Today was primary day in Indiana, one of the many states lucky enough to have an open primary. Among Indiana residents I have found myself to be a rarity in the political realm. It is because I am registered with the Republican Party. Indeed, in such a red state often seen as the northernmost part of the Bible Belt, that seems like gobbledygook. However, as someone who just contributed to the success of Bernie Sanders in my state, I think that may be a fair assertion to make.

I was lucky enough to get a press pass to the Bernie Sanders rally at Purdue University, and between the snapping of 485 photos I listened to him. I haven't been on the fence about who I supported for quite some time, but I wasn't "feeling the Bern" like his other supporters did. Admittedly I wanted to get swept up in the mania and the hype surrounding a candidate whose internal slogan is "Not me. Us."

That resonates with me as I have grown tired of candidates who preach why you should support them with their empty promises, and fail to address how we will be supporting ourselves. I will let you know now that I still do not "feel the Bern." You see, though I am a Bernie supporter, I am also one of the most critical of his campaign, and over the months I have been waiting for his "mic drop" moment (besides the time he actually dropped the mic on the Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore).

Let me go back in time a little. Before I supported him I was lost. No, I was not lost in that "I was lost until Bernie found me" kind of way. I just didn't know who to support. In fact Bernie wasn't even on my radar. I saw this "socialist" who talked about taking down the rich, and I just wasn't feeling that. I turned away from my days as an angry punk over a decade ago and have since enjoyed my life as progressive Republican. I call myself that because I shy away from demonizing a term that literally means someone who seeks to implement new ideas and information for the sake of creating progress. I never understood why progress was supposed to be bad. But then the Republican candidates took the stage. I listened to what they said and researched who they were. For yet another year I could not find myself to get behind any of the Republican candidates. (If you're wondering how I am a Republican if I can't support Republicans it is because I am an idealist. I am a Republican because the foundations of the GOP are what I support and what the Republican Party has become is far from what it used to be. I want to return it to that.) I then looked to the Democratic nominees. Though long ago I wanted Hillary to win, mostly because I got swept up in the "first female president" mania, I have departed from that swiftly after doing a lot of research on who she is and what exactly she has accomplished politically. I certainly am not "with HER." As I researched Chafee, Lessig, O'Malley, and Webb I simply could not fully get behind any of them. I felt, "ehhhh, I guess I might be able to support O'Malley," but who wants to vote that way? So then I was back at Bernie, the only candidate who I had not thoroughly researched.

I'm just going to start by saying, that man is definitely not a socialist. We might think he is, but we are absolutely wrong about that. He might classify himself as a "democratic socialist," but he is also absolutely wrong about that. Famous linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, logician, social critic, political activist, and MIT professor, Noam Chomsky (I know, he's intimidatingly accomplished), in an interview with Abby Martin, an investigative journalist for teleSUR English, endorses Senator Sanders. In that interview, and in an interview with Mehdi Hasan of Al-Jazeera, Chomsky describes Sanders as "a decent, honest, New Dealer with the best policies." In case some of you are a bit rusty on American history, the New Deal was the name of FDR's economic policies that pulled us out of the Great Depression, which were effectively expanded by President Eisenhower, who was a Republican, and in my opinion, one of the greatest presidents to ever be elected. However, I would go farther than Dr. Chomsky and say he is actually the most pro-capitalism candidate I have seen since Ross Perot.

Here's the thing about Bernie. I think that he is an incredibly intelligent and guy with a great deal of integrity. However, I don't think he understands his own politics for what they really are. He gets how to make it work, but he doesn't get that social policies are not indicative of socialism or democratic socialism. Social policies do not provide public ownership over companies and organizations. Social policies do not mean that entrepreneurs will have to give ownership, partial or total, to the public. In fact social policies have a way of removing the responsibility of the enterprise to provide benefits to the employee, thus allowing them to focus solely on their products and/or services. This frees up capital in companies allocated through both benefits themselves and the employees and departments required to handle those benefits. Additionally, when employees are not worrying about how they will pay for their medical bills, put their children through college, or if they will even be able to have the time to care for their newborn children, they become increasingly productive at their jobs, according to the World Economic Forum.

