The champagne communists who sold Millennials a bill of goods



A generation was promised a simple path to the American dream: Earn a four-year degree, get a good job, buy a house, start a family. For many Millennials, the diploma arrived. The rest of the bargain did not.

Now student loan payments compete with rent, mortgages, and the cost of raising children. Graduates work in jobs that never required the credentials they borrowed money to obtain. Meanwhile, socialism has reached its highest positive rating since Gallup began tracking it in 2010. Who sold Millennials the original promise?

You were lied to by leftist universities that gladly took your money and left you in ruin.

Gallup’s September report found that 43% of Americans viewed socialism positively, up from 39% in 2025. Among adults ages 18 to 34, the figure was 57%. It is an extraordinary development. If government-backed higher education helped saddle a generation with debt, why would more government look like the solution?

The financial burden is real. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported $1.65 trillion in outstanding student loans in the second quarter of 2026. In a separate Federal Reserve survey, 23% of adults with student loans reported recent difficulty making payments. Even a manageable loan bill is money a borrower cannot put toward a down payment or a family.

But why did so many people borrow so much for credentials whose value varies so widely? Because Americans were repeatedly told a four-year degree was the necessary ticket to adulthood.

Parents heard it. Guidance counselors repeated it. Politicians promised greater access. Universities gladly collected the tuition, helped along by a federal lending system that made borrowing easier today and paying the bill a problem for tomorrow.

And some of the professors who taught students to distrust capitalism were only too happy to work within this arrangement. Universities expanded administrative operations while students took on mounting obligations. The people selling degrees should have been the first to explain what those degrees could actually buy.

The gamble persists for younger graduates. Federal Reserve research using 2023 data on graduates ages 22 to 27 found an underemployment rate of 9.7% for nursing majors, compared with 56.5% for liberal arts and 67.2% for criminal justice. Underemployment here means holding a job that typically does not require a college degree. These graduates are working, but many are not using the expensive credential they were told they needed.

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What did the colleges tell their applicants about those odds? If an 18-year-old is asked to borrow tens of thousands of dollars, the institution ought to disclose the likely costs, earnings, and risks. A degree is an investment only if the buyer has a realistic picture of the return. Universities should face the same scrutiny over misleading promises that we expect of any business.

Students also deserved a serious account of the alternatives: trade schools, apprenticeships, community colleges, military service, and employment without a four-year degree. These are legitimate paths to adulthood, not consolation prizes for people supposedly unfit for college.

There is a cultural problem, too. On too many campuses, students are trained to interpret society through oppression, power, and inequality. Let them study those arguments. But also make them confront the best defenses of markets, private property, entrepreneurship, and the limits of government. A university should teach students to examine competing ideas, not recruit them to a fashionable orthodoxy.

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Professors who preach against capitalist exploitation might begin by examining the financial incentives of their own institutions. Some feed students a steady diet of anti-market rhetoric while they borrow heavily for degrees with uncertain returns. That is champagne communism for the faculty and a monthly payment for the graduate.

The irony is hard to miss. A generation taught to question capitalism and burdened by debt from a government-supported lending system may now look to government for relief. But another subsidy does not require universities to tell the truth about what they sell. Nor does it hold anyone accountable for promises that proved empty.

Accountability begins with honest disclosures in university advertising and recruitment. I am working on that problem through the Intellectual Nutrition Label project. If a school makes demonstrably deceptive promises, lawyers and class-action lawsuits may have a role. Institutions that charge families so much should not be exempt from answering for what they represent.

The lesson for Millennials is all too clear. You were lied to by leftist universities that gladly took your money and left you in ruin. It isn’t too late to see the leftist worldview for what it is: the road to serfdom. It’s time to hold the universities that pushed these lies accountable.

At 96, Thomas Sowell still has homework for you



Thomas Sowell has a suggestion for young people heading off to college: Get an education while you’re there.

He’s even put together a reading list.

Sowell's introductory statement makes clear that he expects readers to question what they find, including his own arguments.

