Bernie Sanders, the self-proclaimed socialist, has had his greatest popularity with the young. Even those who believe that Sanders’ political program is disastrous, or evil, must pay attention to this warning signal. These young voters are America’s future, and even if a few years in the workforce brings some greater political wisdom, many people still stick with their youthful paradigms unless some political shock disrupts them. For those who would try to change the mind of this generation (and the following one), it is important to understand how our education, occupational licensing, and entitlement policies are driving them to socialist views which break sharply with America’s political traditions of liberty.
Most obviously, the support for Sanders reveals the dreadfulness of many of our universities. They are ideologically homogeneous bastions of the Left, at least in the humanities and social sciences. And while that other university—the place that specializes in STEM—produces real knowledge, its effect on political culture is only indirect. In contrast, much of the non-STEM university today is not principally focused on producing knowledge but on reinforcing a narrative about the centrality of ethnic, racial, and gender identity to the human person and about the oppressive burden of the West’s heritage.
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