Highlighting the Left

LARRY ANDERSON
Larry Anderson

Fetch your Sharpie highlighter. Keep it handy.

These countries are communist: China, Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea.

Go ahead and highlight the one(s) you consider successful in its dealings with its citizens and a place you would want to live.

Finished?

These countries are socialist examples: Venezuela and Greece.

Highlight the one that is economically stable and the one you would most like the United States to emulate.

Done? Good!

Isn’t this fun?

Now here are countries that are socialist lite: France and Sweden.

Highlight the one most like nirvana.

There you go. Good job!

This country is a democracy with a long history of personal freedom, economic opportunity, and protected rights based on needs beyond acquiescence to government: the United States of America.

Highlight that one only if you enjoy what you have compared to the other options identified above.

Don’t highlight it if you have bought the Left’s presentation that America is a racist nation of haters, that income differences are social injustice, that the solution to all problems is more government.

Finished?

If you highlighted our nation, good for you. I am sure you have reasons based on experience. Tell your kids because many have no idea what they have or how easy it is to lose it.

Understanding America is in severe and deliberate neglect.

If you chose not to highlight the country that has protected you, given you a chance to prove yourself, and told you the sky is the limit, then I am sure you have your reasons too. But how did you get there?

Have you analyzed those things you have been told about socialism by politicians, teachers, and popular culture, or did you just accept their arguments because they had a politically romantic appeal wrapped in unattainable idealism?

For instance, have you bought the notion that things will be free in the eventual America of progressivism?

If you have, then I have a memo for you. There is no free lunch or free college education. Someone has to provide. The Bernie and Hillary promises of such are false.

The only way this can be paid is through higher taxes or more borrowing because there is no way the existing budget will be jiggered to cover it. In other words, others have to pay by working harder and/or doing without.

Highlight the good option.

So you know, all Bernie and Hillary want is your vote. Obama promised free higher ed seven years ago, and it worked. Young people actually believed him. Were you one?

Perhaps you have bought the promise to end poverty in 15 years as touted recently by Barack Obama. Not just poverty here, mind you, but for the whole world.

I hope you are at least skeptical of this because any honest economist will tell you there is not enough wealth on the planet to end poverty for everyone.

How do I know?

The Great Society was started in this country 50 years ago as a wealth redistribution scheme funded by taxes on those willing to be productive. Trillions have been spent on the welfare state.

Today, the poverty rate is the same as it was in 1965.

Nothing has changed except there is a higher unemployment rate among young blacks now than then.

The ending poverty silliness is not a high ideal, voters. It is a political mechanism as old as Marx.

Falling for it means you will have to make do with less so others can have more. It doesn’t matter if they didn’t earn it, and it doesn‘t matter if you may view this as unjust.

All that matters is what the Left thinks. Highlight that, please.

While you’re at it, highlight the one(s) you are willing to give up: your nice house, your car, your state-of-the-art electronics, your next vacation, etc.

You can’t have them all in the America of Obama and Clinton. It just wouldn’t be fair. (Well, unless you’re in government. Then it’s okay.)

The Left lies, folks. They present idealism as an attainable arc, but the weight of socialism always falls on those who put their noses to the grindstone. There are no expectations for those who find contentment in the accomplishments of others.

There will always be politicians who will tell us what doesn’t work really does if only we would stop resisting. They are hopeless. Pay them no heed.

By the by, here’s what really ends poverty: freedom, ambition, literacy, education, training, opportunity, work, and perseverance.

Highlight all those because they are the truth and ideals within themselves.

But none are free, nor should they be.