THIRD PINE, OHIO — President Barack Obama wants to make community college free for U.S. citizens. It’s a radical and reformative idea no matter which side of the aisle one finds themselves on. For the left, it’s a move toward a more equal society where the ability to rise through the socioeconomic ranks with a college degree isn’t limited to those who can afford it. For the right, it’s just as radical a notion to help pay for every citizen’s entry level college courses, reducing the need to saddle students with large student loan bills. For one Ohio Republican, opposition to free community college — which got a boost from Democrats in the House and Senate introducing legislation to make Obama’s wish come true — increased taxes are a concern, but he sees a far greater cause for alarm that not enough people are discussing.
“If that socialist in chief gets his way,” former State Rep. Mitch Ricardella (R) told The Political Garbage Chute, “we’ll have thousands, if not millions more Americans educating themselves, and where would they educate themselves? In Obama’s Free Liberal Indoctrination Camps, that’s where.” Ricardella, currently considering a challenge to Speaker John Boehner’s seat in the House of Representatives, is “furious” at the idea of “Obama and the Alinksy Elite ramming higher education down our throats” because “it’s every American’s right to educate themselves as much as or as little as they so choose, and according to traditionally Biblical standards of education.”
Ricardella is worried that a “dangerous path” to intelligent people who aren’t “suckered in by our culture war rhetoric” to believing “fiscal hocus pocus like Supply Side economics.” He also told our reporter that he is “gravely concerned that more intelligent people will lead to more intelligent critique of our antiquated belief structures” and that “people often lose their dogmatic beliefs when confronted with new information” and that “new information flows like so much liberal wine” so therefore “conservatives would start dropping like flies, reawakened as empathetic, thinking people who aren’t cowed into believing there have been major improvements to society in the last few decades.”
“We’ve seen it before, it happens all the time. They go away to college and come back with an open mind…to all sorts of things,” Ricardella told us. “We spend our whole lives telling our children how to think. Why do we want them going away to school to learn how to think for themselves? Why would we want them to develop their own views on things when we have spent so much time cultivating their opinions for them? Open mindedness is just a liberal cultural Marxist term for ‘don’t think you’re better than someone just because of the luck of your genes and birth status’ and that’s not an America I want any part of,” he exclaimed.
State Rep. Tom Thompaulsen, also a Republican, shared Ricardella’s concerns. “What kind of society do we live in if we’re going to tell people we’re willing to invest in our shared future by investing in their personal future,” Thompaulsen asked. “Conservatives know that only wishy-washy amoral losers change their views on things. People don’t evolve, they just lack the character it takes to stick steadfastly to your belief system in the face of overwhelming evidence that refutes those same beliefs.”
“The bottom line to us is really simple. The Constitution says nothing about free community college tuition,” Ricardella told us, “and therefore there’s no legal basis for it. That’s why we Republicans are also against government-subsidized healthcare. It’s not in the Constitution. We’re actually going to start opposing Free Speech on the Internet and TV, since neither of them are mentioned in the Constitution, and I’m even going to consider not inhaling or exhaling, since they too are not covered specifically as guaranteed rights in the Constitution either.”
Ricardella says he will “make life a living hell” for any “turncoat RINO who thinks education is more important than national defense or tax breaks for the wealthy” with a SuperPAC he is in the process of forming. “One way or the other I will keep the scourge of higher education away from our citizenry, if it’s the last thing I do. Give me liberty, or give me…you know…something else.”
