It’s The Grilled Cheese Sandwich, Stupid!

A close friend, a teacher in Los Angeles Unified School District, said to me: “There’s a kid in one of my classes, bright and adorable, but with some, y’know, learning issues. I sat down and talked with him, tried to find out what was going on. Naturally, there were problems at home, the parent’s marriage sounds shaky. But this kid got all teary-eyed when he said that what was really bothering him, the thing that was really making him unhappy was lunch.”

I said: “Lunch?”

“Yeah, school lunch. The menu was changed following new rules imposed by Washington. My student said that he and most of his friends just throw away the salad and fruits and all the healthy stuff being imposed on them by these new regulations. My student was in tears as he recalled the good ol’ days—fourth grade—when he looked forward to grilled cheese sandwiches.”

“Comfort food.”

“Gone and gone.”

Last week the nation was agog with Obama’s war on Catholicism. But what most people didn’t comprehend is that it isn’t Obama’s war, it’s a war being waged by the left. Obama just leads the charge. It’s not just a war against Catholic doctrine; it’s what Obamacare is all about: the diminishment of private institutions in favor of government bureaucracies.

The left wants to restrict individual liberty and mandate government to make all the major decision in your life. In return the citizen will get free health care.

Of course, nothing is free. In rejecting free market solutions the left imposes a soft tyranny whose eventual outcome can be seen in the streets of Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy.

Which brings me to the lack of enthusiasm among Republicans for the current field of Presidential contenders. The reason we are unhappy is because not one of these men has set forth a unified vision. They talk about jobs and unemployment; they blow lots of hot air when it comes to taxes. They make nice to Israel and decry Obama’s hollowing out of the military. All well and good. But it’s not enough.

America yearns for a simple and clear Conservative vision.

That’s why when Marco Rubio speaks, we are riveted. He is passionate about American exceptionalism. Rubio understands that without free markets we become slaves to a political elite whose goal is to centralize power. Rubio is secure in his Conservative values and he doesn’t come across as a policy wonk who sleeps with a spreadsheet.

I write Hollywood movies for a living. My most successful films are always the most emotional, stories that hit the audience in the gut without trickery or melodrama.

The left sets forth a simple narrative wrapped in powerful emotions using words like fairness and justice. Never mind that this narrative as policy always fails, always leads to injustice and misery. Remember Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty? It enslaved millions of citizens as wretched dependents of the state. American society has never recovered from that folly. We still pay the price in fatherless households—one of the major sources of crime.

The Republicans will lose the next election if they insist on emphasizing the economy and allowing the left to control the narrative, to control the emotions.

When a child weeps in a Los Angeles classroom because the state has banished grilled cheese sandwiches, that is a primal emotion that can topple governments.