Socialism with young Americans is on the rise. But why? The answer is simple: crappy parenting.
Hear me out…
It started with the last two generations of children. First came the participation trophies and ribbons. Rather than give out awards for merit, everyone not only got a ribbon, they were told they earned it just by trying. It was a lesson that kids took to heart and it flies in the face of everything America stands for. Those same students went onto school and felt they deserved good grades, even when they hadn’t earned them. And the parents marched on down to the schools and demanded them; and if not that, they moved their kids to other teachers who would hand out rewards like candy on Halloween.
Then came the push for kids to go to college out of the Obama era. Parents were told their kids had to go to college, that it was expected of them, regardless of the cost. These same parents abdicated their responsibility to help their kids choose a career field where they could survive in the real world. Instead, they told them, “You can do whatever you want.” So you had kids majoring in gender studies, performing arts, sociology, etc. These degrees are difficult, if not impossible, to make a living off of. Compounding matters; the parents didn’t save for college, they simply had their kids take out student loans.
The result? Graduates that can’t find jobs that pay money, and kids saddled with outrageous debt, demanding that someone else pay off their poor decision. It has proven to be fertile ground for socialism to take root. Democratic socialists tell kids it’s not their fault that they should be able to do whatever they want. “Under our form of government, you can be an expert in the History of Modern Art and your housing and medical care will be taken care of, free.” If any of us were in the same situation, we might think socialism is an answer as well, especially if college never taught us the true history of socialism in terms of failure and body count.
My junior year of high school, my father sat down and asked me what kind of life I wanted to have. I wanted car, a house, the usual stuff. He put down all of the monthly costs on a piece of paper and showed me what my “lifestyle” was going to run. Then he asked, what I wanted to do for a living.
I answered historian. He took me to the library to look up what a historian made. To get the lifestyle I wanted, I needed to get a masters and PhD, and even then, working at a university teaching, it was a stretch. Historian was off the table.
Next on my list was being a writer. The income for a writer was two thousand dollars below poverty level in 1978. I could have a car with that income, but it was also going to be my house. Scratch that. Eventually I figured out that a business degree was my best chance at actually affording the things I wanted in life. My dad set me up for success in life.
It was a simple exercise in the real world. I learned a great deal from it and applied it when raising my children.
Most parents don’t have these discussions with their offspring. My wife and I saw that with some of our friends. Today’s parents don’t explain the implications and consequences of decisions. By avoiding the harsh realities, they set their kids up for failure. The kids get degrees in Minority Oppression Studies, with no prospects of being successful in the real world, and work instead as an Uber or DoorDash driver. The kids don’t blame their parents. Why should they? Mom and dad have been nothing but supportive, never telling them they were making a mistake.
Bear in mind, mom and dad are so weak in many cases that they blame guns rather than people for shootings. They don’t like responsibility and accountability. The recent Lindsey Clancy case is another example of weak parents (or grandparents) not willing to hold a person responsible for their actions.
So, the kids look to level blame. Everyone is to blame but themselves. Their targets; the government, capitalism, billionaires, society, racism, and hate. They look at men like Elon Musk and think he doesn’t deserve the money he has, that they even deserve some of it. They blame capitalism because it is merit based, and they were raised to loathe merit. Such thinking produces malleable little socialists.
The bottom line, if you want to abate the horrors of socialism, we need to start educating parents on how to be good parents. We need schools to start providing meaningful training in how to plan out the rest of your life, financially and otherwise. Young people need educating on responsibility for their choices and actions.
If we don’t, the problems and risks of socialism are going to get worse; and the damage from it will not just hit the children making bad mistakes, but everyone.
BLAINE PARDOE is a New York Times Bestselling and award-winning author canceled by one of his publishers in 2022. His conservative political thriller series, Blue Dawn, is the story of the violent overthrow of the government by radical progressives. His most recent series, Tenure, is about a Punisher-like hero that goes after the woke. He also authors the bestselling military science fiction series, Land & Sea.
