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Its May 1 - May Day - and the workers of the world are uniting. Wait, no, the workers of the world are mostly working, because its Monday and stuff needs to get done.

But socialists of the world will march today, in honor of what theyve designated International Workers Day. Theyll be on the streets in Cuba, in Venezuela, and in San Francisco, where theyll attempt a Day Without Immigrants march.

According to Mother Jones magazine, Donald Trump has made socialism cool again.

The magazine added, Socialisms hipster makeover has been accelerated by a flowering of leftist media and culture.

Thats certainly true, but whats the truth about socialism? We need only look to Venezuela to see.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said he will expand the number of civilians involved in armed militias, providing guns to as many as 400,000 loyalists, Fox News reported on April 18. The announcement came as Maduro's opponents are gearing up for what they pledge will be the largest rally yet to press for elections and a host of other demands Wednesday. The Bolivarian militias, currently at approximately 100,000, were created by the late Hugo Chavez to assist the armed forces in the defense of his revolution from external and domestic attacks.

The country is now a failed state, with widespread hunger, looting and lawlessness. Its the textbook example of socialism. The government took control of the economy of the wealthiest and most oil-rich country in South America - and wrecked it through mismanagement and corruption.

You wont hear anything about starvation in Venezuela at any of the more fashionable May Day rallies.

This is just the tip of an iceberg of insensitivity, ignorance, and denial about socialisms ongoing and historical track record, notes The Federalists Robert Tracinski. The bodies keep piling up, but the ideology that produced those bodies always gets a free pass.

What we always hear is that socialism hasnt failed because socialism - true socialism - has never been tried.

As Tracinski points out, this is known as the No True Scotsman fallacy in logic. If I tell you no Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge, and you point out that your Uncle Hamish puts sugar on his porridge, I need only respond, Yes, but no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.

The problem with this fallacy, as it applies to socialism, is that socialism always does - and always must - lead to the dictatorships and government thuggery that it always has.

These crimes follow inevitably from the basic idea behind socialism: the idea that the good of society as a collective is more important the rights or even the life of the individual, Tracinski writes. Thats the social in socialism, and by throwing out the rights and liberty of the individual, it serves as a rationalization for an endless amount of carnage. Who cares if this particular person - or a few million people - suffer, so long as you can claim that mankind collectively benefits?

Those marching for May Day wont acknowledge this, of course. But history will.

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Editorial: On this May Day, remember what socialism always leads to - Tyler Morning Telegraph

Recently, I heard popular host Glenn Beck state that he had eliminated the word evil from his vocabulary, the rationale being that he believed it would thwart efforts for conservatives to come together with their political opponents to solve the problems facing our nation.

I acknowledge the fact that Beck has done a lot over the years toward educating his audience concerning the machinations of global socialists, first on Fox News television and later through his online network, The Blaze. However, as Ive indicated previously, sometimes the host goes too far in his self-styled Mormon flower-child modality with regard to the reality of dealing with said political opponents, their ruthlessness, lack of ethics and intractability.

Even though it has not always been a pervasive belief among Western Christians, as a Christian, I can certainly concur with Becks belief that love is the highest ideal a person can have. That said, notions of brotherly love and coming together are nave at best when it comes to political opponents who are wholly dedicated to eradicating an opponents system of belief, governance or population, whether by attrition or by the sword.

Typically, this sort of political opponent is referred to as an enemy.

The half-billion people murdered, maimed and enslaved by socialists of varied stripes during the last century ought to be sufficient proof of their ruthlessness, lack of ethics and intractability. Likewise, Islams 1,400 years of blind zealotry, as well as the murder and mayhem perpetrated by Islamists during that time (to say nothing of the same perpetrated by Islamists over the last couple of decades alone) ought to be sufficient proof of their inability to come to accords with their opponents.

Over the last couple of years, we have seen key indicators that citizens of Western nations whove had socialism and its attendant social engineering devices rammed down their throats over the last 50 years have had enough.

With regard to immigration, for example: Europe is obviously further along than America with respect to the machinations of international socialist politicos. Now, we are seeing a strong response to the doctrine of European leaders having welcomed millions of individuals from culturally bankrupt nations over the last 50 years. Those who have refused to assimilate and treat the largesse of Europeans as their birthright have become a poisonous, indigestible mass in the European body politic.