The economist and author, now 96, launched Facts Against Rhetoric last year to help people find arguments they might otherwise go through their entire schooling without encountering. It’s an extensive collection of books, essays, interviews, lectures, and online courses, organized by subject and available to anyone with the curiosity to start clicking.

Introducing the project in an April 2025 interview with Peter Robinson, Sowell described his purpose as “enabling students to get an education despite being in college.”

Parents paying the tuition may find something useful here too.

The site is a meticulously curated collection of educational resources on subjects ranging from “Intellectuals and Ideologies” and “Italians Around the World” to economics, education, and race. Alongside direct links to interviews, lectures, articles, and courses, Sowell provides extensive bibliographies pointing readers to books, specific chapters, and articles, often noting where and in what formats they’re available. You can click through to watch Sowell challenge claims about the “wage gap” for blacks and women on William F. Buckley Jr.’s “Firing Line” in 1981 or listen to Edward R. Murrow's 1943 account of a brush with death on an RAF bombing run over Berlin.

Although 96, Sowell is hardly taking a victory lap here. He is on a mission, the urgency of which he explains in his introductory statement. A college graduate has decades of life ahead of him, during which he will encounter questions his professors never anticipated. Even if everything they taught him were correct, memorizing their answers would leave him poorly prepared to think through those new problems.

He will need some practice disagreeing with people. Preferably before his livelihood depends on it.

A former Marxist’s reading list

In his long life, Sowell has had to revise a few convictions of his own.

Born in North Carolina in 1930 and raised partly in Harlem, he dropped out of Stuyvesant High School, worked a succession of jobs, and served in the Marine Corps. Eventually he earned degrees from Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Chicago. He went on to teach at Cornell, Amherst, and UCLA, among other institutions.

Along the way, he was a Marxist. Studying under legendary free-market economist Milton Friedman did not immediately cure him. In Sowell’s telling, a summer working at the Department of Labor in 1960 proved more effective. Investigating unemployment in Puerto Rico’s sugar industry, he wanted to test whether minimum-wage requirements were contributing to the problem. His colleagues’ lack of enthusiasm for an inquiry that might undermine their own department’s policy helped change his understanding of government.

Decades later, Facts Against Rhetoric gives readers plenty of opportunities to examine the conclusions he reached. His own books appear throughout, alongside work by economists, historians, journalists, and other scholars.

The selections plainly reflect his sympathies. Under socialism, for example, you’ll find Friedman's 1993 talk "The Rise of Socialism Is Absurd" as well as a reading list, including Joshua Muravchik’s “Heaven on Earth: The Rise, Fall, and Afterlife of Socialism" and Paul Hollander's "From Benito Mussolini to Hugo Chavez: Intellectuals and a Century of Political Hero Worship."Anyone hoping for encouragement to join the revolution will have to look elsewhere.

But there is considerably more here than a collection of arguments to deploy against your liberal brother-in-law.

Start anywhere

For a first visit, try the capitalism section, which links to Friedman’s 1979 appearance on “The Phil Donahue Show” and his lecture “Is Capitalism Humane?” Both offer a manageable introduction before you commit to the books listed below them, including Friedman’s “Capitalism and Freedom.”

Readers who prefer a more structured approach can follow the economics page to Hillsdale College’s online “Economics 101: Principles of Free Market Economics.” The same page points to Sowell’s “Basic Economics” and Walter E. Williams’ “Race and Economics,” along with shorter selections on subjects including affordability and unions.

Parents may want to begin with education. Here Sowell assembles material on schools, colleges, admissions, and academic performance. There’s an interview about his “Charter Schools and Their Enemies,” a discussion with Robert Pondiscio about Success Academy, and a link to Stanford’s 2023 National Charter School Study for readers who want to examine the research.

The college section also includes psychologist Steven Pinker’s interview with Reason’s Nick Gillespie, “What Went Wrong at Harvard.” Pinker discusses academic freedom, the policing of acceptable opinion, and why universities get into trouble when they pronounce on controversies their students and faculty should be free to debate.

For a longer excursion, the biographies page points to videos and articles on figures including Calvin Coolidge, Albert Einstein, and Frederick Douglass. Among a list of recommended books on John D. Rockefeller sits Ron Chernow’s “Titan"; readers considering Stephen Kotkin’s multivolume biography of Stalin — recommended here — can sample his work in the lecture “Stalin at War.”

