By Sam Rohrer for Townhall.com | Image from Townhall
Recently on Stand in the Gap radio, the American Pastors Network highlighted an interview with one of America’s young people. When asked, his opinion was that socialism would be the best government for the U.S. When told socialism has never worked where it was tried, he simply said, “Well, maybe we haven’t given it enough time.”
As believers in free enterprise and religious and personal liberty that brought our early settlers from Europe, we believe nearly 200 years is more than enough time to judge socialism and its militant brother communism.
Today, many Americans have conflicted attitudes about socialism, best illustrated by the Tea Party activists who demanded that “government get its hands off my Medicare.” But when a 2015 Gallup poll asked Americans whether they would consider voting for 11 categories of presidential candidates, “socialist” ranked last, garnering 47 percent, behind “Muslim” and “atheist.” Among 18- to 29-year-olds, however, 69 percent had no problem voting for a socialist. Why the disparity? People in their 20s have no memory of the Soviet Union or Cold War but did come of age during and after the 2008 financial crisis. To young people feeling great economic insecurity, sharing the wealth sounds less like a threat than like a promise. Continue reading…
