The Crimson Unicorn

The outflowing of support for Bernie Sanders on Facebook seems to mirror the similar swell for support among equally deluded fans of Donald Trump.  Here my focus is on the Cult of the Crimson Unicorn, i.e. US socialists circa 2015.

By crimson I mean “red, socialist, communist” and by unicorn I mean something that is fictional and has no basis in reality:  an unattainable ideal held by people too clueless to understand that.

Semantics.  First, let’s get some semantics out of the way.   When the Colonel Sanders crowd barks and brays for socialism, they mean the flavor served in Denmark and Sweden, not the one from North Korea.   Generally we refer to Denmark as “socialist” and China as “communist”.   In doctrinaire terms, Denmark is actually capitalist and China is socialist, and no country has attained the anarchic state which Marxists call “communism”.  I agree the Denmark is actually capitalist – albeit with a heavy dose of socialism – but just so everyone understands what we’re talking about, it’s probably best to continue referring to countries like North Korea as communist anyway.

One element the Sanders crowd never addresses, but which their opponents love to bring up – as I do – is taxes.   I did a blog a few years ago about this, http://formula57l.blogspot.com/2012/08/who-wants-to-run-america_2532.html.   I still think It’s relevant today.

Leaving aside a totalitarian dictatorship I don’t think anyone wants, the question is why we can’t have something like Denmark.   Yes, most things are paid for, including health care and education.   But it comes at a price which few in the US would be willing to pay:  horrendous taxes.  Income taxes are much higher, sales taxes are higher (25% vs 5% in the US), and the tax on cars is 180% (almost triple).  In Sweden the top bracket approaches 100%.  Not everything is as bad as they say it is (http://www.snopes.com/denmark-socialism-brutal-meme/) but it’s still far higher than any of the Crimson Unicorn crowd will ever admit.  I would suggest the theater majors clamoring for Bernie Sanders take a closer look at the cost of their plans.

Libertarians.   I’m a Libertarian.  What that means is that I read Ayn Rand in college, adopted capitalism as an ideal, and initially took the Republicans’ support for that doctrine at face value.  Until I read books like The Suicidal Corporation, by Paul Weaver, and saw how Newt Gingrich and his cronies cynically floated the Contract With America in 1994 as a means of co-opting what they perceived to be libertarian values, with no sincere expectation of supporting that agenda.  Republicans have too much in common with big business and – with few exceptions – no interest in supporting libertarian ideals.  

The Tea Party movement is often described as Libertarian, but I see too much evidence that much of that is simply opposition to Obama because he's black masquerading as libertarians.   Where were these people when Clinton was in office?  Or Carter?

I’d distinguish libertarianism from socialism in the following manner.  Ideologically they’re opposites.  In practical terms the best we can hope for from “socialism” is a Sweden-Denmark deal with everything paid for by the government and insanely high taxes.  The best we can hope for from libertarianism is lower taxes, less wars, and more freedom.  As for the political possibilities….

Jane Fonda once said that if we all truly understood what communism was about, we’d embrace it.  I’ll switch that on its head and say that if Americans were given the truth about what the Danish flavor of socialism meant – super high taxes – we’d reject it immediately and never think about it again.  That’s the ugly truth about Bernie Sanders’ platform:  wishful thinking and assuming that everyone else is drinking the same Kool-Aid.  And I don’t consider Denmark to be a real ideal anyway, although they can claim they’ve “made it happen”, which is more than the Marxists can claim about “true communism”.

As for libertarianism, I sincerely believe that it’s practical as a reality in terms of being a workable model that would actually work in real life.   That is not the problem.  The problem is that there are too few Libertarians and too much entrenched interests in Congress and in America – both major parties – to make enacting this agenda a reality.  The Tea Party came closest, and Rand Paul is this flavor’s biggest candidate, but unless Donald Trump or Ben Carson “have a fatal heart attack and die” between now and the GOP convention in summer 2016, I’m not holding my breath for Rand Paul to win the nomination.