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My Point of View by Robert Hoffman

Brad Kramer is our GOP communications director, a very bright gentleman, who celebrates his wife and family and is a hardworking man. I enjoy serving on our board with Brad and value his friendship. As the chairman of the GOP I talk with our entire board weekly, but I speak to Brad almost daily. He shared these two stories with me recently. We didn’t write these, and they are not in our own words but they are worth sharing.

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, “OK, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism.” All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an “A” (substituting grades for dollars, something closer to home and more readily understood by all).

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a “B.” The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.

As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little. The second test average was a “D!” No one was happy.

When the third test rolled around, the new average was an “F.”

As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

To their great surprise, all failed and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

Human nature will always cause socialism’s style of government to fail because the world has producers and non-producers (makers and takers). It could not be any simpler than that.

This other story reminds me of the quote: “If a person is not a liberal when they are 20, they have no heart; if they are not a conservative when they are 40 they have no head.”

A young woman was about to finish her first year of college. Like so many others her age, she considered herself to be a very liberal Democrat, and was very much in favor of the redistribution of wealth. She was deeply ashamed that her father was a rather staunch Republican, a feeling she openly expressed.

Based on the lectures that she had participated in, and the occasional chat with a professor, she felt that her father had for years harbored an evil, selfish desire to keep what he thought should be his.

One day she was challenging her father on his opposition to higher taxes on the rich and the addition of more government welfare programs. The self-professed objectivity proclaimed by her professors had to be the truth and she indicated so to her father. He responded by asking how she was doing in school.

Taken aback, she answered rather haughtily that she had a 4.0 GPA, and let him know that it was tough to maintain, insisting that she was taking a very difficult course load and was constantly studying, which left her no time to go out and party like other people she knew. She didn’t even have time for a boyfriend, and didn’t really have many college friends because she spent all her time studying.

Her father listened and then asked, “How is your friend Audrey doing?”

She replied, “Audrey is barely getting by. All she takes are easy classes, she never studies and she barely has a 2.0 GPA. She is so popular on campus; college for her is a blast. She’s always invited to all the parties, and lots of times she doesn’t even show up for classes because she’s too hung over.”

Her wise father asked his daughter, “Why don’t you go to the dean’s office and ask him to deduct a 1.0 off your GPA and give it to your friend who only has a 2.0. That way you will both have a 3.0 GPA and certainly that would be a fair and equal distribution of GPA.”

The daughter, visibly shocked by her father’s suggestion, angrily fired back, “That wouldn’t be fair! I have worked really hard for my grades! I’ve invested a lot of time and a lot of hard work! Audrey has done next to nothing toward her degree. She played while I worked my tail off!”

The father slowly smiled, winked and said gently, “Welcome to the Republican Party.”

Robert Hoffman is chairman of the Freeborn County GOP Party.