Conquer Club

What was sad is that Russia could have been the richest country in the world. It has 11 time zones, enormous amounts of every kind of natural resources – gas, oil, diamonds, gold, iron ore, uranium… everything – and yet, the country was very poor.

Not many people in the West realized how poor we were. Today, life today in Russia is far better than it was under the Soviet Union. Yet, most people in the United States don’t realize that 36 percent of all hospitals do not have running water or sewer systems. In many areas of Russia, you must go to an outhouse after surgery.

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President Gorbachev inadvertently destroyed the socialist system. He actually wanted to “reform” socialism; to put a “human face” on socialism. And during that time, I was working with Gorbachev’s closest aides – they quickly realized that socialism with a “human face” was an oxymoron. Because socialism without coercion, without violence against the people – well, socialism cannot survive.

We joked that the CIA didn’t know what was happening with our plan to implement Perestroika. So, the CIA went out and hired James Bond to spy on the Soviet Union to figure out what was going on. So, James Bond is going from one store to another with his note book. He starts with a butcher shop, writing, “No meat.” He then goes to the bakery, writing, “There’s no bread.” However, James Bond notices a KGB officer looking over his shoulder. When Bond turns around the KGB officer looks at Bond and says, “Two years ago, you would have been shot for doing that.” So James Bond concludes in his notebook, “No bullets, either.”

I traveled to Cuba, and people like Bernie Sanders or our president are praising their health care system. I’m sure they were watching too many of Michael Moore’s propaganda movies. I couldn’t believe our president suggested that Cuba had achieved a lot in the field of health care.

I’ve been to Cuba many times. And I’ve never seen any health care. If you go to a Cuban pharmacy, they only have two medicines: Castro Brother pictures or Che Guevara pictures. Nothing else.

During my life in the Soviet Union, I would run into a number of Cubans. The government would bring Cuban youth to Moscow to try and brain wash them with all this propaganda. I became very good friends with a few individuals still living in Cuba today. One friend recently remarked to me about Cuba’s health care system: “Yes, we have a great health care system. But if we had room for doctors, clinics, hospitals, ambulances, and medicines, it would be even better. If you want real health care in Cuba, swim to Miami!”

People like Sanders don’t believe that the one percent should have all this wealth; that we should redistribute it. I recently had dinner with Walter William, an economist from George Mason university. And he made a point that resonates very well with socialism. He suggested that there is no way to truly redistribute wealth, because when you do, you do destroy it.

If you take a palace from a rich person and give it to a poor person, the poor person will destroy it. We saw that in the Soviet Union, and it’s sad when a nation actually destroys its own wealth and opportunities to achieve a socialistic society.