The S-Word

Note: If you happen to be reading this, Mr. President, please note that this post has nothing to do with swords. You might want to click on this video to idle away some time until you return to the ranch.

In order to support Republican politicians, one must suspend disbelief, ignore hypocrisy, and be comfortable with cognitive dissonance. The latest example is beyond extreme, however. The Republicans are calling Barack Obama a "Socialist." Yes, the party whose President and Secretary of the Treasury just pushed through a $ 840 Billion buyout of failed companies is calling someone else a socialist. The Republican party controlled the White House and both houses of Congress when they passed the Medicare Part D bill - the largest entitlement program since the New Deal (and one which specifically forbade the government from negotiating with drug companies, leading to much higher costs for taxpayers in order to increase profits for pharmaceutical companies).

But never mind the hypocrisy. The McCarthyite charge of "Socialist" is yet another example of McCain using campaign tactics from the 1950's (for another example, see here).

In the 1980's, the conservative movement which elected Ronald Reagan was helped along by a book called "Free to Choose" by Milton and Rose Friedman, first published in 1980. The book helped promote the idea of less government regulation and laissez-faire economics, the culmination of which has been the economic meltdown of the last year.

Although I disagreed with it, the authors did an excellent job of making a good argument (ironically, Milton Friedman taught at the University of Chicago, where Barack Obama later taught). They argued that the U.S. in 1980 had an economic system dangerously close to socialism. In fact, in an appendix, they included the platform of the 1928 Socialist Party, to prove that many of the desires of the 1928 Socialists were in place already. The reader was meant to shudder and cringe in horror at the red menace which surreptitiously crept over the land, the book appendix version of the movie "Red Dawn".

But there's just one problem. Unless you're a knee-jerk idiot who only reacts to labels and doesn't look at substance, the 1928 Socialist Party platform isn't all that bad. It's a 14 point platform, and some of those points include:
* Abolishing child labor
* Abolition of exploiting convict labor
* Unemployment insurance
* Establishment of the five day work week

If you don't believe me, click on the preview in Google books here and scroll down to the appendix on page 311. Of course, there are some points addressing their desire to nationalize national resources, which would be controversial today if taken to the extreme. But if we had adult political debates in this country, instead of name calling, we could debate the pro's and con's of those positions and arrive at compromises.

So, the next time you hear a Republican call Obama a socialist, ask him or her if they are in favor of child labor. Or competing for their job with prison labor. Or want to abolish unemployment insurance. Or want to abolish weekends. Because unless they agree with all that, they too are a "Socialist."