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The library card

One of the site’s biographical recommendations is an extended interview with Sowell himself, “Thomas Sowell: A Free Man.”

In it, he recalls arriving in Harlem as a child and being taken to a public library by another boy. Sowell had never seen so many books. He also couldn’t afford to buy one, which made the purpose of the visit somewhat mysterious.

His young guide persuaded him to get a library card. Sowell borrowed two books and began acquiring the reading habit that would occupy much of the rest of his life.

Now he has some suggestions for the rest of us. His introductory statement makes clear that he expects readers to question what they find, including his own arguments: “Whether you end up agreeing with me or with them is beside the point.”

Pick a subject, follow a link, track down a book. You can disagree with Professor Sowell — or not — after you’ve done the reading.

Talarico slithered around the truth at his town hall. Here’s the gaslighting he tried to pull.



Radical Democrat James Talarico attempted to woo Republicans and independents at a town hall in Fort Worth on Wednesday as he attempts to turn a Texas U.S. Senate seat blue for the first time in more than 30 years.

This attempt evidently relied on deception.

'That industry is not gonna last.'

In addition to claiming that "the Bible is silent on the issue of abortion," Talarico made a number of other eyebrow-raising statements at the event hosted by CNN and Jubilee.

One of the Texas voters in attendance asked the Democrat about border security, "regardless of what party was in the White House," and whether federal law should require the removal of illegal aliens who have no basis to stay in the country.

"Texans understand this issue of immigration better than most people around the country because we live with it," Talarico replied. "We live with the challenges, and we live with the benefits."

After stating that "both political parties have failed us on this issue," casting shade on the Biden administration's "unacceptable" handling of the border crisis and criticizing some Immigration and Customs Enforcement tactics, Talarico identified himself as a "border security Democrat."

This purported "border security Democrat" apparently was counting on the audience to overlook the fact that he:

  • states on his campaign website that "our border should be like a front porch" with a "welcome mat out front and a lock on the door" and that certain illegal aliens should have a pathway to legalization;
  • advocated in 2019 for diverting Texas' $800 million two-year border security budget to public education, claiming that "putting a bunch of boats, planes, and border patrol agents on the physical border" "does not solve the problem" and amounts ultimately to "political grandstanding";
  • shared documents in 2019 advising foreigners how to "fight back" against ICE;
  • condemned some of Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's efforts to secure the southern border, calling them "atrocities";
  • voted in 2021 against a bill that provided an additional $1.8 billion in state funding for border security over a two-year period;
  • voted in 2023 against a bill that aimed at beefing up border security and cracking down on transnational criminal activity;
  • voted in 2023 against a bill that would have expanded the law enforcement authority of federal immigration agents in Texas; and
  • voted in 2023 against a bill that made illegal entry into Texas from an alien nation a state crime.

The Border Patrol Union's National Border Patrol Council said Wednesday, "JAMES TALARICO DOES NOT SUPPORT BORDER SECURITY: Talarico’s false claim that he called out the Biden Administration for failing on the border is nothing more than a #FakeNews political ad."

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In addition to masquerading as a proponent of strong security at the southern border, Talarico played the role of an ICE supporter at Wednesday's town hall.

CNN talking head Erin Burnett asked the Democrat, "Do you support abolishing ICE or not?"

"No," replied Talarico. "And I never have."

He did, however, lead a "Stop ICE rally" in January, accuse ICE of "terrorizing our country," and implore Texans to rise up against the federal agency and "fight back."

After boasting about previously having taught illegal alien students, Talarico said in his lengthy speech at the January anti-ICE rally in Austin, "It is time to tear down this secret police force and replace it with an agency that is actually going to promote public safety."

Talarico further denied ICE's legitimacy, demanded that ICE agents be hauled before Congress, and claimed that the agency was "deporting the very people who keep our economy running."

The same Democrat who months ago demanded ICE's "replace[ment]" told Burnett on Wednesday, "We need Immigration and Customs Enforcement in this country."

