Quote:
Originally Posted by Solecismic
One relevant quote (and there are many):
"In the pope's view, and I agree with him, we are living... in a world which worships not love of brothers and sisters, not love of the poor and the sick, but worships the acquisition of money and great wealth."
Sanders isn't shy about his belief system. He often calls for dismantling Wall Street, even though he has no problem accumulating wealth himself through stock. I think that qualifies as hypocrisy.
You can certainly talk about poverty without hypocrisy. And you can certainly strongly disagree with Sanders without trying to silence him.
As any honest assessment of socialism will reveal, it's terrible for an economy. More dramatically in Venezuela in recent years, but throughout history and all over the world. Even in Scandinavia, where tiny and very homogeneous populations have seen their standards of living drop in comparison to the rest of the world since the implementation of socialism around 50 years ago.
We can argue whether lowering the average standard of living is worth implementing Sanders' policies, but I think he's being quite dishonest in stating that we can have everything we want, if only we confiscate the wealth of the wealthy.
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But saying Sanders is a hypocrite for talking about the poor is trying to silence him. If you want to critique proposals, have at, but it's lazy to rely on arguments based on things he hasn't said.
Speaking of which, he has never called for dismantling Wall Street. Keeping banks smaller and adding a transaction tax is not equivalent to ending stock ownership.
What is socialism? In many areas the U.S. is socialist and has been for decades. What is the level of socialism that will end in disaster? Why are no candidates from either major party calling for an end to all socialism? Maybe socialism=bad isn't a sufficient analysis.