Earlier this week, socialist Delegate Lee Carter got up on the House floor to lecture us on the sins of the United States while praising socialism as the cure for America. This is Nick Freitas response.
Transcript
Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise for a point of personal privilege. Delegate Freitas you have the floor. I love to hear the groans over there. Madam Speaker, Delegate Murez gave a very impassioned speech a couple of days ago with respect to a the dangers of some of the concerns with respect to socialism and the response he got was an interesting one, because the response was ultimately not a defense of socialism, the response ended up being a diatribe an indictment of the United States and all of our previous sins. And it was amazing to me because as we heard the list of everything the United States is apparently responsible for, both in this country across the world, there was certainly elements of truth to it. But I found it fascinating to hear that, that was all followed up by “we fundamentally deny”. Who exactly in the United States is fundamentally denying that the United States government treated African-Americans badly? Who’s fundamentally denying that the United States government treated Native Americans badly? Who is fundamentally denying that the United States has been involved in foreign interventions that it shouldn’t be? Nobody’s denying that. In fact I would tell the delegate to make these accusations that if you want to look for regimes that fundamentally denied their past and current sins I would encourage you to actually look at those regimes which adopted the Socialist philosophy. Because if we look at what was happening within the Soviet Union, we didn’t see Pravda getting up there and actually doing a good editorial response to what Stalin was doing when he was actually massacring and starving out his own people. We don’t see the press under Red China that was going and talking about the tens of millions of people that were dying under Mao’s Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. We see people being locked up in Cuba and Venezuela for being political dissenters.
So while yes, this United States, while the United States does have things within our history that we can be ashamed of and that we should seek atonement for. The idea that we don’t have a discussion, or we don’t have a press, or that we don’t have an Academia that is willing to actually call out those episodes in our history. And that we don’t have people on both sides of the aisle that recognize those points of our history and seek to actually make atonement is ridiculous. But that is very common and socialist regimes. The other thing that I thought was interesting is that social, socialism has become something of a caricature because of the way it’s been represented to many people in this country by socialist. Delegate Carter did not actually describe what’s socialism was or whether, or whether it was a particular brand of socialism that he supported, he simply listed out a series of objectives. We want people to be free from want. We want people to have food, we want people to have clothes, we want people to have shelter, we want people to have healthcare. I have news for everybody, we all want those things. The devil is in the details with respect to how do you actually intend to achieve those things. And as I look at socialism, and I will give you this much, socialism is done a really good job of rebranding itself because every time it fails it seems to come out and say we’ll that wasn’t real socialism. But there is a common theme within that political philosophy, and that seemed is the abolition of the private ownership of the means of production. That’s the common theme throughout socialism, so if that’s what you want, it’s very simple. What it essentially means is that private companies don’t exist when it comes to capital, don’t exist when it comes to factories, don’t exist when it comes to laboratories. We’re going to allow the people or the government to run those institutions for us. And here’s my question. Can we think of a socialist regime that is actually implemented this sort of central planning and government control over the economy that is actually produced the sorts of results or objectives the delegate Carter has listed?
I would suggest, Madam Speaker, that as we look at the various to debates going on on this floor, the true test of whether or not this socialism works as a political philosophy is not going to be found in my opposition to it or Delegate Carter’s support of it, it’s going to be found by what do people do that have lived under those regimes? What do those people do? What are the poor people in those regimes, what are the poor people across the world, what do they seek out? Do they sek out socialist regimes or do they seek out free market economies? Because last time I checked I don’t have much of a recollection of American workers in this country running down to the south of Florida, making a makeshift raft and desperately trying to get to the Socialist utopia of Cuba. I don’t recall people in West Germany desperately risking life and limb to go over, under or through the Berlin Wall in order to make it into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. But I’ve got good news, here in a free country, if you would like to live as a socialist you’re welcome to do so. You can get a bunch of your friends together, you can go get some property, and then you can go live in a commune, and guess what? I’m not going to try to stop you. I’ll even try to lower your taxes. But you can’t force me to go with you, and you can’t force me to pay for it. And that is the true problem with socialism as it has been applied throughout history, no matter where it’s attempted. It has always resulted in oppression, violence and degradation, so much so, that the people from those countries are desperately trying to get to this country. And so, Madam Speaker, I would just simply say the United States is not just a country of entrepreneurs, is not just a country of scientist, of artisans, we are also ultimately a country of people that rebell against any sort of political philosophy which would seek to deprive us of our liberty, and that is why I believe that socialism will never take root here in the United States.
Thank you, Madam Speaker.