These aren't the only ways that social programs help capitalism. As things stand now, if you receive health insurance through your job, you probably still pay for it, only at a discounted rate. This is because when a company provides health insurance, what they are really saying is that they brokered a deal with an insurance company to provide them with a minimum amount of buyers in exchange for lower insurance rates. "But Chris, isn't that capitalism? How does changing that system actually help capitalism?" Good point. That isn't exactly the most capitalist thing to do at first glance. However, if we were to implement a system where insurance companies compete to be the provider of universal health insurance, driving down costs in order to win a contract for a set amount of time worth billions of dollars, then that, my friends, is capitalism. Some may be able to argue that it is less capitalist than the current system. I implore those to consider the effects of a healthcare-for-all system. If in the long run you are saving anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars, and if you are not already rich enough to own everything you could ever want, what do you think you will do with that money? What do all of us do immediately when we get our tax returns? We spend it. What do we call spending money, also known as capital, on products and services? Capitalism. When people are more secure financially because they are not worrying about their health, the future of their children, and the present well-being of their families, wouldn't the logical thing to assume be that they will spend much of this extra money? Steward Cowley, former Old Mutual Global Investors fund manager, seems to think so. And this excess wealth increases with all these social programs. Suddenly parents aren't exhausting savings of tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars on school for their children. People aren't taking their earnings once graduated to pay off loans for decades. They accumulate more wealth, though never the kind of wealth it takes to be among the top earners, and thus spend more money. If they have to worry less about being able to afford to retire, then they will introduce more money into the market. There is something to be said about countries ranked the highest in social policies also being ranked the highest in economic policies according to SGI (Sustainable Governance Indicators). It should also be noted that many of these countries also have some of the freest markets in the world according to The Heritage Foundation.

I could go on and on about why his policies are truly capitalist in nature and link to credible sources of information, but for the sake of brevity (which has admittedly long since been thrown out the window) let's just assume you get it. The fact is the Republican Party has it backwards. We have somehow shifted away from the ideals that brought us great leaders like Eisenhower, Lincoln, McKinley, and Hayes. Where we once fought for civil freedoms, we now seek to expand government to limit the freedoms of individuals and impose faith-based restrictions. We have disguised anti-rights movements as "religious freedom" movements as if anyone was stopping us from practicing our faith. We have criminalized women who miscarry, and prosecute them using methods proven by science to be entirely unreliable based on our faith. We spend trillions on bombing around the world with airstrikes that cost on average $2.5 million per strike, and since 2001, we have spend over $1.6 QUINTILLION on war, which can be seen increasing alarmingly fast on a counter provided by the National Priorities Project. Meanwhile we Republicans refuse to properly take care of our veterans, something Sanders has fought for, we won't educate our children without putting them in debt for the rest of their lives, something sanders has proposed bills on as a senator and details in his proposed "College for All Act," and we won't take care of our elderly and disabled who have contributed to the growth of our country, which Sanders has made one of his priorities in his campaign. I believe it is time we, as Republicans, ask ourselves when we, who were on the forefront of social progress, growth of small business, civil rights reform, etc., suddenly started thinking huge government spending on programs that sent our sons and daughters off to die in wars Hillary Clinton has described as a "business opportunity" for US banks and corporations, killed by and battle us in billions of dollars worth of tanks and humvees we basically gave to them. When did we start wanting to suppress freedoms under the guise of freedom? When did we stop fighting for progress, and why did we start fearing the word "progressive?"

As for us in Indiana, we have done our job. Bernie won our state, which is a win for us as Americans. Now we can only hope that moving forward, the rest of the states and the super delegates do their job. But even if he doesn't win, we must still look at ourselves. This is our country. These politicians are our employees, paid for by our taxes. We must always be critical of those we employ. But more so, we must always be critical of ourselves. Always seek to learn more. Always question what you think you know. If it weren't for that, I would still be a punk preaching Marxist theory in the hopes of establishing anarchy, instead of a progressive Republican who wants to make the world a safer and more hopeful place for future generations. Do I feel the Bern? No, and I suspect I never will. I suspect he will never truly call out Hillary in the way I want him to. He won't explain why he isn't a socialist or democratic socialist and how his policies are pro-capitalism, probably because he doesn't realize it. But I do feel hopeful for the future we can create together with or without Bernie as president, though why anyone would really want Trump or Hillary over Bernie is beyond me. And with that said, Santos out.