The appeal of living in our right-wing country
By Bruce VanDenburgh
It was a beautiful day today, in spite of the fact I spent the
morning having my teeth drilled and my afternoon studying for the
CPA exam. It was beautiful because I was able to take a day off
from my busy job and enjoy the near-perfect weather while walking
home.
On Bruin Walk I passed a vendor selling Lenin posters, a guy who
said I was cool because of my Phoenix Suns shirt and a group of
socialists distributing materials on Marx and socialism. Curiosity
stopped me, so I looked at them and a woman asked me how I felt
about the right-wing Republican movement.
In response, I proudly told her that I was a Republican. Her
face turned red, then back to its original shade of white and then
with a very puzzled look but a controlled voice she asked …
"Why?"
"I believe in small government, free enterprise and individual
responsibility," I answered.
She proceeded with some gibberish about unemployment being high
and the Federal Reserve Board raising interest rates in order to
slow the recovery and push unemployment even higher and how I
probably didn’t know about any of that, and so on.
I thought for a moment, because I was confused about what any of
this had to do with the right-wing Republican movement. Then I
tried to explain to her how the Federal Reserve Board was
independent from the three branches of government, how it is not
part of the Republican party, that it is run by a chairman
appointed by the president of the United States and that the
president who is not a Republican has no authority to raise
interest rates.
By then she started babbling about how people are starving and
children in the Bronx are dying and our health care system is a
mess and Michael Eisner is earning $500,000 a day (really?) and
only because he takes advantage of tax breaks and so on.
Again, I thought, "What’s this got to do with the right-wing
Republican movement?" but I paused and instead asked her in
reference to Eisner … "Why is it a sin to be wealthy?" Because
after all, the desire for wealth or at least a better life is what
brought everyone here to this beautiful university campus.
She responded by saying that as long as people are starving, it
is a sin to be wealthy.
I told her that our poor people are actually the richest poor
people in the world. I might be wrong, but the point is that the
lower class in the United States is very well-off if you compare
them to the lower classes of other countries, and it is far better
off than the lower classes of any socialist country. With this
statement, she simply disagreed with me and angrily walked away, so
I did too, not unhappy, but disappointed. While I did, one of her
colleagues said to both of us, "It’s no use  he’s a
right-winger … people like you ruined the country!"
Wow … and all I ever did was vote.
As I walked home I went through Westwood and then passed the
Veterans’ Memorial Cemetery  my usual route. Passing by
headstone after headstone of dead soldiers who gave their lives for
this country … and only for people like me to go and ruin it.
There are so many people buried here. I often wonder how many
people come here and realize what they did for us? They didn’t die
for rich people, they didn’t die for Americans. This country is
made up of people who left the problems of their own country so
they could be a part of a country without these problems. I believe
these soldiers died to protect this, along with freedom, democracy
and a better way of life. They died for many others too, not only
for Americans, because they wanted this country to serve as an
example for the rest of the world to follow. Maybe this is why the
socialist countries are now becoming capitalist countries.
The whole irony of the event was that these socialist student
groups are preaching their dogma on subsidized public universities
and receive their subsidized educations from rich taxpayers and
wealthy corporations. In a socialist country such anti-government
people are taken out and executed.
During the day, I reflected back on how I once felt the way
those students feel. My life was never free of struggle and my
undergraduate economics education included university professors
who were also anti-government socialist types who obviously can’t
cut it in the private sector. They sit on their subsidized asses
and live off the profits generated by the so-called greedy
corporations and taxpayers and they fill students, such as the ones
I just met, full of garbage because they are too lazy to work for a
living. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true.
Our country is not free of problems. Greed, while not a noble
virtue, may be one of the incentives that drives us to work harder.
The bottom line is that our system creates more for everyone than
any socialist system ever could. So we have a bigger pie to divide.
We don’t divide it evenly, and this creates problems, but the piece
you end up with is bigger for the lower as well as the upper
classes.
When I returned home from my nice walk I decided to call my
girlfriend to tell her about my encounter. She is one of the
privileged less than one-half of 1 percent of Chinese lucky enough
to have received a college education from Communist China. She
explained how she would love to tell the UCLA socialists how many
more people are starving in China and how socialism in China began
as an effort to eliminate poverty and inequality, yet has in
reality created massive poverty for 40 years. (Not to mention the
other social problems including human rights.)
That is why millions of people from all over the world would
give everything they have to live in our right-wing country.
VanDenburgh is a former UCLA student.