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Socialism is their name for anything that helps all people.
Link to tweet
Socialism is a scare word they've hurled at every advance the people have made. Socialism is what they called public power, social security, deposit insurance, and independent labor organizations. Socialism is their name for anything that helps all people.
--Harry Truman, 1952
--Harry Truman, 1952
Same shit, different century
16 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100211856137
Needs to be said every day. Need a bumper sticker argument? Here it is.
I'm resigned to the fact that most Americans don't "do" nuance about the word "socialism." I'm not out to educate people about what it is and isn't or what varieties of it there are. I'm not one, but I get called that by Republicans. I'm normally up for interesting debates, but this one is pointless. It's debating a brick wall, and the only thing to do is pry the bricks apart.
I'm just out to remind people that if you believe what Republicans today say counts as 'socialism' then we spent at least half of the 20th century as a 'socialist' nation. That's nuts, and it needs to be said over and over again.
The Movement Conservatism that became the Republicans' ruling ideology always hated social programs, but had particular venom for ones that worked. After all, successful ones argued for more, which to them was an abomination.
To them, it was all 'socialism' and 'communism'.
It hasn't changed much. If anything it's gotten worse as they've come closer to grabbing all the marbles: doing away with the last remnants of the New Deal and packing the courts with operatives who will make conservatively correct rulings.
They'll rail against "European socialism" as if they were talking about Warsaw Pact police states and not the same industrialized democracies that constitute the Free World that we used to be 'leader' of.
They invoked 'socialism' when Obama proposed a small increase in income taxes for people way up on the income scale. Taxes were higher for 6 of Reagan's 8 years, with a top rate of 50%, but somehow a change from 35% to 39.6% for taxable income above $400,000 counted as raising the red flag of revolution.
They can't win with their policies, so they scare. That's why the cultivated the base they did.
Anything that helps ordinary people is called 'socialist', conjuring the spectre of an alien ideology from a foreign land.
But checks and balances on the power of money and wealth aren't socialism. They are just that, checks and balances, and are as American as apple pie.
I don't have a cable news network. I don't have a radio show. I don't have Wingnut Welfare funding. But observing those over the years drove in the power of repetition.
So repeat:
They call everything they don't like 'socialism'
They call everything they don't like 'socialism'
They call everything they don't like 'socialism'
They call everything they don't like 'socialism'
and nobody, but nobody, is exempt from being accused of being a weak-kneed backslider. Everything they don't like is 'socialism'.
1976 book, from Reagan's bid to get Republican nomination instead of Ford
I'm resigned to the fact that most Americans don't "do" nuance about the word "socialism." I'm not out to educate people about what it is and isn't or what varieties of it there are. I'm not one, but I get called that by Republicans. I'm normally up for interesting debates, but this one is pointless. It's debating a brick wall, and the only thing to do is pry the bricks apart.
I'm just out to remind people that if you believe what Republicans today say counts as 'socialism' then we spent at least half of the 20th century as a 'socialist' nation. That's nuts, and it needs to be said over and over again.
The Movement Conservatism that became the Republicans' ruling ideology always hated social programs, but had particular venom for ones that worked. After all, successful ones argued for more, which to them was an abomination.
To them, it was all 'socialism' and 'communism'.
It hasn't changed much. If anything it's gotten worse as they've come closer to grabbing all the marbles: doing away with the last remnants of the New Deal and packing the courts with operatives who will make conservatively correct rulings.
They'll rail against "European socialism" as if they were talking about Warsaw Pact police states and not the same industrialized democracies that constitute the Free World that we used to be 'leader' of.
They invoked 'socialism' when Obama proposed a small increase in income taxes for people way up on the income scale. Taxes were higher for 6 of Reagan's 8 years, with a top rate of 50%, but somehow a change from 35% to 39.6% for taxable income above $400,000 counted as raising the red flag of revolution.
They can't win with their policies, so they scare. That's why the cultivated the base they did.
Anything that helps ordinary people is called 'socialist', conjuring the spectre of an alien ideology from a foreign land.
But checks and balances on the power of money and wealth aren't socialism. They are just that, checks and balances, and are as American as apple pie.
I don't have a cable news network. I don't have a radio show. I don't have Wingnut Welfare funding. But observing those over the years drove in the power of repetition.
So repeat:
They call everything they don't like 'socialism'
They call everything they don't like 'socialism'
They call everything they don't like 'socialism'
They call everything they don't like 'socialism'
and nobody, but nobody, is exempt from being accused of being a weak-kneed backslider. Everything they don't like is 'socialism'.
1976 book, from Reagan's bid to get Republican nomination instead of Ford
anything that stands in the way of them owning and controlling everything for maximum personal profit.
I suspect the French and Russian revolutions may have scared the hell out of them so they set out to use everything they had to make sure they would never have to similarly face the consequences of their insatiable greed.
