Pence Sounds Alarm on Dangerous Creed Overtaking Democratic Party

Liberty Check

• Former Vice President warns socialist ideas once discredited by history are gaining dangerous influence among Democrats and young Americans
• Far-left candidates backed by Bernie Sanders and AOC are winning elections and seizing control of Democratic Party infrastructure
• New York City mayor and Michigan Senate candidate openly advocate seizing private property and dismantling free enterprise system

Former Vice President Mike Pence is sounding the alarm on a disturbing trend threatening the future of American freedom. In a powerful new essay, Pence warns that ideas history already proved catastrophic are finding renewed life within the Democratic Party and among a generation that never learned communism’s true cost.

The vice president’s warning comes as he welcomed his sixth grandchild — a moment that crystallized his concerns about the country she will inherit. “I remain profoundly optimistic about our nation’s future,” Pence writes, but adds he is “deeply concerned by one troubling development: ideas that history once discredited are finding new life among young Americans and an increasingly influential place within today’s Democratic Party.”

Pence grew up during the Cold War, when America faced down the Soviet threat with moral clarity and unwavering resolve. He recalls how presidents from both parties — from John F. Kennedy’s pledge to “pay any price” for liberty to Ronald Reagan’s command to “tear down this wall” — understood the stakes of confronting communist tyranny.

“Communism ultimately collapsed because it denied the most essential of truths: our rights come not from government, but from God,” Pence explains. “When government claims ultimate authority over the individual, freedom inevitably gives way to coercion.”

The historical record proves the point. Stalin’s forced collectivization starved millions while countless others perished in Soviet gulags. Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward killed an estimated 50 million people in history’s deadliest famine. Castro imprisoned dissidents as generations fled Cuba seeking freedom. Hugo Chávez transformed Venezuela from one of Latin America’s wealthiest nations into an economic and humanitarian catastrophe.

Yet despite these clear lessons, socialism is gaining ground on the American Left. Far-left candidates are winning elections and reshaping the Democratic Party’s direction. Politicians once dismissed as fringe ideologues now command mainstream attention as the party’s rising stars.

Pence points to alarming examples. In New York City, Democratic Socialists of America standard-bearer and Mayor Zohran Mamdani has publicly endorsed “seizing the means of production.” In Michigan, Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed — backed by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — is challenging the Democratic establishment. Across the country, progressive candidates are defeating longtime Democratic incumbents while traditional moderates retreat or accommodate.

These candidates have succeeded by “selling government as the cure for every hardship to a generation that never learned the truth about communism and socialism,” Pence writes.

The Democratic Socialists of America’s national program declares capitalism a failure and promises a utopian future without bills for “food, education, energy, medicine, and transportation.” The document states that “complete victory will require building a new society from the ground up.”

“Of course, they conveniently omit that bills do not disappear,” Pence notes. “Government can pay them only by seizing the payment from someone else.”

The former vice president warns of a fundamental truth: “As government acquires the power to provide everything, it acquires the power to decide everything.”

Conservatism offers a starkly different vision. “We believe every man, woman, and child is endowed by our Creator with rights that no government gave and no government may rightfully take away,” Pence explains. “Government exists to protect those rights, and to preserve the conditions for families, churches, communities, and free citizens to flourish.”

That conviction has produced unmatched results. Free enterprise has lifted billions from poverty, unleashed innovation that has improved countless lives, and made America a beacon of hope for generations.

Pence identifies a bitter irony in socialism’s renewed appeal: “America has been so successful that many young people can scarcely imagine the misery that would result from its absence.” They never waited in bread lines, feared midnight arrests, or wondered if speaking their minds might cost them their freedom. “They inherited liberty without having witnessed the price that previous generations paid to preserve it.”

Looking at his newest grandchild, Pence prays “she inherits an America where faith remains free, where honest work is rewarded, and where government remembers that it serves the American people — not the other way around.”

His generation watched communism lose its claim on the world because free people stood firm. This generation, he argues, must show the same confidence in the enduring truths that made America exceptional.

“If we do, our grandchildren will inherit not merely a more prosperous nation, but a freer one,” Pence concludes.

The Constitution must be defended.