MOBILE — One of the trends in U.S. politics that is hard to miss is an embrace of socialism as an acceptable model for the American system. Democratic politicians like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) have gained popularity off of the promotion of socialism as a viable system.
During a one-on-one interview that aired on Huntsville radio’s WVNN, Mobile County Commissioner Jerry Carl, a candidate in the March 31 runoff for the Republican nod for Alabama’s First Congressional District seat, addressed the trend.
Carl attributed the push toward a desire for anything “free,” and the misperception that if it is from the government, it is free.
“I think it is the free movement,” Carl said. “Everyone gravitates towards anything free. And, they think if it is from the government, it’s free. The government has never done anything free. It’s coming out of your pocket. I’m fortunate in my district I’ve got several different cultures — one of them being Vietnam and Cambodian … I’ve got a man in my district that watched his wife, and two daughters have the flesh stripped off of them by the communists. The U.S. government got him out and brought him here. He tells that story quite frequently, and he talked to me the other day about communism with tears running down his face, just trying to get me to understand how important it is to push back on this quote, unquote ‘socialism,’ which is the first step into communism.”
“It separates us as a community when you start dragging politics into everything,” he added. “I mean, I get phone calls about trash on the side of the road, and the first thing I ask is, ‘Did you get out and pick it up?’ The first thing I get is, ‘I’m not going to put my hands on it. My tax dollars…’ Well, you don’t want your taxes increased. I don’t want my name on that. We, as a society, have got to pull together and become one. How that is going to happen — if I had that answer, I would have already given it away. Somebody has got to step up. Trump is trying. He has to fight the Democrats and Republicans up there, and that’s just not right. It’s not fair.”
@Jeff_Poor is a graduate of Auburn University, the editor of Breitbart TV, a columnist for Mobile’s Lagniappe Weekly and host of Huntsville’s “The Jeff Poor Show” from 2-5 p.m. on WVNN.
