Why are conservatives worried about the future?

Here’s an interesting op-ed from Brandon Ross from Manchester, NH.

Perhaps the biggest worry is watching younger generations (which feels strange to say, because I’m not that old)—perhaps born just years after the Berlin Wall fell—suckling from the very-same stale socialism.

As if they’ve discovered something new, promising, and exciting to humanity. Yet which must be better because The Powers-that-Be don’t like it.

I mean. I remember that. I remember people in my social circle in school and college, talking about things like the Communist Manifesto. As if it were so counter-culture and avant garde. Like they were the first to ever hear of them.

Those rebels.

Sure, they wouldn’t be caught dead wearing a T-shirt with Adolf Hitler’s face on it in public. But Lenin, Stalin, Castro, Che Guevara? They’re cool, bro. Communist red stars as a fashion statement. Proudly supporting—religiously preaching, even—the same ideas that have killed over 20 times more human beings than the Holocaust. As if they knew. Which they don’t. And most seemed to sleep through that history class anyway.

History has shown that gullible people, in very large numbers, can do awful, terrible, no-good, very bad things. Historically, democracy is dangerous this way. Large groups of people exercise violent powers about things they really know nothing about—and they rationalize that as morally right because of numerical superiority.

All hard fought and hard won. With even more progress still to go…

But still, we know that democracy is a double-edged sword. It always has been. Like most things in life, perfection is hard. Usually impossible. You have to make very real trade-offs.

In the U.S. from the beginning, we knew this was a problem. So, we have several types of safeguards against the smallest minorities—each individual—against the several tyrannies of democracy: we protect free speech, free religion, free press, the right to bear arms, due process, protection of private property, and so on…

Yet hearing from the mouths of babes that these things should or must be cast aside oh-so carelessly. The nuance and realities of much of life and history escaping them…

Fall of the berlin wall

It’s part of a larger, long-term ideological war. Wealthy-political class v. citizen. Ruler v. Ruled. And “the kids these days”—only from inexperience—misunderstand who writes their sugar-coated agenda. They don’t have perspective for what side they’re one. The long-term implications of the things they think are simple. The Bolsheviks, the Hitler Youths, the Chinese Red Guards—socialist ideologies have always tried to weaponize the naiveté of youth.

We don’t see that kind of socialist organization in the U.S.: the foundational ideas which undergird the supremacy and ideological purity of a democratic majority—protections for the smallest minorities be damned—is increasingly part of the public curriculum. And I mean that in the most literal sense.

That does tend to worry me.

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Apologies for any typos. Civil discussions welcome.

Helpful comments, corrections, and productive disagreements are welcome.

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