The area’s Democratic Reps. Eric Swalwell and Ro Khanna are making their stances on socialism clear: they’re against it.
On Feb. 2, Swalwell and Khanna were among the 109 Democrats in the House of Representatives to vote in favor of a resolution that “denounces socialism in all its forms, and opposes the implementation of socialist policies in the United States of America” alongside Republicans, who introduced the bill. Similarly, the two representatives joined Republicans in a November vote that prevented rail workers from striking to get safer working conditions.
Neither Khanna nor Swalwell responded to requests for comment.
The resolution does not define socialism, instead pointing to historical figures, such as Joseph Stalin and Pol Pot, and present-day figures, such as Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, from other countries as examples of socialism leading to mass death.
It then quotes slave-owning former presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison on the sanctity of private property rights, the latter of who wrote that it “is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest.”
Before concluding with the denunciation of all forms of socialism and socialist policies, the resolution states the U.S. “was founded on the belief in the sanctity of the individual, to which the collectivistic system of socialism in all of its forms is fundamentally and necessarily opposed.”
