Pavlich: Bernie Sanders and his leeches

Earlier this year, the Investor’s Business Daily editorial board ran a story detailing the past of Vermont senator and socialist presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. It turns out Sanders, like many of his followers, is an unproductive leech to society. 

“Sanders spent most of his life as an angry radical and agitator who never accomplished much of anything. And yet now he thinks he deserves the power to run your life and your finances,” the editorial board wrote. “Friends said he was ‘always poor’ and his ‘electricity was turned off a lot.’ They described him as a slob who kept a messy apartment — and this is what his friends had to say about him. The only thing he was good at was talking … non-stop … about socialism and how the rich were ripping everybody off.” 

{mosads}Before turning 40, Sanders lived in a rundown shack with a dirt floor, not because the system was against him but because he spent his time playing victim. When he failed to do any private-sector job well, including writing porn and working as a carpenter, he blamed free market straw men. He made excuses rather than learning from mistakes and bettering himself, not to mention taking responsibility for failure. When the opportunity to enter politics came along, he jumped at the chance, and he has been funded by American taxpayers for decades. 

In the 1980s, a young Sanders further proved his socialist zealotry by praising breadlines as a sign of economic progress, fairness and success. 

“You know, it’s funny. Sometimes American journalists talk about how bad a country is when people are lining up for food. That’s a good thing. In other countries, people don’t line up for food. The rich get the food and the poor starve to death,” Sanders said. 

On the 2016 campaign trail, he’s developed a following of millennials with speeches about a “free” utopia and justice for the evil rich who are keeping poor people down. 

Reality proves Sanders’s promises can never be kept and teaches us there is no such thing as “free,” period. No free college, no free housing, no free healthcare, no free cellphone service. Confiscation of 100 percent of America’s wealthiest individual assets, the “1 percent,” wouldn’t put a dent in the national debt, not to mention provide “free” everything for the other “99 percent.”

In the short term, the rich can pay taxes to provide entitlement services until the money runs out and an entire generation becomes enslaved to the government.

This is socialism, a system sold as fair. Everyone is treated equally despite how much money an individual may have in his bank account. The harsh reality is that socialism not only destroys economic freedom, it severely limits the capability of everyone to reach maximum potential. It’s a system that doesn’t provide more, but instead vastly less. 

Take for example socialist Venezuela, which is currently rationing electricity and toilet paper in the name of fairness. In free market, capitalist America, the vast majority of individuals don’t have a shortage or rationing of either. Sanders isn’t offering an easier, more sustainable lifestyle. He’s offering dependence, hardship and despair. 

Over the weekend, Sanders supporters proved their entitled, delusional behavior by angrily tossing real dollars into the wind as rival Hillary Clinton drove by in a motorcade. They literally threw money into the street, disregarding its value, just like they’ll do with the hard-earned private-sector money of America if Sanders were to ever become president. This is what “free” looks like. 

But despite Sanders’s dishonest offerings, there is hope. 

“The expanded social welfare state Sanders thinks the United States should adopt requires everyday people to pay considerably more in taxes. Yet millennials become averse to social welfare spending if they foot the bill. As they reach the threshold of earning $40,000 to $60,000 a year, the majority of millennials come to oppose income redistribution, including raising taxes to increase financial assistance to the poor,” CATO Institute research fellow Emily Ekins recently published in The Washington Post. “Similarly, a Reason-Rupe poll found that while millennials still on their parents’ health-insurance policies supported the idea of paying higher premiums to help cover the uninsured (57 percent), support flipped among millennials paying for their own health insurance with 59 percent opposed to higher
premiums.”

Considering the millennial generation is the largest ever produced, I’ll hold onto that silver lining.

The definition of “free” under Sanders’s policies means taking from someone else, just as Sanders has done throughout his lifetime. 

Pavlich is editor for Townhall.com and a Fox News contributor.