Socialism::the dirtiest word in American politics

You hear Republicans like Mitt Romney decrying Obama for leading us to a European socialist future. Who does he mean? Not Finland, Germany, the Netherlands and Luxumbourg who, unlike us, still have a AAA rating. Are they picking on poor little Greece or Ireland? Nick Kristof points out that even Europe’s poorest countries produce a wealth of beguiling supermodels. So let’s pick on someone our own size, like Canada, that bilingual socialist monarchy to the north (or the south if you live in Detroit). But wait a minute, even with full national health services it’s the only industrial country that didn’t have a bank failure during the Crash. The truth is that these critics wouldn’t know Keir Hardie from Oliver Hardy. When I was a freshman at UCLA I asked my political science prof. why there was no major socialist party in the US and he answered simply, “There’s no sentiment for it”. OK, point well taken. I re-read Marx last week, the Communist Manifesto, hardly a sound bite and not a single mention of socialism. It is primarily an economic history showing how feudalism gave way to the medieval guilds then the industrial revolution and finally Adam Smith capitalism. What it really seems to point out is that the 99% and the 1% have always been with us. Capitalism creates and destroys over and over again. But here’s a positive note. Warren Buffet is on the cover of Time this week being called The Optimist. Way back in 1935 Alexei Stakhanov was also on the cover of Time. He is the Soviet miner who could produce 5 times his quotas every day. He’s the model for Boxer, the hard-working horse in Orwell’s “Animal Farm”. You see, the sage of Omaha and the lowly miner actually have something in common: they’re both optimists. Workers of the world you have nothing to lose but your credit cards.