Socialist America

   The term "socialist" again faces a campaign to portray it with the same negativity that it had more than 50 years ago during the Red Scare era that pitted American values against the dictatorship of the Soviet Union. And even earlier, before World War Two, those opposed to the abuses that corporate capitalism foisted on workers seeking better wages and conditions, were castigated as "socialists."
   But the reality is that America has in place a wealth of social welfare programs, beginning with the introduction of Social Security and unemployment insurance in the 1930s, protection for workers seeking to organize labor unions, then right-to-work laws, along with Medicare and Medicaid, plus federal agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency, all of which, as well as others, set up to protect consumers.
   Nonetheless, political campaigners and fear mongers are emphasizing negativity as they remind voters that Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is a socialist. Senator Sanders himself has long used the term as he worked the halls of Congress to push programs to benefit all of society, not just the wealthiest of the wealthy, who don't need help.
   Republican spokesmen have been selective in their attacks on the Democratic administration of the past seven years, emphasizing the negative without an overall perspective. Example: Former GOP Chairman Haley Barbour said to Chris Matthews on MSNBC Wednesday evening that the American economy has had "the slowest recovery since World War Two" in the past seven years since Democrat Barack Obama has been President, and that "median household income is down."
   Both claims are true, but Barbour ignores the reality that Obama took office during the Great Recession, the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the early 1930s, both of which began during Republican domination in Washington. And as for median household income being down, this also is true, but it ignores the reality that income for wealthiest 1 percent, income has steadily risen.
   So that seems to be the strategy for Republicans this election year: Play up the negative, ignore the positive, and repeat the myth that socialism is inherently evil. There were and are dictatorships in Eastern Europe and other countries masquerading as socialist democracies, but the reality is they are neither. At the same time, full social welfare programs are common in other democracies, such as Great Britain, France, Germany and Canada, and they work well -- far better than similar programs in the U.S.
   Attacks on "the evils of socialism" are flimsy covers for the real goal -- to eliminate government sponsored programs that help those in need, and replace them with nothing, leaving the conservative elite in full control of everything.
   Or as George F. Baer, president of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, put it in 1901, "The rights and interests of the laboring man will be protected and cared for -- not by the labor agitators, but by the Christian men of property to whom God has given control of the property rights of the country."
   Contrast that with the phrase in the U.S. Constitution that says, "All men are created equal," with the "unalienable rights" of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
   Unless some are more equal than others, as George Orwell put it in his book, "Animal Farm." It follows, then, that those who are not "Christian men of property," as Baer claimed, should keep quiet, know their place and do as they're told by their betters.
   Fat chance.