I’d like to take this opportunity to break from preaching to the choir and offer some helpful advice to my conservative friends. Those protests denouncing big government and relentlessly opposing any increase in taxes (currently at their lowest levels in 60 years) or social spending? They’re sort of self defeating.

Pop quiz. Who established the modern welfare state? If you said Lenin, then you’re wrong. It was first implemented by arch-conservative and thoroughly anti-socialist German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck in the 1880s. He realized that if you gave more people a share of the benefits of a capitalist system, through programs like unemployment, health and old age insurance, they would be less likely to turn to radical ideologies. The communist revolution didn’t happen in Germany, which currently balances a generous social safety net with a highly developed economy. It happened in Russia, where short sighted elites squandered the treasury without giving a second thought to the working class.

The situation we see today in America isn’t quite as dire as that which faced Europe at the turn of the century. For one, we have all the elements of a basic social safety net in place, thanks to the New Deal and the Great Society. But at the same time, post-Reagan tax policies and levels of domestic spending have left these programs underfunded. Levels of income inequality now stand at levels unseen since before the New Deal. Not coincidentally, this time period saw American socialist movements-like the ones fronted by Eugene V. Debs-at their strongest.

Moreover, there are elements of the American Left growing restless with the vitriol with which you obstruct any reform on subjects as diverse as immigration and the financial system. More and more, the label of “socialist” has lost its sting to these people. After all, if the Right hates them, and the Right hates “socialists,” then they must agree with whatever “socialism” is. You are taking people who used to agree with you on a lot of points and are turning them into ideologues itching to storm the barricades.

And in the end, a larger government could work out very well for you. Our infrastructure is woefully under-capitalized and in dire need of repair. Our public education system is the laughingstock of the developed world. If more money is put toward these ends, our economy will grow faster, and as people with money tied up in that economy, you will profit. So if your inner rugged individualist gets upset with the idea, try to think of paying higher taxes as an investment.

So that’s the choice: You can either pay a little more now or you can lose a lot more when, in a generation or two, the masses break out the torches and pitchforks. Please, for your own sakes, think it through and try compromising a little for a change.

Weinberg senior Michael Gsovski can be reached at [email protected].