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CHAUTAUQUA -- Those who have read, listened to, or watched the news this year know that some are shocked at the ascendancy of socialism among Democrats.
They're right to be shocked in the sense of left aghast.
Yet no one should be shocked in the sense of surprise.
Step by step, socialism has been gaining a foothold among Democrats since the ascendancy of Woodrow Wilson to the presidency in 1912.
Has socialism's progress among Democrats always been linear? That is, has it always gained ground at a constant rate? No, socialism among Democrats has ebbed and flowed, yet the net trend has been up.
Which is either up or down for the United States, depending on your perspective.
If Republicans are smart--which many Republicans, like many Democrats, are--they'll use the ascendancy of socialism among Democrats to recruit non-socialist Democrats to the GOP.
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Meet Dr. Ivan Pongracic, an economics professor at Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Mich.
At age 14, Pongracic and his family immigrated from Zagreb, the capital of Yugoslavia--as it was then called--to the United States, and settled in Mecosta, Mich., a village in the lower peninsula an hour or so north of Grand Rapids, and between the cities of Big Rapids and Mount Pleasant.
There his father worked with Drs. Russell and Annette Kirk at their home, where young people have for decades come and steeped themselves in the greatness of Western Civilization.
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Having lived for almost the first decade and a half of his life under Communist rule in what is now called Croatia, Pongracic can speak of socialism from first-hand experience.
Which he did at Advocates for Balance at Chautauqua's, or ABC's, final program of the 2026 Chautauqua Institution season.
He's among the many ABC speakers whom the institution would do well to consider inviting to what at Chautauqua is called "the main stage." That is, invite them to give a morning-amphitheater lecture.
So engaging were he and his presentation that when it was getting close to the time for questions and answers, some in the audience encouraged him to keep going.
How often do you go to a lecture and see that happen? Well, it did when Pongracic spoke on "A Century of Socialist Failure."
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Speaking of socialism and using a turn of phrase that sounds like it came from Mecosta, Pongracic observed that every time humanity tries to create paradise on Earth, it becomes hell.
Recalling that New York City's new mayor seeks to replace the fragility of socialism with the warmth of collectivism, Pongracic rightly asks: What level of ignorance must you have to believe that?
He blames younger people's attraction to socialism on an education system that has let them down.
Socialism "is a movement that is very much on the ascendancy and I think very dangerous," he said. Karl Marx "was responsible for more death than any other human being in history."
Communism, he said, killed 95 million people from 1917 to 1997, and the Chinese communists have killed 40 million people.
He recalled the Marxist saying that under free markets, "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer."
The second part is false, because under free markets, the poor get richer too, he said. Meanwhile socialists have their own elites: Those in government.
"Communism is contrary to human nature," he said. Even just socialism doesn't work. It destroys the richest countries in the world.
Anyone needing a recent example of that need look no further than Venezuela, the South American country that the United States liberated in one night. Venezuela is a country whose economy socialism strangled, even though the country has among the greatest oil reserves in the world.
Think about that: To strangle the economy of a rich country, something must be really bad, which socialism is.
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On its website, https://www.abcatchq.com, ABC posts videos of most of its speakers.
ABC was formed in 2018. Its mission is "to achieve a balance of speakers in a mutually civil and respectful environment consistent with the historic mission of Chautauqua" Institution. ABC is its own Section 501(c)(3) organization, legally separate from the institution.
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Dr. Randy Elf's Aug. 20, 2020, ABC presentation, on "How Political Speech Law Benefits Politicians and the Rich," is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3ebymA7xOo. It's cited in his U.S. Supreme Court brief filed Aug. 7: https://ssrn.com/abstract=6556879.
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