Posted on 09/16/2015 9:33:46 AM PDT by Kaslin
According to the experts, much of the Millennial generation is besotted with the candidacy of Bernie Sanders. Note: Millennials are the largest voting bloc by age.
Born between 1981 and 2000, and mostly in their 20s and early 30s, many Millennials are showing up at rallies of the self-proclaimed “Democratic Socialist” U.S. senator from Vermont and cheering his diatribes against “the billionaire class.”
Like the Baby Boomers and Gen Xers before them, many Millennials are highly educated. You’d think they’d be wary of anyone sporting a socialist brand. With the glaring exception of Bernie Sanders, modern-day progressives go out of their way to avoid the label.
National Socialist Germany, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Mao’s China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, the prison camp nation of North Korea and other socialist experiments in mass murder should have been enough to sully the name of socialism forever.
Yet, as the late Joseph Sobran said, “It makes no difference that socialism’s actual record is terribly bloody; socialism is forever judged by its promises and supposed possibilities, while capitalism is judged by its worst cases.”
You don’t even have to go to the worst of the worst to see the point. Look at how the socialism of Juan Peron ruined resource-rich Argentina’s economy or how Hugo Chavez and his successor Nicolas Maduro have impoverished once-rising Venezuela – while crushing dissent.
Noteworthy exceptions are the small, homogenous Scandinavian countries, which embrace socialistic tenets while allowing capitalist companies to keep them prosperous – for now. Unfortunately for the world’s millions of victims of socialism, these exceptions do not disprove the rule that collectivism leads to rule by the few with poverty for the “masses.”
“Socialism is the pure expression of Alienism,” Mr. Sobran observed in National Review. “It rejects in principle the entire current and traditional form of society and insists on total transformation.” He wrote this in 1985, 23 years before Barack Obama’s boast on Oct. 31, 2008 of being “five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”
Mr. Sobran continued: “In order to accomplish this, [socialism] must replace consent with unlimited state power. There are those who espouse ‘democratic’ socialism, but they are either fools or time-servers.”
So, back to our young voters. Why are so many of them hooked on Bernie?
According to USA Today college contributor Thomas Dowling, citing research by the Panetta Institute of Public Policy and the Pew Research Center, “Millennials will be looking at four major policy areas come 2016: independence from the Washington establishment, support for climate change mitigation policies, job creation and student debt reform. The candidate siding on the right side of all of these issues will very likely win the Millennial vote. That candidate appears to be Bernie Sanders.”
Indeed, the Vermont senator is singing the ages-old tune of getting something for nothing: free public university education and forgiveness of student loans. More government jobs. How to pay for all this? New taxes on financial transactions – as if that won’t further shackle our shaky economy. Did I mention socialized medicine? Plus, like all progressives, he’s for each and every new assault on sexual morality.
The greatest disconnect is Mr. Sanders’ supposed disdain for Washington insiders. But he wants Washington to grow astronomically bigger. The sky’s the limit. Can’t the young voters see through this “anti-establishment” façade?
Well, no, not if they’ve been systematically miseducated in America’s union-run schools and liberal universities. Instead of being taught about America’s unique achievements, students are told America is evil and fatally flawed, and that socialism by contrast is warm, fuzzy and compassionate. It’s why some of them run around in T-shirts bearing the image of Fidel Castro’s murderous triggerman, Che Guevara.
Millennials, more than any other generation, have also been given a false axis of political worldviews, with communists at one end and the Nazis at the other end, misidentified as “right wing.” A true ideological axis begins with no government (anarchy) at one end, and the communists, Nazis, Fascists and other socialists on the other extreme, with the American republic’s system of checks and balances and free markets somewhere in between.
Finally, there’s the popular culture. In Hollywood movies, socialism is never associated with the Nazis. Meanwhile, communists are very rarely the villains, despite hot wars in Korea and Vietnam, and decades of the Cold War. “No enemies to the left” is the prevailing Hollywood mindset, matching the ideology of most journalists, who routinely label anything they don’t like as “conservative.” This includes everyone from Iran’s ayatollahs to Russian crypto-communist “hard-liners.”
With all this disinformation, maybe it’s no wonder that so many people, particularly the young, have bought into socialism’s false, Santa Claus persona.
