You students pay a fortune of your own 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 that infest the campus today, instead of a well-rounded, balanced liberal arts education which you all need in order 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 we wish with our property. The general message sent by these liberal professors is that the government has more of a right to your property and business than you do. The message is that the all-seeing government knows best as to what you should do with your property. This socialist agenda is best illustrated by the environmentalist movement in which the members use the mantra of protecting the environment as the 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.

We have seen this movement before in history: It’s 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 – and can be 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,” he answered. Even those are owned by the government.

The communist attitude toward business and private property rights is being promoted by most university professors today, by teachers unions, unions in general, by the Sierra Club, the Green Party, Ralph Nader, 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 businesses out of business, there are no taxes to run the government and the government is effectively 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 enterprises can be, they still provide a higher quality of life than can be realized by a communist form of government. The professors and students at our schools and universities are not getting this message.
J. M. Ruhge is a Lompoc resident