But in the United States, the Left becomes apoplectic at the mere insinuation that they may have socialist leanings. They obfuscate by bickering about the meaning of the term. They rewrite history by presenting false results of past socialist policies. And they fraudulently portray themselves as pro-business, low tax moderates to get elected.
But this is nothing new. From the early days of the twentieth century, socialists in America have attempted to hide their identities because of the disfavor they found among the general population. This trend can be seen in the life of one of the patron saints of the American "Progressives," John Dewey. As Tiffany Jones Miller recounts in her article for National Review Online:
...Dewey initially embraced the term "socialism" to describe his social theory. Only after realizing how damaging the name was to the socialist cause did he, like other progressives, begin to avoid it. In the early 1930s, accordingly, Dewey begged the Socialist party, of which he was a longtime member, to change its name. "The greatest handicap from which special measures favored by the Socialists suffer," Dewey declared, “is that they are advanced by the Socialist party as Socialism. The prejudice against the name may be a regrettable prejudice but its influence is so powerful that it is much more reasonable to imagine all but the most dogmatic Socialists joining a new party than to imagine any considerable part of the American people going over to them.”When the term Progressive eventually fell out of vogue due to their radical socialist policies, they changed their moniker to "Liberal." When this guise failed to hide their true intentions, they have recently tried to go back to Progressive. It's really rather pathetic.
Socialists try to muddy the waters by claiming that a policy is not socialist because it isn't exactly what the Soviets, or Cubans, or some other overtly socialist regime did. They provide their own very narrow definitions of socialism to prove that they themselves are not, indeed, socialists. They deride anyone who claims their policies are socialist by saying, "You do not even know what socialism is."
Well...good try, but socialism is not a monolithic set of principles, but rather a range of principles with origins in the French Revolution and with the philosophies of Rousseau, Hegel, Proudhon and others. These philosophies combined into a school of thought that gave birth to many different variations of socialism and communism. The Socialist Party USA's web site lists eight different main branches of socialism as: Class Struggle Socialism, Religious Socialism, Utopian Socialism, Social Democracy, Councilism, Socialist Humanism, Anarchism and Eclectic Socialism. All of these branches have their own bent on the basic socialist philosophies.
Another diversion used by the Left is to say that because people use the terms socialism, communism and Marxism interchangeably just proves that they don't know what they are talking about. Well, apparently, then, neither did Karl Marx and Frederick Engels (the authors of The Communist Manifesto). They did not make firm distinctions between communism and socialism. They actually referred to their body of ideas as "a scientific socialism." And in fact, another name for Class Struggle Socialism is Marxist Socialism. According to the book Keywords: a vocabulary of culture and society, by Raymond Williams, some accounts have it that the use of the words "socialism" or "communism" was related to the religious attitudes in a culture. Europeans liked "communism" but the English preferred "socialism" because it didn't sound so close to "communion" with it's Catholic overtones. But by 1847, according to Engels, "Socialism" was respectable on the continent and "Communism" was for the working class. So, in essence, the whole argument draws false dichotomies and is useless to an honest discussion.
So why do the Leftists shy away from the label of socialist? Why don't they take off the masks and be honest about who they are and what they stand for? If they believe their ideas are valid and noble, why don't they openly state them and let the people decide?
Ah...but therein lies the issue. The Left truly believes, and will admit amongst themselves, that you, I and the vast majority of the general populace are too stupid to understand that their way is best. We must, they think, be lead by the elite intelligentsia. This idea was clearly stated by Woodrow Wilson's chief propagandist Edward Bernays, who's books were used by Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels. Bernays states:
"Ours must be a leadership democracy, administered by the 'intelligent minority' who know how to regiment and guide the masses. The common interests very largely elude public opinion entirely, and can be managed only by a specialized class whose personal interests reach beyond the locality."
Or, to bring it up to date, President Obama's Regulatory Czar, Cass Sunstein, states it this way, "Once we know that people are human and have some Homer Simpson in them, then there's a lot that can be done to manipulate them." It is because of this attitude that the left does not care that Americans “by a 2-to-1 margin, say their political views in recent years have become more conservative rather than more liberal.” To them, this is to be expected, it is only the few elite that are intelligent enough to be "liberal." This is why they "never waste a good crisis" and use them to scare us idiots into submission. It is why they believe in central planning and that only they can redistribute wealth properly. They are the smart ones after all.The Left will never own up to their true intentions. They will always treat the general citizenry as if we are just stupid Homer Simpsons who must be manipulated and ruled like the cattle that they believe that we are. But, it is us Homers who have the power in this country...and their masks have slipped. We see them for who they are. And now it's time we teach them a few things about how our country really works.
