You students pay a fortune of your and your parents’ money to attend UCSB to get an education. But what you are getting is a thorough brainwashing by the left-wing bunch of professors who infest the campus today, and not a well-rounded, balanced liberal arts education, which you all need to deal with the multifaceted world after you graduate. The sad thing is that you students do not know that you are being brainwashed because you have no history and no counterbalance to the left-wing assault on your education.

The university professors and the liberal students at UCSB and elsewhere are promoting a determined agenda that undermines our constitutional rights to conduct free enterprise business and to own and do what you wish with one’s property. The general message sent by these liberal professors is that the government has more right to your property and business than you do. The message is that the all-seeing government knows best what you should do with your property.

The environmentalist movement best illustrates this socialist agenda. The members of this movement use the mantra of protecting the environment as justification for the takeover of huge tracts of open and private property to be owned and managed by the all-knowing government and to which the public has no further access or rights to its use. Their thesis is that private owners cannot be trusted to take care of the land as well as the government can.

We have seen this movement before in history: It is called communism.

Environmentalism is the latter-day communist movement in the world. Under this form of government, the government owns and manages everything. But governments are made up of people who are self-serving, just like private business can be, and even more corrupt. Just ask the Russians and the Chinese what they think of communism. In these governments everyone and everything is subject to government control. We asked our guide in China if the thousands of noodle and chopstick stands in China were privately owned. “No” was the answer; even they are owned by the government.

The communist attitudes toward business and private property rights are being promoted today by most university professors, teacher’s unions and unions in general, the Sierra Club, the Green Party, Ralph Nader and those people you see demonstrating at economic summits and the monetary funds. What can be gained by these actions against those who provide jobs, housing and finances?

Nothing but more government.

Governments require taxes to operate. When government puts business out of business, there are no taxes to run the government and the government is called communist. We fought four wars in the 20th century to stop socialism and communism in Europe and Asia. But now we see it growing among the young all over the world. Have we learned nothing from history? Government running our property and businesses is not the solution to the world’s ills. As self-serving as free enterprise can be, it still provides a higher quality of life than can be realized by a communist form of government.

Justin M. Ruhge is a member of Concerned Taxpayers for the Initiative for National Change.