You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

In keeping with my habit of dredging up old news, one of the most disturbing aspects for me during the debt ceiling debate was the insistence, primarily from Republicans, on not hashing over who was to blame for the financial crisis. Sure, it sounds like an attempt to stay productive, rather than wasting time on the blame game, but even if the "who" was not important, the "how" and "why" could be really relevant, rather than forgetting the past so it could be repeated.

What bothers me, and it comes up on many topics, over and over, is the lack, not merely of intellect, but of intellectual honesty. People will say things that are, if not completely false, utterly twisted, and they don't care. I don't know if the mental process is a decision that the ends justify the means, or that it's close enough, or there is actual delusion. It may be a mix. For example, I don't think that Sarah Palin ever really believed in death panels, but I think that some of her listeners did. (And maybe I'm giving Palin too much credit.)

Anyway, one of the things that comes up a lot may actually be due to a lack of understanding, so I thought that I would take a crack at it. President Obama is not a socialist. The Affordable Care Act is not an expression of socialism. The Liberals are not socialists.

I realize I am going to be oversimplifying here, but even under the best of circumstances I tend to go on too long, so I think oversimplification is acceptable. Here we go.

Socialism derives its name from the means of production (farms, factories, etc.) being socially owned. This could mean that they are government-controlled, union-controlled, or maybe controlled by various collectives, but it is opposed to capitalism where generally speaking the capitalists (the people who have the money) control the means of production, and therefore are hiring and selling to the masses. (Again, this is super-simplified, but this is not even the important part, so just deal with it.)

The way this happens is that the masses rise up against their oppressors, be they government or private, and forcibly seize the means of production, and then eventually they move towards communism where everyone gives according to their abilities and receives according to their needs.

The end result of this oversimplification of Karl Marx sounds lovely, but never works. What tends to happen is that you end up with highly authoritarian states where everyone is poor, except for a select few at the top who do very well. Oddly, the socialist states often look very similar to the fascist states, even though they have different ways of getting there. This is one reason why past US policy of supporting any whack job fighting against the Communists has not gone well.

I don’t think the consistent failure of socialism is a coincidence. First of all, see my many previous posts about people being the problem. That one just never gets old. There’s more to it than that though. If your end goal is a society where everyone is unified and supportive of each other, the path to that does not start with the slaughter of other members of that society.

It’s not that you can’t make an argument that those greedy people are evil. We have plenty of evil capitalists around, and some of them may well deserve to be shot. However, once you decide that’s the answer, well, you are throwing away law and order, which has its own complications, and you have just become the tyrant.
And they rarely stop at the ruling elite. In Southeast Asia the royalty were targets, but so were people in the army that had served them, the Catholic priests and anyone who worked for them, and anyone deemed educated or intellectual, because we all know how dangerous thinkers are. I suspect there were other groups targeted too, but I’m just thinking of the refugees I knew, and why they had to leave. The point is, you are choosing hate and enmity instead of love and understanding, and for all the things that you can say against hippies, they are not likely to club you to death.

Now, does anyone really think that the President trying to make healthcare affordable is code for starting up a peasant rebellion against Koch Brothers and Kraft Foods?

Truly, socialism is now the code word for thinking that maybe the government should have some role in keeping life fair and bearable for those who do not fall inside of the 1%. (Yeah, the whole 1/99 thing is a total cliché now, but you immediately know what I mean and that’s what makes clichés work.)

Now here is the irony. This falsely labeled socialism, where there are safety nets and labor laws and regulations, is actually the best guard against the real socialism where the masses get miserable enough to start overthrowing their oppressors. The people who are coming the closest to promoting actual socialism are the Koch Brothers and Kraft Foods and Paul Ryan. How crazy is that!

(Koch Brothers is notoriously evil, but the reason I am picking on Kraft Foods is their participation in ALEC, which is a whole different rant, though certainly related.)

So here is my moderate request for some intellectual honesty. Okay, if you are going to choose evil, at least understand it and speak honestly about it. Don’t hold up signs requesting that the government stay out of your Medicare. And if you really do decide that your guiding philosophy is that you want the things you need, but you don’t want anyone else to have them, please quit trying to associate that with Christianity. That’s really not how it works.