The rift between the failed D.C. establishment and the average American has never been more apparent than in the debate over affordability. Voters of both parties regularly tell pollsters that they are not happy with an economic status quo that has driven the age of first-time homebuyers to 40. But in professional Washington, any conservative who notices something might be amiss faces a chorus of “Shut up, SOCIALIST!”
I am here to tell you: You are not a socialist for noticing that families are being priced out of the American dream. The real socialists are those who defend a status quo that is redistributing trillions of taxpayer dollars to bureaucrats, NGOs, and the powerful. Those of us who demand reforms that favor families over the status quo may be capitalism’s last best hope with actual socialists on the march in the Democrat Party.
Anytime someone in the conservative movement says we need to do more to help families and young people, the immediate assumption is that he is calling for socialism. I view this as bad faith — an effort to protect the current corrupted system rather than confront the ugly reality of what it has become.
First, we must recognize that America is not the pure free-market, capitalist nation we have been told it is by people waving the gospel of Milton Friedman in our faces. This is an unfortunate truth. Every year, working-class taxpayers watch as trillions of their dollars are taken and given to foreigners at home and abroad, destructive bureaucrats and programs, and left-wing NGOs that exist for destructive ends, namely abortion and the sterilization of children under the banner of “trans everything” radicalism.
This is not just something happening behind the scenes on a small scale; it is rampant throughout government programs. There’s the $4.4 billion transgender industrial complex, which the Department of Health and Human Services just revealed was built on the institutional corruption of private hospital systems and taxpayer dollars. Then there are the billions spent on fraudulent but politically connected, nonprofit organizations across the country. Planned Parenthood receives roughly 40 percent of its total revenue from you, the taxpayer. President Trump canceled $2 billion given to a Stacey Abrams-affiliated climate group that also came from your hard-earned paycheck.
It takes very public scandals — and an administration willing to investigate them — to bring decades-long corrupt practices to the fore. Some conservative groups have been sounding the alarm for years only to be dismissed as “Big Government” by the defenders of the status quo. Those who have called for using federal law to rein in the excesses of Big Government and Big NGO have had to fight not only Democrats profiting from the status quo, but so-called conservatives who argue that disrupting DEI programs, abortion access, or child mutilation infringes on the 10th Amendment.
Your tax money is not being used to pave the way for a brighter future; it is used to line the pockets of politicians and their friends. The tax relief that once belonged to working families has been shifted to trillion-dollar enterprises. The result is that individuals and families not only pay more, but they also face the full weight of compliance, penalties, and interest on penalties. In 2023, 14 million filers faced tax penalties totaling $7 billion. Plus interest.
Big corporations were not the targets here — the IRS is all too aware that they have the means to fight back — nor was it the obvious fraudsters operating “Quality Learing Centers” across the country. No, it was working-class Americans making less than $200,000 per year who have no choice but to keep working for the machine that is bent on hurting them.
The priority is no longer the families that are America’s backbone and working class, everyday people who keep the lights on and do the grunt work across the country.
Second, we must identify the problems that families and young people are actually facing. Some struggles are necessary and formative. For example, learning to work on a tight budget builds character. Other struggles are not. For example, importing millions of low-skilled workers, both legal and illegal, while outsourcing millions of manufacturing jobs goes a long way to depressing earnings for blue-collar workers. That is not a character-building exercise. It is a policy failure carried out in the name of building global free markets. It doesn’t make you a socialist to say that if policy broke something, then policy can fix it.
Third, we must diagnose the causes. Are taxes too high on productive people? Are government programs inflating the cost of housing, health care, and education? Are higher-education subsidies producing more debt and credentials than knowledge?
Fourth, we must decide what will actually fix it. Sometimes the answer may be an American-inspired program in the tradition of the original GI Bill. More often, the solution will be simpler: Stop the bad policies and spending that created the crisis in the first place. Eliminating what is broken frequently does more good than layering on another program.
Fifth, we must be realistic about what is politically possible. What do the American people actually want? What will they reject? How do we turn workable solutions into a winning coalition capable of saving the American dream from both the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the current plundering by our enemies?
You are not a socialist for noticing that young people and families are being priced out of the economy in large parts of America, and you are not a socialist for wanting to fix these problems. You are closer to a socialist if you defend the present system that redistributes trillions every year to people and institutions that have not earned it.
We have debased the dollar, robbing the saving class while inflating the asset values of the already powerful, further pricing young people and working families out of the economy. We have spent tens of trillions on welfare programs, many of which give families more money on the condition that the father stays out of the picture. We have poured trillions into an education industry that no longer educates. Is there any serious doubt that eighth-graders in the 1950s were better educated than many of today’s citizens who carry advanced degrees? The system is crumbling in front of us, and the DSA is simply taking advantage of the destruction their ideology helped enable.
In 1992, George H.W. Bush lost the presidency despite holding a 90 percent approval rating just months before. The failed campaign can be summed up by a slip of the tongue at a New Hampshire campaign stop. He stuck a little too closely to the script as he recited his stage directions aloud: “Message: I care.” The gaffe was used to demonstrate an out-of-touch conservative ignoring the concerns of struggling Americans. Establishment Washington, particularly those crying “SOCIALISM,” appears to have taken the wrong lesson from this episode.
“Message: I don’t care” is a recipe for DSA victory come November.
