The Majority of Young People Are Marching Toward Socialism in America. Don’t Blame Me for That!

By Dennis Melby

These days, it appears that the majority of young people in America are marching toward socialism. But don’t blame me for that.  When I was in college, I was elected Student Body President at Montgomery College.  It was enlightening.  Like most students I was fairly liberal, but since I was a Republican, I was always suspect in many eyes.

I believed in free speech and would dole out student funds to all sorts of groups to bring in speakers, from the ultra-left – Jane Fonda comes to mind – to the right wing, such as William F. Buckley’s brother, Senator James Buckley.  During that time, none of the students protested – they actually came out in droves to listen to the speakers. However, the faculty wasn’t too crazy about some of the choices, since they felt we should be more socially responsible.

The faculty often tried to turn the students against the administration and convince us of their enemy status.  I caused trouble too, led protests, and held sit-ins in the president’s office. I saw how easy it was to intimidate the administrators and deans.   It took me a while, but I learned that although the faculty wanted to run the school, the administration stood in the way. I was being played.

I pushed back against that and eventually I was impeached by the Faculty Senate!  The professor who ran it, Jim Cronin, went on to serve on the Montgomery County School Board. He was put there by the teacher’s union Apple ballot. They loved him, for two terms…but during the third term he voted to moderate their pay raises and they threw him out.

In my opinion, union teachers & faculty have four goals:

1. high pay
2. tenure
3. ever-increasing salaries and benefits
4. a liberal agenda to ensure that 1, 2 and 3 continue in perpetuity

After I graduated, I simply assumed the ups and downs of my experience had been an aberration, a unique moment in time that, like everything else, would moderate and return to more sensible education methods. The parents would demand it, the students would demand it, and the moderate teachers and professors would demand it. 

Since I had no children to put through school or college, the shifting ideology in our school systems faded from my life. I assumed that they were no longer as left-wing as when I was in school.  However, I’ve found out that that they’re actually much worse. They continued to travel to the left, and then to the far left. The administrators – at least here in Montgomery County – are always beholden to the most left-wing Democrats who control the government, often all levels of the government. There is no effort to balance the teaching faculty, and every effort by the faculty and administration to weed out those who don’t follow left-wing ideology.

For several generations, higher education has directed an increasingly steady stream of blame on our country, blame one sex, blame one race, blame Republicans, blame the founders, business, religion, blame, blame, blame.  Amid this steady stream of left-wing propaganda, it’s no wonder that so many college graduates have become enamored with socialism, not realizing that the ever-increasing brainwashing by socialist professors has conveniently omitted its links to misery, servitude and death. No one ever told them. Indeed, they were told the opposite by faculty members entirely beholden to the government for their income – yet totally not required to put forth any view that was not left-wing.

But don’t blame me.

And yet, I should have known. I had an inkling 40 years ago. I just never thought we’d get to this point. How do we embolden and empower some great moderate educators? Like you, I am wondering how we can return to a great, world class, unbiased and upstanding American education system – before it’s too late.