Trump's unwitting devotion to socialism

  Donald Trump and, unfortunately, many of his conservative followers, are absolutely clueless when it comes to socialism. You couldn’t find a better example of this phenomenon than a Trump op-ed that was published in USA Today recently. In fact, Trump’s op-ed is a perfect demonstration of the life of the lie that has come to afflict the entire conservative movement.

  In his op-ed, Trump takes Democrats to task for supporting “Medicare for All,” which would essentially be a full-fledged socialist healthcare system. He says that this shows that Democrats are committed to turning the United States into another Venezuela, a country in chaos, crisis, poverty, and violence owing to its socialist economic system.

Why won’t conservatives pick a peach?

  The favorite slogan of conservatives has long been “free enterprise, private property, and limited government.” Another conservative favorite is the term “personal responsibility.”

  Since personal responsibility is so important to conservatives, one must ask: Why hasn’t even one conservative taken personal responsibility by traveling to the Midwest and helping farmers pick their crops, given that conservatives are responsible for the massive crop losses that farmers are incurring?

Trump’s trade war destroys our freedom

  It is a fundamental economic axiom that trade raises people’s standard of living. That’s because in every trade, both traders are giving up something they value less for something they value more. As soon as a trade is completed, both actors have raised their standard of living based on their individual, subjective valuations.

  You go to the grocery store and spend $100.You gave up the $100 to get things (groceries) that you valued more than the money. Your standard of living just went up. So did the standard of living of the grocer. He gave up something he valued less (the groceries) for something he valued more (the money).

Jacob G. Hornberger: Show me your immigration plan

  Whenever liberals or conservatives tell you that they favor immigration controls, one way to stop them dead in their tracks is to say to them: Show me your plan.

  They will stare at you blankly. They will be dumbfounded. They won’t know what to say. It is likely that they will simply respond with something like, “A nation has the right to control its borders.”

  Okay, but what is your plan for making your system of immigration controls work? What is your plan for finally bringing an end to the ongoing, never-ending “immigration crisis” that has lasted for at least 70 years?

Laurence M. Vance: Liquor socialism

  As long as America has been a nation, governments at all levels have sought to tax, regulate, control, and even prohibit the manufacture, sale, and consumption of alcoholic beverages.

  The most infamous example, of course, is the era of Prohibition.

Jacob G. Hornberger: Sell Amtrak

  If we learned anything from the 20th century, it’s that socialism is a disaster. It never works. It never has worked. It  never will work. It is an inherently defective system.

  So, why is it then that Americans continue to embrace socialist programs?

  Among the best examples of this phenomenon is Amtrak, the government-owned and government-operated passenger train service.

Jacob G. Hornberger: The military base dole

  During my recent visit to my hometown of Laredo, Texas, as I was heading out of town toward Corpus Christi, I passed by the former site of Laredo Air Force Base. Serving as a training base for new pilots, the base was a prominent part of Laredo life when I was growing up.

  During that time, public officials and much of the citizenry were scared to death that the base might close. Like many people on the dole and like many other American communities with military bases, Laredoans were convinced that without LAFB, the city would die.

Richard M. Ebeling: The entitlement state and America’s fiscal crisis

  The Republican and Democrat Party Conventions are now behind us, but through all the cheers and jeers, hoopla and poopla, warnings of a dark and dangerous future or promises of a bright and beautiful shape-of-things-to-come, one of the most serious shadows hanging over America was hardly mentioned at all: the unsustainability of the “entitlement” programs of the welfare state.

  In fact, Clinton and the Democrats have proposed to both maintain and expand the redistributive state, and Trump has expressed his intention of not challenging Social Security or Medicare.

Bill Bowling: Toward a literate definition of socialism

  We are a nation full of armchair politicians and Archie Bunker throwbacks. We are also a nation brimming with a citizenry that isn't equipped to state what the Bill of Rights contains, much less discuss the more abstract conceptualizations of our political ethos. Yet that doesn't stop the large numbers of the ill-informed from spouting off about things they know nothing about. There is one term that these folks on the fringe like to toss around, presumably in the attempt to get the goat of all left leaners, or simply to stir up the stink in the big crap pond. That term is socialism.

Jacob G. Hornberger: Why do conservatives support Medicare and Medicaid?

  For the life of me, I just don’t get conservatives. They profess to love free enterprise and free markets and they say they hate socialism.

  Okay, then why do they never call for the repeal of Medicare and Medicaid?