Competing Ideas, Forgotten History

 At the time I was in eighth grade the Soviet Union had already fallen. The main communist nation, often called the Evil Empire, had collapsed. At the time it seemed reasonable to assume its successor state, Russia, would eventually become a democratic country much like the United States. We know that transition was never simple. Russia today is a different animal from the Soviet Union—more authoritarian state capitalism than classical Marxism-Leninism—but the original system’s failure remains instructive.

Right now, if you follow commentators on the right—Ben Shapiro, Glenn Beck, and others—they are talking about the energy on the radical left, mainly those who call themselves Democratic Socialists.

Glenn Beck lays out the sharper ideological critique here: [VIDEO]

Beck’s segment, “How the Radical Left has Gone Completely Off the Rails,” frames the issue as a deeper conflict inside the Democratic Party over socialism, constitutional limits, and the direction of the left.

Bill O’Reilly’s segment, “The Voting Divide & Socialism Rising?,” takes a more observational approach, focusing on the growing gap between big-city progressive strongholds and the rest of the country.

Here’s the O’Reilly segment: [VIDEO]

In that segment, O’Reilly uses Minnesota as a case study of what he calls “Loonville” and ends by asking whether the rise of Democratic Socialists is just a fad or a growing trend.

I wrote earlier about how many of these Democratic Socialists want to upend the system of separation of powers and checks and balances. They go further. Official DSA platform language and working-group documents call for steps toward fully abolishing the police and prison system, abolishing ICE, legalizing migration with broad amnesty, and shifting control of the means of production toward democratic or public ownership. Recent platform language has also included structural changes such as abolishing the Senate and replacing the Electoral College. That is not a caricature; it is what they have put in writing.

I do not want to join the pure hyperventilation over communism suddenly rearing its head in America. The philosophy is gaining traction for very real reasons. Affordability is the core one. The rent is too damn high. Incomes have not kept pace with housing, insurance, and everyday costs. For a lot of younger people the idea that the state should simply provide more of these things feels like a practical answer rather than an abstract ideology.

America is still supposed to be a marketplace of ideas. Communism and socialism, however much many of us detest them, have to compete in that marketplace. We already have extensive evidence from the twentieth century—and from more recent cases—of why the full version does not work in the real world. When the ideas are more accepted by younger people, it suggests we have not adequately educated them on that history or on how capitalism and constitutional democracy actually function. That educational gap is part of the problem.

The philosophy still looks like a serious threat. Worse, many of its advocates are running and winning in Democratic primaries even when their views sit well outside the party’s median. Ben Shapiro has made this point repeatedly on his podcast: Democrats often lack strong internal resistance to far-left candidates. Large numbers of voters will simply vote blue no matter who. Others cannot bring themselves to support a Republican under any circumstances. In low-turnout urban primaries, that dynamic gives more extreme candidates a real advantage.

O’Reilly’s segment ends by asking whether this is just a fad or a growing trend that is here to stay. His guest called it both. That seems right. The organizational infrastructure is real—DSA chapters, primary challenges, aligned mayors and legislators—and it has produced visible wins in certain cities. At the same time, much of the broader appeal still tracks more closely with housing costs and economic frustration than with a fully developed theory of the means of production. If those material pressures ease, the emotional fuel can diminish. If they do not, and if the governing experiments continue to produce the kinds of results O’Reilly highlighted in Minnesota, the trend has room to harden.

The ideas are competing. The historical record is still available. Whether enough people still know that record is the open question.