Huffington Puffing Liberal Fluff

Royce Hall highlighted a surprise visit and lecture by Huffington Post CEO and "journalist" Arianna Huffington.

Stating that she wanted to speak against youth's growing "disenchantment with leadership, business, and in the media," she fails to recognize that her liberal-statist views are the precise source accelerating this disillusion.

From the masses of entitled and spoiled churning in universities, spilling out into the public square and "occupying" everything, today's generation is convinced that someone else needs to pick up the tab on their lives and pick up their piece from their poor choices. The growing "disenchantment" with leadership, both locally and nationally, stems from a political class that has pandered to the reality of the voters while dishing on anti-government rhetoric. Ronald Reagan, with his amiable optimism, made it OK to rage against the machine, but still demand a handout from the state.

Since President Lyndon Johnson's abortive "Great Society" made societies worse throughout the United States, the American people see nothing wrong with the state stepping in to lend a "helping" hand. The only problem is that the two hands at the end of every person's arms creates far more wealth and provides more economy and prosperity that all the branches and bureaucracies of the state.

Huffington wants college students to look in the mirror and find "the leader in ourselves." Many students, however, have not been educated to seek and develop their capacities to thrive in a tough world. In fact, many of them have resorted to running home after graduation, waiting for the storm of responsibilities and difficult decisions to pass over them. The turbulence of a fallen world will not go away; young people need to learn how to lean into the wind, no matter how hard it may be blowing against them. They need to learn how to lead themselves, disdaining their feelings, giving up their cliques, repudiating the herd mentality that characterizes much of liberal thinking, and make the most of who they are and what they have.

I agree that many people are turning to leadership as an empty means to find solutions to growing problems. When most of their mentors exist in government, however, we have to wonder what most people were expecting to find? Most youth do not want leadership, they need parenting, but the state cannot provide that for anyone. The sorry state of public schools today all but confirms this sad conviction.

Hufffington tells young people to stay politically active. For the past three years, the voters of the United States have suffered under one of the most politically active presidents in history. From stimulus packages that fail to stimulate, to health care mandates that threaten existing businesses while discouraging start-up companies, to bank reform that has dissolved loans and banks, most people should be learning, by experience if nothing else, that more government, more political action, just breeds more of the same corruption, dysfunction, and depression.