His campaign tour of college campuses touting the "non-issue" of the expiring reduced interest rate for college loans already being handled by the Congress and the inference that he is "saving" of that rate for them, together with his unsubstantiated claims about his own difficulty paying off college loans may make for good political theater, but it relies on the naivete and "dumbing down" these students have experienced in their schools.
Submitted here is an example of student reaction to one of his visits yesterday.
Had students been taught that the debtor is slave to the debtholder, and that the role of government is not to enslave people by offering to make them indebted, but to provide a framework of laws to protect their freedom, they might not be attracted to shallow "rock star" style leadership, but would demand someone of substance who would tell them the truth about civilizations's historical struggle for individual freedom and of their own Constitution's limits on power in government.
Sadly, the public schools from which these students came have not taught them the uniqueness of America's founding ideas, but, instead, have propagandized them to accept the idea that "government" exists to "take" from other citizens and "give" to them.
Such students likely will not find jobs available because of the "taking" and "spending" philosophy of the redistributionist policies of the past 3+ years, and decades of government's ignoring Constitutional limits on spending, deficits, and debt.
When, in 1776, our ancestors felt the heavy hand of the British government "taking" their earnings, regulating their lives, interfering with their beliefs, and asserting coercive control over their actions, they did not waste their time on such trivia.
They wrote great treatises such as "Thoughts on Government" and "Common Sense." They educated their young on the merits of liberty, as opposed to slavery to government, and they did the groundwork which allowed for a written Constitution for self-government to be ratified in the states only eleven years later.
America is about to be bankrupt, both financially and philosophically, and those who have benefited from the Founders' ideas, who call themselves "conservators" (conservatives) of those ideas, should come together to place those ideas before millions of young people who must participate in voting in November on whether they desire liberty or slavery. Women, youth, men, so-called "seniors"--all need to have the choice presented clearly that this election pits the ideas of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and America's other Founders against the ideas of Marx, Lenin, and Keynes.
There are always "useful idiots." That's what every oppressive regime has relied upon. A "useful idiot" with a big megaphone is more dangerous to liberty than millions of ordinary ones, because of the ability to lull more people into a sense of complacency.
America, awaken! This decades-long battle for your liberty has been engaged. But, for decades, you have allowed the ideas of your liberty to be censored from your nation's textbooks and public discourse.
Your best weapon is contained in your Declaration of Independence and the Constitution which leaves all the power in your hands. Read them, amplify upon their principles and ideas by accessing the Founders' writings and speeches.
For a quick review of those principles and your nation's first 50 years under its Constitution, consult John Quincy Adams' "Jubilee" Address here, or a recent reprint of a 1987 Bicentennial collection of the Founders' principles, here.
James Madison stated: "Although all men are born free, slavery has been the general lot of the human race. Ignorant—they have been cheated; asleep—they have been surprised; divided—the yoke has been forced upon them. But what is the lesson? ... the people ought to be enlightened, to be awakened, to be united, that after establishing a government, they should watch over it ... It is universally admitted that a well-instructed people alone can be permanently free."
Kids might be catching on - that's a good sign.