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The Most Consequential Development of the Primary Season
No, not the Trump phenomenon, which I regard as the re-emergence of the Perot-Buchanan voter, though that’s certainly important. But long-term, that won’t be as big a turning point in American politics as what I’m talking about: the embrace of socialism by millennials. We’re the future, and we’ve fallen in love with what we imagine Sweden is like. Some of us will be voting this way for decades to come.
Having written before that I think Sanders will win NH but fizzle out everywhere else, I’m now going to start harping on the long-term ramifications of the campaign. This post was prompted by an excellent write-up in the Orange County Register, which I think is worth your time.
I’m going to add another important factor to consider: how people vote during their life is significantly influenced by the political environment in their first Presidential election. You can argue “people get more conservative as they get older,” but that doesn’t explain why old folks who turned 18 during the Eisenhower administration voted more Republican than both the people slightly younger than them (Kennedy 18-year-olds) and the people slightly older than them (Truman 18-year-olds):
I’ve said before that the Dubya Bush years will be hurting the conservative movement for decades. Looks like the Sanders campaign has re-ignited the passion many millennials had for Obama. This voting block will be hounding the Democrats for decades, and while we’ll take significant amusement at this division over here on the right, we’ve got to get ready for a socialist nominee from the Democratic party in the near future.
Published in Politics
Socialism: the radical idea of stealing what isn’t yours and making your victim feel bad about it.
Most of us are focused on surviving the next decade. If you’re asking us to worry about a generation of loony voters twenty years from now, cyanide would be more merciful.
True, but the voters I’m talking about gave us Obama twice.
Teachers, entertainers, and hippie parents gave us Obama twice. All-powerful, all-loving government is an idea so engrained in our culture now that it’s a wonder we have been able to slow its progression this much. (And of course with Obama specifically, Republicans were terrified of being labeled racist, so they offered little resistance.)
I agree with many other Ricochet commenters over the years that what we need even more than politicians with backbones is conservatives to be artists, professors, and other influencers of popular culture. We cannot afford for our causes to be boring.
We need more of this and this. Liberty and honor as America’s founders understood them should be presented as epic dramas that young people want to be part of. Young voters follow generals and heroes, not accountants.
Everyone wants to get in on the fun.
That said, I looked at the Register article. I think the prescriptions offered are weak. As Jonah Goldberg says, if the problem were just dumping the social issues, you’d think these folks would be in love with the Koch Brothers.
The defense of free markets has been difficult work. No matter how unfree or poor socialist countries get, it never seems to make a dent in socialism’s moral claims. The fact of the matter is that socialism’s only claim to justice is that a system based on theft results in everyone being poor, a society-wide example of crime not paying.
Yeah I don’t endorse any of the solutions offered, just the diagnosis of the problem.
I think Europe’s struggle with its economy and self-defense will prove an instructive example over the coming decades. The refugees only exacerbate the huge population of muslim immigrants to European nations, and the second-generation muslims seem to be where many terrorist sympathizers come from. Europe will have to beef up internal security while trying to maintain a social network for an aging population. Greece is just the beginning.
Today, we conservatives can point to Greece and Italy and say, “see, here’s where socialism gets you!” Soon, it’ll be France and Sweden.
I agree. Kotkin is a Democrat and while he can be very astute in diagnosing the problems within the party, his solutions hark back to traditional (pre-21st century) cures.
I saw a Facebook post from a young college student who was lamenting her interaction with two older gentlemen. She was praising Sanders and all the wonderful free stuff he was offering and asked if they too would vote for Sanders. The gentlemen shot back that what Sanders was offering would cost too much. Her retort: What don’t you understand about free?
http://youtu.be/v2Vp1moqTKs
When I turned 18, a few months later I voted for Jimmy Carter. Last Dem I voted for. That was 40 years ago.
I think you’re exactly right, LM, that the mainstreaming of socialism is the scariest thing about this election season. (And wow is that really saying something. But I digress.) I also think that you picked the best possible graphic for the topic because we conservatives made a big–dare I say yuge!–mistake long ago in not confronting this canard and its many variations head-on:
Even when they’re wrong, liberals mean well; even when they’re right, conservatives are mean.
As a rule, we consider ourselves rational people, so we hear this kind of nonsense and just dismiss it because it smacks of the feelz. I’m as much to blame as anyone else; I’ve heard this, rolled my eyes, and kept my mouth shut. But the thing is…it’s flat wrong. We all know it. There’s nothing well meaning about progressive politics. Nothing.
But we let it go, y’see–and now a hop, skip, and a jump later…those mean capitalists have lied to you about socialism because they just won’t share. It’s all of a piece.
Anyway…great post, LM. :)
Socialism!
Everyone is employed, but no one does anything meaningful. Everyone is loved, and ignored, by their heroic leader. Every is educated… in the only right way, which is the government’s way.
