Socialism, in all its forms, sounds so reasonable, so appealing that for any young person with empathy advocating it is almost instinctive. That was my own past, and that of my mother- and father-in-law, as enthusiastic leftist college students in Beijing. They were actually there cheering in Tiananmen Square in 1949 when Mao Zedong declared the PRC founding to the assembled crowd and the world and jubilantly declaimed: “China has arisen”. Fast forward twenty years, my father-in-law, a university professor, was beaten up at school, and sent to work in shame in the countryside. My mother-in-law, a high school math teacher, was in hiding from red guard students seeking her death. Both their families’ upper-middle-class houses were confiscated and their parents were forced to live in one room. And the story goes on from there. It would take decades to fully recover. There is so much more that might be said. But such stories produce only bored shrugs from youth. For Denmark beckons!
Hence, I am pessimistic about the US. It is simply impossible to convince youthful idealists that the US has done so much for its citizens and the world. Adam Smith’s subtle discovery of economic paradoxes that have improved the lives of billions holds scant attraction compared to a charismatic latter-day young Marx, Lenin, or Stalin urging revolution.