by Fred Lucas
Vice President Mike Pence warned a gathering of conservative activists Thursday about the perils of socialism and its historical record of failure.
“Socialism has failed everywhere it has been tried, in every era in every continent. Freedom works,” Pence told a cheering crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference, known as CPAC. “It was freedom and not socialism that ended slavery, ended two world wars, [and] has made America a beacon of hope.”
The vice president, tasked with leading the government’s response to the coronavirus, also said Americans “expect us to work together” to keep the public safe.
Pence repeated President Donald Trump’s vow that “America will never be a socialist country” as he noted that the ideology has gained in popularity among lawmakers on the left in Congress as well as on college campuses.
Socialism is being sold as a promise of better health care and a cleaner environment, Pence said.
“The reality of socialism is different,” the vice president said. “The truth is, citizens in the most free countries in the world earn seven times more than citizens in the least free countries.”
Pence noted Venezuela’s grave problems and shortages as the country is in the midst of a struggle for freedom against what the Trump administration considers dictator Nicolas Maduro’s illegitimate government.
“Venezuela was once the second wealthiest country in our hemisphere,” Pence said. “Then we wake up after a decade of a socialist dictatorship. Almost 5 million people in that country have fled to neighboring lands.”
Pence spoke about a woman from Venezuela who said her grandchildren had to rise at 4 a.m. to get a ticket to stand in line to buy a piece of bread in the afternoon.
“This president and this administration will continue to stand with the people of Venezuela,” Pence said.
The vice president also said the Democratic Party has embraced socialism.
“Whether it’s called Medicare for All or a Green New Deal, Democrats have embraced socialism,” he said. “History tells us it has literally impoverished millions of people and robbed the liberty of generations.”
Pence began by speaking about the coronavirus one day after Trump put the vice president in charge of the federal government’s response. The vice president said:
We’re all in this together. This is not the time for partisanship. The American people expect us to work together. … I promise you this administration will work with leaders in both parties, on the state and local level. This president will always put the health and safety of America first.
Pence said the White House’s coronavirus task force has met daily and that as of Thursday, 15 known cases of the disease have been detected in the United States.
“The risk to the American public remains low,” Pence said. “We are ready for anything.”
CPAC, the largest annual national gathering of conservative activists, runs Thursday through Saturday at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, just outside Washington.
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Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Lucas is also the author of “Tainted by Suspicion: The Secret Deals and Electoral Chaos of Disputed Presidential Elections.”
Photo “Mike Pence” by NBC News.
Socialism? Like social security, Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans Administration, public universities, public primary and elementary schools, etc?
The scope and power of the federal government is WAY to big, but not the Boomer-style “socialism!” that Pence and his ilk decry. No, the biggest waste of national resources is our bloated military-industrial complex, which is socialistic by the way. But apparently sending a few shekels to those in need is socialism! while sending hundreds of billions to military contractors is by-the-boostraps Boomer-style capitalism.
Your observation about the scope and power of the Federal government being too big is valid, but your list of programs that you claim are examples of “socialism” is pretty far off the mark. They may be examples of government programs that are too big, too generous, and out of control, but they are NOT examples of “socialism”.
“Socialism” by definition entails the government taking ownership of ALL assets and then re-distributing them (actually just the right to use these assets) according to a policy that attempts to achieve absolute equality in all things. Clearly a fool’s errand, and one that can never be successful because it goes against millions of years of evolution.
And, by the way, anyone (like Bernie Sanders) who is trying to sell “Medicare for all” as some sort of “free” (meaning paid for by someone other than the recipient) medical care either doesn’t know much about Medicare or is a fraud (or, in Bernie’s case, probably both). The only “free” part of Medicare is Part A — and even that is supposedly paid for by one’s previous payroll taxes over a working lifetime. You have to pay extra for Part B, which currently runs about $1,735 per year per person. And that still leaves a lot of medical care uncovered, so most people find it necessary to purchase a Medicare Supplement policy and a prescription drug policy (Part D) or join a “Medicare Preferred” HMO, which can easily add another couple thousand dollars a year. And even after all that, you still have deductibles and co-pays.
And let’s not forget the fact that even with just the limited Part A & B coverage, Medicare is still losing billions every month, so much that it will probably be bankrupt within a few years. The various estimates of what “Medicare for all” would cost (with lots of disagreement over how many tens of trillions this would add up to) still only address the existing Part A & B. If you add to those estimates the cost of eliminating the need for supplemental insurance, deductibles, co-pays, etc., which is what most people seems to think Bernie is promising, and we might be measuring it not in trillions or dollars but in quadrillions.
Socialism, if done right, PROTECTS our freedoms; so-called RUGGED individualism endangers our freedom by creating a dog-eat-dog dystopia!
Utter nonsense, as usual. Socialism, by definition, destroys economic freedom, and, since the only way it can be maintained is by a totalitarian government, it also destroys political freedom.
William, you say “if done right”, but you have never cited an instance where it was “done right”, presumably because there are no such instances. So, if nobody has ever figured out how to “do it right” (because there is no way to do it right?), why would anyone think that Bernie Sanders (or AOC or any of the other nut jobs promoting socialism, including you) will somehow come up with the magic solution.
Some of your posts occasionally make some sense, but when you start promoting socialism, you are simply displaying your ignorance of history and economics for all to see.