(Daily Signal)—As America celebrates its 250th birthday, a growing political movement isn’t just sitting out the party but actively working to tear down the constitutional system.
It’s not a “both-sides” issue: a 2025 Gallup poll found that only 36% of Democrats say they are extremely or very proud to be American, while 92% of Republicans say so.
What sort of Democrat isn’t proud of the greatest country on earth? The same sort of Democrat who’s on the ascent in the New York and Colorado primaries.
Don’t buy the messaging: the only “democratic” thing about the Democratic Socialists of America is its rapid infiltration of the United States’ left-leaning major party. The only “American” thing about it is how vehemently the DSA hates America.
The Democratic Socialists Against America
To adopt a phrase from Christian theology, the DSA is “in but not of” America.
Its ideology traces back to “Progressivism,” a transplant from 19th-century Europe—and a movement at odds with the spirit of the Declaration of Independence.
Under Progressivism, our God-given inalienable rights become privileges ordained by the fickle whims of government elites. The people’s will takes second place to “scientific expertise,” and technocratic experts determine policy. Democratic socialism takes this one step further, expanding government power over more and more aspects of American life.
This focus on government expertise has enshrined leftist positions—from critical race theory (the notion that America is systemically racist and requires fundamental change) to climate alarmism, to transgender ideology—in government and culture, giving the impression that truth and justice must be “woke.”
These forces demonize President Donald Trump’s attempts to challenge the woke bureaucratic consensus, comparing the enforcement of immigration law after four years of open borders to the Gestapo.
This “woke” superstructure is shifting the ground of elite opinion, making open socialism more and more attractive to those who have been primed to see President Donald Trump as the modern incarnation of Adolf Hitler.
While woke leftists may think their approach is sensible or moderate, their hyperbolic reaction to Trump has fostered an environment in which the Democratic Socialists of America can flourish. DSA candidates have won Democrat primaries, most recently in New York and Colorado, often ousting longstanding Democrat members of Congress.
The Democrat Party may have had the antibodies to resist the far Left decades ago, but Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has weakened its immune system and helped infect it with an anti-capitalist fever.
The DSA Platform
The DSA makes no bones about its radical agenda. Its web page on “working-class democracy” calls for extending “full voting rights” to “noncitizens.” It calls for expanding the number of seats in the House of Representatives, ending the Senate filibuster, abolishing the Electoral College, and “reducing the power of the Supreme Court.”
These structural changes amount to a wholesale rejection of the Founders’ approach to limited government, abolishing any checks or balances that might frustrate the Left’s agenda.
What would the DSA do with such unchecked government power?
The platform calls for establishing a “Green New Deal” in the name of combatting climate change, implementing socialized medicine, making higher education “free,” and reducing the work week to 32 hours—”with no reduction in pay or benefits.” It would allow “workers to freely migrate between countries to seek employment” and extend “immediate amnesty for all immigrants.”
Darializa Aliva Chevalier, the 32-year-old DSA member who ousted a five-term incumbent in a New York Democrat primary last month, fleshed out this immigration policy.
Chevalier opposes all deportations, even if an illegal alien committed a violent crime.
She also founded the anti-Israel group Columbia University Apartheid Divest. In 2024, the group posted a statement on Instagram declaring, “We are Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization.” After a U.S. airstrike killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the group posted “Marg bar Amrika,” which translates to “Death to America.”
Rejecting the Woke Ideology Behind DSA
Few Democrats are chanting, “Death to America!” in the streets today, but this post grows out of the same noxious ideology that claims America is systemically racist, sexist, homophobic, or what-have-you. The woke narrative claims that America is systemically evil, and that only a fundamental revolution in each of America’s institutions will bring about “justice.”
If states require ID to vote, it’s a “threat to democracy!” If moms and dads oppose racially divisive lessons in school, they’re abetting “white supremacy.” If we don’t want to pay more in gas prices, we’re contributing to the “climate crisis.”
The DSA brings these woke arguments to their logical conclusion. The result is horrifying, but it’s also revealing.
If Americans are rightfully proud of our country and its history on this 250th anniversary, we must reject the ideology that animates the DSA. We must dedicate ourselves to limited, constitutional government. We must remember the virtues of capitalism. We must oppose the leftist ideology seeping through so much of the legacy media, Hollywood, and academia.
Two hundred and fifty years ago, America was founded on the premise that our rights come from God, not government. Socialism, however “democratic” it may claim to be, rejects that fundamental premise. Americans must emphatically reject it, especially at this historic milestone.
Let’s celebrate the 250th anniversary, and throw such a big party that even those DSA haters can’t help but wish they could join us.
