Democratic candidates Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigrieg and Elizabeth Warren are campaigning on free college for all. That is a terrible idea!
Already American colleges and universities are infested with Marxist and leftist professors who are filling the minds of their students with socialist crap.
College of the Mainland in Texas City is a good example. When I was teaching there, the college was thoroughly dominated by Marxists. They gained complete control of the college in 1983 when they were able to handpick music instructor Larry Stanley as the college president. Their control of COM lasted 17 years until Stanley’s retirement in 2000.
Stanley had for a time been the chairman of the college’s fine arts department, a position that carries with it no administrative duties. Stanley led the college at the direction of the Karl Marx worshipers who were trying to indoctrinate their students in Sociology, History, Economics and Government classes with anti-Americanism and socialist crap.
Those Marxists were very successful at molding the minds of their students. When several Texas City and Galveston County civic leaders and I tried to keep David Michael Smith, a rabid Marxist government professor, from being granted tenure, we were overwhelmed by more than a hundred students at a public hearing, dozens of them attesting to what an outstanding teacher Red David was. He was granted tenure, but was fired in 2013 after 15 years of trying to poison the minds of his students.
Coincidental with the start of the first Iraq war, Larry Stanley held an all college staff meeting at the beginning of a new semester. When I asked him to lead the meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance, he refused. When I then asked him to let me lead the pledge, he refused that too. Stanly said that it was “neither the place nor the time” for the Pledge of Allegiance to our country and he added that if we held it, the Marxists would walk out.
College of the Mainland is a relatively small college, and as such it is more likely to be dominated by left-wing professors than the larger universities. But just look at the University of California and the University of Texas. Marxist influence at those universities have made the cities of Berkeley, California and Austin, Texas entities of socialism.
Furthermore, many of those supporting Bernie Sanders are former college students with socialist tendencies which they acquired from far-left professors who advocate the doctrines of Karl Marx which declare that capitalism is evil.
The far-left purveyors of hatred for America and love of socialism in academia insist they have that right under academic freedom and the right of free speech, and to the discredit of college and university administrations, they are getting away with a perversion of those rights.
Why is free college for all a terrible idea? Our colleges and universities will be filled with students from poor families who, because of their lot in life, will be very susceptible to socialist ideas. And those ideas may very well be carried on into the voting booth.
Keeping students from poor families from attending college sounds like a horrible idea, but free college for all will sure as hell lead the US to socialism.
You didn’t make the case whatsoever debt free college leads to socialism
Oh? First, debt free college and free college are not one and the same. And why does Socialist Bernie Sanders have so many supporters. He would have been the nominee in 2016 had the DNC not stolen the nomination from him with its super delegates.
I don’t doubt that many of those College of the Mainland students who showed up at that public meeting in favor of granting tenure to Red David are among those supporting Bernie. And nationwide, Bernie’s supporters are well educated. Why in the hell would they support his socialist campaign? Because they were influenced by professors like Red David into believing that capitalism is evil
This is, in my humble opinion, a push and a pull. There are some people (ok, a lot of people) who would love to get out of a crushing student debt and dump it on the taxpayers, or anybody but themselves. There are others who honestly believe there is a significant benefit to society by having an educated population (educated beyond basic K-12) and that it is worth it to society as a whole to pay for this benefit. I “went to school” much of my adult life, taking classes that interested me. Fortunately most of them did not lend the subject matter to social indoctrination, but it is definitely out there. The whole “America is evil, capitalism is evil” is part of the mantra of the left and has definitely pushed its way into mainstream education in CA (and elsewhere) at all levels. If you ad the actual socialists with the “green” socialists (we must destroy capitalism to save the planet) you have a significant, loud minority that has had an effect way out of proportion to their numbers. I only hope the pendulum has time to swing back before the current economic and social system is very badly damaged.
I was stationed in The Rio Grande Valley. I saw the majority of the area young men join the military upon graduation from high school. Those folks were not about socialism. In fact, far from it. They worked hard and sent their kids to school. The military G.I. Bill put those who joined through college when their hitch was up. I witnessed a poor Hispanic population observe Memorial Day better than I have elsewhere. Not everyone who is taught by a socialist professor succumbs to their beliefs.
A college degree isn’t what it used to be. Vocational studies are now out paying college grads who may never find a job in their field of study. I’m not saying a college degree isn’t good, but there are a lot more options now.
The part I’m not understanding is… why is democratic socialism bad? When voting citizens regulate the big businesses, people are lifted out of poverty. It works well in Scandanavia and western Europe.