We could use more major studies on today’s democratic socialist. These people are a major force in our schools and colleges and it would be helpful to better understand their thinking. At first glance, they appear to have good hearts and questionable intelligence. What gives?
Democrat socialists in the teaching profession who want to fix poverty usually focus on what they believe are the uncaring characteristics of capitalism, but their approach will depend on whether they are teaching at the school or university level.
Democrat socialists teaching in high schools seem poorly educated and their criticism is ideologically driven at the gut level. It is virtually a guarantee that they have never read a book by Thomas Sowell, F.A. Hayek, or Milton Friedman. In the rare case of such reading, mention of this publicly can be risky. It appears that they do not feel any need to read what these people say about poverty and wealth creation. For democratic socialists in our high schools, it is simple: capitalism is a mean system that favors the rich. Consequently, a political party that takes a free-market approach to reduce poverty is a terrible, heartless party. There can be no redeeming qualities in a Donald Trump government that lowers the unemployment rate with a booming economy. Case closed.
Socialist professors take it one additional step. They also dislike the Donald Trumps of the world, but they cannot completely dismiss the academic idea of a free exchange of ideas. Although most are poorly educated on economics, they give evidence of having read books that are expert in describing the sadness and injustice of poverty conditions. By doing more reading, even if it is narrow, they can pretend to be a genuine academic.
A couple of months ago I had a brief and interesting social media encounter with a poverty activist who teaches at a Canadian university. I noticed his angry tweets and I politely encouraged this individual to read Thomas Sowell’s book on poverty. He responded that he read Sowell and was done reading Sowell. I asked what books he had read and he told me he read one Sowell book back in his undergraduate days. I suggested he read Sowell’s more recent book on poverty, but the conversation ended when he tweeted that he was happy that twitter had a function that muted trolls.
As an academic, I find this behavior puzzling. In the 1970s, the hockey players representing the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had great skills. Although I believe socialism is evil, if I was a hockey coach I would study to understand why Soviet hockey players could outplay most Canadian professional hockey players. Taking another example, should not a nurse be willing to consider ways to alleviate the pain and improve the health of patients, even if the strategy came from an unpopular source? If there is data that Professor Jordan Peterson is successful in helping people should not democrat socialists read him even though he has some tough words to say about socialism, including its connection to totalitarianism.
Perhaps the saddest category are the university-educated democratic socialists who are under educated and who experience poverty in their community firsthand. Democratic socialists who work for institutions that are on the front line of poverty – those who know actual poor people who depend on soup kitchens and other services to survive – see the suffering of individuals lost in the cracks of urban life. These democratic socialists correctly demand action and they have little time for books that point to some unpopular analysis. Whereas the socialist professor with a good salary can display his humanitarianism while employed in an institution that relies on the giving of capitalists, the street worker himself must rely on a small salary as he encounters the faces of broken people with heavy hearts.
Yes, capitalism has risen hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. Ask readers who know the economic history of China and India since the 1990s. Yes, the American jurisdictions with the highest rates of poverty tend to be governed by Democrats. Ask readers who know about the politics of American cities and states. Yes, the international record of socialism is a tragic one. Ask readers who know about the standard of living in North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, or any socialist country. But all such reading is a distraction to the socialist democrat. More pressing are the local poverty examples of the single mother, the alcoholic, the unemployed student, or any other person barely able to keep going.
What can we say about the brain power of democratic socialists? I do not think that they are less intelligent than non-socialists. Many of them, however, are wired in a way that hinders their interest in exploring varied ways to reduce human suffering. For whatever reason, they simply lack the intellectual curiosity to explore broadly. This is a shame. Action with good intentions but bad results will continue to hurt the very people they want to rescue.
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