The Briefing with Albert Mohler - Tuesday, August 18, 2026

Episode Date: August 18, 2026

This is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.Part I (00:14 – 14:16)Democratic Socialism is Bursting Onto the Scene Among Democrats: New Poll Shows Majority of Democrats Report Positive View of SocialismCBS News poll on whether Democrats split over socialism, and how Americans see parties in today’s economy by CBS News (Anthony Salvanto, Jennifer De Pinto, Fred Backus)Part II (14:16 – 19:37)Why is the University Experience Producing Socialists? The Culture of Elite Education is Teaching University Students Wrong Lessons About the EconomyHow Colleges Produce Socialists by The Wall Street Journal (Kimberlee Josephson)Part III (19:37 – 22:55)The Energy Is in the Extreme: The Current Ideological Battle in the Democratic Party Was InevitableBeware the Democrats’ ‘Redshift’ by The Wall Street Journal (Matthew Continetti)Part IV (22:55 – 26:03)The Parable of Raoul Vaneigem: The Obituary of a French Marxist Points to the Nearness of HistoryRaoul Vaneigem, Whose Manifesto Inspired 1968 Revolt in France, Dies at 92 by The New York Times (Adam Nossiter)Sign up to receive The Briefing in your inbox every weekday morning.Follow Dr. Mohler:X | Instagram | Facebook | YouTubeFor more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.For more information on Boyce College, just go to BoyceCollege.com.To write Dr. Mohler or submit a question for The Mailbox, go here.

It's Tuesday, August 18, 2006. I'm Albert Mueller, and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. There is simply no doubt that if you look at the American political landscape, the most amazing development of late is the conversation about socialism. And that is now an inevitable conversation. And it's inevitable for more than one reason. It's inevitable because it's such a big development. It is such a seismic development. It is such a seismic development. when you think in worldview terms, just about the future of civilization, the future of the United States of America. It's also really not that socialism hasn't been around for a long time. Late 19th century, throughout the 20th century. You've had the Democratic Socialists of America as an organization since the 1970s. But the explosion and the energy among those who identifies

Democratic Socialists is fairly recent. It's something that really has happened over the course of the last four to six years, and it's now just burst onto the media and cultural and political landscapes. And by the way, the other big issue is it really matters. It really matters if someone actually holds to socialist positions in a socialist worldview. And as we're going to have to see over and over again, that worldview is tied to larger presuppositions, a larger framework, much of which the Democratic Socialists don't want to talk about out loud until they're in control, and then they We'll talk about them very loudly. Okay, so let's just back up for a moment and let's ask ourselves again, what's going on here?

Is this impression? No, well, it's more than that because we're talking about electoral success. You're looking at Al-Saiyid, for instance, the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate seat in Michigan, who, by the way, has been supported by the DSA, has gone to DSA events but says he is not a Democratic socialist, but he clearly has that support and he's welcomed that support and he's identified with that very same very progressivist left-wing division in the Democratic Party. But you also are, of course, looking at mayors Iran-Mamdani in New York City, who is a card-carrying Democratic Socialists, so to speak, and very proud of it. Right, right as a part of his brand. You have Representative

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez very much identifying, at least historically with the DSA, and at least to DSA adjacent political movements. But you also have, in the background of this, someone like Bernie Sanders, who is officially registered as an independent, but who has also been extremely friendly to the DSA and its ideology, and supported by DSA energies. I think it's important to say, just as a matter of clearing the air, that we're talking about a movement and a worldview, an ideology, and a system. And there are those who want to identify with it, capital D, capital S, capital A.

Others who want to basically hold to the same positions without identifying with everything the DSA is going to say, much of which, by the way, is going to be Looney Tunes. But this is such a big development. CBS News decided to launch a major investigative study. They launched a major poll. Here's the question, whether Democrats split over socialism and how Americans see parties, that is the two parties in particular, in today's economy. Okay, it's really interesting. Anthony Salvatto, Jennifer DePento, Fred Back us together on this team for CBS News. I'll just say it's really important stuff.

