In conservative and Republican circles, there is a lot of talk about using persuasion to get people to understand principles and to vote for limited government.
I have a better idea: Tell everyone free markets work and state control does not. The facts speak for themselves. Since President Obama enacted Obamacare, healthcare costs have gone up, access has gone down, and now the citizens of the United States are hurting under more taxes.
I sent out a blog post about the rich paying “their fair share,” and the debate was impressive. Many have no clue about the damage of government interventions, and they are not going to visit Townhall.com or Fox News for the other side.
University outreach is a must. Texas Congressman Ron Paul had the strongest following among the youth vote, a growing number of whom are tolerant on social issues yet virulent about the spending spree that is bankrupting the present and ruining their future.
I recall meeting a few months ago with a young voter in Venice who told me that he decided to become a Republican despite the overwhelming animosity young conservatives face on college campuses. The professors condemn ideas that make nothing of the isolated intellect and require a man to look outside of himself to respect the over-arching systems of trade that exceed the capacities of man to design, implement or control.
Having a Little Fun
Dinesh D'Souza, author of Letters to a Young Conservative, shocked his campus peers with the help of right-leaning academics who modified National Review, the Bill Buckley brainchild, to a college audience. On a weekly basis, they skewer inane, unwary academics and left-wing interest groups with pitch, wit and well-placed sarcasm. One vulgar example: While campus interests wanted to open a club promoting the gay agenda, D'Souza and friends drew up their own club proposal, the Bestiality Club. Horses and dogs, run and hide. By pushing the limits of moral relativism to a relatively unknown limit, D'Souza and friends made an open mockery of the Inter Club Council at Dartmouth. Incidentally, their request was rejected.
At the outset, the young have a bias toward understanding things chiefly from their own point of view. This limited mindset stems from the adolescent revelation of right and wrong clashing in a world filled with varying and vying notions of right and wrong, standards people talk about but fail to live up to. Like the young Charlie Rollins from the Disney Movie “Bedknobs and Broomsticks,” the age of adolescence does not immediately lend itself to believing, to accepting as realities that which cannot be instantly perceived.
Strategy Is Not Complex
Beyond persuasion, the mere announcement that Republicans want to lower taxes for everyone convinces more people than you may realize. One minority student in a government class told me he had thought Republicans were the bad guys. He was shocked when he learned that Democrats, in general, want to grow the government and expand the tax burden. When young voters get a whiff of the truth, they open their minds to accept a conservative point of view. If more of them talked to the business owners down the street, they might learn a thing or two about the long-term yet unseen damage that comes from taxing “the rich.”
The young vote, the minority vote, the women’s vote – they all want to know the truth. The GOP can tell them the truth. If someone goes there, then they will come. Unfortunately, the Republican leadership has not made a move.
Boehner Misses the Point
Newly re-elected House Speaker John Boehner, like too many in the GOP establishment, does not get it. People are not sold on the benefits of the free market. Too often, students in substandard public schools or overcrowded colleges are taking in minced, chintzy pablum about the evils of capitalism. After more than a decade of being bombarded with the badness of supply, demand, and the supernatural order of markets and trade, small wonder that kids graduate with no understanding of businesses, economics, or the impropriety of state intervention.
Our young people need and deserve to know the good news about free markets that make free people, about the power of forces, trends and cultural realities transcend our thoughts and feelings, that define us more stably and ably than the musing of Ivy League academics. They spend all of their time thinking about how the world should work. They end up “should-ing” all over themselves, their students and the professionals in training whom they send out into a world which does not play by artificial constructs or postmodern mendacities.
Not persuasion, GOP, but announcement: Just tell people what you believe.
Arthur Christopher Schaper is a writer and blogger on issues both timeless and timely; political, cultural, and eternal. A lifelong resident of Southern California, he currently lives in Torrance. He may be contacted at arthurschaper@hotmail.com, aschaper1.blogspot.com and at asheisministries.blogspot.com. Also see waxmanwatch.blogspot.com
