[detbuch]

Originally Posted by Jim in CT

Do you think Sanders' polling suggests a shift? Or is it a constant, simply a reflection of the fact that college kids have no idea how the world works?

You probably mean "how the world SHOULD work." But our educational bureaucracies instill the relativist view that it's a matter of opinion. And the opinion that counts, in a world without guiding principle, is that which appointed "experts" (and Spence) say is the right one. Usually the one considered the most "pragmatic" and efficient.

So college kids of today actually do have an idealistic (ideological) idea taught to them of how the world SHOULD work. And, more than us older, stuck-in-the-mud "Conservatives," they have grown into, therefor accept and "understand," how our American world "works." They are acculturated to accept a priori that the governmental operation is how it is supposed to be. Most Americans, and especially those still being "educated," accept our form of a centralized Administrative State as perfectly and normally being how our government should work. Whatever the government does is not questioned as to whether it has the constitutional power to do it, but whether it is a "good" or better thing to do. The pragmatic view cares not about appropriateness, right or wrong, but does it "work." Is it the most efficient way, etc. So, yes, college kids do have an idea of how our world "works." But what they lack is "an idea" of how unopposed centralized power, no matter how "efficient" or "pragmatic," can and will erase any "idea" of their existence as individuals with basic rights which cannot be trampled by government.

There's this little article by a stuck-in-the-mud Conservative which touches on the actual size, complexity, and unmitigated power our Administrative State has:

http://theresurgent.com/trump-is-pop...6cb6-266050641

"There are 456 “official” federal agencies, and many of these have bureaucracies within them. According to The Center for Small Government, just the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has 47 separate bureaucracies! Let’s say the average, for the sake of time, is 40. That’s 18,240 bureaucracies, and 2.6 million (give or take) federal employees.

There are 535 federal legislators in Congress who are elected to oversee, fund, and pass laws to regulate this morass. If we divided it up equally, that’s 42 bureaucracies per Congressman/woman, and 182 bureaucracies per Senator. Congress has roughly 200 committees to discuss all of these, and other, items they deal with.

It’s impossible.

Congress needs a huge staff just to keep up with the alphabet soup. Bonus question: Off the top of any Representative or Senator’s head, what’s the budget for Climate Change Adaptation technical assistance program grants for the Office of Insular Affairs of the U.S. Department of the Interior? Don’t know? Me neither, but President Obama signed Executive Order 13653 to make these grants happen. It’s buried somewhere under 20 line items.

How do you roll back 80,000 pages of federal regulations? How do you undo the Gordian knot? How do you stop the avalanche?"

And Federal Regulatory agencies are little fiefdoms which have executive, legislative, and judicial power in themselves. They are little tyrannies.

If he ran 5, 10, or 20 years ago, perhaps his numbers would be similar, especially among college students. When I was in college, accummulating loans, I would have listened if someone said ""vote for me, all I'll do is tweak tax rates on the billionaires, and that will give you free tuition and healthcare", I would have fallen for that when I was 19.

I hope his numbers do not represent a shift. Because if they do, it's not a healthy shift.

When I was in college, there was still a different view of how our government was supposed to operate, but the progressive view was on the verge of totally changing that. No, it is not a constant. Past generations had different ideas of how the world, and specifically how the American world, "works." There has been a shift.

But no shift is permanent. It remains, yet, to see which direction it goes in November and beyond.