As Bernie Sanders’ campaign continues to gain momentum, a few sober-minded adults have seen fit to chide his supporters for their idealism. These members of the reality-based community claim that Sanders’ supporters are unwilling to accept that politics, as any undergraduate will tell you, is all about compromise. One simply cannot conjure up House and Senate majorities that will raise the federal minimum wage to $15/hour, make higher education free, and pass a single-payer healthcare system. Sanders, if he were to be elected president, would have to operate within the world as it exists rather than the world as he wishes it to be.
As Paul Krugman wrote a few days ago, “while idealism is fine and essential — you have to dream of a better world — it’s not a virtue unless it goes along with hardheaded realism about the means that might achieve your ends.” He warns Sanders supporters not to “let idealism veer into destructive self-indulgence.”
Continue reading “The Left’s Destructive Self-Indulgence of Idealism”
Waqas Mirza 