OPINION:
The No. 1 issue for 2022 and 2024 is very simple. Big Government socialism isn’t working.
Go to your local gas station and ask folks filling up their gas tanks if they think things are working.
Go to the grocery store and watch people coping with the rising cost of food and ask if they think things are working.
Go to small businesses whose shipments are still hung up on container ships anchored off Long Beach and ask them if they think things are working.
Ask people if things are working when the man who burned down the Christmas tree outside Fox News in New York City, causing $600,000 in damage, is released from jail without bail. He was back on the street before the paperwork for his arrest was finished.
When 80 people break into a Nordstrom just outside San Francisco and steal as much as they can carry, Americans know that things just are not working.
On issue after issue, and problem after problem, it is clear to most Americans that Big Government socialism simply is not working. To be sure, a recent Scott Rasmussen National Survey found 53% of Americans describe the Biden administration agenda as Big Government socialism.
It is important to tie the continuing failures all around us to the underlying philosophy of Big Government socialism, which simply does not work.
The Biden administration and the Democrats in Congress are committed to the most radical experiment in imposing government on Americans since the British failed to coerce free Americans in the period from 1770 to 1783.
Big Government socialism seeks to control our bodies through vaccination and mask mandates while controlling our minds through radical indoctrination in schools, businesses and government offices.
It isn’t enough to study and get good grades and real knowledge. You must learn the left-wing language and attitude. It isn’t enough to generate a profit as an effective worker. You must learn the official propaganda. It isn’t enough to be an effective soldier, sailor, airman, Marine, Coast Guardsman or Space Force guardian. Being a woke Department of Defense is now more important than being a war-winning Department of Defense.
This passion for total control fits the warnings of Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” George Orwell’s “1984” and “Animal Farm,” and Friedrich Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom.”
We have seen this kind of radical effort to remake society before — from the Jacobins of the French Revolution, the Russian Communist effort to create the New Soviet Man, and the thought control of Maoist China, which is still underway with President Xi Jinping as the new Mao. Again and again, radical belief systems have tried to force people into a government-imposed version of reality.
The impossibility of the thought processes of Big Government socialism can be best understood through two Walt Disney movies.
The inability to deal with violence — whether from criminals, terrorists or nation-states — can be compared to someone who sees “The Lion King” and thinks it is a documentary. They believe lions and zebras like each other and sing and dance together. Why not release murderers, rapists, robbers and others back into the population? Why not recognize and speak well of the Taliban and other terrorists? Why not tolerate the aggression of Communist China, President Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the Iranian mullahs or the dictatorship of Kim Jong Un? They are committed to the Big Government socialist worldview. Why be mean to them?
The inability to design an effective economic policy of opportunity for all stems from the Big Government socialists’ failure to understand the 1934 film “The Grasshopper and the Ants,” which is based on the Aesop fable that describes two different approaches to life.
The ants constantly work during the warm, pleasant summer days, storing up food and preparing for the winter, which they know is coming. The grasshopper enjoys life, thinks all the hard work is a stupid waste of time, and makes fun of the ants, singing, “The world owes me a living” and telling the ants, “You shouldn’t soil your Sunday pants like those other foolish ants. Come on, let’s play, and sing, and dance.”
As winter approaches, the grasshopper faces starvation while the ants comfortably survive the cold in a warm place filled with food. Only the ants’ generosity saves the grasshopper from starving to death. By the end, he’s singing a different tune: “I owe the world a living.”
Big Government socialists share the grasshopper’s disdain for work and favor policies that encourage dependency, indolence and redistribution. If you don’t want to study and succeed in school, the Big Government socialists will simply abolish grades so you don’t feel bad. If you work hard and save, the Big Government socialists will take your money to give it to others who have learned to be dependent on government.
If you have been diligent and acquired some property, the Big Government socialists will tolerate criminals who steal your hard-earned goods or vandalize your home or business. Under Big Government socialism, there will eventually be no ants to feed the grasshoppers. Or, as Margaret Thatcher said, “the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”
A Big Government socialist, “Lion King”-grasshopper ideology is impossible in the real world. It just doesn’t work.
President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer are giving us a wonderful opportunity to win gigantic election victories in 2022 and 2024. But much more importantly, they are proving to every American that Big Government socialism just doesn’t work.
• To read, hear, and watch more of Newt’s commentary, visit Gingrich360.com.