This isnt an instance of Westerners being bigoted, creepy Christian dogmatists, particularly in the case of Europeans. Europe accounted for 66.3 percent of the worlds Christian population in 1910. Today, it represents 25.9 percent. The proportion of European Christians has dropped from 94.5 percent of the population to 76.2 percent in 100 years.

Over time, Westerners, whether Europeans, Canadians or Americans, have begun to find the insidious aspects of socialism that were dramatically misrepresented to them by politicians, akin to having ingested spoiled food. One doesnt get sick right away, but when it sets in, its something one never forgets.

These people are not ideological conservatives either, nor have they identified socialism as the name of their pain yet. They just know that their paychecks dont go nearly as far as they used to, theyre far less safe, their entertainment media has become shameless left-wing propaganda, and their children are being indoctrinated in school rather than educated.

Other than the election of Donald Trump to the presidency (the most notable byproduct of this phenomenon), there are myriad examples of plain folk expressing their disgust with socialist encroachment. Brexit, the United Kingdoms effort to extricate itself from the European Union is certainly one of these. Citizens expulsion of their government in Iceland a few years ago is another.

In the corporate world, the shrinking coffers of the NFL and ESPN followed those companies tolerance of anti-American expression among certain pro football players and sportscasters, respectively. Big-box giant Target is currently hemorrhaging top executives and cash, the result of that organization becoming a corporate activist for the homosexual agenda.

It was one thing for Westerners to view from afar the desolation of Soviet Russia, Cuba and other nations that went socialist during the last century, or to muse over oil-rich Venezuela being flat broke due to hard-line socialist policies but the foregoing declines have struck too close to home for comfort.

With regard to the opening paragraphs and concepts of evil and enmity: Most people can recognize evil when they see it; obviously, this holds true even among societies in which leftist moral relativism abounds. There is a danger to the excising and modification of language in that it smacks of the Orwellian the politically correct moral relativism, social engineering and borderline mind control so often employed by socialists. Theyve even gone so far as to modify or negate such terms as good and evil to advance amorality and secure political gains.

Increasing numbers of those who have known liberty under Western constitutions and democratic republics are coming to realize that a chief consequence of this strategy has been an erosion of their liberties and a decline in their quality of life which I suppose breathes new life into the axiom referencing not being able to fool all of the people all of the time.

Media wishing to interview Erik Rush, please contact media@wnd.com.

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THE OTHER RUSH - WND.com

April 25 Public Pulse writer Virgil Patlan Sr. (Mello should be ashamed about Bernie) made the incorrect claim that Many U. S. veterans died fighting socialism all over the world. I would like to know, what wars we have fought against socialism?

People are often all too quick to lump socialism and communism together and have this knee-jerk negative reaction toward anything that remotely reminds them of some movie they saw where some American hero was kicking butt against some Commie menace.

Some of our greatest achievements are examples of socialism. The list is exhaustive but consider Social Security, public education and the Interstate Highway System, to name a few.

The idea of working together as a society to fund programs and solve problems is not what our brave soldiers were fighting against. This oversimplification of history is a dangerous misread of truth.

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The Public Pulse: Don't confuse socialism with communism - Omaha World-Herald

NEW YORK The Jewish Sunday school teacher, a black accordion strapped to her shoulders, stands before a photo of a 1927 Jewish protest in Warsaw and introduces her students to an important holiday observed by their ancestors.

It isnt Passover, which has just ended, but another that is approaching in a couple weeks: May Day, the unofficial May 1 holiday celebrating workers rights.

Socialism is the idea that everyone should have what they need, says the teacher, Hannah Temple, as a projector flashes images of a protest sign and Jewish immigrants marching in a labor demonstration. On the walls, multicolored signs declare Jewish communities fight for $15 a minimum wage campaign We are all workers and Remember the Triangle Fire, a reference to the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire that killed 146 garment workers at a factory and galvanized the labor movement.

Temple teaches the children words to a Yiddish May Day anthem and offers a short primer on early 20th century labor activism.

We need to sleep some, we need to work some, but we need some time thats for us, she says, describing the campaign for an eight-hour workday. She invites the few dozen students and parents in the room to a May Day protest in downtown Manhattan. A few hands go up.

Maybe? she asks. Maybe is great.

The Yiddish sing-along-cum-socialist teach-in is the morning meeting of the Midtown Workmens Circle School, a secular Jewish Sunday school that combines Yiddish language and culture education with progressive social justice organizing. Its one of eight such schools, called shules, in four states serving a total of 300 students aged 5 to 13 teaching them everything from an Eastern European melody for the Four Questions to how to protest on behalf of underpaid fast-food workers. The curriculum ends with a joint bar/bat mitzvah ceremony for the seventh-graders.

