Democrat Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is promisng Americans the same thing brutal dictators promised, and those promises are never realized, Ben Stein explained in a Fox News Channel interview this week.
Stein, an economist, lawyer and writer, warned that, when politicians promising to punish success in the name of equality obtain power, their policies invariably have terrifying results:
"We have a society in which there are an awful lot of people who have no idea that Stalin, Hitler, Mao Tse Tung all came to power promising the same kinds of things that Miss Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is promising.
"That led to mass murder, led to dictatorship, and led to genocide.
"These promises are old promises, and they invariably lead to bad things. The promise of saying to the people do what you can within the law to make your life better and your family's life better that system works extremely well. Capitalism is a system that allows people to make something of themselves instead of oppressing other people."
American society works because people are free to succeed - but, communism and socialism lead only to oppression, violence, corruption - and broken promises - Stein concluded:
"Making money is one of the most of harmless things there is to do in the whole world. And, that’s what our society is about. It's not about ordering people around, putting them concentration camps. What do you do if there is a richer or poorer person? What do you do? Do you take him away and shoot him?
"Well, that was what the communists tried; it didn’t work out very well for them. And, at the end of the day we wound with Russia with one of the most unequal societies there’s ever been in the world.
"In Vietnam, we were promised all these things and we wound up with one of the most of corrupt countries in the world. In Venezuela, I don’t know how corrupt it is, but people say it’s one of the most corrupt countries in the world.
"We don't wind up with the promises people made."