Category: 2016 Presidential Election

A new Gallup poll shows that more Democrats have a favorable view of socialism than capitalism. This pattern has been building for a while. Senator Bernie Sanders took socialism mainstream in the party during the 2016 Democratic presidential primary. Since then, Democratic Party candidates have been increasingly attaching themselves to the ideology. …several members of the Democratic Socialists of America are writers and editors at Jacobin magazine.
A magazine that would enthusiastically embrace this title is signaling that, like socialist movements of the past, the DSA is willing to drop the “democratic” part of their moniker and instead rely on the traditional method for socialist revolution – bloodshed, violence, and tyranny. The Jacobins were the most violent and radical political group of the French Revolution. Led by Maximilien Robespierre, the group responded to a growing backlash against the revolution by executing anyone their so-called Committee of Public Safety deemed insufficiently loyal. The Jacobin clubs located throughout the country were used as a secret police force to root out dissent among politicians and the general populace alike. Historian Timothy Tackett estimates that almost 40,000 people were killed under the Jacobin control of the French government. Many were beheaded by guillotine in a grotesque public spectacle after a show trial, and others were brutally executed with firearms. In the case of one period in the city of Lyon, people were executed en masse by cannon fire. This period of carnage was known as the Reign of Terror. It is hard to imagine a modern-day Reign of Terror happening in America. But consider the recent phenomenon of outrage mobs on social media demanding people be fired and ostracized for expressing un-PC points of view. Think about the left-wing activists taking over classrooms to prevent conservative voices from speaking. Think about the rash of people being attacked for wearing MAGA hats. Think about the violence of Antifa. Perhaps it is not so difficult to imagine.