Pete Buttigieg, in an award-winning high school essay he wrote in 2000, praised Bernie Sanders as courageous for describing himself as a “Socialist.”
The essay, which received the Profile in Courage Essay Contest award from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Museum and Library, criticized candidates who abandoned their ideals to appeal to a larger number of voters. The 37-year-old presidential candidate singled out Sanders as an example of political “courage.”
“Sanders’ courage is evident in the first word he uses to describe himself: ‘Socialist,’” wrote Buttigieg. “In a country where Communism is still the dirtiest of ideological dirty words, in a climate where even liberalism is considered radical, and Socialism is immediately and perhaps willfully confused with Communism, a politician dares to call himself a socialist? He does indeed.
“Here is someone who has ‘looked into his own soul’ and expressed an ideology, the endorsement of which, in today’s political atmosphere, is analogous to a self-inflicted gunshot wound,” added Buttigieg. “Even though he has lived through a time in which an admitted socialist could not act in a film, let alone hold a Congressional seat, Sanders is not afraid to be candid about his political persuasion.”
The South Bend, Ind., mayor’s essay also suggests that Sanders, then an obscure, radical House member from Vermont, inspired his decision to enter politics. “I commend Bernie Sanders for giving me an answer to those who say American young people see politics as a cesspool of corruption, beyond redemption. I have heard that no sensible young person today would want to give his or her life to public service. I can personally assure you this is untrue,” he wrote.
Buttigieg’s father, Joseph Buttigieg, who passed away in January, was a Marxist professor who praised the Communist Manifesto and was an adviser to the Rethinking Marxism academic journal, the Washington Examiner reported earlier this month.
“If The Communist Manifesto was meant to liberate the proletariat, the Manifesto itself in recent years needed liberating from Marxism’s narrow post-Cold War orthodoxies and exclusive cadres. It has been freed,” wrote Joseph Buttigieg in a 1998 article for the Chronicle of Higher Education.
While Buttigieg has shied away from calling himself a socialist on the campaign trail, he has questioned the fairness of the capitalist system and called for reforms.
Buttigieg, a virtual unknown before he entered the presidential race, has been moving steadily up in early polls. He came in third behind Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders in an Emerson survey this week, edging out better-known candidates such as Sens. Kamala Harris of California and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
