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  And so we become willing participants in the Left’s sport of identity politics, despite the perpetual outcome of our defeat. So comforted are we by the ease of the progressive path laid beneath our feet, that we ignore that it’s a path to nowhere.

  But what would our ancestors think?

  What would your grandmother, your great-grandmother, or your great-great-grandmother say if they saw you now? Better yet, what would you say if you were transported back to their upbringing, and made to endure the reality of what they lived through to grant you the opportunities that lie just beneath your feet? It was my grandmother’s unexpected death that forced me to harvest the seeds of her legacy. My hope is that the thought of your ancestry inspires you to do the same.

  Never should we set ourselves on a fruitless quest for an imaginary utopia. Rather, we ought to commit ourselves to the steady remembrance of the sacrifice and hardship that came before us, so that we may appreciate the many blessings of our circumstances today.

  5 ON SOCIALISM AND GOVERNMENT HANDOUTS

  Human beings have a strange relationship with the truth: we would much rather hear what makes us feel good than a hard-hitting, fundamental fact. I believe this is especially true in the black community. Carrying the burden of generations of oppression has left us longing for goodness—for politicians, media, and others to pander to our delicate emotions rather than deliver any stinging truth regarding our predicament.

  The dictionary defines truth as “that which is true and in accordance with fact.” Truth, then, is universal and absolute. It transcends our humanity, our imperfect societies, and the leaders within them. Two plus two, for example, will always equal four. Upon any continent, within any city, under any leadership, this conclusion will always hold true.

  Goodness, on the other hand, is less certain; it is defined as “the quality of being morally good.” And unlike the factual constraints of truth, goodness is marked by its subjectivity. Indeed, what seems good to you may not seem good to me, and vice versa. Our current circumstances, our past experiences, and our circle of family, friends, and coworkers all help determine our perspective of what we deem good or not.

  Inevitably, if you put a handful of people in a room with differing backgrounds, they are bound to disagree. And when they do disagree, lines will be drawn and factions formed as people align themselves with those who seem the most sympathetic to their perspectives. That is a fundamental course in how problems arise.

  Take the abortion debate, for example. Pro-choice advocates stand on the side of the would-be mother and the “goodness” of supporting her right to decide whether she should carry a fetus to term once she becomes pregnant. Despite liberal points to the contrary, the question at the center of the debate is not about whether an early pregnancy constitutes life (the demand for the procedure itself reveals an understanding that even at the point of conception, the fetus is a living thing that will grow, as only living things can do). The argument between pro-choicers and pro-lifers, then, is not about science or what is true—it is about an individual’s idea of what is good.

  In our current social climate in which activists and politicians can turn something as fundamental as life itself into a matter of subjectivity, promising to do “good” is the platform of many political leaders. And when dealing with the black community, the concept of “goodness” has become synonymous with “free stuff.”

  Right now, Democrat candidates are attempting to shore up black votes by detailing what they will give us if elected. And I might be offended if I didn’t see the humor of this repeat tragedy. Truly, this old dog is learning no new tricks. Lest we forget, Democrats first lured blacks away from the Republican Party via the same routine—the promise that goverment intervention would significantly improve our livelihood. But for the Democrat establishment, promises made are problems kept. By all serious economic retro-assessments, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “New Deal” was an absolute disaster. In fact, a 2004 analysis concluded that government interventions prolonged the Great Depression by several years. This conclusion is supported by the fact that in the first year following the stock market crash of 1929, absent any federal intervention, “unemployment peaked at 9 percent, two months after the [crash] and began drifting downward until it reached 6.3 percent in June of 1930. That was when the federal government made its first major intervention with the Smoot-Hawley tariff. After… unemployment rates reversed and shot up… within six months, unemployment reached double digits at 11.6 percent in November 1930. After a series of additional large federal interventions in the economy, unemployment stayed in the double digits for the remainder of the decade.”

  Roosevelt’s 1933 National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) was a critical component of his New Deal plan to put Americans back to work. And in a statement made on June 16, 1933, Roosevelt set the hearts of millions of destitute Americans at ease with his vow to create new income-earning opportunities for those who needed them most:

  Between these twin efforts—public works and industrial reemployment—it is not too much to expect that a great many men and women can be taken from the ranks of the unemployed before winter comes. It is the most important attempt of this kind in history. As in the great crisis of the World War, it puts a whole people to the simple but vital test: “Must we go on in many groping, disorganized, separate units to defeat or shall we move as one great team to victory?”

  It was on this premise that FDR campaigned for votes, promising that even the black men and women who were struggling to keep their heads above water would benefit from his transformative policy. It all sounded “good,” but it did not take long for black America to realize that FDR’s promises were empty. The NRA was a key tenet of the NIRA, and while it was officially known as the National Recovery Administration, it was eventually given more accurate pseudonyms in the black community, including the “Negro Removal Act,” “Negroes Ruined Again,” and “Negroes Robbed Again.”

