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Socialism will Destroy America
The communist takeover of the Democratic Party is not a stealth invasion. The Democratic Socialists, who are in fact aspiring communists, are sweeping the country with an agenda and candidates who are promising to replace our Democratic Republic with a fundamentally different form of government that will squash our individual rights and freedoms and destroy our way of life. They have won primary elections against more moderate, established Democrats in local and national races and are threatening to take enough Congressional seats from the Democratic establishment in November to gain a foothold.
When the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (MJS) published an expansive column on how good the Socialist party was for Milwaukee during the fifty years Socialists ran the city (1910–1960), I had to ask myself why they would want to soft-pedal the takeover of the Democratic Party. And more importantly, who was the author that MJS determined should receive what amounted to more than a full page of the Sunday Ideas Lab opinion section, broken into two parts on September 27 and October 4?
I didn’t have to do much research to discover that the author, John Gurda, is a Trump hater masquerading as a historian. A single article he had published in USA Today in November 2025 and also as a “Special to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel” provided all of the context necessary to evaluate Gurda’s column embracing the benefits of socialism through a clear lens.
Gurda spewed venom all over Donald Trump as he expressed his bewilderment at Trump’s rise to power. His feeble attempt to characterize who Trump is and the motivation behind his support is typical of what we hear from liberals and could not be further off the mark. I have included a link here because the entire diatribe is worth a read (know your enemies), but have also included some highlights that follow.
According to John Gurda, Donald Trump is a narcissist whose presidency is driven by a desire for money, power, and adulation. He says, “Trump is constitutionally unable to see anything but his own reflection.” And “We are witnessing in real time the demolition of traditions and institutions as old as the Republic.”
Gurda refers to the work of German Social Psychologist Erich Fromm on narcissism to craft a detailed explanation of the relationship between Trump and his supporters. Mystified, he laments, “The question is why a slim majority of voters gave this mendacious, self-dealing, patently amoral egomaniac the most powerful job in the world.”
Gurda’s attempts to explain some of the conditions that made the country receptive to Trump contain a grain of truth, but are completely devoid of any recognition that it is career politicians from both parties who bear responsibility for creating the miserable conditions in the first place.
Gurda contends, “The sad fact is that millions of people have lost their faith in the American Dream. Expectations have shrunk dramatically for working-class Americans. The economy has shifted from hand work to head work, wages have been stagnant for a generation or more, and higher education has become the province for those who can afford it.”
Gurda went off the rails with his sick view of what he describes as “visions of a diverse, equitable, and inclusive future for all” created by gay Americans stepping into the sunlight, “gender identity” that “acquired a novel fluidity” and a black man who spent 8 years in the White House.” All of these developments, he says, created populist resentment and were too much for “hidebound traditionalists” to take.
In his clueless version of why conservatives object to liberal social manipulation, Gurda calls the war on DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) initiatives “pandering to harden the shell of whiteness” that secures their dominance in a caste system.
According to Gurda, “The rabid support of MAGA Republicans keeps Trump’s ego inflated leaving the rest of us to cope with what is basically a personality disorder.”
You now know all you need to know to evaluate Gurda’s writing in proper context.
John Gurda’s Story of Socialism in Milwaukee
Gurda titled his column “How the Socialists saved Milwaukee,” a warm reminiscence of fifty years of Socialist Party rule in Milwaukee punctuated by his thoughts on today’s rise of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). He describes the resistance to socialism as conservatives using “mindless redbaiting to paint liberal policies and politicians with the noxious tar of bloated government, extortionate taxes, and un-American values.”
Gurda opens with “…socialism is surely enjoying a moment in the sun” today and suggests that Milwaukee has been raised into the national spotlight by the resurgence because it was the only major city in the country ever run by socialists.
According to Gurda, “corruption in high places” was the primary driver of the rise of socialism in Milwaukee. Elected crooks selling their votes at every turn created an “enormous appetite for change” and the socialists emerged as the standard bearers for reform.
Also contributing was the high concentration of industrial workers in Milwaukee. The majority of adult males had factory jobs and worked long hours in tough conditions. They were very receptive to appeals to class consciousness.
Victor Berger, an Austrian immigrant described as a tactician and theorist, emerged as a leader of the movement seeking to replace capitalism with the “cooperative commonwealth.” He was a “practical socialist’ believing in evolution rather than revolution and when, over time, the leadership of organized labor and the organized party became one in the same, they called themselves “Social Democrats.” In 1910, campaigning on their “unimpeachable integrity” they won leadership of the city in a landslide.
