Time for Americans to Take A Hard Right Turn Away From the Left’s Attraction To Socialism

America is flirting with disaster, and the seducer goes by the name “democratic socialism.” What began as campus fashion and AOC Instagram aesthetics has metastasized into mainstream Democratic policy: Medicare for All that no one can pay for, Green New Deals that would bankrupt the country overnight, student-loan forgiveness that punishes plumbers for the gender-studies degrees of others, and “wealth taxes” that are really just slow-motion nationalization of private capital.

Let’s be blunt: every single time socialism has been tried at scale, it has delivered shortages, stagnation, and (often) secret police. The Soviet Union (collapsed), Venezuela (hyperinflation and empty supermarkets), Cuba (1950s cars in 2025 because nothing new can be afforded), North Korea (need we say more?). Even the softer Scandinavian versions American socialists love to cite aren’t actually socialist; Denmark’s former prime minister literally begged Bernie Sanders to stop calling his country socialist. Denmark has no minimum wage law, lower corporate tax rates than the U.S. in some brackets, and school choice more radical than anything Ron DeSantis has proposed.

Yet here we are, with 40-year-high inflation still fresh in memory, supply-chain breakdowns, and a new generation being told that the root of all evil is profit itself. The same people who couldn’t keep toilet paper on shelves in 2020 want to run energy, healthcare, banking, housing, and transportation. The arrogance is breathtaking.

Look at the actual data. Since 1960, countries in the top quartile of the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom have seen their real per-capita GDP grow more than twice as fast as countries in the bottom quartile. Life expectancy, infant mortality, environmental quality, and even income equality (yes, really) tend to be better in freer economies once you reach a basic level of wealth.

Hong Kong and Singapore didn’t get rich by confiscating the means of production; they got rich by leaving people the hell alone.

Meanwhile, every expansion of government power in the United States has come with massive cost overruns and mediocrity. Amtrak loses money on almost every route. The Post Office bleeds billions. Public schools in deep-blue cities graduate fewer than 20% proficient in reading or math, yet unions block competition. The VA scandals should have killed the dream of government healthcare, but apparently veterans dying on waiting lists isn’t enough.

Socialism always needs an enemy to explain why the five-year plan failed again. Today that enemy is “billionaires,” “corporations,” “whiteness,” anyone who succeeds too much. Envy is elevated into a political program.

Capitalism runs on ambition, not resentment. Yes, markets can be brutal—but the alternative is a politburo of fallible humans deciding who gets what. History says that ends badly every single time.

The 2024 election was a scream of warning. Huge swings toward Republicans among working-class Hispanics, Black men, and union households happened because people who actually work for a living looked at empty shelves, $5 gas, and crime-ridden cities and said: “No more.”

It’s time to finish the job: slash regulations, universal school choice, repeal the Jones Act and Davis-Bacon, drill-frack-nuclear until energy is dirt cheap, and means-test entitlements before they collapse.

America tried the hard-left turn. We got inflation, crime, open borders, and cultural self-loathing. The only sane response is a hard right turn back to limited government, individual responsibility, and the proven engine of free markets.

The hour is late. Choose freedom before the flirtation with socialism becomes a marriage no one can escape.