Scandinavia, Socialism, and a Surgeon

Despite the media giants being dead-set on Hillary Clinton being the next president (I remember them already burnishing her public image 20 years ago when she was a president's wife who clearly wanted to be much more), some of my Democrat friends are quite excited about Bernie Sanders. He seems to be promising a lot of "free" stuff.*

From Wikipedia:

A self-described democratic socialist, Sanders favors policies similar to those of social democratic parties in Europe, particularly those instituted by the Nordic countries.

All this Scandinavia-dreaming strikes me as rather racist. The same policies, when attempted elsewhere, rarely work out well (Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, China when communist, Italy, Greece, etc.), but fans of democratic socialism keep longing to be like Scandinavia. What they're really saying--but don't realize it--is that they want the USA to be Scandinavian. Sorry to invoke Hitler and his Nazi crew, but they would no doubt feel a bit vindicated by the continuing adulation of the Nordic people.

I think I'm most favorably impressed by Ben Carson. As a man with a scientific background, he seems to be the only candidate aware of how numerical and physical realities get in the way of ideologies making good on their promises. Any experienced doctor knows that no matter how good your intentions, mortal weaknesses mean your patient might not benefit from your ministrations. Also, after what our foreign policy has been for the last long while, I'd love to see a "do no harm" approach in the White House. At the very least, we should be focusing on not doing harm to our allies.

* Nothing provided by the government is really free, is it? Unless we plan to repudiate some of our national debt down the road, which would be pathetic considering the size of our economy. From what I can see, the Tea Party movement exists because some people (but rarely politicians) quite rationally think that the federal and local government should rein in spending so that we don't overtax producers and eventually sink in a Greece-style debt quagmire. The US federal government is up to nearly 18.5 trillion USD in debt, and almost nobody in politics or media wants to mention it anymore.