Denouncing the Horrors of Socialism

Floor Speech

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Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I rise to oppose this cynical and silly resolution. I am not a socialist myself, but a Tom Payne Democrat, a champion of strong democracy, universal freedom, and equal rights for everybody, but this resolution is ridiculous.

From its first paragraph, it promotes the fallacy that socialist ideology leads to social collapse. In fact, many of our strongest democratic allies on Earth, including Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, and Finland, lead strong, democratic socialist governments and thriving societies and economies. Yet, House Republicans base their entire resolution on this falsehood and advance a false equation between democratic socialism and Communist dictatorship, a preposterous assertion that contaminates the entire resolution.

The resolution even tries to conscript to these ideological deceptions the words of Presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, enlightenment liberals who lived long before socialist ideology even existed and would detest the fanatical, theocratic politics of the MAGA movement and the plutocratic billionaires and plundering CEOs who are running these things behind the curtains.

Thomas Jefferson is quoted embarrassingly in this resolution for the proposition that to take property from one to give to another is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association. This is a bizarre argument, not only because Thomas Jefferson died in 1826, a decade before the word ``socialism'' even existed and was in common use, but it is also bizarre because Jefferson shamefully owned more than 600 enslaved people over the course of his lifetime. Whatever his many other virtues, and he had many, his entire livelihood was based on appropriating the labor of other people against their will and stealing their property that they should have had in their own bodies and in their own lives.

The resolution is completely disoriented. It plainly feeds into the decades-long Republican obsession with labeling the great programmatic achievements of American democracy as socialism, including Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, public education, and public health measures in the Affordable Care Act.

By defining essential, democratic public programs as socialist, and in claiming that socialism inevitably leads to Stalinist communism and social collapse, these plutocrat Republicans are plainly working to undermine the living standards of the working-class majority of America and rip up the social fabric of the country.

Meantime, President Trump's heroes and best friends in the world are Communist dictators.

If House Republicans really want to oppose the promotion of socialist ideology, why don't they write a letter to President Trump and condemn his worship and admiration of Stalinist dictator Kim Jong-un of North Korea? He said they have a ``unique'' relationship and a very ``special friendship.''

Former KGB officer Vladimir Putin thinks that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest catastrophe of the 21st century. Of him, Trump said, ``Putin, very smart,'' and, ``Will he become my new best friend?''

What about the chief of the Chinese Communist Party, President Xi? Trump described him as a ``brilliant man,'' and that he has ``the look, the brain, the whole thing.'' President Trump has no problem with the actual horrors of communism today, like the Chinese Government's massive human rights violations against the Uyghurs, Tibetans, and political dissenters in their country. ``He's a brilliant guy,'' and, ``He controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist.''

How about Vladimir Putin's persecution and poisoning of human rights and anticorruption activists like Alexei Navalny? Of him, Trump said: ``I don't know exactly what happened. . . . We haven't had any proof yet, but I will take a look.''

I am voting ``no'' on this pathetic, disorienting resolution, which is divorced from reality and drenched in rightwing ideology. It will only serve to accelerate MAGA's attempts to defund the essential social programs that are central to American democracy and that were built by the American people, like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, which they call socialism but which serve our people.

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