Kim Strassel @ Hillsdale College

I recently received a message from Hillsdale College entitled "Why Is Socialism Popular?"

Hillsdale recognizes that socialism becomes more & more fashionable among young Americans everyday.  I also can't help but recognize that it becomes more fashionable among older Americans everyday as well.  

Hillsdale reports that 70% of Millennials are either "somewhat likely" or "extremely likely" to vote for candidates with socialsit positions.  In fact, the results of the last presidential election verified that young voters preferred Biden over Trump by a whopping 61% to 36% margin.  

In Washington County, Michigan - home of the University of Michigan - Biden received 23,000 more votes than Hillary got in 2016.  Michigan State's home county provided 20,000 more votes for Biden than Hillary.  This 43,000 additional youth vote for lackluster Biden was over four times the amount that Trump won Michigan by in 2016 thereby attributing a very significant portion of Biden's win in Michigan in 2020 to people 18 to 29 years old.

A similar story is told in Wisconsin where Dane county, home of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, produced nearly 35,000 more votes for Biden than Hillary received in 2016.  Trump won Wisconsin in 2016 by less than 23,000 votes.

 

Hillsdale reports that for decades far too many American K-12 schools have failed to provide young people with a solid grounding in American civics - the study of American history, government, & economics & that this failure has contributed to the attraction so many young people today feel for socialism.

In turn, American colleges & universities are now hotbeds of progressive & "politically correct" ideology, including socialism, to the point that nearly half of younger Americans would "prefer living in a socialist country than a capitalistic one."  The word "socialism" does not carry the stigma that it did in the past thanks to celebrity politicians like AOC.  Much of America's youth ignorantly think the term refers to FaceBook or Twitter.

To help explain why America's youth, the future of our country, has turned to socialism Hillsdale sent me a video of Kim Strassel's recent address on the Hillsdale campus & asked me to present it on the blog.

Kim writes the Potomac Watch column every Friday in the WSJ & is a member of the WSJ editorial board.  She frequently appears on TV.  During the video Kim says she has only had one job in her life & it is @ the WSJ for the past 25 years, meaning I have probably read every piece Miss Strassel has ever had published in the paper.

But in answering the original question, "Why Is Socialism Popular?", Kim offers the following cognizant points that I take from her speech:

1.  The American youth has turned to socialism because they do not grow up.  In fact they are not being asked to grow up.  They stay dependent on their parents well into their thirties.  They are getting married later, putting off having children, putting off buying a home, all the things that usually lead to developing adults being more skeptical of government schemes & government plans for redistribution.

2.  What Progressives are advocating today is just another version of socialism.  It would be a U.S. version in which some markets would be allowed to exist, in which some wealthier Americans & corporations would be allowed by the government to keep some of what they earn - but they would be, by & large, working for the benefit of everyone else.  That is the common thread that makes up every socialistic system including the one today in America that is more euphemistically presented & called Progressivism.

3.  Younger Americans who are adopting socialism @ least have the excuse of being ignorant of history thanks to America's poor government school system that in fact teaches socialistic values not free enterprise values.  America's youth today are never taught the extraordinary cruelty & devastation that the pure forms of socialism have wrought - ending free speech, free assembly, a free press, free religious belief, free elections, & a free judiciary.  Socialism's more communistic versions have resulted in imprisonment, execution, & starvation of tens of millions of human beings - examples: Russia, China, North Korea, Cuba, Cambodia, Vietnam, Ethiopia, & more recently Venezuela.  America's youth mistakenly think things will continue harmoniously for them, as it does today, as they spend down their parents wealth without a clue of the foregoing dangers or any idea of the freedoms they are throwing away.

4.  Kim explains that Democrats' messages are inherently simple - they take advantage of young Americans demoralized by a global economy,  struggling to find jobs, overloaded with student debt, & unable to buy a home.  Democrat messages to young Americans portray the world as unfair, stacked against them, with the rich keeping them down - all messages not designed to lift people up or inspire them but rather to pander saying I'll pay for your healthcare &  education.  Kim counters by saying this opportunity to prey exists because conservatives simply have not done enough to combat Democrats' messages that appeal to young Americans' basest instincts.  The claims that the government can do anything & everything are too overwhelming & America's youth are not hearing a compelling message to the contrary as the majority of commenters to this blog regularly point out.  Kim gives a list of things conservatives could do & I have given a list of fourteen questions that must be asked & answered by the citizenry or the slide toward socialism will continue.

5.  At the end of the speech Kim has a Q&A session where, if possible, she speaks even more freely than during the talk including explaining the difference between Bernie Sanders & AOC & how AOC came to power.

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In her talk @ Hillsdale College Kim Stassel cited several reasons why we're seeing more & more Americans embracing socialistic ideas, including ignorance of history among the young & desire for power by those in authority - & all @ our expense.  For over 120 years Communists in America, whether labeled Marxists, socialists, or fascists, have sought to subvert America until today socialism has taken hold of over half of Americans between 18 & 29 years old.  Socialist elites are trying to overrun America, rather than places like Darfur, because America is where the material wealth is that will provide them luxurious lives of power while making worker bees out of everyone else.  America was founded on the principles of limited government, personal responsibility, & free enterprise & American youths are about to throw all this away without having a clue about what will happen to them if they ever speak out against the government they profess to want.