“I’m enjoying the irony of American Sanders supporters lecturing me, a former Soviet citizen, on the glories of Socialism and what it really means! Socialism sounds great in speech soundbites and on Facebook, but please keep it there. In practice, it corrodes not only the economy but the human spirit itself, and the ambition and achievement that made modern capitalism possible and brought billions of people out of poverty. Talking about Socialism is a huge luxury, a luxury that was paid for by the successes of capitalism. Income inequality is a huge problem, absolutely. But the idea that the solution is more government, more regulation, more debt, and less risk is dangerously absurd.”

—-Former chess grandmaster and Soviet dissident Garry Kasparov on Facebook, explaining to  clueless  U.S. citizens what they don’t appreciate about their own system, from the perspective of an immigrant who has seen where socialist fantasies lead.

Of course, Kasparov isn’t remotely eligible to be President, since he was born in Russia and is now a Croatian citizen. Yet if I could, I would vote for him over any of the leading candidates in both parties even if he couldn’t speak English and had to commute from Croatia.

Kasperov, who is the chairman of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation and the author of Winter is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped, elaborated on his theme at the Daily Beast, giving an American history lesson in the process (Does Donald Trump know any of this stuff? No chance!) and saying in part… Continue reading →