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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
Interesting sticker…
I can’t imagine even Sanders’ supporters buy that.
Well, yes, but we’ll have a socialist nominee for the Democrat party as early as August — one way or another. They’re all socialists now, it’s just some are more forthright about it than others.
The sticker should have several retorts:
Socialism
The radical, un-American
idea of empowering central government
over the people.
Socialism
The radical opposition to liberty
in favor of confiscation and redistribution
I think socialism is being redefined. There has always been a rosy picture painted of it by the left, but now that is becoming the accepted understanding of it. I work with a bunch of millennials, but as they’re in the military they take a different view of things.
Ryan, while the face of the murderous Che Guevara adorns popular T-shirts and posters, I can certainly imagine that they “buy that”.
The end of the sticker was cut off. It reads: “… at gunpoint.”
Socialism: Only government can do what a thousand generations before us did without it.
Socialism: because the President is my pimp!
Socialism: Working for the Government, All Day, All Year
Thanks for the post and the link to the Orange County Register article. I’ve read other stuff by Joel Kotkin, who’s an old-line Democrat in the mould of Mickey Kaus. He’s written on how between the tech oligarchs and the crazy progressives & greens on the California coast, the state’s middle class has been crushed. It’s pretty disturbing to see the demographic data on the Sanders support.
Socialism: The radical notion that stealing is a synonym for sharing.
Lesson: buy ammo.
Well, canned goods too. But mostly ammo.
Also Chapstick, according to The Book of Eli. You don’t want to have to make do with cat oil.
Socialism: the radical idea of me forcing you to share with him.
And yes, I do think most people pick a team early and stick through thick and thin. On both sides.
Doesn’t really matter if that is right or wrong. But it does matter for winning.
Saturday evening while scrolling through Twitter, Wired magazine tweets that Rand Paul supporters are moving to Bernie. At that point my head exploded.
They are polar opposites. How does that work? In the blink of an eye you move from less government to government 24/7?
HOA, Jr. (my Millenial) tells me that his crowd is fine but that he knows that so many of his age group are buying the “gimme the free stuff” garbage. He did share that he felt that many of the Rand Paul voters (he is himself) will move over to Cruz. However, he will not be one of them.
I’ve been thinking about this for a long time and it seems entirely consistent to me. An old post.
I think this is important to wrap our heads around.
The young I know that are into socialism by Bernie is because they believe that they should get free college and be paid to go just like Europe.
The academics I know love Bernie because they believe they will get more money and benefits with unlimited supply of money the government will give their industry. They believe that all teachers are underpaid and undervalued and that Bernie will change that for them.
The lower income people are looking for the $25 / hour for doing low skilled jobs since they work hard at those jobs (and they do) and believe they should be paid for that work.
I have no doubt that the GOP is quite capable of fielding their own socialist candidate that is just a little more conservative than the Democrats.
Reason just did a poll, I can’t seem to find the link at the moment, analyzing this trend. The really scary part is that when they actually broke down what socialism means or what it would take to get millenials what they seemingly want – they rejected it. They want all the free stuff but not pay for it. Above all it shows a stunning lack of economic education.
I’m a Millenial though I’ve only been around military people the past 4 years (rare to find a Socialist, but they exist). Back in college though, I was one of the only conservatives I knew. The lack of intellectual diversity was simply laughable, in school. And yet everyone was oblivious to it. I consider myself to have virtually nothing in common with most people my age. I simply don’t understand the culture.
Socialism: The radical idea of COERCIVE sharing. Is how the sticker should read.
Great words. When I’ve had similar conversations the only thing that sounds good is those who are rich should pay for stuff for those who are not.
I’ve not attended a Sanders rally and can’t imagine he is going to go big in Texas, but what Bernie seems to be talking about is basically higher taxes and more education/social service spending.
My guess is inevitably the state takes over the formerly free enterprise as they die under the weight of taxes, but doubt Bernie or his audience is thinking through these steps.
