Friday, April 19, 2024
Miles from the Mainstream
D. R. ZUKERMAN, proprietor

Millennials -- if you like the socialist Bernie Sanders, you should love the populist LPR

February 19, 2016 --

Okay, so today, Sen., Sanders is expressing concern about how rigged is the economy and how badly the middle class is doing. Well, this writer, in a letter to The Riverdale Press, January 9, 1992, urged the election of Jack Kept as president.

Why?  "Because the middle class, that segment of society that carries the nation, yet is ignored and scorned, wants anybody but Bush, and Kemp suggests a statute lacking in the present Democratic field."   The letter continued, "No one pays attention to the middle class, yet we do most of the purchasing, and when we stop buying because our money is taken up for shelter, debt, food and transportation, the economy listens."  The letter went on: "We have no friends in high places. The managers of our system--whether business or political -- take pains to ensure that they will not fall bank into middle class morass. Our financial institutions view us the way the banker in 'It's a Wonderful Life' viewed the working people: as riff-raff.'"    

The letter added, "More than 50 years ago, Thomas Wolfe remarked 'the enemy is single selfishness and compulsive greed.'  There is so much evidence that the enemy is still with us--and growing stronger." 

The answer, millennials is not forthcoming from Sen. Sanders, who, as LPR sees him, is nothing more than a demagogue who would lead the country into tyranny.  

(See  Alexander Hamilton  in Federalist No. 1.)  

Look instead to our roots -- particularly the populist counsel to our leaders from James Madison in Federalist No. 57.  

Consider,  229 years before the Sanders candidacy for president, Madison warned about the people aiming for the "ambitious sacrifice of the many to the aggrandizement of the few."

Madison advised that if we are to avoid tyranny, our officials must stay close to us.   

Gov. John Kasich, one of the GOP presidential contenders recently disclaimed money-grubbing, saying that he made only $15,000 for a 15-minute appearance when he worked for Lehman.  

Millenials, in 15 minutes Kasich got only a few hundred dollars short of the income this social security recipient gets for the entire year.