America’s Socialists Have Already Lost --They just haven’t figured it out yet.

 How did you spend America’s 250th birthday? New York’s socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, spent it lecturing America about racism and xenophobia while his wife attended an Islamic “spiritual wellness” retreat.

It was another reminder of the ugly rise of socialism in America.

Last month, a socialist named Darializa Avila Chevalier won a congressional primary in New York despite praising communism and calling America a “f—king disgrace.” In Colorado, socialist college student Melat Kiros defeated long-sitting Democratic representative Diana DeGette in her primary race. (RELATED: When the ‘World-City’ Votes Socialist)

This has set off alarm bells across the country as conservatives gear up to fight another generation of socialists. (RELATED: The Return of Socialism and the GOP’s Golden Opportunity)

Socialism is having a moment in America, but as the sheer toxicity of the actual socialists shows, it’s likely to be short-lived.

But this concern, while understandable, is also overstated. Socialism is having a moment in America, but as the sheer toxicity of the actual socialists shows, it’s likely to be short-lived. (RELATED: Don’t Panic Over Democratic Socialism)

For starters, the socialists have mostly been winning Democratic primaries, not elections to Congress or even the town dogcatcher office. This indicates that Democrats are moving further left — which we already knew — but not the country as a whole.

In fact, only a little over a quarter of Americans say they’d even consider voting for a democratic socialist. Under a third said they see socialism in a “very favorable” or even “somewhat favorable” light.

Imagine that: decades of university indoctrination, hip socialist influencers, righteous anger over corporate abuses — yet socialism remains radioactive to the vast majority.

Americans vote not just at the ballot box but with their feet, and they’ve been overwhelmingly moving to states that are less socialist. By far, the biggest trend in American migration is people leaving blue states for red states, seeking lower taxes and lighter regulatory burdens. (RELATED: ‘Reverse Okies’ and Blue State Refugees — Another Wave Appears To Be Building)

It’s true that some of these red tape refugees bring leftist political beliefs with them — “don’t California my Texas!” — but socialism? At least in practice, they’re rejecting it.

It’s worth remembering that America has had far more resounding socialist moments than the mayor of New York and a handful of primary-candidate fruitcakes. Bernie Sanders became the first out-and-proud socialist to win a Senate seat in 2006. Socialist ideas in general got more traction in the 1930s and 1960s than today.

Thousands of socialists have been elected to city councils, mayoral offices, and even Congress since Karl Marx put poisonous pen to bloodstained paper. Yet a socialist consensus has never taken hold in America, and this is what counts.

The U.S. no longer has an adversary like the Soviet Union to remind us why socialism doesn’t work. Instead, an ex-socialist adversary (China) now mimics our market-oriented policies.

China used to be socialist, but in the 1980s it adopted market reforms that it dubbed “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” Today, this essentially means state-directed capitalism, very different from what the Mamdanis of the world support.

Don’t expect American leftists to learn from China’s failed socialist experiment, which begat Mao Tse-tung and mass murder. But if modern China gets its way, then the U.S. will become even more dependent on Chinese exports, prices will go up, and American jobs will vanish.

I doubt today’s pampered socialists will be okay with that. Global competition has a way of clarifying who Americans are, and competition with China should remind us that we succeed when we’re not socialist. (RELATED: Champagne Socialism Comes to America)

Look at space. NASA spent decades building rockets by committee. Then a private company, SpaceX, came along and did it faster, cheaper, and better — landing boosters upright like something out of science fiction. Let’s see China do that.

And when China’s state-controlled tech giant Huawei proved a threat to American national security by controlling too much of the globe’s AI and 5G capabilities, the Trump administration waved through a merger between two American companies, HPE and Juniper Networks. This created a new U.S. tech company with the global scale to leave Huawei in the dust.

It was a reminder of who we are. Americans value competition, creativity, freedom, innovation, and the progress of free enterprise.

It’s why we’re the world’s number one exporter of energy. It’s why we lead the world on AI. And there’s nothing a few dingy socialists can do about it.

In his 4th of July speech, Mamdani declared that America is a place of “monopolies that dominate every industry,” “oligarchs who buy elections,” and “masked agents terrorizing our streets.”

That dystopia might exist in his mind. But for most Americans, it calls to mind a certain Russian experiment in socialism they’d prefer to leave in the past.

https://spectator.org/americas-socialists-have-already-lost/