Please continue to pray about the socialist agenda that is trying to take root in our nation.

Psalm 16:8

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Three months before democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 28, stunned politicians by defeating a 10-term incumbent in a Democratic primary in New York, Nicanor Ochisor, a cabbie in his mid-60s, stunned his family by committing suicide in his garage in Queens.

Ochisor, a taxi cab driver for nearly 30 years, had been dismayed by plunging profits in recent months, and his son said his father was distressed over losing significant business to the ride-sharing company Uber. Ochisor was the fourth New York City cab driver to kill himself in five months.

Ocasio-Cortez responded to the tragedy with a tweet: “Yellow cab drivers are in financial ruin due to the unregulated expansion of Uber.”

By late August, Ocasio-Cortez was a political star touting democratic socialism in appearances across the country, and federal records showed her campaign staffers had paid $4,000 for at least part of their ground transportation between April and June….

But basic economics teaches that no scarce service is free, including college, and one economist estimates that Medicare-for-all would cost at least $32 trillion over 10 years. The burden for payment would inevitably fall on taxpayers—many of whom work within the free-market system that democratic socialists oppose as unfair.

Indeed, concern alone isn’t enough for effective policies. No system in a sinful world is perfect or without abuses (including capitalism), but an impulse toward compassion by compulsion can lead down a dangerous road, including for Christians attracted to socialist ideas.

And while democratic socialists haven’t made huge inroads into the upcoming midterm elections, they’ve made a big splash, pushing some politicians to the left, grabbing the interest of younger voters, and tapping into ideas already embraced by some voters across the political spectrum….

DSA isn’t a political party—it’s an organization for members paying dues, but it also endorses candidates. In recent years, membership has skyrocketed. Between 1982 and 2016, the group maintained about 6,000 members. Since the 2016 elections, membership has swelled to nearly 50,000.

The growth comes as a Gallup poll reported in August that Democrats have a more favorable view of socialism than capitalism. (Fifty-seven percent said they viewed socialism positively, while only 47 percent viewed capitalism positively.) The strongest support for socialism came from younger voters.

What does DSA believe? Some DSA leaders have called for abolishing capitalism, abolishing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), and even abolishing the U.S. Senate. Members debate how to implement such sweeping proposals….

BUT WHAT IS THE REAL THING?

Jay Richards, a fellow at the Discovery Institute and an expert on economics and free markets, says that what the current crop of democratic socialists describe isn’t socialism in its historic form.

Richards says historically the idea of socialism has in view the abolition of private property, or government ownership of productive property: “That’s what socialism actually meant in the 20th century.” But he notes few democratic socialists advocate that idea today: “More often than not what they have in mind is just some pleasing idea that they usually associate with Scandinavian nations.”

In fact, some democratic socialists point to Nordic-style welfare policies as the ideal for the United States. But as The Economist has pointed out, “Those countries are not socialist. They are free-market economies with high rates of taxation that finance generous public services. Indeed, the ‘socialist’ part of those countries that Mr. [Bernie] Sanders’ fans like would be unaffordable without the dynamic capitalist part they dislike.”…

Though many democratic socialists don’t push socialism in its purest form, Richards says it’s worrisome that socialism’s renewed popularity puts at least some voters and candidates on a trajectory toward that end.

“That’s essentially what I think democratic socialism is. It’s a movement in which a population gets more and more accustomed to this dependency. … Rather than focusing on how we create value and wealth for ourselves and others, we focus on how we confiscate the wealth of other people,” Richards says.

“The more the population is in that confiscatory mode, the more dangerous it gets.” (Excerpts from Jamie Dean article in WORLD.)