Republican megadonor Charles Koch says society’s key institutions are leaning too heavily on a bloated federal bureaucracy, in a new video that revealed what’s on his mind a day before the Koch brothers’ Seminar Network holds a summit meeting in Colorado Springs, Colo.
Koch said schools, communities, businesses and the government all have a role to play in society, but said the overreaching government is breaking down their traditional roles.
“As government takes on much more than it’s able to handle, it uses force in areas where it does more harm than good, and undermines its ability to perform its basic functions, like keeping Americans safe,” he said in a video posted online promoting the Seminar Network.
He charged that businesses were engaging in “bad profit” and overuse of “corporate welfare” from the government, and said people are relying too much on government aid.
Koch said educational institutions are failing in their basic role of promoting free thought and discourse.
“As schools and universities clamp down on free speech and expose people only to a narrow set of ideas, they cultivate an intolerant, ill-informed citizenry,” he said. “New ideas language, and so too does social progress.”
“When institutions drift from their productive roles like this, society begins to deteriorate and peoples’ well-being declines,” Koch said, adding that the U.S. needs to ensure each element of society “plays its productive role.”
The Koch network’s retreat in Colorado Springs will gather business leaders, politicians and others in part to develop ideas for pursuing the goals outlined by Koch, but also to address the next election cycle.
