The brick walls of the tenements echo with the rapturous voice of a passionate old man, confident in his party's ability and power. He ensures the crowd that the evil oppressors will be thrown off, and the people will be liberated! "Finally, soon, we will get what is right, just, and deserved by our country!" The October wind violently blows the falling leaves across the stage, and it seems the winds of revolution are blowing. Is it Lenin in St. Petersburg, 1917? Perhaps Mao in Beijing, 1936? No. Actually, it is Bernie Sanders at CU Boulder in 2016...
Bernie Sanders is on campus right now complaining about how health insurance is so expensive, how much money the insurance companies make, and how many people are uninsured... even though he voted for the affordable care act, which mandated the purchase of medical insurance thus raising people's deductibles considerably and thoroughly enriching insurance companies (who were its primary proponents). By the way Bernie, many of those uninsured (especially young people) choose to pay the fines for being uninsured rather than buy insurance, because it is cheaper, and they are confident that they will have extreme medical costs in the near future.
Why isn't socialism dead? People must learn to see that the promises of free (insert desired product or service here) are nothing more than a bribe to the masses to win over absolute power. This has never proven itself untrue. There an abundance of empirical historical examples and statistics proving that socialism is not and never will be a utopia where comrade gives freely unto comrade, each working his hardest to provide for the common good. Nor will any amount of socialist policies ever amount to anything similar to this. Socialism destroys the cultural and moral fabric of societies, and consumes the amassed material wealth of nations.
One can look to nations like Sweden to see the effects that socialism has even in limited doses. At one point they were nearly the fastest growing economy in the world, now it is around 109th. This nation had a relatively free economy during the 19th and early 20th centuries, and has for the last 50 or 60 years been eating its seed crop. If free college educations helped a nation grow its economy, Sweden would not be ranked below Tajikistan, Madagascar, or Angola in terms of real GDP growth rate.
Generous welfare, too, destroys the group it is targeted at. Just a glance at the massive gains the black community of the United States made in terms of family strength, income, and educational attainment from the time they were released from literal chattel slavery until the 1960's (approximately a century), and the losses they have made in all these areas and more since then, tells the entire story. Black culture is centered on violence, there is widespread infidelity and illegitimacy, a very low average income, and a very low rate of educational attainment. When the government teat can be suckled off for only the price of a vote and concession of power, the desire to achieve drops dramatically.
So Bernie, take your socialist lies and never return. Every solution you preach is false, and dangerous. They have killed in the past, and could do so again. You have blood on your hands, and your addiction to power is disgusting.