Can we put a moratorium on the word "socialist"? Pretty please?

Great Debates
21

wierdaaron,

I agree with you a zillion percent. As a Canadian watching discussions on public healthcare in the US, I find it quite interesting. Several years ago, when I was staying at a B&B in Vancouver, BC, there were a few couples from the US (as George W. was vying for leadership of the Republican party) and the discussion of public healthcare came up at breakfast one morning. In that discussion, it was apparent that Americans believed that we Canadians could not choose our own practitioners (blatantly and extremely untrue) and now the belief that public healthcare is bad because it’s “socialist” is tossed about.

Taxes have a purpose, beyond apparently screwing over hard-working citizens. Is ensuring that everyone have access to a guaranteed standard of roads more important than access to a guaranteed standard of health care? Just a thought, and I think, wierdaaron, that you hit the nail on the head quite effectively.

My humble advice to American citizens is as follows. Disregard what we in Canada do -it’s irrelevant to the debate and it’s a red herring. Disregard, as wierdaaron asks, labels, as they distract from the facts and turn the debate into a factless, insult-filled slugfest.

Ask yourselves, without using labels such as ‘left’, ‘right’, ‘democrat’, ‘republican’, or ‘socialist’ etc, the following questions - “If I get sick or injured, should my family necessarily be bankrupted?” or “If, through no fault of my own, or even through my own fault, I lose my job, should I be denied medical treatment?”

If your answer to the above questions is ‘no’ then, without using our (Canadian) healthcare system as a reference, design, setup and implement a system which accomplishes the objective. If you wish for a system that imposes a doctor on you, as many of you think happens in Canada, then design the system that way. If you wish for a system that allows you to choose your own doctor, as our system does, then design the system that way.

22

Rather than banning it, why not just point out it is not necessarily pejorative?

Like the term “racist” for instance–one of my favorites bandied about on this board as if the application of the label itself attached some sort of significance to the point being made.

“Racist” and “racism” are often used as if they were automatically pejorative–i.e as if simply attaching the label made a point all by itself. But if its meaning is taken as applying to the concept that there are innate differences among races, hardly a pejorative. Simply a scientific concept to be debated.

There is no government without socialism. It’s anarchy, or it’s varying degrees of socialism. Nothing wrong with the term at all.

23

I think we can all agree with these concepts. Unfortunately, the terms themselves are rife with misunderstanding and loaded with emotional content for most people. The idea is to stop using the terms not because they aren’t useful terms, but because people misuse them.

If we could get people to stop misusing (and mis-hearing) terms in another way, I’d be all for it, but I don’t see that happening.

24

The weird part is that someone that obviously ignorant even knows the name of Engels. (Everybody’s heard of Marx – Engels, not so much.)

25

As a scare-word, it’s terribly provincial - I think the retort “it’s socialist[and therefore intrinsically bad]” is quite likely to fall completely flat almost anywhere outside of the USA.

26

Attempting to outlaw words is such a common socialist tactic.

27

What socialism are we discussing? Our medical system has private hospitals, private pharmacies, private hospices, all buy equipment from private companies. The scream of socialism is just about insurance companies who produce nothing and take over 30 percent of the cost of healthcare.

28

Yes, if we take ‘racist’ as meaning something that it doesn’t actually mean, it’s not an insult. Well done.

29

You don’t “outlaw” or “ban” something with a “pretty please”.

30

Well, I don’t agree that “there is no government without socialism”. *Socialism *is not a synonym for government. It’s not even a *form *of government.

If I’m wrong, then perhaps now is the time for the more knowledgable posters to correct the Wikipedia article, which says:

In any case, the problem is not with the word but with misunderstanding it and using it frivolously and fatuously.

31

Maybe we should let the market decide instead.

32

New SDMB money scheme: Sell the use of certain words.

You wanna call someone a socialist? You get exclusive rights to that word by paying ten thousand dollars. One time use is 100 dollars.

33

That’s just how sneaky them Reds are! :mad:

34

…and you (plural) stop using “Randian” as a scare word for free markets

35

And stop calling white people “honkies”. :rolleyes:

36

I don’t think liberalism necessarily fetishises freedom. The taxonomy of liberalism belies the fact that it is a huge tent which is home to many competing ideas about political philosophy and political economy. At one end of the spectrum, you have those who may, indeed, stand accused of being entirely focused on an abstract primacy of rights view, which you might fairly characterise as being conceptually barren about the preconditions of human flourishing. But I don’t think you can characterise most of liberalism like this. I try not to let the surface inanities of popular usage determine how I use philosophical nomenclature.

37

America has a long and proud history of persecuting socialists. You can’t take that away from us!

38

My big gripe is “homophobe”, a word almost universally accepted for anyone who doesn’t approve of (or automatically accept 100%) anything having to do with gay rights or proposed gay rights.

My complaint against this word is that it is rarely applied to anyone who is actually phobic about gays. To me, it’s a word that was deliberately pressed into service on behalf of gays in order to portray anyone in opposition as, for want of a better term, having mental problems…this despite the fact that homosexuality is banned/discouraged/punished in most countries around the world and that the U.S. is among the vanguard of countries adopting gay rights.

The response of the left, when I voice this complaint, is that ours is a living language and since “homophobe” has come into common usage to be applied to anyone opposing gay rights, that is therefore what it means. In other words, everyone knows what is meant by the use of it whether it meets the dictionary definition or not.

In my opinion, the word “socialist” is evolving in the same way. It has come to mean someone who approves of a nanny-state government in which it’s the role of government to protect us, provide for us, keep us safe from the consequences of our own actions, redistribute wealth so as to make things more “fair” and/or to provide people who can’t care for themselves with the produce of others in order that they may be cared for, and to make sure society and the economy are one big pie from which everyone deserves more or less an equal slice without regard to their contribution toward the baking of the pie.

So in other words, tough. Words develop meaning they haven’t traditionally had, and when they do, and they become accepted by most of society under that new meaning whether we as individuals approve of it or not, then that’s just the way things go.

Thus, whether you personally want to enforce the traditional meaning or not, what society adopts for its use is the one that applies. Therefore you have to deal with “socialist” meaning something different than its traditional meaning and I have to deal with “phobe” meaning something different than its traditional meaning.

So what’s good for the goose (lib/Dems) is good for the gander (conservatives/Pubs). Either we’re going to have to stick strictly to dictionary meanings or we’re not, but it can’t be one-sided where lefties get to mould words into whatever meaning they want while conservatives have to stick to traditional dictionary definitions.

39

Ah, but individuals can convince others - and, gradually, society - that the new meaning is incorrect or inapplicable, and push the definition back in the other direction, can’t they? If enough self-labeled and self-defined socialists convince enough of society that your definition is crap (which it is), then it becomes meaningless.

Exactly. That’s a double-edged sword you’re wielding, there.

40

This is a ridiculous-enough caraicature as it is. I don’t think a lot of Americans would aggree that this describes their views. But “socialist” is used with an even more negative coonotation than that. There’s a sense in which it means, “enemy of the American way of life”.

You have to deal with it? :dubious:

The problem with “socialist” is that it’s an unfair exagerration. If I’m an inch-taker, don’t call me a mile-taker.

“Homophobe” may be a bit of a misnomer, but it’s negative connotations are fully deserved by those to whom the term is applied. If someone calls you a homophope, you’re supposed to feel like a bad person and change your attitude.

And enough of this bullshit whereby any flaw among “liberals” justifies full-blown evil on the part of conservtives.