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2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: "Everyone now is more or less a Socialist" [View all]Babel_17
(5,400 posts)46. Working for love, in all the wrong places
The point here is not to say that everyone on the left needs to embrace every aspect of socialism or even more modestly social-democratic ideals.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/the-s-word-by-john-nichols-is-a-history-of-american-socialism/2011/03/10/AFbIg12C_story.html
THE S WORD
A Short History of an American Tradition . . . Socialism
By John Nichols
Verso. 307 pp. Paperback, $19.95
What do Thomas Paine, Walt Whitman, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. have in common? According to John Nichols, Washington correspondent for the Nation and a contributing writer for In These Times, these legendary Americans were more than a little bit red. The United States is a country that has always been and should continue to be informed by socialists, socialist ideals and a socialist critique of public policies, Nichols writes in The S Word, a search for the legacy of our homegrown radicals. Socialist ideas, now so frequently dismissed not just by the Tories of the present age but by political and media elites that diminish and deny our history, have shaped and strengthened America across the past two centuries.
Nicholss history isnt merely wishful. The party of Lincoln will be surprised to learn that in 1864 the 16th president corresponded with Karl Marx through intermediaries. Fans of Wisconsins anti-union legislation probably arent familiar with Emil Seidel, who, in 1910, became the first socialist mayor of an American city: Milwaukee. And Nichols isnt shy about his contempt for conservatives who romanticize the disconnected libertarian living in individualist isolation or Third Way lefties who abandon progressive values for votes. The point here is not to say that everyone on the left needs to embrace every aspect of socialism or even more modestly social-democratic ideals, Nichols writes, criticizing the centrist Obama administration as forcefully as he does Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. Those who stand on the left . . . would do well to consider their relationship with the one word that still has the power to frighten, inform and inspire Americans.
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As a Sanders Supporter, I agree. Socialist Democrats would be more acceptable. I think it
libdem4life
Dec 2015
#3
Linguistics is culture...a noun is different than an adjective used to delineate a noun. We start
libdem4life
Dec 2015
#7
Who cares about Norway or Sweden. They don't get a vote here. I'm ignoring your
libdem4life
Dec 2015
#68
What is fascinating, if you'll look back, I agreed with you. From there on it was parsing
libdem4life
Dec 2015
#78
There are more tendencies within socialist philosophies than just Marxism.
Fantastic Anarchist
Dec 2015
#30
You are fighting a losing battle here, Babel. DU'ers who support HRC have nothing to add to the
mother earth
Dec 2015
#80