Students at the Midtown Workmens Circle School in Manhattan read through a play in Yiddish, April 23, 2017. (Ben Sales via JTA)

Though its more than a century old, the Workmens Circle, a left-wing Eastern European Jewish culture and social justice group, has seen its fundraising and school enrollment grow in recent years. Part of the boost, leaders say, was due to the diametrically opposed presidential campaigns of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Donald Trump.

Sanders, says executive director Ann Toback, awakened American Jews to secular, progressive Jewish culture conveyed with a heavy Brooklyn accent. Trump, she adds, sparked Jews on the left to organize in protest.

Workmens Circle made a lapel pin bearing the faces of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump accompanied by the words mensch and putz, respectively. (Josefin Dolsten via JTA)

Workmens Circle isnt shy about its political leanings. Following the presidential election, it made a lapel pin bearing the faces of Sanders and Trump accompanied by the words mensch and putz, respectively.

Before there was Bernie, there was the Workmens Circle, Toback says. Is there a way we can connect to so many of his followers? The values that he based his campaign on are really the inherent values of the Workmens Circle and our movement.

In the five-month period after the election, the group saw its donations double over the same stretch the previous year. It has opened five of its eight Sunday schools in the past three years. The biggest, in Boston, has more than 100 students. In May, the Manhattan school will be hosting a spring open house for the first time.

More people are coming to us looking for I want to engage in social justice activism, says Beth Zasloff, director of the Midtown school. I know that for me, after the election, having a community, having a place to go where I know we can address these issues with our children, felt extremely important.

The Midtown school, like its counterparts, eschews traditional Jewish Sunday school mainstays like learning Hebrew or studying ritual and prayer. Israel isnt a focus. Workmens Circle has partnered in the past both with Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, a left-winggroup that focuses on domestic issues, and Habonim Dror, theleft-wing Labor Zionist movement.

Instead, kids take three types of classes: arts and crafts, Yiddish language and history, and culture and social justice. Last Sunday, the three students in the Yiddish class were reading a play, in transliteration, about a robot. The teacher would read a line in Yiddish and translate, which a student repeated.

The arts and crafts class was making banners for an immigrant rights protest. In the history and culture class, four students prepared for their bar and bat mitzvahs next year. For the ceremony, theyll do a research project on their family history and interview an elderly relative. Later that Sunday, this years bar mitzvah class made presentations on children who werekilled in the Holocaust.

Beth Zasloff, director of the Midtown Workmens Circle School (Courtesy of Zasloff via JTA)

One student said knowing Yiddish made her feel like her friends at school who hail each other in the hallways in Bengali. Another said her favorite Workmens Circle experience was participating in the Jan. 21 Womens March in New York City. And for some, the appeal lies in attending a Sunday school that avoids the standard memorization of Hebrew prayers.

This is secular, and Im not super religious in terms of my beliefs about God, says Moxie Strom. So its nice to have something that doesnt focus so much on God said this and God said that.

The Workmens Circle/Arbeter Ring was founded in 1900in large part to help Jewish immigrants from Europe succeed in America. Along with advocating for better working conditions, it offered members services like health care and loans. It supported socialism at a time when Jews on the Lower East Side of Manhattan helped elected a Socialist Party candidate, MeyerLondon, to Congress.

Nolonger socialist but still left wing, the Workmens Circle fights for those issues largely on behalf of non-Jewish workers, leading campaigns for immigrant rights or better pay.

And instead of helping Yiddish speakers integrate into America, the organizations cultural mission has flipped, preserving and promoting an old world culture for American Jews. It runs Yiddish language classes for adultsand a summer camp for kids, and hosts culinary and holiday events.

Theres so much culture theyre missing, says Kolya Borodulin, the groups associate director for Yiddish programming, who grew up in Birobidzhan, the Soviet Unions Jewish Autonomous Region. Jewish holidays, traditions described by famous Yiddish authors any contemporary issues you name are reflected in the Yiddish language. So you can see this parallel universe in Yiddish.

Even if they go to eight years of Sunday school, Borodulin says, the students are unlikely to come out speaking proficient Yiddish, or even reading a page in the languages Hebrew script. The schools aim, rather, is to reinforce a cultural and ideological Jewish identity in its students. The aspiration is that years after they leave, they will be able to connect to their Judaism on holidays, in song and on the picket line.

