The rise of socialism within the ranks of the Democratic Party was inevitable given their “progressive” policies. They have spent decades building a regulatory state that reaches into private businesses on production, hiring, pricing, energy use, hiring quotas, and even speech. This system they’ve created matches the fascism Ronald Reagan warned would arrive in America in the name of liberalism through private ownership paired with total government control. Hayek showed in The Road to Serfdom that progressive demands for detailed economic planning and regulation inevitably centralize coercive power because only the state can enforce comprehensive commands across a complex society. And Mises explained that interventionism is unstable and each new restriction on private owners creates distortions that force still deeper state direction until the profit motive yields to reasons of state. The middle of the road leads to socialism with every intervention to fix the previous intervention. Once government regulators hold the power to approve or destroy businesses through endless rules rather than letting voluntary exchange decide outcomes, private ownership becomes a legal formality and effective control shifts to the state. And that is the socialism now rising openly inside the Democratic Party after years of their incremental policies advancing exactly this progression.