Newly elected GOP congresswoman knows too well the misery of socialism

“I grew up in [a] socialistic country…. I saw what happens when it runs out of money, and it’s not pretty.”

That’s what newly elected Republican Congresswoman Victoria Spartz, who grew up in the Ukraine when it was still part of the Soviet bloc, recently said in an interview on Fox & Friends.

The representative-elect from Indiana first came to America after meeting her husband, a born and raised Hoosier, on a train in Europe. Now, America is “building socialism,” she stated. “I’m kind of going full circles. I can tell you what is going to be next. It’s very sad for me to see that.”

When asked what she says to those who doubt politicians would actually enact socialism, Spartz replied, “Well, I think we need to be good students of history. Our country, for the last century, fought against socialism and a lot of young kids died. I took my kids to the beaches of Normandy, and you can see how many young kids died fighting for freedoms, how many wars were fought, and we won.”

She continued, “And let’s look at any country that had socialism — every country failed because this system is not sustainable, this system creates a lot of destruction and misery. So we have to be smarter than that…. There are only two systems: you have freedom and free enterprise and you have a system where the government decides and political elites on top [decide] how we’re going to lead, what we’re going to do.”

Spartz’s experience with socialism has proven formative and led her to speak out against the ideology. Her campaign website says, “Growing up in socialist-controlled Ukraine, she experienced firsthand the dark side of socialism. Living through this molded her conservative political philosophy: limited government is always better, and financial and healthcare decisions should be made by individuals in the free market, not bureaucrats and special interests.”

After arriving in the United States, she worked her way up from a bank teller to a CPA, finance executive, and successful business owner. In 2017, she entered the political arena, winning an election to serve in the Indiana Senate.

Spartz said that socialism restricts liberty and individualism and attempts to view and treat everyone the same. “If you think about it, we’re not equal…. We want to have equal rights to pursue happiness, but we want all different things. We don’t even want to travel to the same countries! If the government forces us to be equal, you have to suppress, so every socialistic system [is] about suppression. And we have to value our freedoms because we are the greatest republic that ever existed.”

This is the difference in the equality of opportunity promised by American liberty, and the equity, or equality of outcome, promised by socialism. When the government tries to pick winners and losers and bring everyone to the same economic level, it crushes innovation and individualism. As Winston Churchill famously said, “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”

While deeply concerned about the encroachment of socialism, Spartz expressed optimism because she believes that the average voter does not want socialism. When asked why so many Republican women won congressional elections in November, she responded,

“Well, if you think about it, my district is really a snapshot of America. I have urban, suburban voters, rural voters, and we have a lot of women. And I’m a mother of two daughters, I’m a suburban woman. And I think if you look at that, I’m very hopeful to see that [the] majority of people in our country don’t believe in socialistic utopic ideas [that] the Democrat party is now promoting.”

Spartz will join a record number of conservative Republican women in the House of Representatives, and fortunately, she will also bring a critically important voice to the ongoing debate and struggle over which ideology should guide America’s future.

Check out the Falkirk Center podcast with Joel Pollak on socialism and the Presidential election: