A major cause of the problem is people who send their children to government indoctrination centers (public schools) where the children do not learn the facts about capitalism or collectivism, or American history, or critical thinking.
I would say Todd is understating the percentage. I would also say that you are understating the percentage of freeloaders, since public schooling is a form of welfare. Doesn't matter if you're paying taxes or not. If you took food stamps or heating assistance while paying taxes, you'd be freeloading nonetheless. Same with public schooling. Yet many do it, because they went to public schools themselves...and they just don't think. (In two generations at most, they will have stopped thinking about food stamps, too.)
So if I may take the liberty of paraphrasing your post:
"Half This Country Believes In Collectivism" Sure, more than half are freeloading. Or, to put it another way, the more than half that's too lazy to TEACH and relies on the government to do it for them.
EXACTLY!
“Public” socialist-entitlement K-12 schooling was our nation's first welfare program...and...it only took one to three generations of compulsory socialist-entitlement schooling to produce Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Children who attend socialist-entitlement schools ( mislabeled “public” schools) risk learning that any voting mob powerful enough to give them tuition-free schooling is powerful enough to give them **LOTS** of “free” stuff!
What sets my teeth on edge are conservatives who believe that socialist schooling can be reformed. Nonsense! It must be abolished! Completely!
By the way, government owned and run schooling has never been religiously neutral because a neutral education is **impossible**! Currently, our nation's government schools are godless. The children who attend **WILL** learn to think and reason godlessly. They must just to cooperate with classroom and school policies. How could it be otherwise?