In an apparent attempt to reconcile the two statements, Talarico claimed that "what we've seen over the last year is a secret police force, and that's what we don't want in this country."

Talarico also tried to pull a fast one Wednesday regarding his past criticism of capitalism.

Burnett noted that at a Sierra Club event in September 2020, the Democrat said that capitalism is an "oppressive system" in need of dismantling. The CNN talking head then questioned Talarico's current identification as a proud capitalist.

"If you go back and listen to the conversation that we were having, I was talking about the system we have now, which is actually not capitalism. It's crony capitalism," Talarico said.

Talarico does not appear to have specified that he was criticizing "crony capitalism" at the Sierra Club event in 2020. Rather, he highlighted the supposed link between "climate change and white supremacy and capitalism in our country."

"I think only understanding the ways that all three of those oppressive systems work together are we going to be able to begin the process of dismantling them," Talarico said at the time.

A spokesperson for Talarico told the Texas Scorecard last month that "James is a proud capitalist and agrees with the majority of Texans that racism, natural disasters, and a billionaire-controlled economy are all problems we need to address."

Madison Cercy, a spokeswoman for the campaign of Talarico's Republican opponent, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, said that "James Talarico is a democratic socialist who wants to destroy economic opportunity, ban oil and gas, and raise taxes to pay for his radical agenda."

Talarico, who told Burnett that he wants to return to old-school capitalism, also claimed at the town hall that "if the Democratic Party is going after the good-paying oil and gas jobs here in Texas, I'm going to stand up against them."

Yet Talarico said during the same Sierra Club event, "We all know that Texas has been a leader in oil and gas, but in many ways that's like being the leader in cassette tapes in the 1980s," CNN reported.

"That industry is not going to last. And if we want to ensure we have an economy that's going to work for our children and our children's children, we gotta be ahead of the curve, and Texas has to lead instead of follow on this issue," Talarico added.

This supposed friend of the oil and gas industry claimed in 2022 that "fossil fuels are destroying the planet" and suggested that Texas should "transition" to so-called renewables.

The Talarico campaign did not immediately respond to Blaze News' request for comment.

Blaze Poll Watch presently shows Talarico leading Paxton 48.1%-45.1%.

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LGBTQ+ therapist arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting patients



A man who founded an LGBTQ+ therapy practice was arrested after he was accused of sexually assaulting two of his patients.

Joseph LoGiudice founded the "Liberation Psychotherapy" practice and acted as a clinical director when the assaults occurred, according to a press release from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

'While expressly described as an LGBTQ-centered practice, we allege that LoGiudice abused the trust placed in him as a therapist to sexually assault members of the LGBTQ community he serves.'

One of those who accused LoGiudice did so after hearing about a separate indictment against Remington Yhap, another worker at Liberation Psychotherapy who specialized in LGBTQ+ mental health.

Yhap was arrested for allegedly raping a teenage patient he had been providing therapy to for many months.

"Liberation Psychotherapy’s clinical director, Joseph LoGiudice, allegedly sexually assaulted two patients in his care at the very practice he founded," said Bragg in a statement with the press release.

LoGiudice had run the clinic's Gay Men’s Therapy Group and is a licensed clinical social worker.

One victim was assaulted by LoGiudice in Nov. 2022 after engaging in "sexual misconduct" with the patient twice.

A second victim was assaulted by LoGiudice in Jan. 2024 after a group therapy session and again in Jan. 2026 during a private therapy session, according to Bragg.

"While expressly described as an LGBTQ-centered practice, we allege that LoGiudice abused the trust placed in him as a therapist to sexually assault members of the LGBTQ community he serves. This investigation is ongoing.

LoGiudice is facing a total of 24 counts related to the alleged abuse, which includes 10 counts of third-degree criminal sex acts, 13 counts of third-degree sexual abuse, and one count of third-degree rape.

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Bragg asked for any other possible victims to contact his office.

A profile at Huffington Post said LoGiudice had published a book titled "Our Naked Lives: Essays from Gay Italian-American Men" in 2013. He wrote an article claiming that capitalism had destroyed people emotionally and psychologically.

