Nothing from the government is ever free. And nothing is ever as expensive as when the government decides to give it to you.
That's a universal truth.
But selling free stuff is easy. Selling hard work and sacrifice is hard.
The Democrats running in 2020 are selling freebies. Free college, free healthcare, a government guaranteed job, free childcare, etc.
The laundry list of candidates are trying out-promise one another to capture the votes of people who are blinded by the word free.
Vice President Mike Pence laid out the counter to that sales pitch last week at CPAC. And he made the perfect case.
“The truth is we want to make poor people richer, they want to make rich people poorer. We want to make poverty more rare, they want to make poverty more comfortable," Pence told the crowd. "That’s the choice we face today...between freedom and socialism, between personal responsibility and government dependence.”
The cornerstone of conservativism is personal responsibility. That you are responsible for your successes (and failures) leads many conservatives to reject the hagiography of big government.
But if the liberal position is the opposite of the conservative, then there are people who believe that you are not responsible for your failures (and certainly not you successes). And many of those people are the same ones that Pence and fellow Republicans will need to win over in they want to win in 2020.
Listen to "The dangers of free stuff" on Spreaker.
Photo Credit: Getty Images