Lately, I’ve been hearing an interesting word in the wake of our credit and financial crisis.  Traded among journalists, politicians and those “common folks” on Main Street, the endearment, comrade, has been rearing its ugly head.  One has to wonder what the implications are.  Obama has been criticized as having socialist views–but the American people are responding to his policy ideas.  Even McCain has hopped on the bandwagon with several of them.

UPDATE!!! I originally left this out, but realized that not everyone knows the “textbook definition” of Socialism. From American Heritage Dictionary:

 1. Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.
2. The stage in Marxist-Leninist theory intermediate between capitalism and communism, in which collective ownership of the economy under the dictatorship of the proletariat has not yet been successfully achieved.

In light of the recent remarks about certain individuals being socialists, let me remind everyone that the FEDERAL BAILOUT is, according to a strict interpretation, THE FIRST STEP TOWARD COMMUNISM, and it was perpetrated by the CURRENT administration as well as a majority of truly concerned parties. Thanks for letting me clear that up, now let us continue…

During the Second Red Scare in the 1940’s and 1950’s, many thousands of Americans (especially government employees) were accused of being Communist or Communist sympathizers. With investigations on Un-American Activities headed by Senator Joseph McCarthy, the decade was rough for government employees, educators, entertainers, and union activists.  The term that these actions spawned, McCarthyism, defined as “aggressively questioning a person’s patriotism, making poorly supported accusations, using accusations of disloyalty to pressure a person to adhere to conformist politics or to discredit an opponent, subverting civil rights in the name of national security and the use of demagoguery” (sounds like the post-9/11 fervor and the current presidential campaigns, right?), is now a derogatory term.  But at the time, any left-leaning ideas were suspect. From Wikipedia:

It had long been a practice of more conservative politicians to refer to liberal reforms such as child labor laws and women’s suffrage as “Communist” or “Red plots.” This tendency increased in reaction to the New Deal policies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Many conservatives equated the New Deal with socialism or Communism, and saw its policies as evidence that the government had been heavily influenced by Communist policy-makers in the Roosevelt administration.  

Some of these perceived threats were fairly socially acceptable, and not until the 1980’s did neoliberals attempt to tear apart the social welfare system. Theirs was an argument that government welfare and similar agencies were impediments to private entrepreneurship at public expense. This remains a battleground today in the BIG vs. small government debate in our major political parties. Wikipedia also mentioned:

Though McCarthyism might seem to be of interest only as a historical subject, the political divisions it created in the United States continue to make themselves manifest, and the politics and history of anti-Communism in the United States are still contentious. One source of controversy is the comparison that a number of observers have made between the oppression of liberals and leftists during the McCarthy period and recent actions against Muslims and suspected terrorists. In The Age of Anxiety: McCarthyism to Terrorism, author Haynes Johnson compares the “abuses suffered by aliens thrown into high security U.S. prisons in the wake of 9/11” to the excesses of the McCarthy era. Similarly, David D. Cole has written that the Patriot Act in effect resurrects the philosophy of McCarthyism, simply substituting ‘terrorist’ for ‘communist.'”[

Luckily, since many of us benefitted from these social reforms along the way, we can view these actions as preposterous now–or can we? This is a two-sided issue for today; we are in the throes of a financial disaster that has governments across the entire globe stepping in to save banks…and situations that necessitate social programs for the families that were affected by its damage or in need of government assistance in the first place. Sadly, this only proves that we are so dependent on a capitalist society that we would take formerly abhorrent socialist practices and apply them…so that we can return our capitalist economy to its former glory.

The humor in all of this is that, if McCarthy’s practices still existed today, more than likely, we would be investigating all of Washington and Wall Street for recent activities. McCarthy is probably still rolling in his grave after the Fed Bailout, but it makes for good politics.