Can We Please Relax About ‘Socialism’?
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By David Bentley Hart,
Only in America is the word freighted with so much perceived menace.
To be trapped in the boarding area of a smallish airport in the upper Midwest is, as often as not, to be subjected to that bestial din of fricatives, gutturals, plosives and shrieks of hysterical alarm that constitutes political discussion on Fox News, pouring incessantly from those obnoxious pendulous ceiling televisions. And unless one fancies running the T.S.A.’s gantlet of gropers again, there’s no escape. The experience is especially nasty if one’s wait coincides with the prime-time shows hosted by those two almost indistinguishable fellows with the suety faces, bouffant coiffures and nerve-racking mezzo-castrato voices.
That fate, at least, I avoided a few weeks back. Instead, there I was with the commentator Ben Stein hovering over me like some grim heathen god, exuding all the effervescent charm of a despondent tree sloth, glumly wobbling his jowls and opining that Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez espouses a political philosophy that in the past led to the rise of Hitler and Stalin.
Now, I realize that this has become axiomatic on America’s excitable right. I know also that in this country we employ terms like “socialism” with wanton indifference to historical details and conceptual distinctions. I grasp too that many among us truly believe that, say, a higher marginal tax rate or a public subsidy for poor children’s dentistry is only a step away from the gulags.
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