The Democrats are trying to Make Socialism Great. There is no Again because it’s never come up great the many times it has been tried. From Patrick J. Buchanan at buchanan.org:
After reading an especially radical platform agreed upon by the British Labor Party, one Tory wag described it as “the longest suicide note in history.”
The phrase comes to mind on reading of the resolution calling for a Green New Deal, advanced by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and endorsed by at least five of the major Democratic candidates for president.
The Green New Deal is designed to recall the halcyon days of the 1930s, when, so the story goes, FDR came to Washington to enact the historic reforms that rescued America from the Great Depression.
Only that story is more than a small myth.
The unemployment rate when FDR took the oath in 1933 was 25 percent. It never fell below 14 percent through the 1930s. In June 1938, despite huge Democratic majorities in Congress, FDR was presiding over a nation where unemployment was back up to 19 percent.
World War II and the conscription of 16 million young men gave us “full employment.” And the war’s end and demobilization saw the return of real prosperity in 1946, after FDR was dead.
Yet this Green New Deal is nothing if not ambitious.
To cope with climate change, the GND calls for a 10-year plan to meet “100 percent of the power demand of the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources.”
This appears to require a phase-out by 2030 of all carbon-emitting power plants fueled by coal and oil and their replacement by power plants fueled by wind and solar.
Will natural gas be permitted? Will nuclear power? There are 60 commercially operating nuclear power plants with 98 nuclear reactors in 30 states. Will they be shut down? Will the Greens agree to dam up more U.S. rivers to produce renewable hydroelectric power?
Air travel consumes huge quantities of carbon-producing jet fuel. What will replace it? Perhaps progressive Democratic candidates will set an example by not flying, and then by voting to end production of private aircraft and to ground all corporate jets. Let the elites sail to Davos.