This is one of those research projects that really does demand our attention. So, for instance, listen to this. Most Americans believe a free market system is a good thing. Americans are net negative on socialism. Capitalism is better liked. But then I'm reading from their report. Ideas aside, right now they say it's harder to do things like buy a house, raise a family, and just to feel financially secure than for the last generation.

younger people are especially apt to feel opportunities are fewer end quote okay so let me just say that when you look at previous generations at the same point many of those previous generations had the very same assumption there certainly was a point at which previous generations say generation x or the millennials for example there was a time when they were seemingly having difficulty ascending the ladder of financial success in terms of the hallmarks of job and savings and and homeownership and things like that. And then all of a sudden they became the established generation. And that was often a generation remarked upon for its economic success and power. So when you're looking at younger adults today and this impression, I just want to say that has been the impression of previous generations of young

adults. It is not false, however. When you look at the actual mechanisms of the economy, it is more difficult these days to buy a house. It is more difficult to accomplish some of these financial goals. But it is interesting that when you look at this, still the majority of Americans are not friendly to socialism. At least they say, they believe that capitalism is a better system. But get this, quote, the Democratic Rinkin File does have a higher view of socialism than capitalism. Okay, so that's really interesting because it's just one sentence and it didn't say the Democratic Rinkin File has a higher view of socialism than, say, Republicans. It says they have a higher view of socialism than capitalism. Okay, that's rank and file. That's astounding. We've just been told by CBS News with lots of data behind this research that the average Democrat, when you say rank and file, that's what you're talking about, has a higher view of socialism than capitalism. If this is true, this is a truly seismic development. All right, so let's look further at the research. You have general questions about the economy. Then you have a question that comes up like this, just views of

socialism and capitalism. Positive views of socialism, 35%, capitalism, 46%. Negative, 42%, capitalism, 33%. So this is Americans. So Americans, by 46 to 35, think capitalism is a better system than socialism. But that's just Americans, before you get to party, breakout, or age. Negative opinions about capitalism, 33%, but about socialism, 42%. And then you have about 20% in both of these who say they have no opinion. And that's a very revealing, sadly revealing number as well. Okay. But then things get much more interesting when you begin to break out the voters,

number one, to identify those who identify as Democrats or are counting themselves as Democrats. And then when you look at the issue of age. So, okay, now we turn to views of socialism and capitalism among Democrats. Positive views of socialism, 58%. positive view of capitalism only 32%. You're talking not about a close call here, but 58, 32. So, okay, now we move in the study to views of socialism and capitalism among Democrats.

So the Republicans and independents are gone. This is just Democrats in the room. Positive views of socialism, 58%. Positive view of capitalism, 32%. Okay, that's massive. You're talking about 58 and 32. That's not exactly... twice as much, of course, but it's getting close to twice as many Democrats saying that they have positive views of socialism than who say they have positive views of capitalism.

Negative views of socialism? 18% among Democrats, 50% say they have concerns about capitalism. So, okay, what we're looking at here is the fact that 58% of the Democrats in this study said that they have positive views of socialism. Only 32% said they have positive views of capitalism. Okay, so then you ask you. the question, okay, how did that happen? What's behind this? The very next graph. Among Democrats, so this is only among Democrats, the view of socialism by educational level. Okay, brace yourself. Positive views of socialism among Democrats with no college degree, 49%. That's still big. With a college degree, 71%. Those who among Democrats have a negative view of socialism, only 19% of those who have no degree, 16% of those who have a college degree. So that's pretty stable. You're talking here about the fact

that having a college degree is of seismic significance. So if you just take Democrats by themselves, you're going to be looking at younger Democrats more positive than older Democrats, but you're really going to be looking in a clearer pattern, those who are college-educated Democrats, much more positive about socialism than those who are not college-educated. Okay, there is more about this. As you continue through the study, quote, another item that marks differences within the Democrats, just how progressive should the party be to about half? It's as progressive as they want. To about half is not progressive enough. They're more liberal. I'm reading from the study and have a relatively more positive impression of socialism too. Okay. So let's just talk about that for a moment

because this is really big because it's about momentum. It's about energy. When you have an organization like a political party. And let's just say that it's about half and half. Half believe the parties as progressive as they want it to be. The other half say it's not progressive enough. And as the study says, they're more liberal and have a relatively more positive impression of socialism too. So, okay, how does that shape the Democratic Party?

