Sunday, January 6, 2019

POLLS: Americans Warming to Socialism over Capitalism

Polls show American voters across the country – in particular, young people and Democrats – increasingly warming to socialism over capitalism, reports FOX News.

The shift is a recent phenomenon, and reflects a dimming view of capitalism more than anything, notes the news network.

I hope this doesn't come as a surprise to long-term Target Liberty readers.

As I have mentioned many times, on November 10, 2016, two days after the election, I wrote a post, The Problem With the Donald Trump Victory for LIbertarians.

I began that post this way:
Heading into the election, I felt that for strategic reasons Hillary Clinton was the best alternative for libertarians. Not because she is good on many issues, she is not, but because she would come with a ready-made opposition that would listen to libertarian arguments against her.

It would have been a great opportunity to reach out to Trump supporters and spread the libertarian message. That opportunity is now gone with the Trump victory. Trump supporters are rabid, they will likely follow him down almost any hell hole.

These people are not going to listen to our arguments for smaller government. Their man is in power.

There will be opposition to Trump but it will be coming from the left, not the Trump right.

The left is all about expanding the state. Thus, it will be very difficult to reach out to these people and present state shrinking anti-Trump ideas. They are a perfect target for the socialists.
And so it is.

FOX reports:
Back in 2010, 68 percent of young people, 18-29 years old, said they approved of capitalism, while 51 percent said they approved of socialism, according to Gallup. Fast-forward to August 2018, and that same age group backs socialism over capitalism, 51 percent to 45 percent.
Democrats, meanwhile, were evenly split between capitalism and socialism back in 2010. But now, 57 percent say they hold a positive view of socialism, compared with just 47 percent who say the same for capitalism.
The trend extends to high school students, according to a YouGov poll released in November, which found 14-17-year-olds split 50-50 on whether socialism or capitalism is better...
Putting aside the label of “socialism,” a 2017 Pew survey found that 57 percent of Americans 18-29 years old want a “bigger government with more services,” compared with just 38 percent of Americans 50-64, and 40 percent of Americans over 65.
There has been a trend toward socialism for some time but the election of Trump hasn't stopped that. Indeed, as Tom Woods notes, there is something of a cult of personality around Trump. I believe that it is the foundation for what I call the neoright.

What Libertarians for Trump never seemed to have calculated was Trump's sucking the air out of the liberty movement. The kids think the lying Trump represents capitalism so they are moving leftward because the right fails to promote a free market, pro-liberty alternative to Trump. For the kids, it is a choice between Trump and socialism and they aren't choosing Trump.

The right is now all about cheering on the buffoon Trump regardless of the fact that he regularly calls for actions that are anti-free market and anti-liberty.

This is a mess.

Trump positions need to be attacked aggressively whenever he makes an anti-free market or anti-liberty statement, and any time he calls for an anti-free market or anti-liberty position.

It's not as though there isn't enough in his tweets to go after, from comments about his mercantilist trade views to his pro-monetary price inflation desires to the neocons he surrounds himself with.

Trump is bad news.

  -RW 

5 comments:

  1. Still dont think this can be blamed entirely on Trump. If Hillary hadn't played dirty political tricks that we know for a fact now she did, Bernie Sanders would probably have been the nomination and he was openly socialist. He still almost won the nomination even with Hillary's cutthroat and well-connected campaign. That was grass roots support. This has been a long time coming and is accompanying the snowflake movement. As someone who is quite a bit younger than many of you, I have seen things progressing this direction in the schools years ago, even in the red state I grew up in. I understand this may be recent polls, but this didn't happen over night. The socialists have been inching their way for decades like the proverbial camel with its nose in the tent.

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  2. A century of ever increasing mis-teaching in the schools has been going on. Anything that opposed it could have been a catalyst to increase the speed. Even if nothing happened things would continue in the direction of socialism. So long as the state has the schools socialism will gain and liberty will retreat. Blame Trump if you wish but if Ron Paul were elected or Hillary Clinton socialism would still gain ground.

    Remember socialism is never discredited because it was never the right sort of socialism that was tried and/or it was the wrong people who were in charge. So even with HRC as president and socialism causing massive unemployment it would just be blamed on those "libertarians" that didn't allow socialism to work. I've seen that charge countless times that libertarians were to blame for one state failure or another despite only one or none being in any federal office.


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  3. "The right is now all about cheering on the buffoon Trump regardless of the fact that he regularly calls for actions that are anti-free market and anti-liberty."

    Everyone on the "right"? It doesn't seem like it. Trump only seems to have fractured support among the GOP and so-called "right wing" commentators.

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  4. It's very disconcerting to see the antipathy against Capitalism growing in this country---even on the Right. Until yesterday, I belonged to a Facebook discussion group ("The American Conservative" which, judging from their website, I thought was very paleo-conservative / Old Right conservative). I posted Target Liberty's article from the other day, criticizing Tucker Carlson's anti-Capitalist/anti-Free-enterprise stance, and commented on how both Right and Left seem to be competing to embrace Populist attitudes of antipathy toward Capitalism and free markets.
    Boy, was I attacked! I couldn't believe how many people conflate Capitalism with Corporativism / Crony-capitalism! I was accused of siding with "the Power Eliet," and of worshiping Gordon Gecko and greed...and of being of the same type and character as those "who destroyed this country." I was even mocked for such truisms as "capitalist entrepreneurs take risks," and informed by these scolds that capitalists exploit everyone, earn nothing, and risk nothing. (I even learned that suburbs and strip-malls are "soulless" and are evidence of capitalism's decay).
    I've said it before: If we are to play the "Long Game," we must abolish government schooling, or else face the fact that the anti-capitalist / pro-Marxist narrative will continue to be indoctrinated into each successive, school-age generation, and such attitudes will be increasingly accepted as "truth."

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  5. "POLLS: Americans Warming to Socialism over Capitalism"

    Looks like they're getting tired of so much winning.

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