Democrats are pushing the Green New Deal as the urgent response needed to the climate change crisis facing our planet, but a respected Cold War scholar says there's nothing new about what Democrats want to do with this legislation because it's the same power-grabbing agenda socialists have advanced for a century.

Dr. Paul Kengor teaches political science at Grove City College in Pennsylvania. He says a closer look at the Green New Deal proves the effort to save Earth is just a smokescreen.

"This is sort of classic leftist, progressive, socialistic economic socialism more than it is green environmentalism," said Kengor.

Kengor says the proof is that much of what progressives want to do has nothing to do with the environment.  And while the Democrats have not released their legislation yet, Kengor says the pillars of a Green New Deal pushed by the Green Party are very revealing.

"Three of the four planks are about the economic bill of rights, abolishing the Electoral College - things are are political, economic, ideological, much more than they are environmental," said Kengor, who says Americans should not believe Democrats when they say their widely-rejected talking points didn't really reflect their bill.

According to Kengor, many of the communists in Europe migrated to the green movement after the fall of communism there.  But if the green agenda is really just a Trojan horse for socialism, why do progressives believe the environmental movement is the best vehicle for achieving their goals?

"For the old communists and socialists, what the environmental movement allows them to do is control and regulate and limit people and resources," said Kengor.

He also says the environment debate the issue.

"Among other things, the beauty of it for them is that the trees and frogs and rocks and birds can't tell them to go take a hike," said Kengor.

Listen to the full podcast to hear why Kengor thinks Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is right to vote on the Green New Deal, why identity politics is creating more support for the plan than it would otherwise have, and why socialism requires atheism to flourish.