A kook for president?

It's frightening but possible: America could soon have a kook for president, for the society is so politically correct and so dependent that Senator Bernie Sanders could be elected to the White House.

That he is a kook no one can dispute. He is a socialist, and all socialists are kooks for socialism is an irrational ideology in addition to being a destructive system of governance. Stalin, Khrushchev, Ceausescu and, in our time, Fidel Castro have all been irrational men. Sanders shares their irrationality, but not their brutality.

Bernie Sanders, former four-term mayor of Burlington, the state of Vermont's biggest city, congressman from 2001 to 2007, and independent senator since 2012, wants government to control the economy, and by so doing, control peoples' lives.

He wants college to be free for all Americans; he calls a "college degree the new high-school diploma". He wants government to raise the minimum wage to US$15 an hour, which means that employers will have to lay off many of the poor, pass on the cost of the increase to consumers in higher prices, or shut down their businesses.

MOST POISONOUS VITRIOL

Sanders also wants universal health care, which means that those who sit on their butts all day and do nothing should have the same access to doctors, hospitals and medications as those who work. How will all this be possible? By taking from the rich, of course, especially the wealthiest Americans for whom Sanders reserves his most poisonous vitriol.

Time magazine, quoting a tax analyst named Dylan Matthews, said, "Matthews estimates the rate for the richest bracket would be closer to 77 per cent a number we haven't seen since 1964, back before income equality was a thing."

Bernie Sanders' ideas and promises are clearly socialist and kooky, and even 30 years ago, anyone holding them would be rightly considered insane, but now one man promulgating them has a chance at the presidency.

His rival for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton, had a big lead over him only months ago. This, however, has narrowed.

COMPROMISED

Clinton is compromised by the Benghazi affair and her sending classified emails on her personal computer server. This rightly raises questions about her integrity and fitness to hold the most sensitive and confidential office in the world. Having no other serious contender among Democrats for the presidency, people will naturally turn to Bernie Sanders.

It is frightening that such a system as socialism that has brought so much pain and suffering and poverty wherever it has been experimented with could be imposed on America without violent revolution.

But it is possible because the society has become so terrified of denouncing people's ideas because of political correctness that any kook who comes along is given respect as a sane person because it is incorrect to say people are wrong. Political correctness is nurtured by moral relativism, which contends that there are no absolutes, only preferences. Every man's ideas are as valid as the other man's.

Finally, Bernie Sanders has a chance of becoming president because Democrats and liberals have inculcated into some people and deceived others that government and society owe them a living, especially if they are poor. Their poverty, they are continually told, isn't the result of their own laziness and ignorance, but of the unjustness of society caused by those who have and the rich who plundered the poor for their own gain.

Hence, they have a right to what the rich possess. They can't take it from them at gunpoint, but they can depend on the government to do so by tax and by law. Bernie Sanders promises them that if he becomes president, he will do just that.

They may well elect him. They elected Barack Obama, who began the process that Bernie Sanders has pledged to accelerate.

- Ewin James is a preacher and freelance journalist who lives in Florida. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and eroyjames@aol.com.