What resonates most with them is the social justice and having a sense of what we believe in, says Debbie Feiner, whose two sons, ages 9 and 12, attend the Midtown school. The older one, she says, understands that when you see some injustice, you need to take action. He cant be a passive bystander, and hell connect that with his Judaism.

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This New York City Sunday school teaches Jewish kids Yiddish and socialism - Jewish Journal

Lisa Mascaro, Tribune Washington Bureau (TNS) 10:10 a.m. ET April 28, 2017

Lisa Gehrke, left, and Lisa E. Hansen, middle, at a Resist Trump protest in Oshkosh, Wis. Hansen says Donald Trump's election first depressed and then mobilized her. (Lisa Mascaro/Los Angeles Times/TNS)(Photo: Lisa Mascaro, TNS)

OSHKOSH, Wis. Lisa Gehrke knew to hold her tongue during a business trip to Chicago the night Donald Trump was elected, enduring a long evening of schmoozing with the other sales reps and executives.

Back in her hotel room the next morning, she drew a hot bath and sobbed.

Then her sadness turned to an anger that startled even her. The 55-year-old mom, never particularly active in politics, went outside, looked up at the nearby Trump Tower office building and flipped the icon of the new president the double bird.

From that point, there was no turning back. Within days she had organized a Trump resistance group, donned a pink pussyhat and drove 14 hours with a carload of like-minded crusaders to the Womens March in Washington.

GOP cushions its voter registration edge in York County

Were all terrified at whats going on that our country is going to be somehow ruined, said Gehrke, who kick-started early retirement to focus almost full time on civic activism. Im dedicating my life to trying to stop that spinning out of control. Im just a little ant, you know, but right now, thats what I can do.

President Trumps election has mobilized thousands of first-time activists in a do-it-yourself movement like nothing seen on the political left in years. With bountiful energy and some impressive early successes, the grass-roots movement has stunned even Democratic Party officials, drawing comparisons to the tea party movement that transformed the GOP with its unyielding opposition after President Barack Obamas election.

Women like Gehrke and much of the movement is being fueled by women are organizing nationwide via Facebook, email and often tearful support meetings around kitchen tables.

The Indivisible Project, launched after Trumps election, has already sprouted nearly 6,000 chapters nationwide, at least two in each of the 435 congressional districts.

More established activist groups like MoveOn.org which holds weekly Resist Trump Tuesdays protests are enjoying a surge in membership, particularly in blue states, but most surprisingly in some deep-red pockets, where liberals had largely kept quieter. One Colorado activist said that in past years, event turnout rarely matched the number of advance sign-ups; now it routinely surpasses it.

Lisa Gehrke at a Resist Trump protest in Oshkosh, Wis. (Lisa Mascaro/Los Angeles Times/TNS)(Photo: Lisa Mascaro, TNS)

These newly minted activists along with other long-standing protest groups on the left flooded the U.S. Capitol switchboard during Senate confirmation hearings for Trumps Cabinet, pushed Democrats to filibuster Neil M. Gorsuchs Supreme Court nomination and helped tank the presidents plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act often by noisily protesting at lawmakers town hall meetings.

With old-school organizing and modern-day social media they have formed instant communities that can mobilize hundreds even thousands as a group of stay-at-home moms in Kenosha, Wis., did recently to protest Trumps visit there.

We always told our kids theres a lot of really smart people in our country, and we all want to make it better, said Julia Kozel, one of the women who organized the Kenosha rally. But I dont feel like I could say that anymore.

Like the tea party activists before them, many of the resisters as they call themselves are newcomers to the political process. And much in the same way tea party activists grieved for the country they no longer recognized under Obama, these women recount being devastated that fellow Americans elected Trump and say they are fighting to restore their own vision of the country.

Publicly, Democratic officials embrace the newfound energy on the left. Party strategists even marvel at the large turnouts that they had been unable to achieve in recent years.

But privately, many Democrats also worry the movement is whipping up a deep-rooted emotional and ideological fervor, much like the tea party did in blocking Obamas agenda. Unpredictable and with no clear leadership, the liberal uprising could prove difficult to contain and may turn its anger currently focused on Trump toward the Democratic Party itself, just as the tea party fractured the GOP.

Wounds from the 2016 primary battle between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont still run deep among Democrats, and the protest movement could split the party further between moderates and progressives.

