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February 9, 2020

Chris Matthews warns against the dangers of socialism

By Andrea Widburg

Despite his prominent place on MSNBC, Chris Matthews is a throwback to an earlier Democrat Party. Perhaps that accounts for his unusual willingness to say that, while he’s all for a generous welfare state, he hates and fears true socialism. Of course, Bernie’s followers want him banned from TV.

Matthews, a one-time U.S. Capitol Police officer has already admitted “I’m more conservative than people think I am. . . . I voted for George W. in 2000.” No wonder that, after the latest Democrat candidate debate in New Hampshire, Matthews warned against socialism. He was explicit about socialism’s dangers:

Chris Matthews: But I think that the Democratic Party has to figure out its ideology. In Britain, we had the Liberal Party, when I was growing up at the beginning of the last century . . . when the Liberal Party, they were overtaken by the Socialist Party. Labour became the main threat, the main challenger to the Tories. Churchill went back to the Tories. We know all those . . . a lot of us know that history. A lot of us will be sorting things out if the Democratic Party runs a socialist candidate. That's a change for the Democratic Party.  The Democratic Party has been to the left of the Republican Party on the issue of mixed capitalism: More social programs. They push Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. Enormously popular programs. I think ACA-Obamacare has also. . . I wish they'd follow through with it, make it work. I think most Americans would be happy that . . . to have a public option and have Medicare followed through with.

But I don’t want to into the. . . . You know, I'm on every night. I'll let the Democrats figure this out. I have my own views of the word "socialist" and I'll be glad to tell them, share them with you in private. And they go back to what [sic] the early 1950s.

I have an attitude about them. I remember the Cold War. I have an attitude towards Castro. I believe if Castro and the Reds had won the Cold War there would have [been] executions in Central Park -- and I might have been one of the ones getting executed and certain other people would be there cheering, okay.  So I have a problem with people who took the other side.

I don't know who Bernie supports over these years. I don't know what he means by socialism. One week it's “Denmark. We're gonna be like Denmark.” Okay that's harmless. That's basically a capitalist country with a lot of good social welfare programs. Denmark is harmless.

[snip]

Chris Matthews: What does he think of Castro? That's a great question. What did you think of Fidel-ismo? We all thought he was great when he first. . . . I cheered like mad for him when he first went in and then he became a communist and started shooting every one of his enemies.

Matthews reminds us how far left the Democrat party has shifted in the last few decades. In the 1950s and 1960s, Democrats were ferociously anti-communist. Indeed, the AFL-CIO was in the forefront of America’s fight against communism.

The entire Kennedy Doctrine was aimed at defeating communism in the Western Hemisphere, especially in Latin America. In  his inaugural address, Kennedy promised to fight communism:

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

Today’s Democrat Party is no longer Kennedy’s (or Matthew’s) party. It’s the party of Bernie Sanders, the man who clings to true socialism despite seeing over the decades the deaths of one hundred million people around the world, and the enslavement and degradation of billions of people, all in service to the socialist ideology he now seeks to impose on America. (And make no mistake: Warren and Buttigieg have the same vision, although the one cloaks it in motherly “planning” language and the other in meaningless platitudes.)

Bernie’s followers immediately ridiculed Matthews, mostly by twisting his words:

The hashtag #FireChrisMatthews instantly trended. The worst thing, though, was the rehash of the "disliking Obama's policies equals racism" accusation to silence people. All concerns about Bernie’s socialism are derided as anti-Semitism – never mind that Bernie is aggressively non-religious, hates Israel, and hangs about with anti-Semites. The Left is happy to see all the Jews in Israel burn, but don’t insult Bernie….

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