Good god, do you really need it pointed out there is a major difference between someone being a socialist who is running for office in a democratic republic and someone who is a socialist taking office in a totalitarian dictatorship?
Francois Mitterrand was a socialist and I don’t recall any genocide taking place in France during his years as a democratically elected President of the Fifth Republic. I realize Randy Paul is just pandering to the GOP base but I actually expect more sense from you. I can’t really say why I expect it but I do. Silly me apparently.
Kolak, I understand the differences. I just wonder why you’re surprised that the word socialist would be associated with Mao and Stalin in the eyes of a lot of Americans.
Socialism is a dirty word here. Exploiting that is just politics.
Specially when he is not going to be the candidate for the Republicans, it does however show the type of voter that people like Paul does know that Trump and Carson are attracting right now.
The type of voters who don’t like socialism and aren’t too concerned about distinctions between socialists who just want to take your property and those who want to kill you?
As noted you are then now swimming in the ignorance, not fighting it. In my experience that same type of voter also is attracted to the idea that a coup in the USA can be a good idea.
:dubious: I wonder if anyone online has a list of historical American socialists.
Are Americans in general put off by the likes of Eugene Debs? W. E. B. Du Bois? Upton Sinclair? Lucille Ball? Dorothy Parker?
I expected Martin Luther King, Jr. to be listed. Or Bayard Rustin. Well, they were friendly to “democratic socialism,” anyway.
There is a type in any country who despise socialists: the rich elites who burn £50 notes in the faces of beggars. So what?
There is in the USA a second type: an anti-communist, fearful of religious persecution and/or having to (gasp!) pay taxes. I don’t know how common it is outside the USA for middle-income types to have such a ridiculous knee-jerk reaction against the very word “socialism.”
Anyway, the rich toffs who sneer everywhere at socialism (as well as at democracy, labor, and equality) can be dismissed as a peculiar special-interest class. The other type of anti-socialists are misguided, and it’s high time their foolishness is confronted head on.
I don’t think Americans would have elected any of those people in any era. Americans’ reaction to socialism is just as irrational as Europeans’ reaction to any political philosophy labelled “American”.
No, the vast majority of people want something that is actually socialist. They just are ignorant about what the word means. The majority of people support public schools, public roads, Medicaid, Social Security, food stamps (even if they are concerned about abuse), etc.
Also, way to make your opponents right. You do this a lot. You have a leg to stand on, but then you pull it out from under you because you’d rather attack. You had a point when you started talking about how “socialism” is an American boogeyman. Then you piss it all away by acting like you believe in boogeymen.
That’s fucking stupid. Thinking you could never support a coup is actually the stupid or immoral decision in that scenario. If our government so breaks down that the constitution is being completely violated, a revolution of some sort would pretty much be necessary. You’ve got a complete government breakdown at that point.
I mean, they said they couldn’t even imagine a situation where they would support a coup. That’s scary. No matter how locked out of the government they get and how bad said locked out government acts, they would not support the only action available to fix the problem.
Either they lack imagination, or they are surprisingly more jingoistic than I thought even Americans were.
Er, several of the American socialists on foolsguinea’s linked list were in fact elected to political office by Americans.
E.g., Pennsylvania state legislators Darlington Hoopes and Lilith Martin Wilson, Wisconsin state legislators William Aldridge, Thomas Duncan and several others, and Wisconsin US Representative Victor Berger, to name a few.
adaher, it sounds like you agree that Republican politician should and do take advantage of their constituents’, or potential constituents’, ignorance; that they can and do manipulate and misguide potential voters.
While I think it’s par for course for Republicans go the ignorant route, a part of me is saying that this is just another instance of Democrats completely sucking at messaging.
Adaher, do you understand what this thread is for?
Rand’s comment about genocide is deeply stupid. Either he’s an ignoramus, or he’s a liar pandering to fear and ignorance. Either way, he belongs in this thread.