Renowned economist Thomas Sowell believes that the mainstream media and the education system are to blame for the latest surge in socialist ideas across America.
On Fox Business Network’s “Cavuto: Coast to Coast,” the Hoover Institution senior fellow offered his take on socialism’s growing popularity.
In Sowell’s view, socialism’s latest comeback is not all that surprising given American legacy institutions’s failure to truly confront the idea. In fact, they often end up embracing it.
Sowell asserted, “Unfortunately, neither our educational system nor our media encourage people to test ideas against facts.”
The astute economist continued:
“Socialism is a wonderful sounding idea. It’s only as a reality, it is disastrous.”
Thomas Sowell also opined on Venezuela, the latest iteration of socialist failure, arguing that people starving on the streets and fleeing the country en masse are enough to show that socialism doesn’t work.
Much to Sowell’s dismay, socialism continues to rise because people simply don’t look at the evidence.
However, there are always naysayers that will routinely dismiss clear examples of socialist failure as “not real socialism” and use other vague factors to explain how nations collapse.
Sowell was quick to point out that socialism is bound to fail regardless of culture or race:
“Looking at it from a worldwide perspective, I would say these so-called exceptions are universal on every continent among people of every race, color, creed, and whatever.”
For decades, Sowell has been one of the leading free market intellectuals in America, whose literature has provided some of the soundest refutations of socialist policies.
It’s a sad day in Western society when see socialism, the absolute anti-thesis of free enterprise and voluntary association, gaining ground.
Sowell’s points about the academia and media are spot-on. It’s no shock that in the Communist Manifesto, socialists see state control of the education system as one of the first steps in realizing Communism.
From there, they can indoctrinate the youth with all sorts of anti-capitalist dogma and turn them into loyal automatons for socialist causes.
Indeed, America news outlets are not state-owned like the Communist Manifesto calls for, but their fall to Cultural Marxism have turned them into vehicles that spread socialist ideas and condition millions of Americans into accepting these ridiculous tropes.
The rise of socialism is ultimately a cultural phenomenon that will require an equally powerful rebuttal from conservatives and libertarians in the general culture.
We must remember that politics is downstream from culture and the push to undermine our rights does not always start in legislative assemblies.
