Both candidates tick communist boxes

(My Eastern New Mexico News column for August 25, 2024)

Is Kamala Harris a communist?

That would depend on what "communist" means. Defenders of communism get very slippery when you try to pin them down on the definition. Their usual tactic is to demand to know how you define communism rather than to define it themselves-- probably because they can't define it without looking like monsters for defending it.

Whatever you say in response, they'll claim it isn't "real communism" like they are advocating.

The dictionary says communism is a system based on "the holding of all property in common, actual ownership being ascribed to the community as a whole or to the state". That's the nice version. The political version is a "social organization in which all economic and social activity is controlled by a totalitarian state dominated by a single and self-perpetuating political party". (The definition of socialism rearranges the same words.) This sounds like "The Uniparty" to me.

Since I'm not a mind reader, I can't tell you what people who advocate communism are thinking or what they want.

A more useful approach is to describe what communists tend to do when they get power.

Communists tend to close the borders. They empower legislation enforcers. They work to erase property rights. They use legislation to control businesses and they impose price controls. They use taxation to finance the state, punish achievers, and buy support from those they give handouts to. They push "equity"; equality of outcomes, not equality of rights. They put government interests and power above the interests and legitimate power of the individual. They pretend to be doing it for those who have been left behind by success and prosperity-- they call it "fairness".

They try to censor those who point out what they are doing. Rather than outright government censorship, they may send their legions of flying monkeys-- corporations and activists-- to silence their opposition.

Once they get enough power they inevitably come after the smart people who don't follow the communists' agenda.

One final thing communists reliably do when they gain power: they eventually murder vast numbers of people in their own country-- after they disarm them in the name of "public safety", of course.

Political communism always results in too much government and too much government always starts sharing many characteristics with communism. Is Kamala Harris a communist? She certainly ticks more boxes than Donald Trump, but is it enough to single her out?

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