From Svetlana Kunin at Investors Business Daily.

Democratic party leaders speak incessantly of limiting profits and regulating salaries.

It brings back to memory another Soviet line: You pretend you are paying us salaries, and we pretend we are working. If bureaucrats predetermine the value of your work, there is no incentive to be productive. This is the quickest way to kill a dynamic economy.

I never expected to hear this kind of rhetoric in the USA. Today,the American educational machine teaches exactly the same points the Soviets taught.

It idealizes Socialist societies and denigrates America, especially its economic system.

American students are brainwashed to despise economic freedom and to yearn for a big government state.

Freed from their parents' control, but intimidated by the relentlessly negative portrayal of America, young Americans look for politicians to show them the way.

Ms. Kunin hit the nail on the head.  Parents have abdicated their responsibility to the nanny state.  Schools are expected to be mom, dad and educator.  They're expected to teach morals and ethics in addition to the three Rs.  And the more resources schools receive from the government, the more diluted their curriculum becomes. 

And why not?  After all, when an entity - especially a governmental one - pours money into your coffers, you become beholden to that entity.  So when politicians pour billions of dollars into the school system, they can demand schools teach what is politically desirable at the time.  Facts, logic, rational thought and objectivity be damned!

When politicians in power bloviate about equality and fairness, what they're really targeting is achievement and success.  What they're talking about is force - government force that will impose equality and fairness in a world that cannot, by the nature of morality, have both.  Equal opportunity?  Sure.  Equal achievement?  Never. 

In a fair and just world, there will always be people who achieve and succeed, who perform their jobs better, and who consequently receive more for their efforts.  There will always be those who dedicate their lives to succeeding in school, work long days and achieve the highest success at their jobs.  They deserve a higher level of compensation than the indolent who sit around and expect everything to be handed to them, who have no ambition and no desire to work.  That's justice.  That's the nature of the universe.  For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

The politicians who talk about how unfair it is that some have more than others, aim to tip that precarious balance in favor of the lazy - in favor of the non-achievers - in favor of those who refuse to work, and who consequently have less to show for their lives.

They do so through emotional appeals, targeting the natural sympathy of Americans, instead of their rational minds. They tug at the heartstrings.  They emphasize poignant stories of the starving unfortunate, and ignore the inconvenient facts about how those wretched got that way.  They discount the numerous charities that are able to help the truly needy - those who honestly have fallen upon hard times - and involve the nanny state in the lives of every miserable mediocrity, regardless of whether or not they were the architects of their own fate.

Speaking of sympathy, I feel the need to address the following that Ms. Kunin wrote in her essay.

As someone who experienced real government-approved anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union, I am amazed by the obliviousness of American Jews,the most fervent supporters of left-wing politics.

They support a party that is obsessed with pitting one group againstanother, and that incessantly plays on envy and hatred for bankers,rich people, big business and doctors.

They fail to notice that the success of Jews, as well as otherminorities, in the sciences, business and arts is directly correlatedto their freedom from oppressive, centralized control. American Jews who support big government do not understand what their ancestors escaped from.

Persecutions of Jews throughout history all have one thing in common: a centralized power that manipulates and directs people's anger away from themselves onto an easy target.

No matter how much Jews align themselves with the power structure and work for noble causes, they will remain an easy target.

I never understood it either.  I have experienced some nasty anti-Semitism in the USSR as well.  I was shunned, ignored and borderline tortured by kids and teachers alike in kindergarten as the kid with the weird Jew name.  Teachers encouraged students to bar me from group play. When we went outside to play, I was the one kid on a deserted set of monkey bars, while everyone else played in a group on the other side of the playground. I was the one kid who wasn't allowed to go to the bathroom after nap time and forced to wet my bed.  I was the one kid who was constantly ridiculed about my last name.

And knowing all this, I could never figure out why it was that Jews here in America were so anxious to embrace the type of system that perpetually abused them and turned them into second class citizens.

My father, being particularly religious, finally shed some light on the subject.  Jews are a naturally sympathetic people.  Their faith directs them to fulfill mitzvah, a word that has come to mean "acts of kindness."  This compels them to fall victim to cunning politicians who play on their natural tendencies to help when they can.  This also many times prompts them to close their eyes to the natural consequences of the kind of policies they support, but instead focus on the immediate gratification of having done something that could help the poor and oppressed.

This is why they fail to notice that they support policies that increase centralized government control.  They're too focused on the issue of helping to understand the unintended consequences of their acts.