He was also married to Michael Carosone, who was also a therapist at Liberation Psychotherapy, according to posts online objecting to anti-Semitic statements he allegedly made.

"His interests and passion are in understanding and advocating for individuals who are marginalized, vulnerable, and stigmatized, particularly LGBTQ individuals with disabilities, while utilizing perspectives from disability studies and intersectionality," read a line from the profile.

His profile at his website has been scrubbed from the internet but can still be viewed at the Wayback Machine internet archive. His website has also been scrubbed.

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The government would like to discuss your allowance



Abdul El-Sayed did Americans a favor when he sat down with Jesse Watters on Fox News this week. The Michigan U.S. Senate candidate gave us a remarkably clear lesson in the philosophy behind America’s growing democratic socialist movement. The real question is simple: Who owns your property — you or the government?

The most revealing moment was not about Sharia law, transgender medicine, or even socialized health care. It came when Watters pressed El-Sayed about his proposal to tax the wealth of Americans with more than $100 million.

Before giving government more power, ask what happens when the people wielding it decide that you, too, have more than you need.

El-Sayed has made the argument before. Billionaires, he says, can surrender a substantial portion of their wealth and still remain billionaires. Their children and grandchildren will still be rich.

Notice the premise. This is not merely an argument that government needs revenue for legitimate functions, nor a dispute over whether the top marginal income-tax rate should be 35% or 39%. The argument is that you possess more than you need — and government gets to decide how much that is.

That is the part Americans need to understand.

Suppose you build a company. You work for decades. You save, invest, and take risks. The company becomes enormously valuable. Under the traditional American understanding, the presumption is that the property is yours. Government may tax under constitutional authority, but it does not acquire an unlimited moral claim on your property because politicians decide you have too much of it.

El-Sayed reverses that presumption. What are you going to do with all that money? Whatever your answer, the socialist argument says it is too much because you have more than you need.

The proper question is not what you intend to do with your property. The proper question is: By what right does the government take it?

That distinction takes us back to 1776. The founders understood that government is necessary to protect life, liberty, property, contracts, and the peaceful exercise of rights.

But precisely because government possesses coercive power, it must be limited. The founders built a constitutional order around the insight that human beings abuse power, so power must be divided, checked, and restrained.

Read the Declaration of Independence. The complaint against George III is repeatedly that political power has exceeded its proper bounds. The king interferes with colonial legislatures, imposes taxes without consent, and seeks to subject Americans to “absolute Despotism.”

The central political problem was not how government could solve every problem. It was how citizens could prevent government from becoming one.

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Compare that instinct with New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s declaration that there is “no problem too large for government to solve, and no concern too small for it to care about.” That is nearly the photographic negative of the American constitutional tradition.

The founders asked: What powers have we actually given government, and how do we limit them? The new socialists ask: What problem is left for government to solve?

El-Sayed’s wealth-tax argument reveals why. Once we abandon the presumption that your property is genuinely yours, the limiting principle becomes hard to locate. If $100 million is too much, why not $50 million? Why not $10 million? If politicians may determine how much wealth you need, why stop with billionaires?

The issue is not whether anyone should feel sorry for billionaires. The issue is who owns the property.

Redistribution is politically easiest when it begins with somebody almost nobody identifies with. He has plenty. You do not. Why shouldn’t government take some?

Because a government powerful enough to decide how much property another person needs has been given a power that does not become harmless merely because its first target is richer than you.

Then there is the comic assumption beneath the argument: Government will spend the money more wisely.

El-Sayed’s home state offers a useful caution. The state auditor found Michigan’s Unemployment Insurance Agency ineffective during the COVID pandemic. Fraud controls were weakened, billions in improper or fraudulent payments went out, and later audits found serious failures in recovering them.

These are the institutions that will reliably improve on the decisions of people who built billion-dollar companies?

Government has legitimate but limited purposes, and legitimate taxation follows from those purposes. But legitimate taxation does not establish a standing claim to whatever share of your wealth politicians decide you do not need.

