The leftist group Center for American Progress and its higher-ed wing (Campus Progress) recently issued a survey, “The Progressive Generation.”

The survey purports to find high levels of support among young Americans for the whole range of socialistic nonsense favored by the Left — universal health care, higher taxes, more regulation, etc.

Maybe this is another instance of phrasing questions to get the answers you want, but I’m inclined to doubt it. Most Americans are bombarded with collectivist, nanny-state notions from the time they first enter government schools, and it’s no wonder that many of them come to reject freedom, private property, individual responsibility, and limited government. The American populace is slowly being Swedenized.

Naturally, the “progressives” are jumping for joy, but they don’t understand (or perhaps care about) the long-run implications: a nation that gradually loses its dynamism, becoming poorer and riven with political strife among grasping factions. We’ll become like pre-Thatcher Britain. Capital and talent will go elsewhere while the “progressives” propagandize the people that things are really the best they can be under their rule.

There’s no magic in the United States. It can be ruined by bad ideas, just as many other nations have been throughout history.