It means the party is going to lurch to the left. And you can say, well, only half don't believe the party's progressive enough. Yeah, but the point is that that's half. So in other words, if you have half the party that says that, think it's progressive enough. And half they say it's not progressive enough. The meeting place between those two parties is not where the first party is. It's somewhere between the two parties. And this is where energy in politics, energy and culture counts massively. It's hard to know in terms of arithmetic how you'd even measure it. But those who are coming with the stronger,

more energetic argument, they win in the political context in terms of changing positions. So the Democratic left, We've known that the left and the Democratic Party is really gaining an ascendancy. They're gaining in terms of generational strength. They are gaining in terms of primaries and elections. They're gaining just in terms of the conversation the nation's having. And they are openly saying, okay, now we're about half and half. And that leftist half is going to drag the other half in a more progressivist leftward, even socialist direction.

That, according to the numbers, is just now a matter of inevitability. Well, all right, let's think about this for a moment and let's ask another question. Why would education make such a difference? Why would the level of education end up being so predictive of the fact that these younger Democrats are identifying as socialists? And by the way, younger, this is just mean college age or in their 20s. Younger in this case is under 50. So, well, that means that the college experience has to make some difference. You're talking about double-digit impact. And when you look at the crowds, I think this is one of the most frustrating things for many people in the Democratic Party.

When you look at the crowds at these DSA events, these Democratic Socialists events, you'll notice they're young. You'll also notice they're just amazingly white, at least, in terms of much of the video, many of the photographs, and they look relatively prosperous. And so here's the amazing thing. And by the way, this isn't fundamentally new. When you look at socialist movements, they're often driven by people who say, we're doing this. for those who are the underprivileged, those who are in need, etc. But the people who are actually driving the energy tend to be from the elites of society. Now, that's not always the case. You look at the Bolshevik revolution. That's not always the case. You look at the Chinese communist

revolution. It's not always the case, but it is increasingly the case, especially when you're looking at what's labeled Democratic socialism. Yeah, that's pretty much the case. And we're going to be reminded in just a moment of a very odd indication of it just why that's so. So, okay, that raises the huge question as to how colleges or universities, the college experience, tends to push people in a socialist direction. So you have younger people, college educated people, wow, you're looking at stratospheric numbers, really, in terms of the American political system that now are at least open to socialism. The very people you would think wouldn't be in their own economic self-interest so committed to socialism. And so they had to pick up this worldview of socialism. somewhere, the college campus is the obvious answer to that.

Now, the most obvious thing you think about here is leftist professors teaching leftist ideologies. And by the way, that's just massive. It's just massive. It's been a huge problem in American higher education ever since, just to make the issue very clear in chronological terms, ever since you had the generation of the 60s revolt, decide that they were going to change things from the inside. that's another form of cultural Marxism. It was one of the principals and is still one of the principles

of the Frankfurt School and critical theory. We'll move from the inside of the knowledge production industry, which is largely the colleges and universities, the think tanks, and the rest. And we will bring about social action that way. This Marxist experiment's not going to be a workers' revolution.

It is going to be a revolution of the knowledge class. And yes, that was a technical designation about the 1960s and the 1970s. And so you are looking at explicit teaching. You're looking at the fact that by every measure, by every measure, the faculties of America's colleges and universities, especially the most prestigious ones, are far to the left of the American people. And we've seen recently, for instance, when you look at presidential elections, you'd have entire elite faculties where apparently no one contributed to a Republican candidate.

Many of them were contributors to not only Democratic candidates, but people like AOC and Bernie Sanders. And then you look at those who identified by party affiliation, and you have entire universities where it's very rare to find anyone who would even admit to even once voting Republican. But now I want to bring an article by Kimberly Josephson of the Wall Street Journal into the conversation. It's really interesting. Parents and others just need to really listen to this. She writes an article with the headline, how colleges produce socialist. And I think it's probably the case that most people looking at that would say, well, it's the liberal faculty. It's, it's, it's the liberal influence on the campus. Yeah, well, that's part of it. That's not what she's

concerned about. She's writing in economic terms. What would happen in the college experience, in terms of economic experience that just might, let's just say, allow persons to be susceptible to the illusions of socialism? What would mark the college experience? Well, as Kimberly Josephson explains in the college experience, especially in the elite college experience, students really don't have any knowledgeable way of understanding how much things cost or should cost. And what is the cost signal or the price signal? Those are economic terms. The price signal. That's what's missed by college students. They're on a meal plan. They just go to the cafeteria. They eat much. They eat little. In the traditional university cafeteria, it's all just a part of the meal plan. You go to the,