This debate is especially important because socialism has found a receptive audience among younger Americans. Harvard’s 2025 Youth Poll found support for capitalism among young Americans at only 39%, while nearly half of young Democrats expressed support for socialism.

That is, in part, a failure of education.

We have spent enormous energy teaching young Americans to critique power and too little teaching them why constitutional government was designed to limit it. Much of contemporary oppression theory condemns authorities who presume to know how others should live, then demands political power to impose its own answers.

The next generation needs a different lesson.

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Your life is your responsibility. Your neighbor’s property belongs to your neighbor. Wealth does not become public property when it crosses an arbitrary number selected by a politician. Government exists to protect rights, not to decide how much prosperity citizens are permitted to enjoy.

Freedom includes choices politicians consider foolish or wasteful. Save your money, give it away, invest it, build a business, leave it to your children, support your church, fund a charity, or buy something ridiculous. Within the law, those decisions belong to you.

That is what limited government protects.

The socialist temptation is perennial because it begins with an attractive promise: Give us more power, and we will use it to make life fairer.

The American answer is older and wiser: Before giving government more power, ask what happens when the people wielding it decide that you, too, have more than you need.

James Talarico shamelessly politicizes Amazon worker's tragic death to attack capitalism



The Democrat candidate for one of two U.S. Senate seats for Texas was seemingly caught spreading misinformation about an emergency incident at an Amazon warehouse.

James Talarico was campaigning at a church when he referred to an incident at an Amazon warehouse in which an employee died.

'Lying isn’t very Christian. And that’s what you’re doing here because that’s not what happened.'

He posted a video of his comments to social media on Sunday to spread the message against corporate greed.

"An Amazon worker died in one of Amazon's warehouses. And as he lay dying, management told the other workers: 'Turn around. Don't look. Get back to work.' Get back to work? That was a human being. That was a child of God," Talarico claimed.

"Sacrificed on the altar of corporate greed," he added.

An Amazon employee did die after collapsing at an Oregon facility in April in Troutdale, Oregon, and that story has been used by Democrats and other activists to attack capitalism, though Amazon has specifically denied allegations about it.

Amazon responded to a Blaze News request for comment by directing to a previous statement about the incident, denying the "misinformation" being spread online.

"Sadly, one of our teammates collapsed during his shift from what we now understand as a pre-existing medical issue. When our onsite team was notified, three CPR certified team members, including two from our on-site safety team, provided CPR and deployed an automated defibrillator until emergency medical services (EMS) arrived shortly after."

The statement went on to say that the area was cordoned off while the company's safety teams and EMS cared for the worker. Unfortunately, the employee passed away.

And in contrast to criticism casting Amazon as cold and heartless in its response, the company outlined steps taken to protect the man's privacy and to care for the other workers at the warehouse.

"Shortly after this event occurred, employees were sent home with pay for the rest of the day," they added. "When we resumed operations the following day, any employee who requested time off was given that time, and onsite grief counselors were provided to anybody who chose to come to work and needed them."

Many online found Talarico's politicization of the man's death to be inappropriate and crass, especially as the Democrat regularly cites Christianity in his campaign.

"Lying isn’t very Christian. And that’s what you’re doing here because that’s not what happened," said one critic.

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"Total LIE about the actual events. Do you EVER tell the truth??" said another.

"You don’t turn someone’s distress into a sideshow Talarico," responded one detractor. "You allow medical personnel and others qualified to handle the situation and ask everyone else to leave the scene. And it’s also exactly what the first responders tell you too. And another reason you are unfit to serve in our senate."

Amazon has been hounded by critics pointing out that its workers are twice as likely to be injured as non-Amazon workers. Another report found that Amazon warehouses had 30% more injuries than the industry average in 2023.

The company responded to the criticism by noting Amazon had invested $2.5 billion in increased safety standards.

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Socialism’s favorite bait-and-switch



The Democratic Socialists of America are no longer hiding the ball.

In July, the organization published a manifesto calling on the United States to "establish public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries to ensure democratic control and accountability to the people.”

Public ownership does not give power to the people. It gives power to the government — and asks the people to trust that government never to abuse it.

