The Midterm elections are coming quickly now. We’ve all heard the old saw that “this is the most important election ever,” and its corollary, “You’ve heard this before, but this time it really is.” Well, guess what? Here we go again, as Ronnie Reagan once said. He also said we are never more than one generation from the loss of our freedoms and liberty.
When Sen. Joseph McCarthy thought he saw a Communist behind every tree in the ’50s, he was sometimes overzealous and wrong. Now, we only have to look at candidates for office at high levels and their followers. The liberal far-left believers have joined with socialist/Communists and the Green New Deal proponents and the DEI folks to create a group with no understanding nor belief in free market capitalism, in personal liberty and freedom of association for anyone but themselves.
American agriculture has become the powerful engine it has, able to feed our country and significant portions of the rest of the world, because of the free enterprise system that rewards hard work, vision, innovation and risk-taking. The defense of that system is critical now, when mobs of people, sometimes funded by our country’s ideological and military adversaries, are intent on destroying our system and replacing it with chaos and proven failed ideas.
When I first came West in the ’70s, I was impressed by ranchers’ interest and concern with education in our rural school districts. And it wasn’t just because in many counties they were the main contributors to the tax base. It was because they realized intuitively that the future of our country is shaped in our schools. As a country, it has become obvious that we have allowed our schools to become breeding grounds for every kind of political theory and cultural opponent imaginable opposed to the foundations of freedom and liberty our country was built on.
The old saying was that the young begin as liberals and become conservatives as they grow older, start families and become concerned with survival and prosperity and real-life concerns. Today, too often the liberal stage has been replaced with “radicalism” or “extremism” that is encouraged by our schools and universities. Exposure to other ideas is one thing but indoctrination and preaching that our country is evil and wrong, that our society empowers “oppressors” over the “oppressed” is another.
France this fall is a perfect illustration of what our country could become if the tilt away from America’s economic and political system is allowed to continue.
The beef industry right now is enjoying demand success because we have in decades past been able to fund our own research and promotion, defend our industry at all political levels and used our work ethic, ingenuity and the tools provided by science, university research and allied industries’ investment to improve our product.
The young radicals don’t seem to understand that Big Government Socialism means the government telling you where you shall live, what job you will have, if you can travel out of the county and numerous other decisions we take for granted. The shutdown during the pandemic was just a taste of government controlling if you could leave your house, where you could shop, what mask you had to wear, whether your church could hold services or go to work.
We have more people working than ever in our history; our unemployment is the lowest in decades; our household income averages $80,000/year versus China’s $19,000; we have an economic boom going on stemming from tax cuts and less regulation and tariffs that have unleased capital expenditures for construction, manufacturing and industrial effort and consumer spending; a stock and bond market that reflects real profits and the expectation of more and a standard of living that blew away visitors to America during the World Cup tournament.
Yet consumer sentiment is flagging and the current administration is given little credit for fostering our progress. Our schools also have neglected logic and critical thinking, it seems.
We cannot take for granted the system we have, imperfect as it is, or that our government, our community or family members fully appreciate what we have. That means doing what we can to make sure those around us do understand our system and the perils of alternatives being promoted as superior to the one that has propelled us to the top of the world heap. It also means making sure the folks around you recognize the stakes and vote this November. — Steve Dittmer, WLJ columnist
(Steve Dittmer is the author of the Agribusiness Freedom Foundation newsletter. Views in the column do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of WLJ or its editorial staff.)