the health clinic. You go to the climbing wall, you go to the magnificent, and Kimberly Josephson is really good at pointing out the radical campus inflation in terms of colleges and universities spending untold billions of dollars cumulatively in terms of athletic facilities and adding amenities and all the rest. But students, during the time that they're in university, they just get to enjoy these things. They don't have to ever price them out. And even as somebody's paying multiple tens of thousands of dollars in terms of elite education, you can easily generalize to the fact that in total cost, it can be easily something like $100,000 a year by the time you had tuition, housing, clothes, entertainment, car, transportation, all the rest of it. It's a ton of

money. But students don't have to deal with the realities of the economy. As a matter of fact, one of the points that Kimberly Josephson makes is that the college experience is actually an introduction to adulthood without adult economics. and there can be some really bad lessons learned from all of this. Why wouldn't you support socialism if it comes to all these promises? Because why wouldn't it work? I mean, it works on campus. Yeah, but it works on campus because someone's paying an unbelievable amount of money

for you to be there in the first place. When it comes to why the college-educated part functions so much in terms of support for socialism among the young, Kimberly Josephson says, why college students? The usual assumption is that professors are indoctrinating students, but she says that's too simple. It's profoundly true, but she says, that's not enough. Quote, the campus itself is a powerful factor.

When students arrive in college, they encounter a vague sense of freedom. What they often do not realize is how controlled their campus experience is. Universities operate as a closed economy, centrally administered, collectively resourced, carefully controlled by administrators who hope their plans aid retention efforts. Very interesting words that follow. Over the past several decades, the college campus has morphed into a comprehensive of residential and lifestyle provider. Beginning in the 1990s,

when colleges started competing more aggressively for larger enrollment numbers, investing in student life, became a way to recruit students. And that led to what she calls an amenities arm's race. And this is where she comes in later and says, look, being on the college campus

basically blinds you to price signals. Now, the parents paying the bills, they may be fairly aware of the price signals. But on campus, there are no price signals, not when it comes to enjoying all these amenities and all the rest. Not to mention the fact that you're going into the classroom, you don't have a financial transaction with every lecture. You don't have a clue how much it costs for you to spend that hour, hour and a half

in a classroom with a high qualified professor. That's just completely missing from the student's understanding. And then they graduate and have been hopefully, you know, moving into adulthood during that period. But economically, it is often a, let's just say, breathtaking discovery to understand. how much things cost. And by the way, everything costs something. But I think Kimberly Josephson's onto something important here.

That's just a good thing for parents to think about making certain that older teenagers and college age students get some kind of cost signal, some kind of price signal in terms of matters economic, even if the campus doesn't work that way. And by the way, it can't. Kimberly Josephson here is not criticizing campuses for being campuses. She understands that's just the way it works. works, but she says that is an artificial environment. One little anecdote she tells, by the way, is the fact that, you know, Zohramamam Dani, the mayor of New York City is pushing basically

a socialist understanding of public transportation and buses and all the rest. And, you know, she mentions that on many campuses, I think of a university like Duke University, which has basically two different campuses there in Durham. They're close, but they have transportation. Well, that's really nice transportation. Probably runs on time. Probably, you know, all the buses are really clean and all the rest. And someone says, well, this is great. This is the way all transportation should work. Well, the entire world, guess what, is not the campus of Duke University. Speaking of the moving left in the Democratic Party, Matthew Contonetti writes an opinion piece at the Wall Street Journal. This one's entitled, Beware the Democrats' Red Shift. Underneath that,

it says the lines between camps and the party are blurry, but moving left. I think that directional energy is exactly right. I think he gives some good argument about it. He says this, quote, progress is progressed in recent years, however. The Democratic Party has undergone its own version of the cosmic red shift in which light bends toward the red end of the spectrum at great distances. As Democrats rocket toward the socialist fringe, every part of the party shifts left, end quote. And so that's exactly what happens.

