I understand you are planning to vote for Bernie Sanders.
It is free country, and you have the right to vote for him. I am grateful to live in a country were we actually have a choice when we go to the ballot box. There are many countries where that option doesn't exist.
Did you realize that?
That there are countries were the head of government places his/her name on the ballot, no competition, and still conducts an election. Of course, in such countries, voting is actually often MANDATORY. The result? The head of government receives overwhelming ballot box support. 80% 90% support!
Now these countries have many things in common.
For example, in most of them, the government owns everything and decides how everything will be used.
The government decides how much toilet paper will be produced, what car comes off the factory line (assuming the country is large enough to have an automotive industry).
The government makes intimately personal decisions too. What you will study if you go to university ("we need engineers, you look like an engineer, you will study engineering"), what career you will pursue ("we need sanitary landfill heavy equipment operators, you look like a sanitary landfill heavy equipment operator, you will be a sanitary landfill heavy equipment operator").
The government allocates resources according to its perception of needs. Perhaps you are accustomed to the quaint American practice of wiping your derriere with toilet paper after defecating? The government needs paper for documents of the government, and the odd American practice of butt-wiping has reduced available resources. Many people around the world wipe their butts, after defecating, WITH THEIR HAND. In a government that controls resources and their allocation, toilet paper can be made into an unobtainable luxury. (Ask the people of Venezuela.)
The government finds that too many people are becoming a vexatious burden and disposes of them. Kim Jong Un actually had his uncle taken out to a bombing range, had him forced to stand on a marked spot, and had a bomb literally dropped on him. Excessive, right? Many governments engage in similar acts of culling of the population. Another country forcibly aborts any child after parents have their first live birth.
The government limits the ability to depart from these happy lands. They restrict access to international traveling papers (passports, exit visas). They restrict access of outsiders (foreigners) to the people.
These countries all have something in common. They are modeled on various forms of a political and economic idea of socialism. On the hard left of socialism, bizarre leftist nutcases like Kim Jong Un and the Peoples Republic of China mark the dismal distance that can be traveled in the quest to disentangle the human heart from the love of individual liberty and autonomy. On the far right of socialism, we have the friendly socialism of countries like France, England, Canada, and, yes, the United States. Oh, don't forget Nazi Germany.
Now, you go ahead and vote for Bernie.
He's a tired, tiresome, old fart, who has never worked an honest day's work since college. He free-loads, first as a Congressman, now as a Senator and Presidential candidate. He is the only declared, elected member of Congress of the Socialist Workers Party.
You want free stuff.
I get that.
Lord knows, I'd love some free stuff too.
But the God's honest truth is that what he is offering you ISN'T free, except in the same way that a TV stolen from a business during the Ferguson riots is free. Yes, there is no difference from stealing during a riot (mob-based theft) and stealing by electing a man to government office who is planning to have the government take property, possession, and funds from others.
So, go ahead, vote for Bernie. It helps in the primary election because it exposes serious weaknesses of his opponent, Hillary Clinton.
But here's a head's up for what a Sanders presidency would look like:
He is an incompetent buffoon who does not understand how economic principles operate. So he will try to do things like he's promised you. Things like taxing your father's salary massively (yes, your dad (or mom) (or both) to pay for your "free education" and your "free health care."
Of course, while sensible Democrats (if you can find them) and Republicans are controlling Congress he will be worse than incompetent buffoon. He will be an incompetent buffoon that can no more get legislation passed as President than he could as a member of Congress. (Look up how many bills for which he was the original sponsor actually passed both Houses and became law.)
Being stymied by a Congress that MAY possess marginally greater economic understanding than a man who, in his dotage, bitterly clings to a failed economic and social ideal (democratic socialism) doesn't mean he'd be unable to do anything. He does have the example of the current occupant of the White House, who, when he doesn't get a bill through Congress decides that he will undertake "executive action."
Odd words, "executive action." They are absent from the Constitution of the United States. There is, in the American Constitution, only one legitimate body for the MAKING OF LAW: the Congress. Yet the current president, himself an undeclared socialist, and your would-be president, a declared socialist, are in a grand tradition of socialists. That tradition is autocratic authoritarianism.
Bernie Sanders, a failed Congressman, a failed Senator. The producer of absolutely nothing. Nothing that you ever ate. Nothing that you ever drove. Nothing that you ever lived inside. Nothing that you ever sat on, slept on, wore. The creator of one known work of fiction, in which he details the imagined sexual fantasy of every woman, to be gang raped.
Yes, please. This is the exact president we need. The match to the fuse. The start of the Revolution. And you're voting for him because he is BUYING your vote with a promise HE CAN'T keep.
The prosperity of generations has eased the American love of liberty into slumber. In our dreams we have imagined that the government is a lovingly disposed parent. Yet true history, actual fact, dispels any truth to the benevolence of government.
The long train out of brutal serfdom has been a force march of stalwart folk that have refused to encourage the growth of power in central bodies, that have denied the "moral rightness" of theft by taxation, and that have called on the sterner, more hopeful beasts of human nature: love of liberty, despite of oppression, resourcefulness, and, frankly, enlightened self-interest.
So, go ahead.
After all, he is promising you "free" college.
After all, he is promising you "free" health care.
Why wouldn't you take his bribes? Why wouldn't you sell him your vote. Thankfully, your dream of a Sanders-led paradise can only do what every previous Socialist paradise has done: fail.