That is not a proposal for higher taxes, tighter regulation, or a larger welfare state. It is a demand to replace private ownership of America’s largest companies with government ownership.

The language is designed to sound appealing. Why should a handful of billionaires control enormous corporations while everyone else gets left behind? Why shouldn’t “the people” own those companies instead?

No more greedy executives collecting fortunes while workers earn far less. No need to nationalize every business — only the “essential” industries deemed too important to operate for profit or remain in private hands.

It sounds reasonable. It sounds as though power would finally be taken from wealthy corporations and returned to society.

But that is nearly how Fidel Castro sold communism to the Cuban people.

History shows that “ownership by the people” usually means control by the government. The public does not acquire power. Politicians and bureaucrats do.

Castro did not introduce himself as a communist promising state control over every part of Cuba’s economy. He said he was fighting corruption, inequality, and concentrated wealth. Private property and capitalism became the villains. The solution was to place the country’s most important industries under the control of “the people.”

The rhetoric sounded fair and humane. Wealthy owners would lose power, and ordinary Cubans would gain it.

The first part happened. The second did not.

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Power was taken from private owners, but it never reached ordinary Cubans. It accumulated in the hands of the state. Today, Cubans live under political repression, chronic scarcity, and widespread poverty.

“Nothing belongs to you. It all belongs to the government,” Rosa Garcia, a survivor of Castro’s Cuba, recalled in an interview with Young Americans Against Socialism.

Garcia watched the transformation firsthand. She remembers Castro assuring Cubans that his revolution was not communist. Many believed him. Some hung signs on their doors reading, “This house is yours, Fidel.”

As government control expanded, private property rights disappeared. So did the ability to obtain goods, build wealth, or make basic economic choices without permission from the state.

When Garcia’s family later applied to leave Cuba, government officials came to their home and inventoried everything they owned to ensure they took nothing with them. Utensils, clothing, and household possessions all belonged to the government.

That is the reality behind the dreamy language of collective ownership. What supposedly belongs to everyone is controlled by the people who run the state.

Public ownership also carries enormous economic costs.

Private property gives people a reason to create, invest, innovate, and serve customers. Every smartphone, laptop, lifesaving medicine, digital platform, and other product we rely on exists because someone had the freedom to take a risk and the opportunity to profit from success.

Before Castro’s revolution, Cuba ranked among Latin America’s more prosperous countries. Today, it is one of the region’s poorest, with nearly 90% of its population living in severe poverty.

Take away private ownership, and you do more than redistribute wealth. You weaken the incentive to build businesses, develop technology, create jobs, and produce the prosperity those activities generate.

Supporters of democratic socialism will reasonably object that modern America is not revolutionary Cuba. The United States has stronger institutions, a different political culture, and constitutional protections Cuba did not preserve. Public ownership of one enterprise does not automatically produce a one-party communist state.

That distinction does not eliminate the underlying danger.

Nationalization begins with the easiest targets: highly profitable companies, billionaires accused of earning too much, and industries politicians label too important to remain privately owned.

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Leon Neal/Getty Images

Once society accepts the principle that government may replace private ownership whenever politicians decide an owner is too rich or a company is too important, no clear limiting principle remains.

Why stop with the largest corporations?

Every industry placed under public ownership gives government officials more authority to decide how resources are used, which services are available, and who receives them.

Cuba’s history shows how quickly control of a few “key industries” can become a broad assault on private property. America would be foolish to assume the same principle could be embraced here without the same temptation to expand it.

Public ownership does not give power to the people. It gives power to the government — and asks the people to trust that government never to abuse it.

‘That’s not capitalism!’ Trump attacks Exxon and Chevron over ‘too much money’



President Donald Trump is known for taking on whoever he wants, but his latest target has even some conservatives raising eyebrows — and wondering if the government is abandoning the free market principles America thrives on.

"Based on a shortage, they're making too much money," Trump told reporters about Exxon Mobile and Chevron. “I don’t like it.”

“When we’re finished with Iran, you’re going to see the prices drop through the floor. But they made too much money. Too much money. Chevron, too much money. Exxon Mobile, too much. Too much money,” he continued.

