How the Failures of Higher Education Led to the Rise of Bernie Sanders | Eastern North Carolina Now

    As both a devoted political observer and a college student, the rise of the self described democratic socialist from Vermont was impossible to ignore. Sanders took the nation by storm with his cries for free healthcare, free college, and free everything else under the sun. A struggling millennial generation embraced him with an unapologetic and firm desire to stick it to the evil billionaire class for their supposed greed. His supporters didn't care about economic fact or individual liberty, they only cared that the mass inequality caused by the goons on Wall Street came to an end. They shouted, stomped, and cried for a $15 dollar minimum wage, completely unaware of the havoc such a mandate would actually wreak on low-wage workers. It was hard to keep a straight face as my peers told me that socialism hasn't actually been tried "the right way" before and that the failures of countries like the Soviet Union, Greece and Venezuela were irrelevant. I also remember holding back a chuckle when a professor of mine tried to explain to me that a redistribution scheme that would leave surgeons and waiters with identical wages would work. While I don't see Bernie Sanders as anymore than a sellout and intellectual lightweight that is just as confused as his pack of supporters, his candidacy undoubtedly revealed something about a change in American culture that had been suspected by many but unconfirmed until now. The virtues of grit, character and strength are being replaced by entitlement and victimhood. While the ill-effects of this transformation have crept into almost all of the institutions that Americans hold dear, it is nowhere more evident than in higher education.

    Going into my second year of college, I have dealt with my fair share of professors with viewpoints that stand in strong opposition to my own. I expect this, and am fine with it. There are few things that I enjoy more than a hardy exchange of ideas that challenges me to think and defend my beliefs. The problem, however, is that the debate is becoming more and more one-sided. If you, as the student, don't subscribe to the narrative that an all-knowing central government is necessary to save the stupid people from their own freedom, you are either declared ignorant, bigoted, or both. Even worse, you sometimes are just silenced altogether. Look at the banning of The Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro from speaking at DePaul University, which is only the most recent example. Students on campuses all over the country have had their free speech and opportunity to hear alternative ideas stifled simply because the cupcakes on campus can't handle dissent. Even lifetime liberal Kirsten Powers notices this, writing, "A "dialogue" with the illiberal left is one in which they inform you of the "right" way to think."

    This shutting out of the other side of every argument has also watered down the quality of our education and the content that we are taught. For example, I had an American History class in my first semester in which the professor, unsurprisingly a Bernie Sanders supporter, spent almost an hour raving over Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger. He explained to us her courage in providing contraception and eradicating the poor of their unborn children in order to improve their financial situation. My strong moral objections to the services Planned Parenthood performs aside, it turns out that Sanger was an ardent racist and that at least part of her motivation involved a desire for a racial cleanse, much in the same fashion as the Nazis. If the professor really just likes Planned Parenthood that much, that's okay. He has a right to feel that way. But when he, as an educator, fails to tell the entire story in pursuit of getting his students to think a certain way, he becomes nothing more than an indoctrinator. This type of dishonesty from the very people we are supposed to learn from has no doubt been cancerous to students. They take the opinion of a biased professor as fact and designate any varying opinion as wrong. It is never more visible than in the young people you see protesting on television. After watching them for a couple of seconds it's not hard to tell that there is no doubt in their minds that they are right. Usually the interviews are most revealing, however, when one of them has to defend their purpose to a reporter and fails to produce words belonging to the English language, much less an articulate argument.

    Politicians like Bernie Sanders prey on minds like these. Big promises of free stuff, hope and change have proven effective because they closely mirror the type of rhetoric that is drilled into our brains in the process of 'getting an education.' To be clear, I still see tons of value in a college education, and every professor certainly isn't like this. I had plenty of good ones in my freshman year alone. Still, this is an issue that needs to be seriously addressed. Not by trying to silence professors from the other side, for that would make us no better than them. A better result would come from a coalition of conservatives, libertarians, and even the truly free-thinking progressives pushing for serious intellectual diversity. Not only would this heighten the quality of education, but it would play a huge role in fixing our politics. No more political correctness, no more one sided debates, but intellectual conversation. Instead of just learning the economics of Marx and Keynes, maybe we could read some Hayek and Hazlitt. I think that this would go along way in allowing young people to decipher the coded language of the radical left, and perhaps give our country a fighting chance. While professors will always have their views, and only the students can drink the kool-aid, I would love to see universities start serving more than one flavor.