Now at the helm, Gurda says, they “turned Milwaukee around” transforming “municipally sanctioned vice into a paragon of civic virtue.”
It is only near the end of his long telling of the story of socialism in Milwaukee that Gurda gets to the heart of the matter for freedom loving Americans. Fundamental to the success of socialism is the concept of “public enterprise” which focuses on “public good rather than private profit.” Underlying public enterprise is a “deep and abiding faith in government.”
Socialist rule in Milwaukee ended as party politics at the national level underwent
massive change with the Democrats co-opting the Socialist agenda, but Gurda’s story doesn’t end there. He speculates that the “current socialist wave” is a response to Donald Trump.
“When Donald Trump pulled the Republican Party hard to the right, gutting federal agencies, declaring war on diversity, denying self-evident climate change, and hunting down undocumented immigrants, he sparked an equal and opposite reaction from activists on the left who believed he was killing democracy…”
The “anti-MAGA movement” as he calls it, is “animated by visions of universal health care, affordable housing, cultural diversity, educational opportunity, and affordable childcare – benefits taken for granted in European countries with higher standards of living than ours.” (Mr. Gurda must have missed the many thousands of European visitors during the FIFA World Cup who were awestruck by the quality of life in America. Access to goods and services like they’d never seen before had them singing American’s praises non-stop on social media. No one anywhere in the world has a standard of living that comes close to the one that Americans take for granted every day.)
As he closes Gurda acknowledges significant differences between the socialists of old Milwaukee and the Democratic Socialists of today, but also stresses there is “a tie that binds them. Both movements embody the egalitarian impulse…” and embrace the “same antidote to the failure of American capitalism to put the public good above private profit.”
Conspicuously missing from Gurda’s celebration of socialism is any mention of the specific socialist policies that deliver “public good rather than private profit.” It is governing policies, after all, that make the lives of citizens better or worse, and are the essence of the fight to take our country back.
Socialism will Destroy America (but only if we allow it)
The Democratic Socialists of America are making no attempt to hide their agenda. They want to replace capitalist economic structures with social and economic control by the “working class” (translation: Government). DSA stresses that it seeks to dismantle and replace the capitalist framework rather than simply regulate it. Some of what they are promising includes:
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Single payer universal health care with abortion and “gender affirming” services for all. Eliminate private health insurance.
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Rent control and public housing.
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Tuition-free college, full cancellation of student loans.
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Universal childcare paired with paid family leave.
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Transition away from fossil fuels, public ownership of energy infrastructure and major utilities.
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Mandatory 32-hour work week with no reduction in pay.
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Tax the rich.
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Close international military bases and redistribute military budgets to public infrastructure.
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Restructure or eliminate the US Senate, Electoral College, Supreme Court, and Presidency.
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Freedom of movement across our borders, immigrant amnesty, and the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
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Defund prisons and demilitarize the police.
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Replace private ownership of corporations with public ownership of major corporations, financial institutions, and essential industries.
Freedom loving Americans reject the socialist agenda and embrace the leadership of Donald Trump for the policies he champions. He has been delivering on the non-negotiable issues from day one. They include:
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Living free, unencumbered by oppressive regulation, Government mandates, and censorship.
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Restoration of verifiable elections.
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Safe communities.
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Secure borders and legal immigration.
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Fair trade agreements that enable Americans to compete on a level playing field.
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Peace through strength.
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Less taxation. Responsible management of the people’s money with aggressive fraud prevention and prosecution.
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Energy dominance.
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Manufacturing resurgence, fueled by deregulation and incentives for domestic production.
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Protection from burdensome regulations imposed at the altar of the greatest, unproveable theory ever suggested: human behavior can alter the course of climate change.
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Rethink the benefits of NATO membership. Require NATO countries to fund their own security.
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Celebrate success achieved through hard work and the pursuit of dreams.
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Expect self-sufficiency and personal responsibility.
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Defend capitalism, the best economic engine, and the Democratic Republic, the best model of government. They have produced the freest, richest people in the world.
Now is the time to stiffen our resistance
The timing of John Gurda’s version of the benefits of socialism, abetted by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel which functions as a public relations (PR) arm of the Democratic Party, was meant to soften the resistance of voters to the communist aspirations of Democratic candidates who are on the ballot for the November elections. We know what comes next in the battle to take our country back. The choice could not be clearer. Now is the time to stiffen our resistance, mobilize in numbers that will, once again, produce an election that is too big to rig, and defeat the Democrats up and down the ballot on November 3.