“All animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others.”

Those chilling words from George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” summarizes socialism’s inevitable conclusion — disillusionment, corruption and failure. When the pigs on Orwell’s farm take over and set the rules, promising equality, it turns out they do better than anyone else, contradicting the premise of their original egalitarian power grab.

It is a marvelous fable and also accurate. As socialist policies infect regimes from Venezuela to the European Union, innovation dries up, growth stalls and corruption blooms. Whether it’s socialism light, as in Europe, or the destructive grasping of private enterprise that has crushed Venezuela, the results are predictable and consistent.

In the 1950s, Venezuela was the fourth-wealthiest country in the world; today, almost 90 percent of the country lives in poverty, inflation is ruinous and the economy has been shrinking for years.

The EU, where the government have taken an ever-larger slice of the economy and the welfare state has mushroomed, residents have paid a high price. The World Bank reports that from “2008-2023, EU GDP grew by 13.5% (from $16.37 trillion to $18.59 trillion) while U.S. GDP rose by 87% (from $14.77 to $27.72 trillion).”

Bottom line: capitalism outperforms socialism.

This is not an academic issue today. Because Democrats lack........

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