  The NRA gave previously unprecedented power to unions that refused membership to black workers in most cases. Meanwhile, government mandates for minimum wages kept employers from hiring blacks who were too unskilled to be deemed worthy of the pay increase. What’s more, legal guidelines prevented blacks from usurping the unfair hiring practices, because they were not allowed to offer to work for lower wages. Unironically, 1930 is the last year that black unemployment was lower than white unemployment. Federally mandated minimum wage laws did away with that occurrence altogether.

  Blacks engaged in agricultural work faced an entirely different set of challenges. In the South, blacks were forced off land that the government began paying landowners to leave unfarmed. The goal was to drive agriculture prices back up to pre–World War I levels by reducing inventory, but the artificial reduction of the market put many black tenant farmers out of work. Sharecroppers were technically entitled to a percentage of a farm’s profits, including any government funds that were allocated to acreage reduction. Initially, the federal government sent those funds directly to sharecroppers, but complaints from southern Democrats ended that practice, leaving landless black farmers jobless and incomeless.

  What is most surprising about the many ways in which these policies hurt black Americans is that it did nothing to quell their willingness to vote in even larger numbers for Democrats again in 1936—helping Roosevelt cruise to a landslide victory. As it turns out, the black community’s support of FDR had little to do with the truth that his New Deal policies caused disproportionate harm to the black community and everything to do with the goodness that blacks saw in the promises made by his administration. Furthermore, as FDR consistently pandered to racist southern Democrats and refused to rock the congressional boat by introducing legislation that would tackle racism head-on, his wife, Eleanor, presented herself as a sympathetic ear legitimately concerned about the issues facing black Americans.

  It was Eleanor who pushed for antilynching legislation (though she knew her husband would never support it) and
helped form the black cabinet, a group of people who became “advisors” to the Roosevelt administration on matters affecting the black community (though they were never involved in creating actual policy). Eleanor also befriended well-respected activist and educator Mary McLeod Bethune and arranged for her to become the director of the Division of Negro Affairs of the National Youth Administration. Encouraged by the endorsement of Bethune and other influential blacks, Eleanor became the new face of the Democrat Party, and blacks, sensing sincerity in the First Lady’s outspokenness about racism, ignored the fact that her husband, the president, was responsible for making their economic circumstances worse.

  Sound familiar?

  Right now, as Democrats build out platforms pledging to give black people more stuff—reparations, free health care, student loan forgiveness, free college tuition, etc.—they prey upon the same vulnerabilities and frustrations that Eleanor Roosevelt did with the same tacit understanding that their policies will do nothing to alter the situation. Their strategy is to feign sympathy and friendship, with zero intent of transforming circumstances. Perhaps more worrisome is the fact that their push for government solutions has grown increasingly more ambitious. They now openly advocate for transforming all of America into a socialist state. According to a recent Gallup poll, only 47 percent of Democrats view capitalism favorably, while a mind-blowing 57 percent are in favor of socialism—the abhorrent political system that would abolish private property, transform the government into an all-powerful dictatorship, and otherwise destroy everything great about this country.

  But you do not have to take my word on how horrible socialism is, nor do you have to go back to the 1800s to see how socialism has ravaged nations. Right now, in the twenty-first century, countries are still implementing the worst social experiment known to man and ruining the lives of millions of people in the process.

  A BRIEF HISTORY OF SOCIALISM

  Socialism is the ultimate example of promised goodness, of a noble benevolence to a society’s poor and destitute, and only when great portions of a population have been mercilessly impoverished and slaughtered (typically, the people whom socialism was promised to help) is the truth revealed. I find it truly amazing that socialism is implemented as often as it is, given its history of utter failure. Time and time again, politicians promise different results, but everything always unfolds exactly as it has before. In this sense, socialism is the ultimate example of human insanity as defined by Einstein: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

  Socialism is a parasite, a cancer, a lie. And like all lies, it will eventually kill. It kills the society that gives birth to it, destroying the social fabric and contracts that govern basic day-to-day interactions. It kills families—indeed, in The Communist Manifesto, the essential reading on nineteenth-century socialist/communist thought, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels argued for the explicit “Abolition of the family!” They believed that the traditional family structure was the source of private property and the division of labor, and that the innate nature of humans was to exist in sexually free, open communities.

  Socialism kills faith, as all challenges to the supremacy and authority of the state must be abolished, including God. Socialism certainly kills the spirits of entrepreneurism and self-improvement, as all aspiration is stripped from society in an attempt to maintain a state of commonality. And finally, of course, socialism kills people. The saddest outcome of all socialist republics is the starvation, death, and/or forced slaughter of the populace, all done in an attempt to maintain the power of tyrannical leftists and stamp down the inevitable uprisings from the poor and powerless who are made slaves to the socialist system.

