Take them at their word

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

The Democratic Socialists of America has put its ambitions in writing. Its new platform reaches far beyond higher taxes and expanded government benefits. WORLD commentator Cal Thomas says Americans should read it carefully—and take the organization at its word.

CAL THOMAS: Members of Congress—and the vice president—take an oath to support and defend the Constitution “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

Foreign enemies are usually easy to identify.

Domestic threats are harder—especially when they come not with weapons, but with a political program.

The Democratic Socialists of America has now published one. It is called “Workers Deserve More.”

The organization says it wants to “draft a new constitution” and create “a democratic socialist republic.”

That is not an accusation from its opponents.

It is DSA’s own language.

Here’s DSA national co-chair Ashik Siddique on C-SPAN

SIDDIQUE: Let’s start with abolishing the Senate. The Senate is a very undemocratic institution because a state with a small population has the … same representation as a state that has 40 million people, like California does, or New York State, … which are the most populated states in the country. But they have the same representation as a much smaller population. So the House of Representatives is more democratic that way, and we just don’t see the point of the Senate.

Nor do they see the point of the Electoral College.

DSA would replace the president and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by Congress—and subordinate to it.

It would extend voting rights to permanent residents who are not citizens.

It calls for public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries.

It proposes aggressive wealth taxes and publicly owned housing.

Healthcare would come at no cost to individuals.

ICE would be abolished. And the platform calls for steps toward fully abolishing the police and prison system.

When a political organization tells us exactly how it intends to restructure the country, we should believe it.

DSA asks voters to imagine life without capitalism.

No debt. No need for health insurance. No mortgage. No landlord. Retirement publicly funded.

Food, education, energy, medicine, and transportation would no longer be businesses. They would become what the program calls “common goods and utilities.”

The answers to the obvious questions are simplistic.

Who pays?

Billionaires, they say.

America has roughly a thousand of them. Confiscate their entire combined wealth, and—on paper—it would fund the federal government for less than fourteen months.

Then what?

And most of that wealth is not cash. It is ownership in companies. Seizing it would make the government the owner.

Who allocates resources?

The platform says they would be allocated “democratically.”

That means politically—by elected officials and government agencies.

And who decides what each person receives?

The same people.

Socialism does not eliminate scarcity.

It centralizes power over scarcity.

DSA identifies its enemies, too.

Not merely individual bosses, police officers, judges, or presidents—but, in its words, “the entire global system of capital” and “the entire anti-democratic structure of our society.”

Again, we should take them at their word.

Americans have a right to advocate constitutional change.

But the rest of us have a right—and a duty—to understand what is being proposed.

This is not simply a demand for higher taxes or another government program.

It is a plan to replace America’s constitutional order with a socialist republic.

Calling fellow citizens enemies should never be done lightly.

But neither should we ignore a movement that announces its intention to discard the Constitution’s basic structure.

The answer must be peaceful and lawful—in elections, legislatures, schools, and public debate.

But there must be an answer.

For WORLD, I’m Cal Thomas.

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