In this election cycle, I’ve seen candidates rise and fall, gaining a superior position above the fray before losing their dominance within a half-dozen news cycles.
However, there seems to be one candidate who has seen a sustained and meteoric rise: Bernie Sanders. Despite the fact that he would be the oldest president in history, his largest supporters are college students. I can safely say, in no uncertain terms, that I have never felt more ashamed to be a college student than Monday night when I beheld a sea of liberal arts students waving signs and chanting for a socialist septuagenarian.
Bernie Sanders has said that the American public is tired of the same old ideas. I wholeheartedly agree, but Sanders seems to think that his brand of progressivism is a novel idea.
Is there any better epitome of old ideas than a 74-year-old socialist? Socialism (and I cannot state this forcefully enough) is a failed ideology.
Every nation that has bitten from the apple of socialism has ended up regretting it. Socialism nearly destroyed Europe’s economy (just ask the Greeks how well free college tuition is working out), bankrupted their future, and shattered society’s foundations by fostering dependence on government. Even the spending-happy nations of Scandinavia have had to run back to capitalism to save their economies from the brink. Only college students could get behind socialism as its remnants fall: one would have to be educated to make a decision that foolish.
Second, Sanders continually blames the rich for society’s ills.
It is supremely hypocritical of Sanders to claim that greed is our nation’s biggest problem while demanding a 90-percent upper limit on income taxes. Moreover, his poorly-informed disdain for the wealthy is misplaced. The wealthy are the engines of our economy, not some mustachioed cadre out to extort us.
What Bernie and his ilk fail to understand is almost all jobs are created by people who make more than $250,000 a year. They are the ones who take the risk, put in the longest hours to get a company off the ground and accept all the responsibility when they fail. That doesn’t mean there aren’t people who distort and abuse the system — there certainly are. However, blaming honest and profitable employers shows a knowledge of economics as thin as the paper this is printed on.
Even free college tuition, the centerpiece of Bernie’s marketing strategy to students, will only drive our government deeper into debt and make bachelor’s degrees as worthless as a high school diploma, thereby shutting more people from the job market.
To my fellow college students: quit thinking about yourselves and measuring a candidate’s fitness by how much of other people’s money he is willing to give you. I leave you with a quote by Winston Churchill: “Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.” Words we would do well to remember in this election.
Andrew Hayes is a sophomore international studies and economics major from Tupelo.
