When I wrote a review of the excellent Socialism Sucks by Bob Lawson and Ben Powell, I quoted a passage from it that they attributed to Bernie Sanders. It did sound extreme, even for Bernie, and I should have checked.
Unfortunately, I didn’t. That’s a problem because Bernie didn’t say it.
Here’s the relevant passage in my review:
They [Lawson and Powell] quote Bernie Sanders’s 2011 comment that “the American dream was more apt to be realized” in Venezuela than in the United States.
In “The Falsity of the Sanders Venezuela Meme,” Ouillette, March 10, 2018, Jack Staples-Butler lays out some excellent detective work in which he explains where the quote came from.
Staples-Butler writes:
So did Sanders write it? This mystery was resolved with a single email to the Valley News Editorial Board. An editor named Ernie Kohlsaat replied:
The Aug. 4, 2011, piece you are referring to, headlined “Close the Gaps: Disparities That Threaten America,” was an editorial, not a news article. It was written by a member of the Valley News Editorial Board and as such reflects the opinion of the newspaper. The version on Sen. Sanders’ website appears to be an accurate rendition of the editorial as published on Page A8 of the Valley News on that date.
In 2011, Bernie Sanders reposted the Valley News editorial here, calling it a “Must Read.” Of course, you can call something a “must read” without endorsing every single thing in it.
My apologies to readers and, if they’re paying attention to my writing, various fans of Bernie Sanders and, of course, Senator Sanders himself.
HT2 David Boaz.
READER COMMENTS
Brandon Berg
Aug 19 2019 at 12:20am
I got taken in by this one, too, until I went to dig up the link again and saw the attribution at the bottom. In my defense, the attribution was added a few years after the editorial was republished on Sanders’ site. When I first saw it, there was no attribution at all, so it looked like original content from the Sanders campaign.
Mark Brady
Aug 19 2019 at 12:34am
Your post encouraged me to visit Amazon, and I found that the hardback had made it into three specialist category rankings.
#3 in Communism & Socialism (Books)
#2 in Beer (Books)
#1 in Comparative Economics (Books)
Stephen Clively
Aug 20 2019 at 12:05pm
Good for you to post this correction. It is just what honourable people do.
There are more than enough reasons for strongly disagreeing with Bernie regarding things that actually has said.
David Henderson
Aug 20 2019 at 6:02pm
Thanks, Stephen.
Re your second comment, yes, it’s not as if the rest of what he advocates on economic policy is fine. I must say, though, that I’m a little comforted that there is no evidence that he favored what was going on in Venezuela in 2011: many leftists did. It suggests that there are important limits to his belief in government intervention.
Comments are closed.