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285 views • February 3, 2023

Over 100 Democrats Join Republicans in Passing Resolution Condemning Socialism

Capitol Report
Capitol Report
The U.S. House of Representatives on Feb. 2 passed H. Con. Res. 9, a bill "denouncing the horrors of socialism," over opposition from Democrats. The bill was introduced by Rep. Maria Salazar (R-Fla.). It passed in a bipartisan 327–86 vote. All Republicans and 109 Democrats voted in favor of the measure. 13 Democrats voted present. Salazar explained her rationale for unveiling the bill now in comments to NTD. "Because 44 percent of Americans believe the Communist Manifesto is better than the Declaration of Independence," Salazar replied quickly. Salazar represents Miami, the world capital of communist refugees fleeing from the socialist systems of Cuba, Venezuela, and others in the southern hemisphere. She grew up in Fidel Castro's Cuba, where she experienced the deprivation of basic essentials that have historically been part and parcel of socialist states. Republicans pointed to the atrocities and human rights violations historically common to socialist states like the Soviet Union, the Chinese Communist regime, and North Korea. Founded in the political philosophy of Karl Marx, a German who spent a lifetime in unemployment, socialism and its offshoot communism push for state ownership of the means of production—meaning capital goods like factories, machinery, and other equipment for production. In Marx's formulation, a communist country in its final form has no need for a state; however, as a transitionary device Marx called for a so-called "dictatorship of the proletariat," a nominally short-lived body meant to transition a society from capitalism to communism. Thus far, however, no communist state has moved beyond this first conceptual stage. Meanwhile, guided by Marx's ideology, socialists are responsible for the deaths of upwards of 100,000,000 people during the 20th century. 'The Greatest Crimes in History' "[Socialist] ideology necessitates a concentration of power that has time and time again collapsed into Communist regimes, totalitarian rule, and brutal dictatorships," Salazar wrote in the bill. Socialism, she continued, "has repeatedly led to famine and mass murders, and the killing of over 100,000,000 people worldwide." "Many of the greatest crimes in history were committed by socialist ideologues," Salazar argued, pointing to figures like Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, Pol Pot, Kim Jong Il, Kim Jong Un, and others. Salazar then listed a slew of examples of rights violations under socialist regimes: the horrors of Stalin's dictatorship in the USSR, which killed tens of millions and sent millions more to rot in terrifying gulag labor camps; the destruction brought to China's inhabitants by Zedong's "Great Leap Forward," which killed upwards of 55 million human beings in China. She pointed to the so-called "killing fields" of Pol Pot's Cambodia, which left over one million dead; she pointed to mass starvation that continues to this day in Kim Jong Un's North Korea. Socialism, Salzar argued in the bill, is contrary to the founding principles of the United States. Salazar noted: "The author of the Declaration of Independence, President Thomas Jefferson, wrote, 'To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry, and the fruits acquired by it.'" Likewise, Salazar cited a quote from former President James Madison, known in American history as the "Father of the U.S. Constitution." Madison wrote that it “is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest.” “Whereas the United States of America was founded on the belief in the sanctity of the individual, to which the collectivistic system of socialism in all of its forms is fund
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