A LESSON REPUBLICANS SHOULD BE DRIVING HOME

A LESSON REPUBLICANS SHOULD BE DRIVING HOME
 Joseph Farah sees opportunity to emulate Reagan in educating young voters

Why is socialist Bernie Sanders so popular with young Democrats?

Because they’ve been educated to have no problem with socialism.

It’s just that simple.

While political campaigns aren’t the best time to re-educate people about such basics, it is absolutely necessary that an attempt is made.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think there’s a dime’s worth of difference between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. They are both socialists. It’s just that Bernie freely admits it and has since he was in college.

If you listen to what Hillary said in the last debate, the real difference between them is that she believes it will take more time to reach the objectives Bernie demands now. What she was clearly intimating is that they share the same goals, but she is the pragmatist who realizes they can’t get there overnight.

Young people don’t want to wait. They’re convinced because of what they’ve been taught in school and college that socialism is the answer. So why should they wait?

Yet I hear none of the Republican presidential candidates really addressing the obvious:

Hey, kids! Why do you have huge student loan debts? Because those colleges and universities you attended willingly gouged you for a bad education. They lied to you about socialism and stole from you while they were doing it.
There’s no free lunch. If government picks up the tab for student loans, that means your kids will be gouged even more for their education – through higher taxes.
The answer is to drive tuition prices down. That requires competition and accountability – something completely lacking in higher education.
But the economics lessons need to get beyond the college tuition scam.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan delivered those basic lessons. He persuaded Republicans and independents and even many Democrats there was a better way than government taking on more responsibility for our lives in exchange for less liberty for all of us. That’s how he won two successive landslide victories. He painted an optimistic picture of a future and laid out a plan to achieve it. Then he delivered the goods.

Where are those lessons in 2016?


I understand the Republican presidential candidates are battling each other now. But it’s not enough to call Hillary and Bernie socialists. It simply doesn’t have the sting it once had with Americans – particularly the young.

How about communicating with them in a more sophisticated way? Simply labeling Hillary and Bernie socialists won’t cut it any more.

It’s hard for me to believe that as a former socialist.

But it’s also obvious to me that had it not been for Reagan, I might not be a former socialist. He woke me up during a presidential campaign. So who says political campaigns are not the time to do education? I wasn’t alone. He woke up millions.

Is it too far-fetched to believe that can happen again?

Maybe that’s exactly what will have to be done in 2016 to beat Bernie or Hillary.

Maybe we’d have more success getting Republican members of Congress fighting the temptation to expand government if we had an intelligent debate over free enterprise and liberty vs. socialism.

As a former socialist in my misguided youth, I have written and said many times that the abject, 100 percent failure rate of socialism in all of its many trials is a lesson every generation needs to learn for itself.

I really believe that. But we’re not teaching it. Not in our elementary schools, not in our middle schools, not in our high schools and certainly not in our colleges and universities.

That’s not likely to change any time soon – which is another big problem.

But, in the meantime, can we at least use our election campaigns to spread the truth around?

It has worked in the recent past.

It might work in 2016.

But I can tell you it hasn’t been tried yet.