Socialism? Heartland folks will have their say.

Socialism is having a moment in America. In the late 1980s I naïvely believed that when the Soviet Union finally collapsed of its own moral bankruptcy and manifest unsustainability, socialism/communism as a viable political idea was at last finished.

Silly me.

We now see that far-left ideas about socialism/communism that fairly recently were considered fringe are making their way into the political mainstream. The once semi-sane Democratic Party is being hijacked by socialist loons right before our eyes.

It’s undeniable that the political left has an enormous advantage, occupying as it does the commanding heights of American culture. The left dominates academia, entertainment, the legacy media and many of the institutions that shape how many Americans – particularly the young – understand their country. We are living with the result of the miseducation of an entire generation of our kids that have been exhaustively instructed in America’s sins while being deliberately kept ignorant of America’s triumphs.

These kids know about slavery, discrimination, inequality and corporate greed in granular detail. Fine. They should. Those are real chapters in our history.

But they should also understand – and clearly don’t – that America created the most prosperous large society in human history. American free enterprise unleashed extraordinary innovation. Capitalism, despite its imperfections, has lifted more people from poverty and created more broadly shared material abundance than any economic system ever devised.

We conservatives can be forgiven for occasionally looking at the cultural landscape and feeling discouraged. But look beyond the campuses, newsrooms, the Hollywood studios, the gated estates of Palo Alto, California and the penthouses of Manhattan and instead consider the vast American heartland — the places condescendingly dismissed by our betters on the coasts as “flyover country.”

That’s where millions of people still build things, grow things, fix things, transport things, start businesses, raise families and keep the country running.

The heartland is Moline, Illinois where farm equipment is made, Akron, Ohio where they make tires and Louisville, Kentucky where they manufacture major appliances. It’s Dalton, Georgia where the mills turn out carpet and Columbus, Indiana, America’s diesel engine capital. And it’s Tyler, Texas where we make air conditioners.

Then, of course, there are the millions of acres of land on a vast, wonderful, bountiful and beautiful continent stretching from the west bank of the Hudson to the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada, from which good, hardworking, patriotic Americans toil from sunup to sunset so that we might have grocery stores and restaurants full of gorgeous, delicious food.

The heartland folks know that America isn’t perfect. But they also know that America is good. Proudly self-sufficient, they are deeply skeptical of politicians promising prosperity through government dependency and equality through government control. The commanding heights of academia, media and entertainment may shape the conversation, but the folks in the heartland who put food on our tables, make and fix our machines, pick up after us and stand up to defend us shape the country.

So, take heart. On the subject of socialism, the heartland folks will have their say.