“You're surprised? I'm saying it. I'll say it loud and clear," the president added.


“This is concerning,” BlazeTV host Pat Gray comments.

“That’s not capitalism,” he adds.

“Just to look ahead, Mr. President,” Jeff Fisher chimes in, “when the prices do drop through the floor, they’ll have had this money to maybe survive on a little while.”

Executive producer Keith Malinak points out that on February 27, Chevron closed at $189 a share.

“Today, they’re all the way to $193 a share,” he says.

Meanwhile, Exxon is up $6 a share.

“So very modest stock gains at least for those two companies in the last six months. It’s not like how drug companies did with your vaccine,” he adds.

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The socialists are coming for the Senate



As the United States marks its 250th anniversary, Americans are rightly reflecting on the enduring genius of the Constitution. For two and a half centuries, separated powers, federalism, and institutional checks have protected liberty against the concentration of power.

That system has survived civil war, depressions, and foreign totalitarian threats. Yet as the nation celebrates this milestone, a radical faction at home has published a manifesto aimed at dismantling the constitutional structure that made those achievements possible.

The platform calls for the ‘public ownership and democratic control’ of major corporations, energy grids, and transportation infrastructure.

The Democratic Socialists of America just released a national platform titled “Workers Deserve More.” The populist title conceals an agenda far more radical than another increase in the minimum wage or an expansion of organized labor’s influence.

This is not a conventional progressive wish list. It is a blueprint for remaking the American republic and weakening the constitutional limits that stand between citizens and concentrated political power.

The platform begins by demanding the abolition of the United States Senate. The DSA would replace the bicameral Congress with a single legislative chamber, concentrating federal lawmaking power in a radically expanded House of Representatives.

That proposal attacks one of the central compromises of the Constitutional Convention of 1787. The Senate protects smaller states from domination by a handful of heavily populated metropolitan regions and forces national majorities to build broader coalitions.

A single chamber based solely on proportional representation would move the country toward unchecked majority rule — precisely the danger James Madison warned against in Federalist 62.

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The assault does not stop with Congress. The DSA platform also calls for severe restrictions on judicial review, placing the Supreme Court under congressional control and preventing it from striking down unconstitutional laws enacted by the proposed single chamber.

The platform would also replace the independently elected presidency with a centralized “premier” chosen by the legislature.

Consider the structure as a whole: one dominant legislative chamber, a premier answerable to that chamber, and a Supreme Court stripped of its ability to enforce constitutional limits.

That is not democratic reform. It is the consolidation of federal power in a single political institution, with few meaningful safeguards for individual liberty or dissenting minorities.

The economic program is equally sweeping. “Workers Deserve More” calls for the “public ownership” and “democratic control” of major corporations, energy systems, and transportation infrastructure. In plain English, it proposes state control of large sectors of the private economy.

History offers no shortage of warnings about such nationalization. From Eastern Europe to Venezuela, government seizure of private industry has produced shortages, economic decay, corruption, and diminished personal freedom.

The DSA pairs this centralization of political and economic power with a direct assault on national sovereignty. Its platform treats borders and citizenship not as foundations of self-government but as obstacles to be removed.

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Its immigration plank demands unrestricted “freedom of movement,” abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an end to deportations, and federal voting rights for noncitizens.

Combined with proposals to eliminate cash bail, demilitarize law enforcement, and dismantle the carceral system, the agenda would weaken the government’s ability to protect law-abiding citizens while expanding its control over nearly every other part of life.

The timing is supremely ironic. This summer, as Americans celebrate 250 years under a system designed to limit government power, the DSA is offering a system designed to maximize it.

The organization claims to speak for workers. Its platform would instead make ordinary Americans increasingly dependent on a centralized state that controls political institutions, major industries, public safety, and access to citizenship itself.

The country should call this platform what it is: an anti-constitutional program dressed in democratic language. America’s strength lies in the limits placed on government, not in the power surrendered to it.

The DSA platform is a reminder that the struggle to preserve the republic did not end with its founding. On America’s 250th anniversary, citizens should defend the constitutional guardrails that have kept power divided and Americans free.

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