Resisters gather for a weekly protest outside GOP Sen. Ron Johnson's office in Oshkosh, Wis. (Lisa Mascaro/Los Angeles Times/TNS)(Photo: Lisa Mascaro, TNS)

Even Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., a favorite among progressives, found herself under fire after voting to confirm Housing Secretary Ben Carson. Some progressives threatened to challenge the Massachusetts liberal in the next primary.

California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein felt pressured enough to hold her first town hall in years early this month. There she was heckled as a sellout from an occasionally rowdy crowd of liberals.

When airport protests erupted over Trumps first travel ban, Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., raced to Dulles International Airport to demonstrate his solidarity.

No party is safe, said Jeanne Peters, a jewelry designer in West Virginia, whose Indivisible chapter has started calling its House member and both its Republican and Democratic senator every weekday with a coordinated message, such as demanding a congressional vote on Syrian airstrikes or opposing the GOP health care plan.

If the threat from the left wasnt evident enough, a new political action committee, #WeWillRreplaceYou, is raising money to back primary campaigns against Democrats they view as insufficiently progressive much the way outside conservative groups targeted RINOs, politicians they considered Republicans in Name Only.

Voters who are fed up with the Democratic Party at every level want to see their Democratic representatives stand up and fight Trump, said Claire Sandberg, a former Sanders organizer who is a co-founder of the PAC.

Another group run by former Sanders allies, Brand New Congress, is recruiting challengers for every single House district Democrats and Republicans alike in 2018.

Rep. Ted Lieu, a progressive from Torrance, Calif., known even in Oshkosh for his pointed tweets about the president, acknowledged the risk for Democrats as passions run like nothing he has ever seen.

People call my office all the time, and they want President Trump impeached two months ago, he said. We just have to tamp down expectations.

The groups make it no secret that they are using the tea party playbook to fight Trump.

The tea party had a method of organizing that works, said Hillary Shields, 32, a paralegal whose Indivisible group drew nearly 150 to a Saturday spring training for activists in Kansas City, Mo. Why reinvent the wheel?

Ezra Levin, a former Capitol Hill staffer who is president of the Indivisible Project, helped fuel the movement by posting online a how-to organizing guide that borrows heavily from the tea party. The goal of this tactic isnt just to target Republicans. Its to stiffen the spines of Democrats, he said.

But while the resistance groups share many similarities with the tea party, it remains to be seen how far they are willing to go to block Trumps agenda. Would they be willing to shut down the government, as the tea party did over Obamacare, for their own priorities say, to save Planned Parenthood or stop Trumps travel ban?

The moms sitting around the dining room table at Kozels house the day after the Kenosha protest shake their heads no, saying they wouldnt want to disrupt government operations or break laws with civil disobedience.

Our endgame is getting people elected, said Kozel, as three of her school-age kids munched doughnuts and played nearby.

But others know playing nicely may only go so far. I think the Democratic Party needs to be more progressive, and thats what Im trying to do, Gehrke said.

She recently joined others writing postcards to lawmakers at the Oshkosh home of Lisa E. Hansen, 51, a former graphic artist who had never been politically active much beyond casting her vote.

And then the election happened, Hansen said. She said she sunk into a depression, spending her days scouring the news to make sense of it all. Only when protesters turned out for the Womens March did she think to herself: I can do that.

Now every Tuesday, Hansen, who is partly disabled by Lyme disease, puts her walker in the trunk of her familys car and heads to downtown Oshkosh to Republican Sen. Ron Johnsons office, where a few dozen resisters have been protesting every week since the inauguration.

She dials up the senators office on Mondays to say that her group is coming and would like a meeting. The senator has not agreed to meet with them. But his staff comes out to hear their concerns, and sometimes Hansen brings them snacks.

On a recent Tuesday, more than two dozen protesters quietly formed a neat line outside the office with homemade signs reading, Not paying for Trumps wall! and Dont let Wisconsin values be Trumpd.

The Tuesday protests were supposed to last only for the first 100 days of the new administration. But as that date approaches, no one wants to quit, so they agreed to extend it for another 100 days.

Its given me a sense of purpose, Hansen said. Maybe we should send Donald Trump a thank-you note. He brought all of us together.

Read or Share this story: http://www.yorkdispatch.com/story/news/politics/2017/04/28/democratic-tea-party-turn-its-own/101020336/

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Will the Democratic tea party turn on its own? - York Dispatch