PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon, as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

A recent column in the Washington Post by the candidate who lost the Florida governorship last time around contends that Democrats have to fight back from what he called “the socialism smear.”

The candidate, Andrew Gillum, makes some decent points, I guess, but he forgets – or ignores – what for him is one major inconvenient fact: Most of the Democrats running for president want to make government even bigger and all-inclusive.

Bureaucrats – I mean no disrespect by using the term — would be in charge of nearly every area of American life if the far left Democrats like Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have their way.

That’s socialism.

And the cost would exceed any ability to pay for it, except to saddle future generations with a huge bill.  Plus, even to make a stab at the far higher cost, those in favor of socialism would have to impose huge tax increases.

From the far left, Warren and Sanders want to spend trillions of dollars of your money to GIVE you health care, as well as to FORGIVE all student debt and MAKE education the responsibility of the federal government.  And they don’t care much, if at all, about higher taxes.

Would you have to work your way to gain access to the federal largesse?

Probably not. Socialism gives. It does not require specific effort.

All of this conjures up in my mind memories of my wife’s and my trip to Europe a year or so ago, with a start in Prague. There, our guide, a woman of about 40, recounted her years growing up in a communist regime where enterprise and creativity were not just not valued – they were forbidden.

She loved her current life when, she said, she could talk and think on her own without fear of government reprisal.

So, I say this to Gillum: The best way to avoid the “socialist smear” is to avoid being part of it. Emphasize individual effort and enterprise, with a role, to be sure, for government – not to mention enlightened capitalists — to take care of the less fortunate in society.

Improve and expand capitalism. Don’t throw away the American dream motivated by enterprise and effort.