When I was a child, my grandmother often told me the story of the grasshopper and the ant. It's one of Aesop's many fables, told with her own style and flourishes.
In the story, the ant toils away all summer preparing his home, stocking up grain getting ready for the winter that he knows is coming. Meanwhile the grasshopper spends his summer playing the fiddle, dancing, and having a good time. When winter comes as it always does, the ant answers a knock at the door to find the disheveled grasshopper shivering against the cold, begging for food.
When the ant asks why the grasshopper didn't prepare himself, the grasshopper replies "I was too busy making music and practicing my dance and the summer just slipped away.
"So dance, then," the ant answers as he closes the door.
The story as she told it was designed to reinforce the idea that a man should work and save for the future rather than squandering his time and energy on frivolity.
You know who hasn't heard that story? Bernie Sanders. The "Squad." And most pointedly, Elizabeth Warren.
In many of her campaign speeches, Warren has pounded the drum for forgiving student loan debt. She's claimed that her first act as president would be to eliminate all outstanding student debt.
Great idea, right? It would relieve an onerous burden on so many current and former students. It would free them from the outrageous and unnecessary fees that colleges impose in order to maintain their frenetic race to build more and more.
I don't disagree that there's a problem there. My daughter is in college. Her dorm room is nicer than every home I lived in until I was over 30. It's brand new, built just last year. She has "free" access to a fitness center that makes the local gym look like the gym Rocky went to with Creed in Rocky III. She gets unlimited "free" food at the cafeteria. She has "free" transportation all over campus and to many off-campus locations. Free cable. Free internet. Free walking trails. Free access to an expansive library. At 20, she has more perks than the average working family does. It's ridiculous.
But is the answer to forgive all student debt?
Warren was confronted on the campaign trail by the father of a college student. He saved for years, worked two jobs and paid for his daughter's education without taking out a loan. If she forgives all student debt -- and there's nearly $2 trillion of it sitting out there -- would he get his money back?
"Of course not," she flippantly and dismissively answered.
In those three words is the problem with Elizabeth Warren's impossible promise and the problem with the democratic party as a whole.
They are courting the grasshoppers. They are promising to let the grasshoppers keep on playing the fiddle, keep on dancing, keep on idling the hours away. Don't worry, we'll just take it away from the ants. The ants have plenty. It's not fair that the ants have all that and the grasshoppers must do without. You deserve your fair share.
It's a seductive lie. The promise of a life of leisure supported by those evil ants who are over there building up their filthy nests is difficult to resist for a generation that's known absolutely nothing but excess. Why should they work? Why should they have to pay for school? Or medical care? Or transportation? Or food? Let the ants pay!!
What the democrats don't tell you is that one day, we'll run out of ants.
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