Other People’s Money, Part 1

By Patrick Hall

About a month ago, several volunteers at the local VA Medical facility, where I also volunteer, found ourselves engaged in an impromptu discussion.  It had to do with why so many young people, and not so young baby boomers, seem to hold a favorable view of Socialism, as in the case of the newly elected mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani. Mamdani is a confessed Socialist, if not a Communist ideologue.  

Here is a sidebar. In the year 2026, the distinction between those who professed Socialism and those who acknowledged Communism has rapidly metastasized into a distinction without a difference. Maybe Socialism has managed to hide the dead body count more effectively than in places like the Soviet Union, Communist China, Somalia, Nigeria, Cambodia, and elsewhere.

Mamdani openly preaches the political catechesis, urging New Yorkers and others to be embraced by the “warmth of socialism.”  Over 3 million New Yorkers, plus a plurality of young people, elected him mayor, although some 4-5 million New Yorkers regrettably did not vote.   It was reminiscent of the maxim or axiom, "For evil to exist, good men only need to do nothing."

Unlike his mentor, former President Barack Obama, who, every once in a while, let his Socialist demeanor emerge, most notably in his unabashed comment to Joe the Plumber, that Americans like Joe need to “share the wealth.” Mamdani candidly exhorts and shouts political hosannas to Socialism, in contrast to the perceived excesses of capitalism and our Republic form of governance. Add to this that the majority of newly arrived immigrants (both illegal and legal) originate from countries in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East, where Socialist and other collectivist forms of governance have been tried and failed for decades. Where the Socialist/Communist polities promised to provide stable and healthy economies for their people, that never occurred.

Oftentimes, Socialist utopian dreams turn out to be dictatorial and socio-economic nightmares that were anything but warm. As the late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once opined, Socialism and Communism never really work because, sooner or later, they run out of other people’s money. Socialism looks good on paper or in a college and University seminar class.  But its track record in the real world has often been abysmal.
To paraphrase President Ronald Reagan and the late Conservative Talk Show Host Rush Limbaugh. They both believe it was the job of the centralized government (in peacetime) to protect its people’s lives, liberty, and property. Unfortunately, all other government activities tend to diminish and hamper progress.  President Reagan firmly held that government should be limited to three functions. They protect citizens from violence or fraud, provide a justice system to resolve disputes, and protect the country from foreign threats and/or invasion.

But returning to the concerns posed by my fellow Medical Center Volunteers. Why do so many young Americans and their baby-boomer constituencies lean toward or prefer this governmental ideology or political theology of Socialism, when its track record has been appalling?  

Even in the EU, where the cultural-political ethos runs left-of-center.  Their quasi-Socialist or Collectivist policy seems to work only because they are anemic when it comes to spending to protect their own sovereignty. NATO, or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, has very seldom, if ever, fully contributed to its own defense. NATO and the EU have consistently failed to pony up the measly 5% for their own protection.  It has basically poured, or “redirected,” that money into lavish social benefits in countries like Germany, France, Spain, and the United Kingdom.  At the same time, someone else's money (mainly the United States) is used, so NATO members can administer the “free” or reduced social service benefits to their populace, which I often hear my German in-laws boast about in my over 10 trips to the EU.  Once more, they haven’t quite run out of someone else's money, yet!

However, in both the UK and the broader European Union, there is a problem due to the massive influx of populations from the Third World. They are more than feeling pitch on their vaulted social services industry.

The Studies: We didn’t watch our universities!

The singular reason why so many young Americans, as well as many of my aging baby-boomer cohorts, still maintain a political crush on Socialism is that our universities and colleges have been an incubator for Socialism and other Collectivist government structures for decades.  It began to be specially built into the system in the late 1960s and early 70s during and following America's involvement in the Vietnam War.

Protests against American involvement, accompanied by unabashed support from the numerous college protests and communist groups like the Weathermen, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), as well as individuals like Noam Chomsky, Allen Ginsberg, the Berrigan brothers and others in the pantheon of radical leftist,  began, or acted as a catalyst for the cultural left to give a nod to Socialism, Communism, and other anti-capitalist, if not anti-American, dogma.

It was not a coincidence that many of these hard-left-wing constituencies (or what Noam Chomsky half-jokingly referred to as the Hippies) never really left the Universities.  They first became college lecturers. They then moved into assistant and associate professor positions, especially in the humanities and social sciences.

Even the so-called hard sciences weren’t spared from the socio-political influence of the political left. We witness this with the rise of the environmental movement and its siren call promoting man-made climate change (e.g., global warming and cooling).

A Sidebar:  Did you ever notice that China, the Soviet Union, and other Socialist/Communist polities, which happen to be the biggest polluters on the planet, are seldom, if ever, called out by the movers and shakers within the Environmental movement?  It is only in Western societies that climate change has become a mortal threat to the planet.

They later migrated into some of the preeminent full-professor and administrative positions. This was especially so at many of our top Eastern Universities and colleges. The West Coast University culture, especially in places like California, Oregon, and Washington State, became a haven for Socialists, left-leaning, anti-capitalist, America-is-bad, as well as endemically racist and sexist pedagogy.  The damaging popularity of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States is a quintessential example of the sickness, cancer, or cultural poison that the cultural left and the Democratic Party have sown.