You have a party that's already basically on the left. Then you have a much further left. The equation between them means somewhere between the left and the further left. That's what's described here as a cosmic left. redshift. There's another interesting statement, quote, the laundering of socialist ideas through progressive politics harms Democrats who begin to assume that far out proposals won't hurt them in a general election. Okay, then he tells something very interesting. You have Kamala Harris who lost the 2004 presidential race. An interesting story after the withdrawal of then the incumbent

President Joe Biden from the race for the Democratic nomination. You had an unusual situation without primaries. The current Vice President, Kamal Harris, has made the presidential nominee. And, you know, she is now positioning herself either for influence in the party. More likely, she's positioning herself for another run at the Democratic nomination. And then Contonetti writes, quote, in an October 24 Gallup poll, taken one month before she lost the presidential election, 51 percent of registered voters said Ms. Harris was too liberal. That hasn't stopped her from embracing the latest socialist surge. And then the article points out how she's been encouraging those who have won these socialist

nominations and have gone on to win. That's clearly sending a signal. That tells you something how the Democratic Party is shifted. We're not talking about a long period of time. We're talking about 2024, now 2006. And guess what? Presidential election next coming in 2008, just two years away. By the way, Contenetti also does a very good job of bringing some things to light that a lot of

people would know. You have Abdul al-Said, the Democratic nominee for that Senate seat in Michigan, and what's really interesting is he's a very wealthy man. As Contonetti says, quote, although Mr. El-Said has socialist views, attended socialist events for years, headlined a Democratic Socialist of America fundraiser, campaigned with socialists like Mizakosio-Cortez, he says, I'm not a socialist, but listen to this. The El-Said's combined tax return for 2025 showed an adjusted gross income of more than $675,000, the couple own rental properties in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Dubai, and Bangalore. Capitalism is working for him for sure, end quote. Yeah, I guess so. By the way, at the end of the article, Contonetti writes, quote, if a candidate wants to impose Medicare for all, abolish ICE,

and in support for Israel, remake America's constitutional system, fund gender transition for minors, and allow men to compete in women's sports, he's moving toward the socialist platform, even if he doesn't admit the label, and he should be opposed. End quote. Absolutely right. Finally, for today, I said I'm going to come back to the radicalism of the 1960s. An interesting obituary appeared just in recent days at the New York Times. It's the obituary of Raul Vinesian.

He died at age 92, as the headline in the obituary says, quote, inspired student revolt in France. The obituary begins by saying Raul Vennasian, a prolific Belgian writer, whose radical 1967 manifesto, the Revolution of Everyday Life, was a leading inspiration for the student uprising of May 1968 in France, died on July 28 at his home near Barcelona in Spain at age 92. Okay, he wrote a book entitled The Revolution of Everyday Life back in 1967. It was a manifesto for the left.

And you had people on the left, especially young people on the left, college students involved in the riots and rebellions, the revolutions of 1968 in Paris and in the United States who followed this kind of theory. It was very much coming from Marxism. He didn't identify as a friend of Soviet communism, but he clearly was coming from the Marxist left. He identified with a movement known as Situationism, which was driven by Guy Debord. And that was a theory that said social change is going to come by people in the midst of the boredom of mechanistic and industrialized life, making much of situations to maximize the call for a revolution.

So situationism was basically an acknowledgement of the fact that most of the people in the middle class seemed to be increasingly satisfied. They were committed to the economy. They didn't want a revolution. They just wanted to advance to the next job. They joined a labor union. They were involved in all of this. This is where you have the Marxist category of false consciousness. The theory of the Marxist was that the middle class is just blind to this reality. Situationalism as a movement basically came down to the situationist's left saying, you know, we just need to amplify situations so that we can break through that false consciousness and bring about eventually a revolution. And you know, the interesting thing is that rule of Venetian who died, as I say, just a matter of a few weeks ago there near Barcelona. You have to wonder, did he think history had passed him by?

Or is history all of a sudden showing up in a situation, such as, the Democratic Party in the United States and the political left in the United States in the year 2006. It just might be that what he was looking for is happening in the very year that he died. It tells you something that his obituary ran in that very rarefied environment of the obituary section of the New York Times. Thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information, go to my website at Albertmobler.com. You can follow me on X or Twitter by going to X.com forward slash Albert Mueller. For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to SBTS.edu. For information on Voice College, just go to voicecollege.com. I'll meet you again

tomorrow for the briefing.