How to Immunize Children Against Socialism

A frivolous Friday post...

It’s not difficult to immunize children against socialism. All it took for my mother was a minor disability that gave her the opportunity to be a “Helicopter Mom.” Here is her easy method of teaching us more than any of us ever wanted to know about socialism:

1. Have lots of time to play with your children. Tell people that sharing the precious moments of their childhood is more important than any job. (Actually an effect of your disability is that you’re more easily confused and distracted than your three-year-old is.) Really supervise the children’s play time. Join in their games and use every possible teaching moment. Tralala…

2. If possible, have children of different ages and genders. This really drives the lesson home when you resolve to treat them “equally,” especially when one is sixteen and one is six.

3. You have time to make sure everything is exactly fair and equal. All the toys belong to you the adult, and you can make sure all the children get equal opportunities to play with each one, and nobody is allowed to play with the interesting little toys the baby might swallow.

4.Watch the children make it the goals of their lives (1) to get outside and play their own games without you, until they’re old enough (2) to earn their own money and buy their own toys that they don’t have to share equally.

5. This one borders on cruelty, so do it only if you really want to make sure they’ll never have any respect for any blather about how not having access to the same things has kept people from ever being able to earn what they’re willing to work for. Resolve to treat the children "equally" in spite of age gaps. Then try listening to the whines of the youngest child when the older ones play with their own things. Say the twelve-year-old and the fifteen-year-old are playing tennis. Both are above average in their classes at school. The five-year-old whines when not allowed to play, whines when unable to win, and whines when deliberately allowed to win. Act as if anything ought to be done, beyond sending the five-year-old to its room until it can stop whining, to relieve the five-year-old’s frustration with just not being on the same level with the teenagers.

They will always have to fight an urge to sneer, “Oh shut up you whiny brat!” whenever a crybully starts in on the “If the whole class stays with the same material so that no child is left behind, if tax money is used to make it possible for everyone to have cell phones and home computers and Water Piks and other luxuries that a lot of rich people actually say they’re happier not bothering to own any more, if college classes give credit for watching television so people who don’t like to read can get college degrees, if any number of other stupid ideas are carried out, that will give us our chance to feel equal with other people…” 

The older ones may become Reagan Democrats, McCain Republicans, Libertarians, or Tea Parties, but that five-year-old will become a total right-winger. If female, she might even subject herself to two pregnancies in three years, to avoid an age gap between her children.

And that, Gentle Readers, is why I'm an Independent, my adoptive sister is a Democrat, and my natural sister is a Republican.