A recent article proclaimed, “socialism is on the march.” The writer focuses on the Democratic Socialist candidates who are winning Democratic primaries.

Socialist candidates have run for office in the past and rarely won. Why are these candidates winning in these midterm elections? Jim Geraghty has a suggestion that comes from a book he was reading by Mark Manson.

The book talked about the strategy used by perennial presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche. His youth movement attracted many disaffected and agitated college students. Their tactic was simple. Tell these young people that the problems they faced weren’t due to their parents or even the government. They explained that “it’s the system’s fault.” If they could just overthrow the system, everything would be okay. “No more war. No more suffering. No more injustice.”

Does this sound like what we are hearing from these candidates and the young people voting for them? Your problems are the fault of “the system.” This movement of young people are yearning for a vision of a better future. They want control over their lives but have been told that you need to overthrow “the system” to usher in utopia.

Of course, the system they want to overthrow is our constitutional republic and our free market economy. Granted there are political and economic changes that need to be made, but overthrowing the current system for a socialist fantasy isn’t the answer. It will make their problems worse not better.

Any student of history should be able to see that defunding the police, opening the border, abolishing jails and prisons, and having government take over the means of production will be a disaster. Unfortunately, too many young people haven’t studied history and have been seduced by the siren song of socialism.