal Democrat who wants to expand social programs, in the tradition of Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. He is the most radical candidate in American history with a real shot at winning the presidential nomination of one of our two major political parties.
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In a “special interview” in 1981 with a communist newspaper called The Militant, Sanders, who had just become mayor of Burlington, Vt., claimed there are American police departments “dominated by fascists and Nazis.”
“We’ve got cops here who are good trade unionists on all the regular trade union issues, and who also have a concern for young people,” Sanders told The Militant, in reaction to some concerns voiced by socialists who were worried that he received too much support from local police during his 1980 mayoral campaign.
In other words, Burlington had good cops – but bad cops dominated many other police departments.
The attack Sanders made on police is not only outrageous, it’s also incredibly ironic. The Nazis were, in fact, socialists who believed in collectively managing property and most of the German economy.