Our ancestors helped each other. Socialism means citizens delegate their “compassion” for others to fulfill, trusting that whoever happens to be in power at the moment knows best what each one of millions of people need. Socialism is pretending to care.
I was talking to my mentor yesterday, and after almost 30 years working in the public school system from classroom teacher all the way up to super he’s always considered it a mission field. For most of his time he admonished conservatives and Christians to engage and put their children in public schools in an attempt to reclaim that part of society. Over the last few years he’s changed course and now believes the right should form our own counter-culture and counter-society. He sees no other way to preserve truth.
And this, of course…
“Socialism — as the logical conclusion of the tyranny of the least and the dumbest, i.e., those who are superficial, envious and three-quarters actors.”
–Nietzsche
I don’t endorse a lot in Nietzsche, but when he was right, he was profoundly right.
In the end, all government can do is kill you. And it will. If “sharing” becomes the law of the land, and if you refuse to do so, men with guns will force you to comply. That probably isn’t what today’s wannabe socialist think, but it is the hard reality.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAA!!! You mean we haven’t had one yet?!! Obama, the Centrist!
Look, this was a great post and quite frankly frightening enough for me to start looking for the exit door. But to say that the Democrats haven’t had a socialist running the show for the at least the past 8 years is laughable. Obama is exactly what they were looking for both in policy and in demeanor. Obama is an authoritarian socialist. What your generation is upset about is that they had those mean old Republicans standing up to their guy and luckily the mid-term electorate is usually void young skulls full of mush.
Agreed. But now the half the Dems are being honest about it, and pissed at the half that aren’t.
It’s still different. Obama still felt the need to pay lip service to free enterprise, to deny his socialism. Sanders’s honesty is a turning point.
Socialism: The radical idea of sharing, as conceived by ‘experts’ and enforced by bureaucrats.
Free Market Capitalism: What’s mine is mine; what’s yours is yours.
Socialism: What’s mine is the government’s; what’s yours is also the government’s.
But Mis, if the government does it, it’s not stealing. Even Ricocheti believe this if you press them on it and it’s a “legitimate function of government.”
Socialism: Because we want to share YOUR stuff!
The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.
– Norman Mailer
Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance,
and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.
– Winston Churchill
I am convinced that the path to a new, better and possible world is not capitalism, the path is socialism.
– Hugo Chavez (who died a billionaire, and his people can’t buy bread)
A man once told me he lived in Sweden, and found it strange how no-one helped each other – even grandparents didn’t help with grandkids. They all thought it was the government’s job to help.
So this past fall, a friend’s college age kid went to Sweden on a study-abroad semester. He said everyone was very nice, but no one ever helped him with anything- not even the people whose job it was to help the students. And the ‘free college’ was worthless, he said no one was really learning anything. And to add to his misery, everything was so expensive, the students couldn’t afford to have much fun on the weekends.
There’s your socialist paradise.
These kids think they’re going to get free college and free healthcare. But what they don’t understand is, if they have any success at all – and I’m talking middle-class level success, they’re going to spend their lifetime paying for other peoples’ free college and heathcare.
Which is a good thing. The historian John Lukacs said a while ago: “We’re all National Socialists now.” We fell into it so easily partly because no one ever ran with that as the bumpersticker.
It seems so to me. He’s very insistent that he’s not a socialist in the Marxist-Leninist sense, but a democratic socialist. The distinction may seem to be one without a difference, but looking at his platform, I see “the left wing of the Democrat party.” I don’t see his views as a huge departure from the rest of the party or even from our current mixed economy, and in some important ways, his views resemble Trump’s. The phenomenon that’s really stunning to me is that the two populist candidates, on both sides, are doing so well. I do think this has to be reckoned both a failure of capitalism and a failure of education.
Don’t be blaming capitalism for this. The overall arc of the primaries has been how popular “outsider” populist candidates have been relative to “insiders” and experienced politicians. Bernie’s 30% on the right mirrors Trump’s fall popularity, and the Carson/Fiorina boomlets. The biggest obstacle on the right to gaining primary traction has been winning an election before.
A lot of this is the backlash for the bailouts of 2008 and Obamacare coordination with insurance companies, neither of which had an outlet in the 2012 election. The reaction to crony capitalism takes different forms on the right and left, but the people can see the system’s rigged. The DC growth boom and “Wall Street bonuses” during the great recession were both symptoms. Issues like “getting rid of cabinet departments”, “taking money out of politics”, “reigning in the bureaucracy”, “prosecuting Wall Street criminals”, all share some commonality with this.
It also helps explain Trump’s appeal. He’s the crony capitalist who “turned on his class”, and now wants to use his knowledge of how the system’s rigged for the common man’s benefit.