One young guy did man-on-the-street interviews on college campuses where he’d tell the student there were so many kids getting Cs and Ds, and would you be willing to share your A and B grades with them? As I recall, not one student said yes.
Another Ricochet member said the other day that voters on the Left tend to equate socialism with caring and fascism with anything opposed to that. I agree. There’s no deep philosophy behind it. Socialism and fascism have simply become buzzwords for Left and Right.
As the word “liberal” has been completely and irrevocably divorced from its original meaning, so “fascism” might be close to that level of irreparable confusion today. Whenever I see reference to fascists, it’s generally in the same breath as complaints about “far-right” “fringe” groups fighting to keep the colored man down.
In any case, more thought-provoking one-liners on T-shirts, bumper stickers, Facebook, and Twitter might actually help to combat this nonsense.
“Socialism: The radical idea of sharing.”
Ha! As others have rightly noted, when sharing is effected through the threat of force, it is not sharing at all, but rather theft.
I frequently see people on the left put forth juvenile, simplistic arguments such as this one. As they enjoy making their case in childish terms, I will provide a counterargument in the form of a children’s story – “The Little Red Hen”. This version of the story is attributed to Ronald Reagan, from a radio broadcast in November 1976:
Once upon a time there was a little red hen who scratched about the barnyard until she uncovered some grains of wheat. She called her neighbors and said “If we plant this wheat, we shall have bread to eat. Who will help me plant it?”
“Not I, ” said the cow.
“Not I,” said the duck.
“Not I,” said the pig.
“Not I,” said the goose.
“Then I will,” said the little red hen. And she did. The wheat grew tall and ripened into golden grain.
“Who will help me reap my wheat?” asked the little red hen.
“Not I,” said the duck.
“Out of my classification,” said the pig.
“I’d lose my seniority,” said the cow.
“I’d lose my unemployment compensation,” said the goose.
“Then I will,” said the little red hen, and she did.
To be continued…
At last the time came to bake the bread. “Who will help me bake bread?” asked the little red hen.
“That would be overtime for me,” said the cow.
“I’d lose my welfare benefits,” said the duck.
“I’m a dropout and never learned how,” said the pig.
“If I’m to be the only helper, that’s discrimination,” said the goose.
“Then I will,” said the little red hen.
She baked five loaves and held them up for the neighbors to see.
They all wanted some and, in fact, demanded a share. But the little red hen said, “No, I can eat the five loaves myself.”
“Excess profits,” cried the cow.
“Capitalist leech,” screamed the duck.
“I demand equal rights,” yelled the goose.
And the pig just grunted.
And they painted “unfair” picket signs and marched round and around the little red hen shouting obscenities.
When the government agent came, he said to the little red hen, “You must not be greedy.”
“But I earned the bread,” said the little red hen.
“Exactly,” said the agent. “That’s the wonderful free enterprise system. Anyone in the barnyard can earn as much as he wants. But under our modern government regulations, productive workers must divide their products with the idle.”
And they lived happily ever after, including the little red hen, who smiled and clucked, “I am grateful, I am grateful.”
But her neighbors wondered why she never again baked any more bread.
It’s not that under Socialism we work for the government. It’s that fewer and fewer work at all. And it’s not that we share what we have . It’s that there is less and less to share. All that is really shared is the misery.
This assumes that continued drift toward central control does not undermine representative government. Sweden is homogeneous and tiny which means Swedes can reach consensus and change it when reality informs their views. That is occurring now. A giant heterogenous country like the US or the Soviet Union cannot do this. They must centrally impose that consensus in order to turn private activity into public activity and to do that they must control political and cultural thought. And they will. That is what this is all about.
I agree this is a consequential development. The scale surprises me. My instinct is to put the blame on less than diligent parenting and the utter failure of our education institutions to teach either history or economics. My two first ideas to address this situation are to require a course or two on basic economics in college and even high school, and to point out the many failures of socialism, the most current one being Venezuela. Ask why Bernie’s America would be Sweden and not Venezuela.
Start here:
Should have seen it coming: put a good graphic at the top of an article, and lots of people will comment… about the graphic