I had a good chuckle over the Oct. 8 letter to the editor accusing “liberal democrats” of being “democratic socialists.” How many Democrats, liberal or otherwise, actually have advanced a socialist agenda? True socialists, no doubt, would be totally surprised to hear that they had. To be more specific, which industries have any Democrats advocated being nationalized? And “Medicare for All” (which last time I looked is not the official position of the Democratic Party) doesn’t count. Medicare in any form, operates by subsidizing a private, and largely capitalistic American health care system. What about calls for “confiscatory taxation,” even a return to the marginal tax rates in force in the 1950s and ’60s? Please point out where liberal democrats have used the words “redistribution of wealth in favor of the masses,” a major tenet of classical socialism.
Arguments made with very imprecise and vague terms, let alone distorted references to fact and evidence, often look much better as rhetoric than as logic.
As an economic philosophy or doctrine, socialism seldom has primary positions on religion, the “traditional family unit,” gender identification and nation states. Although governments or political parties with socialism as its economic platform may generate policy on these other questions. In a very unsettling assertion the letter writer states that liberal democrats as democratic socialists hold that “Race must be eliminated through mass immigration and eventual inter-breeding of the masses.” Should we assume he actually means “the white race” (a concept shown to be fictitious by genetic science)? Calls for white racial supremacy are surely not about socialism and certainly not about core American values.
And finally, there is the statement that “liberal Democrats know that their policy aims cannot win elections.” Is the writer aware that in 2016 Democrats (of all varieties) won the total popular vote for both president and Senate, and only 1 percent less total vote for House of Representatives? Seems as if there is very strong support for their policies, but that historical quirks and antiquarian provisions skew elections in the other direction.
Edward Mikel
Brier
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