Bernie Sanders may be our next President! He leads in the betting for the Democratic nomination. But some of his ideas are frightening.
Senator Sanders now talks of "democratic socialism” but he was once full of praise for violent socialist regimes including Castro's Cuba, the Soviet Union, and Nicaraguan Sandinistas.
Stossel producer Maxim Lott compiled Sanders' most gushing praise of socialist regimes.
Of Fidel Castro, Sanders said: "He educated the kids, gave them health care -- totally transformed the society."
Sanders spent his honeymoon in the Soviet Union and said he was "impressed by their public transportation system. In fact it was the cleanest, most effective mass transit system I’ve ever seen... the stations themselves were absolutely beautiful, including many works of art, chandeliers that are beautiful..." He gushed more: "I was impressed by the youth programs that they have... cultural programs which go far beyond what we do in this country."
Even more effusive praise went to Nicaragua's socialist revolution. Sanders lauded the confiscation and redistribution of property, which he called "...land reform – giving, for the first time in their lives, real land to farmers so that they can have something that they grow. Nobody denies that they are making significant progress." Today, the lack of progress is so clear that even Sanders hedges that he is " very concerned about the anti-democratic policies of the Ortega government.”
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