This week, millions of young Americans are heading off for their first semester in college. How many do you think will be taught that socialism – despite its 100% record of failure – is both practically and morally superior to capitalism? I’d guess maybe around 90% – and this despite the fact that America’s institutions of higher learning would be nonexistent without the economic firepower unleashed by our free market economy.
With the takeover of the Democratic Party by the Democratic Socialists of America, socialism and even communism – long the preserve of radical university faculties – are reentering the mainstream as unironic calls to action. Not content with warping the critical faculties of the young, these zealots have moved beyond the quads and into state and national politics, exploiting legitimate concerns about issues like affordability to peddle a politics of grievance and expropriation.
For my generation, this development is particularly perplexing. I came of age at the end of the Cold War, when Soviet communism collapsed and its utter practical and moral bankruptcy was laid bare; and as a young cavalry officer patrolling the border between East and West Germany, I saw those failures up close. Communism was the most destructive ideology in global history – responsible for the deaths of tens of millions, and the imprisonment and immiseration of millions more. The idea of its rehabilitation should be unthinkable.
But nearly two generations later, those lessons appear to have faded from memory, while our educational system has instead promoted ahistorical leftist propaganda in place of a solid understanding of history and the capacity for critical thinking. That deficit is being taken advantage of by the socialists taking control of so many of our institutions, including the Democratic Party.
Since leaving government, I’ve had the privilege of teaching a few courses at Columbia and Liberty University. I have been humbled by the opportunity to help shape the worldview of these bright students, drawn from very different backgrounds. And I can say with confidence: Our nation’s young people are hungry for truth; but are all too often being fed lies – especially by the false prophets of democratic socialism.
It’s been said that socialism only works in heaven, where it’s not needed, and hell, where they already have it. But that aphorism doesn’t quite capture the flaw at the very heart of socialism, which derives from the fundamentally immoral claim to the fruits of another person’s labor, and the inherently coercive apparatus that makes that system possible. Socialism necessarily entails granting more power to the state, and in doing so, creates the conditions for tyranny. It also necessarily inhibits the human flourishing that only participation in a free market economy can produce. It thus not only fails to produce the material benefits its advocates promise, but also leads to the abrogation of liberty and human potential.
Milton Friedman once said, “A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.” America has prospered because of that recognition. We must help our young people to resist the siren’s song of those who seek to reverse it.
