Since President Obama’s introduction of a comprehensive healthcare reform bill there has been a word rolling down the news media outlets and political blogosphere, picking up an ugly weight: socialism. In fact, so many of the right-wing conservative mouthpieces (see Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Sean Hannity for the big-hitters) have used it so often that you would think the word would be completely rung out; losing whatever nasty edge they attempted to attach. However, something unusual, and much more concerning, has happened; it’s earned the distrust and disdain of mainstream middle class America.

            For the last two years we’ve heard President Obama accused of a socialist, even communist agenda. Obamacare has been touted as unconstitutional even to the point of changing our very government from a democracy to some socialist welfare state. In 2008, Republicans even drafted an order that stated the Democratic Party should change its name to the Socialist Democratic Party. All of this has been in the name of American constitutionality, because according to the perpetrators of this myth, the United States was founded as a capitalist nation and all good Americans are thoroughbred capitalists.

            In a recent article by John Nichols in The Nation, two things are clearly demonstrated in no uncertain terms:

1.     This is not a new conservative tactic, and was, in fact, first perpetrated by the southern Republicans in 1856 before the Civil War.

2.     That socialist ideas have indeed been part of the American dialogue, and even guided our national polices and programs, since Abraham Lincoln’s administration (and even before).

Nichols points out that there are a number of significant federal programs that were enacted during the administrations of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and John F. Kennedy; none of whom were socialists. However, they borrowed what socialist democratic ideas were practical and beneficial to the country, rather than to write them off out of hand as “not the American way”. As Nichols masterfully points out, the American way is actually as varied and diverse as the people living it.

Public housing, Public school systems, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, interstate highway systems, even JFK’s War on Poverty were socialist ideas with plenty of merit. However, long after the adoption of these ideas into actual policies, their origin has been forgotten. The result is a lot of Tea Partiers and right-wing pundits decry socialism as an assault on American ideals, yet staunchly defend policies and programs that are, essentially, socialist ideas.

For instance, President Obama’s healthcare reform law (often flippantly referred to as Obamacare) was venomously referred to as “socialized medicine” by Tea Party advocates. However, in town hall meetings with representatives, these same folks decried any hint that legislators might attempt to cut entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid, which is by definition, socialized medicine. Historian Patrick Allit, quoted by Nichols in his article, suggests that these people, “are ardent supporters of socialism, even if they don’t realize it and even if they don’t actually use the word.”

This may sound like (at best) a defense of socialism or (at least) a semantic argument. It’s neither. It’s reframing the debate in this country away from the go-nowhere argument between liberals and conservatives, and calling it what it is, a philosophical conflict between socialist democratic ideals and capitalist ideals. However, in the past, by the nation’s leaders that truly made a lasting mark, it was never an “either/or” proposition, but a question of what will benefit the nation, and what will not. Until we return to a common sense national dialogue, and are able to speak free of dogged ideology or corporate bank-rolled manipulation, there will be no true progress.

Photo courtesy of leftcoastrebel.com