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36% of Americans view socialism favorably.
You know who is making socialism more popular? The American Right.
First, you have all these hateful rightists going on about how Obama is a "socialist." They should research what a socialist actually is. If they did, they would realize that a conservative politician like President Obama is far from a socialist. However, the nuts who keep saying this don't realize that they are having an unintended impact on our society.
The far right's policies and attitudes have driven our country into a ditch. The rightists' behavior gets more erratic and bizarre with each passing day. They are understandably unpopular among reasonable people. So, anything they throw tantrums over will get a favorable looking over these days.
Also, the right fringe is fond of referring to a lot of things that aren't socialist as being so. Here are some of them.
- Increasing taxes on the rich
- Bringing back strong regulation of the financial markets
- Taxing unearned Wall St. bonuses
- Unemployment insurance
- Repealing NAFTA and withdrawing from the World Trade Organization
All of these things are liberal policies that are alternatives both to socialism and to the positions of the right. All of these things are perfectly reasonable, and they all have strong historical track records. When the ignorant right refers to these things as "socialism," the expected result is that socialism starts looking really good.
The right is rebranding socialism in a way that helps to sell it. If the right doesn't want the general public to start looking into real socialism and start thinking about actually becoming socialist, the smart thing would be to shut up about the whole socialism thing.
Wouldn't it be weird if Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh ended up being instrumental in turning America into a socialist country?
Psycho Woman Throws Knives At Children
13 years ago
I hope you're right but here in Massachusetts, they've just voted socialism out by electing Scott Brown.
I wish Glen Beck and Limbaugh would go over the edge even more! I keep hoping it happens one of these days when some wingnut really loses it.
I've really been diggin' the Man Ray! :-)
As a libertarian I'd like to hear your definition of socialism, because if you truly look at history, "Communist" China and Russia were really socialist, trying to reach the communist stage. So in my opinion, socialism means that the government tries to fix the problems that the people have instead of letting the people resolving them themselves, which is exactly what Obama, Bush, Clinton... and really every president for the last hundred years was.
Pagan Sphinx: The majority still has an unfavorable view of socialism, but the minority is getting larger.
Marc: I use the standard definition:
Government ownership and control of property and the means of production.