How do toddlers get their way? Temper Tantrums. The “terrible twos.” Why do they throw so many temper tantrums? Simple. Tantrums get them what they want.

Why do leftists, socialists, and progressives throw so many political/mob violence temper tantrums? Simple. It gets them what they want.

Just look at the recent temper tantrums; two impeachments, BLM burns down Minneapolis, Antifa loots and vandalizes Portland, Special Counsel investigations. Why? It worked to get rid of President Trump and the Republican majority in the Senate. Now they are in control.

From their point of view, political tantrums work. Like a toddler, they demand something, and they get it. This is working for them in the political world. As they continue their tantrums in other fields, however, they are going to bump up against something called objective reality.

When you are a toddler, all you have to do is point at food. Then your mother or father will put it into your mouth—instant gratification. You don’t have to know how the food is grown, harvested, transported, sold, and cooked. You point, you get.

Progressives, socialists, and environmentalists are functionally toddlers who know nothing of the chain of raw materials, manufacturing, transportation, warehousing, and retailing of products, all to get an everyday product like a wooden chair. See Leonard Read’s classic, I, Pencil, for the complexity of making something as commonplace as a pencil. 

Another everyday product we use is electricity. We flip a wall switch, and the light comes on. We don’t see the drilling for natural gas, the pipeline construction to deliver the gas, the generating plant that burns the gas to make electricity, the steel mills making the metal for transmission towers, and wires that deliver the electricity to our homes.

In the Prager U video What’s Wrong With Wind and Solar, Manhattan Institute scholar Mark Mills shows us the chain of production required to produce wind turbines, solar panels, and electric car storage batteries. Surprise! The energy needed to manufacture these “green” devices far exceeds the energy they produce. You can’t make reality conform to your wishes with a political temper tantrum. The laws of physics don’t care how red in the face you get.

Magical Thinking

The child psychologist Piaget wrote that toddlers could believe that waving their hands causes the wind. He called this “magical thinking.” He argued that this comes from experiencing yourself as the center of the universe. Of course, from a baby’s point of view, he IS the center of his universe. Leftists, Socialists, Progressives, and Democrats think that they are the center of the universe.

In the normal course of growing up, children learn that they are not the center of the universe. They no longer get everything they want immediately. Then they go to college where Marxist professors tell them they are victims and deserve to be the center of the universe again. How? With a mob temper tantrum. March. Protest. Cancel. Burn. Get people fired.

They missed the ‘Who What Why How’ part of growing up. The part that shows Mom and Dad going to work to earn money to buy the things that Junior or Princess wants. In the words of an old maxim, “They think the world owes them a living.”

These young adults generalize their toddler/dependency / magical thinking to the world at large. They see two worlds: first, the economic world, where you have to earn money to buy what you want. Second, the political world, where whining, demanding, and temper tantrums get you what you want. What have they been successfully doing for 20+ years? Whining, demanding, and temper tantrums. So, what becomes their default response? Whining, demanding, and temper tantrums.

Meet today’s Democrat Socialists

Socialist thinking is toddler magical thinking. Socialist thinking is ‘I’m the center of the universe’ thinking. Of course, this is cleverly disguised as ‘I only want Socialism so that poor people can get free stuff! Social Justice!’ How? Magic!

Democrat Socialists never grow up; they don’t know where stuff comes from. Jobs and hard work. All they know is that some people have more stuff than they do, and they want it. So, they do what has worked for them in the past: whining, demanding, and temper tantrums.

“People with more stuff than me are evil, greedy, and unfair! We must take their stuff and redistribute it fairly to everybody! Then more stuff will magically appear, and we will redistribute that too!”

Of course, as hard workers see their stuff taken and given to those who do not work, they stop working. The “magic” stops—atlas shrugs. And soon, there is no more stuff to demand. We will be like oil-rich Venezuela, where oil is becoming scarce. In just 20 short years, Venezuela went from a prosperous capitalist country to a starving socialist country. Temper tantrums won’t plant crops and pump oil. Only hard-working capitalists plant crops and pump oil.

We got a trial run of this with the Wuhan Virus shut down. When millions of workers had to stay home, suddenly, common items like toilet paper and appliances became scarce. We had to wait two months for a new washing machine. Certain store shelves were bare. No workers equal no stuff.

And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is where socialists reach the point of diminishing returns. After they punish, gulag, and re-educate the capitalists, they say goodbye to plentiful food, energy, clothing, and housing. Temper tantrums won’t grow food, make energy, weave clothing, or build housing. 

The only solution is to stop catering to Democrats, Socialists, Progressives. Stop reinforcing their tantrums by giving in to their demands. Toddlers grow out of it when Mom stops spooning food into their mouths. Stop spooning political nourishment into the mouths of these infantile groups on the Left.