Tuesday night during my introduction at our Freedom to Flourish event, The Christian Imperative for Entrepreneurship, I pointed out why defense of free markets is still such a relevant task today. I suggested that given one of our major political parties is having an identity crisis over whether it should support socialism makes this a great issue to think about. Our context was the importance of Christians being entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurship is the missing ingredient in a planned economy. And while some of our readers may not believe it, I actually don’t enjoy having to “take sides” quite to the degree I do today. But I want to be clear, its not because my economics is getting political, its because our politics insists on being in so much of our economics. In the great progressive push to increase government involvement in everything, it is a logical reality that political strife will only increase. When issues are decided outside the political sphere, there has to be some measure of win-win, because that’s the only way to get voluntary agreement. But when the government gets into a sphere, it is not only possible, but also the usual reality, that there will be winners and losers. And not surprisingly, the losers don’t like it so much.

Within the Democratic party, there are many that are openly embracing the term socialism. And this is causing panic among the old guard Democrats, since they know that politics is about addition, not subtraction. Hence Nancy Pelosi’s comments this past week about AOC, saying she doesn’t speak for the Democratic party. It’s true that it is not a large percentage that make this open advocation, but these (like Bernie Sanders and AOC) are driving the debate given the media’s need to promote conflict. And they represent where all the base’s energy is. It is also true that none of the advocates of socialism are thinking they want Venezuela or North Korea results, or even Great Britain of the 1950s-70s results. But just because they don’t think that, doesn’t mean that it is not where this train is headed. Once you unleash the dragon of populist hostility toward the rich, you don’t always get to choose where it goes.

We see numerous examples of this, beginning with Mrs. Pelosi herself (or even Mrs. Clinton or even (shock to me) Mr. Obama. These politicians have all been within the last two decades, considered at the very extreme left of their party. Mr. Obama, for example, had a zero rating from one of the conservative voting rating groups, IIRC, and was the most liberal senator prior to election as President. Yet their influence has not merely moved the party to them, but as they are now more at the center of the party, there is still a bell curve distribution of party members. You can never be angrier or shout louder than the left tail of your base. As the center of the party moves left, the tail gets angrier and louder. The fact that AOC and Bernie Sanders are now getting mainstream coverage is just a natural result of the center of this party legitimizing what was previously considered radical.

This also happens on the right, of course. Mr. Trump would likely not be president if not for Mr. Cruz. Mr. Cruz carefully cultivated a war against the establishment Republicans for years, in the hopes to present himself as the true blue “outside” candidate. He was aided and abetted by a frustrated Rush Limbaugh, who seemed to forget the magic numbers of 218 and 60. As Mr. Cruz bashed his own party, there was no way he could be as distant or outside his party as Mr. Trump. What he thought he was doing by unleashing the populist anger against establishment (whatever that means) Republicans went in a direction well beyond what he wanted.

So it is the dilemma for the Democrats. They have unleashed the revolutionaries, and they are surprised that the revolutionaries, unlike them, don’t simply want power but actually want a revolution. I don’t think Mrs. Pelosi or others will be able to put AOC or her radical colleague, Ms. Omar, back in a box. They are not wanting to wait 40 years to get seniority. What is harmful for the Democratic Party as a whole is the accelerated path to power for the revolutionaries–tear down the existing structure and make way for the new generation. It is better for the revolutionaries agenda that the Democrats lose to Trump, if they won’t fully embrace the leftward lurch. And that is exactly what the Democrats fear. Robespierre would be proud.