The Socialists Await the Gullible

So-called Democratic Socialists are having a moment in America, but their surge is shadowed by the incompatibility of Marxism and civil liberties. Feature the latest démarche by, say, Nicaragua’s leftist strongman, Daniel Ortega. “There will never be elections here again,” the Comandante asserts, and his rubber-stamp Congress is moving to cancel the vote that was set for 2027. It marks a caution for the Jacobins seeking to hijack America’s Democratic Party.Mr. Ortega’s dictatorial turn is a throwback, too, to debates that roiled American politics in the 1980s. Back then President Reagan and many Republicans were steadfast in opposing the leftists, including Mr. Ortega, who rose to power in the Sandinista revolt. In 1988 Reagan decried Mr. Ortega and his camarilla for “the systematic crushing of all human rights, the torture of dissidents, and the swelling population of political prisoners.”Under Sandinista rule Nicaragua promoted close ties with Soviet Russia, destroyed Nicaragua’s economy, and drove inflation to confiscatory levels. Reagan sought to support the local opposition to the Sandinistas, the Contras, but Democrats in Congress barred American aid. This led to what became known as the Iran-Contra imbroglio as the White House scrambled to identify alternative sources of funding for the Nicaraguan freedom fighters.The Democrats’ sympathy with Mr. Ortega and the Sandinistas came despite what a Wall Street Journal editorial in 1988 called “the junta’s almost daily and grotesque mockery of democracy.” Among the most fervent admirers of the Nicaraguan regime was the socialist mayor of Burlington, Vermont, one Bernard Sanders. The future senator, de facto godfather for today’s Democratic Socialists, in 1985 visited Mr. Ortega and called him an “impressive guy.”Mr. Sanders said “as a socialist, the word socialism does not frighten me, and I think it’s probably fair to say that the Nicaraguan government is primarily a socialist government.” In a video that is circulating on social media, the mayor crooned of Mr. Ortega’s rule that after “years of economic and political domination, Nicaragua is determined not to be a banana republic anymore, and it’s free to make its own decisions.” Mr. Sanders asked: “Is this a crime?”The socialist mayor invited Mr. Ortega to visit Burlington, and groused that American press coverage had not “reflected fairly the goals and accomplishments of your administration.” Mr. Sanders urged a better public relations campaign because Mr. Ortega’s regime was “not getting their message of what they are trying to do out to the American people.” Mr. Sander’s enthusiasm was of a piece with his enthusiasm for the dictatorship at Havana.At the same time that Mr. Sanders was defending Mr. Ortega’s government, the Vermont socialist was touting how Cuba’s Marxist tyrant, Fidel Castro, “educated their kids, gave them health care, totally transformed the society.” Reagan offered a clearer-eyed view of the regime at Managua, asserting in 1988 that “Daniel Ortega has said that his revolution is irreversible. Our goal in Nicaragua must be to make democracy irreversible.”Of the Nicaraguan leftists’ pretensions to legitimacy, a Wall Street Journal editorial in 1982 said that “the Sandinistas did not exactly come to office as a bunch of innocent social democrats trying to establish a regime that civil libertarians would love.” In words that resonate amid today’s ascendant left, the Journal warned that “it was only a matter of time before their Marxist-Leninist orientation would become too evident to fool even the most gullible.”

The Socialists Await the Gullible

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