Voting Ignorantly

IN EVERY AMERICAN ELECTION, it seems, its only a matter of time until the candidates start calling each other dirty names, like "socialist". When we get desperate, we resort to vicious name calling in American politics. Its always republicans accusing democrats of harboring socialist tendencies. Latent, insidious, evil socialism, lurking just beneath the surface of the opposing liberal Democratic candidate, ready to spring forth and devour all that is good and right and clean in America if you vote for the wrong person. Roosevelt was accused of being a socialist before he was even elected president in 1932, and since he hardly bothered to campaign that year against the already defeated Herbert Hoover, nobody really knew much about him. But within a few weeks of his administration's beginning, Roosevelt revealed that he truly was a socialist, and had to live with the accusations the rest of his long presidency. In 1920 and again 1932, socialist presidential candidates got more than a million votes. The young African-American running for governor of Georgia is the latest to be accused of socialism; they can't accuse him of being black, so, they use the next best thing. What Democrats should start doing is owning up to it, pleading guilty to being, at least partly, socialists. The same people who don't believe in climate change or evolution, our dear ignorant Christian conservative friends, seem to be confused about what socialism is as well. Socialism is governmet control of the economy, and in the United States, we have plenty of that. Many of our most basic goods and services are delivered through socialistic institutions, because its teh best way to deliver them' police and fire departments, roads and highways, schools, and so many other examples, owned and operated by the government with no profit motive; socialism. No matter who you are, if you are an American and you don't want your local police department to be a private profit seeking business, you are partly a socialist. When accused of it, Democrats should say: "I am part socialist, part capitalist". Actually, republicans should say the same thing, but will probably never bring themselves to it, because their entire agenda is based on the false idea that socialism is some kind of evil dictatorial. government, rather than merely public ownership. Better education, about such matters as climate change, evolution, and socialism would assist American society in having more intelligent policy discussions. For the present, too many of our conservative electorate are ignorant of the basic facts,