If you don’t think that socialism is on the rise in America, then you may want to stop watching MSNBC and start looking at the facts.

Up and down the entire west coast, homeless rates are beginning to skyrocket as more and more people struggle to afford housing. In Seattle, for example, some 400 unauthorized tent camps are quickly popping up in public parks, underneath bridges, on freeway medians and along sidewalks. In San Diego, government officials are now forced to scrub down sidewalks due to a deadly outbreak of hepatitis A. In Anaheim, an astonishing 400 people spend the nights sleeping on a bike path that runs alongside Angel Stadium. Organizers in the city of Portland recently had to use incense to mask the smell of urine in a parking lot where vendors set up shop.

Of course, the one thing that San Diego, Anaheim, Seattle and Portland have in common is that they are all run by big government leftists pushing big government policies. These cities serve as a perfect example of what happens when you combine burdensome regulations, excessive taxation and the redistribution of wealth, and force it all down the throats of the American people. Indeed, if the liberals had their way, then the homelessness that is steadily on the rise on the west coast wouldn’t be unique to these cities; it would be the unfortunate reality across the entire country.

What is happening on the west coast should serve as a stark reminder that sadly, the basic tenets and principles of socialism are alive and well in America. Capitalism is being rejected more and more frequently due to the idea that it’s rooted in greed and selfishness, and conversely, socialism is starting to become more accepted because it is almost always associated with “fairness” and “compassion.” The truth, of course, is that socialism is anything but fair – any economic system that involves the government taking money from people who have earned it and giving it to those who haven’t is just about as unfair as it gets.

What’s worse is that young people appear to be growing more and more fond of the idea of socialism in America, and shockingly, many of them even embrace communism. According to a study that was recently conducted by Victims of Communism Memorial Fund-YouGov, 44 percent of millennials would rather live in a socialist country rather than a capitalist country, and an additional seven percent say they prefer to live under communism. This means that an astonishing 51 percent of young people in America today would rather live under socialism or communism instead of free-market capitalism, which, for anyone who is economically literate, is not a good sign. (Related: The communist infiltration of the U.S. Congress has been exposed in a mind-blowing documentary.)

“Millennials are increasingly turning away from capitalism and toward socialism and even communism as a viable alternative,” explained Marion Smith, the executive director of Victims of Communism. “This troubling turn highlights widespread historical illiteracy in American society regarding socialism and the systemic failure of our education system to teach students about the genocide, destruction, and misery caused by communism since the Bolshevik Revolution one hundred years ago.” (Related: These are the 45 goals of communism’s takeover of America… more than half have already been achieved.)

On the official website for the Victims of Communism Memorial Fund, the organization argues that this embrace of socialism and communism “isn’t back” because “it never left.”

“We simply forgot about it,” the statement reads. “And as it rears its ugly head once more, openly and shamelessly, we seem far less prepared to meet the challenge in this century as we did in the last.”

Sources include:

SFGate.com

DailyWire.com