Hidden in the general population lies a small group of young adults. They can be seen sipping Veuve Clicquot, brand names from head to toe, dripping in family heirlooms and found in high-end bars. There, they praise Bernie and Hillary and their plans to provide free college education for everyone. But they don’t know what it’s like to pay taxes, to have such a huge portion of your paycheck go to someone else. These people are highly educated and have been enrolled in prep schools since kindergarten with tuitions that rival that of colleges all in the hopes that they will matriculate into in prestigious universities. They are the Champagne Socialists.
Colleges and universities are certainly a breeding ground for liberalism; they are filled with young adults with copious amounts of hope beaming from within. They have started a life away from their parents, high schools and whatever small town they grew up in, and they see nothing but possibility. They think that anything, even mass economic reform, is possible.
It makes sense to me that these young adults, who clearly have means and education, would be debating and discussing the multitude of issues that plague our nation. They should. That is, after all, what their parents paid all that money to schools for. What doesn’t make sense to me is the notion that they can speak to the struggles of the middle class.
I am just as guilty of this. I drink Starbucks like it's water, and I talk about the pros and cons of Marx and Weber from the readings I just did for my “Introduction to Poverty Studies” class, which I only remembered because all of my Apple products reminded me in unison. But not until recently have I stopped to think about how these socialist principles, if implemented, would directly impact the American public as a whole.
I once heard a quote that said something like, “If you're not a socialist at the age of 20, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative at the age of 40, you have no brain.” Well, then call me Mr. Grinch because I am without a heart. I fundamentally disagree with the basic principles of socialism and with the people who preach about income inequity while they, themselves, fail to alter any part of their lifestyle in the pursuit of achieving this economic utopia.
I am a registered Republican, but I am not a radical conservative. I know people fall on hard times, and I believe those people should be helped, but not at the total expense of you or I. Social welfare programs do, in fact, better the country, without food stamps and without CHIP and TANF and any other alphabet soup acronyms you could come up with, we would be in deep sh*t. But these programs are broken; they are being abused when they have nothing left to give. They are like the Giving Tree, they gave so much to so many people for so long, and now, they are maxed out.
The definition of insanity is continuing to do something over and over and expecting a different result, and that is what is happening here. We continue to throw money at these programs and hope that, somehow, all of these people will be lifted from poverty. These were once pillars of support for people, and now, they have become a lifestyle. What happened to self-reliance and the idea of pulling up your bootstraps and getting to work? Like I said, I understand hardships, and I understand challenges, but passivity and handouts are no longer acceptable. If we want to reestablish ourselves as a powerful nation, then we need to address the problems with social welfare programs and look at the gaps in investments and returns and perhaps put caps on how long people can receive benefits for.
We are embarking on a critical time in our country, a time that is going to decide the fate of our nation. Are we going to preserve the traditional American ideologies of individualism and the pursuit of the American Dream, or are we going to become a socialist society where wealth, yours and mine, is redistributed?
To all the Champagne Socialists out there, I urge you to stop and think about the people who are preaching these ideas of complete equality. Hillary Clinton is so out of touch with what the American middle class needs. She lives in an entirely different reality than the average American. I would bet the last time Hillary drove a car was before her husband was in office some 20 years ago. How can a woman, who gets half a million dollars every time she speaks, speak on behalf of millions of Americans who don’t know where their next meal is coming from?
