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From accusations of embracing socialism leveled at the Obama administration by the Tea Party movement to the rise of self-proclaimed democratic socialist Bernie Sanders as the second highest vote-getter in the 2016 and 2020 Democratic Party primaries, socialism has been an emerging movement and topic of conversation in the American body politic.
While polling data suggests that socialism is generally still viewed far less favorably than capitalism or free markets overall, the younger Millennial and Gen Z generations are more embracing of socialism than generations before. Similarly, those younger generations are more likely than their forbearers to be among the Nones: those who proclaim no religious affiliation and no religious or spiritual beliefs.
Is socialism filling in for the human religious impulse, allowing people to feel a part of something larger than themselves without embracing the concepts of God and church?
On this episode, Kevin Williamson, roving correspondent for National Review and author of the 2010 book, “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism,” discusses the emergence of socialism in American politics and the spiritual role it seems to play now, and has historically played, for its proponents.
Kevin Williamson at National Review
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism – Kevin Williamson
The Celestial Afterlife of Karl Marx – Kevin Williamson
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s crass Marxist materialism – Dan Hugger
The key to understanding Bernie Sanders – Rev. Ben Johnson
Bruce Ashford: Marxism is a false religion (video) – Rev. Ben Johnson
There is no ‘Catholic case for communism’ – Rev. Ben Johnson
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Some thirty years ago, I spent two years as a visiting professor in an American university. The experience was most instructive. There were, even then, snarling Marxists on the faculty, browbeating their astoundingly ignorant students, but on a personal level what made me yearn for home was the health-insurance plan in which my family and I were enrolled. It seemed to have been designed by Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen. I ruefully admitted to myself that while I am a staunch anti-statist, free-marketer, I am largely content with how the Japanese and European systems work. I hasten to say, however, that there are indeed important cultural and demographic factors. To put it simply, the Germans, for example, and the Japanese look approvingly on a degree of social conformity that ever feisty Americans would never endure. Built into the languages we speak are forms indicating both closeness and “social distancing.” One addresses even long-standing acquaintances by their surnames, with an honorific. There is no general word for “you,” and in Japanese every sentence is marked for speech level. In Germany, Teutonic stubbornness and pride are blunted by the fear of making a fool of oneself in public. If there are videos “gone viral” of Japanese or Germans punching each other over the wearing of face masks, I have yet to see any…“Socialism” appeals to spoiled, young barbarians who not only wish to be “cool” but who also want someone else to pay for their pseudo-educations and who yearn for the spectacle of the guillotine, as promised by their professors.