Familiarity is not the reason

A couple polls came out recently each showing that 40 or more percent of the Millennial Generation have a favorable view of socialism. Numerous bloggers and wonks took this info to mean that they had been brainwashed to believe that socialism was good.

Ends up that it was much more sinister than that:
Not only have they been taught that socialism is good, they have been been purposely shown a misrepresentation of what socialism is.

Recent polls have suggested that millennials are far more positive to socialism than older cohorts. For instance, the Pew Research Center found that 43 percent of 18-29 year olds had a positive reaction to the word socialism, compared to 33 percent of 30-49 year olds, 23 percent of 50-64 year olds, and 14% of 65+. The older you get the more you hate socialism.

But do young people even know what socialism means?

Perhaps not. A new Reason-Rupe report on millennials finds that young people are more favorable to the word “socialism” than a government-managed economy, even though the latter is lessinterventionist. Millennials don’t like government intervention in the economy when you spell it out precisely, rather than use vague terms like “socialism.”

In fact, a 2010 CBS/New York Times survey found that when Americans were asked to use their own words to define the word “socialism” millennials were the least able to do so. According to the survey, only 16 percent of millennials could define socialism as government ownership, or some variation thereof. In contrast, 30 percent of Americans over 30 could do the same (and 57% of tea partiers, incidentally).

You know the Tea Partiers. They’re the folks the media portrays as being “stupid”, in contrast to Millenials who are told they are the smartest generation ever!

By the way, from the first quoted paragraph, the reason you dislike socialism more as you get older is that, as you get older you tend to increase the number of gray hairs and aches and pains and also acquire a severe allergy to bullshit. Doctors haven’t been able to figure out why this is. Which is why we have philosphers.