  For people struggling to make ends meet, who are unemployed and drowning in medical debt, the idea of living in a society in which the government provides all basic needs—food, shelter, health care—sounds appealing. But the realities of socialism never match its grandiose ideals. Only those in power are afforded a “good” life with all of the privileges we now enjoy. Conversely, those on the bottom rungs of society struggle to barely get by—the difference being that they are now prevented from ever moving up life’s ladder.

  Today there is no greater example of socialism’s ills than Venezuela. By any measure, Venezuela represents a modern tragedy, a once-great South American nation now brought to its knees.

  After struggling to feed themselves and their families, the people of Venezuela are now engaged in a great exodus, deserting their homeland for countries that offer them the opportunity to simply stay alive. With millions of Venezuelans having already fled the ravaged country, Nicolás Maduro, the current president, announced that he was closing the Venezuela–Brazil border, in part to prevent the entry of humanitarian aid in what was deemed a foreign “provocation.” While the decision was later overturned by the supreme court, the reopening of the Brazilian border provided little hope for Venezuelans seeking relief. This is, indeed, one of the great ironies of socialism: while capitalists are accused of building walls to keep people out, socialists build walls to keep people in.

  Meanwhile, as is so often the case for socialist countries, the transfer of power back to Venezuelan citizens has become nearly impossible. Maduro assumed his presidential post via what many foreign governments believe was a rigged election; soon after, the congress granted Maduro the ability to rule by decree, effectively forming a government of absolutism that allows the president to pass laws without congressional approval. Since this happened in 2013, Maduro has used his powers to effectively trample on the rights of individuals without fear of ramification, and private property, the old enemy of the socialist, has been seized by the government. In the same year that Maduro was allowed to rule by decree, private business owners were arrested and accused of speculating and hoarding, while government-mandated prices on goods led to mass destocking of inventory with no incentive for businesses to restock. At the same time, skyrocketing inflation that occurred as a result of the government printing excess money has led to chronic currency devaluation. In fact, the hyperinflation led Maduro to institute a new currency in 2018, the bolívar soberano, though it still has not remedied Venezuela’s inflation issues.

  So what does this mean, in practice? What would happen if socialism-induced hyperinflation took over the United States? For starters, the dollar bill would become worthless almost overnight, the hundred-dollar bill insignificant inside of a month. At the same time, the price of your morning cup of coffee would double on a daily basis, while the cost of your weekly visit to the grocery store would quadruple within a week. Moreover, that weekly shopping trip would become physically impossible, as the amount of cash you would have to lug around—bags and bags full—to make said purchases would be too much for the average person to bear.

  This is socialism manifest—economic catastrophe caused by price controls, blowout debt, poor management of government industries, and the nationalization of efficient private businesses. The end result? Death, starvation, and mass emigration. Maduro, living in the presidential palace in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, continues to ignore the worsening plight of the people he claims to represent. Meanwhile, President Trump spoke absolute truth when he said, “The problem in Venezuela is not that socialism has been poorly implemented, but that socialism has been faithfully implemented.”

  Former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, an avowed antisocialist, noted, “Socialists cry, ‘Power to the people’ and raise the clenched fist as they say it. We all know what they mean—power over people, power to the State.” Yet the fact remains that politicians around the world, including the United States, still view socialism as an aspirational, utopian ideal. In America, as Democrat leaders continue to brainwash people with their socialist rhetoric, they rely on distressed minorities—particularly blacks—to support this narrative. And there is no one guiltier of this manipulation than Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

  * * *

  Comparisons h
ave often been drawn between myself and AOC, the young Latina socialist from New York City. On the surface, these comparisons are fair; we were born in the same year, and we are fellow minority women with large social media followings. However, we have arrived at radically opposed political conclusions. She and I perhaps illustrate the war of ideas that presently rages within Western societies, and while Ocasio-Cortez has chosen the pursuit of goodness, I have chosen the path of truth.

  Like all socialists who came before her, Ocasio-Cortez appears to rely on class warfare—a struggle between the haves and have-nots—to justify the need for her existence and the power of the Left. Helplessness, then, becomes a necessary ingredient to maintain power. She is certainly consistent in her socialist crusade, even taking actions that seem to work directly against the interests of the district she represents in Congress. Case in point: When Amazon announced in 2018 that it had plans to build its second national headquarters in New York City, Ocasio-Cortez rallied her constituents and some of the city’s liberal opinion leaders against the deal.

  Understand, this deal would have brought with it 25,000–40,000 new jobs to the city, as well as at least $30 billion in revenue. What is more, the headquarters were not set to be in Manhattan, where there is already concentrated wealth. They were to be built in Long Island City, a working-class area in an outer borough that is struggling economically. According to statistics from the New York City Community Health District last taken in 2015, 19 percent of the population in Long Island City lives below the federal poverty level, and unemployment is hovering at a higher-than-the-national-average 9 percent. Adding insult to the injury inflicted by the Latina AOC, Long Island City and next-door Astoria are 28 percent Hispanic (with 41 percent of the population having limited English proficiency) and about 10 percent black.