Socialism begins with a profound misreading of human nature -- that we are naturally “good” and just need ever more government to help us evolve toward perfection on earth. It ends with coercion, and lots of it.
I think we need a mandatory Con Game class for every high school student in America.
Our people have turned into some of the biggest rubes in the world.
I don’t think they teach American history anymore. Or anything at all about our founding or the constitution.
The politics of envy.
Someone needs to tell these kids that the United States is not a giant collective where everyone is supposed to get an equal share. Their unionist school teachers certainly didn’t tell them that because they don’t believe it.
From each according to his ability, to each according to his need sounds really fair, when you’re twelve years old. But kids fail to consider who will be deciding what you owe and what you need.
Your party apparatchik will clear that up for you. “Sorry, prole, you don’t NEED a Jaguar; they are reserved for the party.”
An unelected bureaucrat will decide that you have too much money left over and raise your rate of taxation, too.
From each according to his ability, to each according to his need sounds really fair, when you’re twelve years old. But kids fail to consider who will be deciding what you owe and what you need.
Your party apparatchik will clear that up for you. “Sorry, prole, you don’t NEED a Jaguar; they are reserved for the party.”
An unelected bureaucrat will decide that you have too much money left over and raise your rate of taxation, too.
OOPS! Double-click.
Yep.
And what a true shame that is.
Joe Sobran is still alive? I remember him doing radio commentaries back in the 70’s.
Millenials do not remember the Cold War, and hence Socialism and Communism are not frightening concepts to them. On the contrary they believe that if America is the greatest nation on earth, then the greatest nation on earth SHOULD provide free college education and health care to its citizens.
Reaganomics ain’t coming back in my lifetime. [sigh]
TNSTAAFL.................
I remember reaganomics. If we cut taxes enough we will bring in more revenue to fund the government and reduce the deficit. I fell for that back in the day. Not interested in bringing in more money for the government.
so....you would raise taxes to keep the government from getting its hands on more revenue?
-”I don’t think they teach American history anymore. Or anything at all about our founding or the constitution.”
Instead they teach the opposite. The Constitution is a document written by “Old White Males” and is therefore suspect.
The problem with the Millennials is they are taught it is “cool” to hate success. This comes from the government school system and from popular culture (movies and RAP music).
I have a few Millennial friends who actually get it. They somehow survived the brainwashing process with good heads on their shoulders. They had keen interest when I told them I once met Ronald Reagan in his office.
They feel that Ber-neat-toe will force their parents to switch places with them and they’ll take over the house and the folks will live in the basement.
Bernie Sanders says that George Washington, et al, owned slaves. And that is supposed to prove that it is easy for anyone to be morally superior to George Washington. Well, whatever they might say about slave-owning patriots, the decision of George Washington to resign after winning the Revolution so amazed George III that he exclaimed that, if it was true, Washington was the greatest man in the world.Sanders thinks he’s better than Washington because he didn’t break America’s laws and traditions by owning slaves. Well, Washington didn’t either. Washington, in fact, was subject to pressure from his neighbors not to free his slaves. And his ownership certainly didn’t break the laws of his country.
Slavery existed worldwide and throughout history as an unchallenged institution. Including Christian history. Until Christianity - and no other religion or tradition - turned against that institution over the last years of the Eighteenth Century and most of the Eighteenth Century.
William WilberforceSowell's book is well worth the read, if you haven’t seen it.
You could teach a lot of history out of Thomas Sowell’s books . . .
“...many Millennials are highly educated. You’d think they’d be wary of anyone sporting a socialist brand.”
They’re not educated, they’re indoctrinated. By socialist teachers. Of course they are not wary of socialists.
“Millennials will be looking at four major policy areas come 2016: independence from the Washington establishment, support for climate change mitigation policies, job creation and student debt reform.”
One legitimate concern, one imaginary bogeyman, and two problems that millenials brought on themselves (but want someone else to solve for them, with other peoples’ money).
“Millennials will be looking at four major policy areas come 2016: independence from the Washington establishment, support for climate change mitigation policies, job creation and student debt reform.”
One legitimate concern, one imaginary bogeyman, and two problems that millenials brought on themselves (but want someone else to solve for them, with other peoples’ money).
“We can all enjoy 3rd World poverty equally!”
“I think we need a mandatory Con Game class for every high school student in America.”
The schools are helping run the con game, so no chance of that.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.