PHONY "SOCIALIST" SCARE

We thought it was silly last fall when
candidates Mc Cain and Palen took up
the "socialist" claim against Obama. Now
it has gotten ridiculous, with senators,
congressmen, and assorted ditto heads
along with most of the nitwits at Fox Noise
parroting this nonsense. Michael Lind
writes (Salon 3/7/09): "Once upon a time
in the United States, public goods -- from
retirement security and energy research to
public roads -- were provided by the govern-
ment and paid for by taxes. As late as the
Nixon administration, the provision of
public goods by government was consid-
ered perfectly compatible with a robust
market economy by so-called Modern Re-
publicans like Eisenhower and Nixon as
well as New Deal Democrats like Roose-
velt, Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson. In
the intervening 40 years, however, free
market fundamentalists of the Chicago
School have managed to change the de-
bate, redefining "socialism" to mean not
only public ownership of the means of
production (the historical meaning), but
also public provision of public goods."

Which redefinition, of course, makes ex-
actly no sense at all. (Paul Krugman, James
K. Galbraith and George Soros are a few of
the foremost economists who have written
recent books soundly refuting the whole
free market liturgy, and Alan Greenspan
(long one of its most devout apostles), has
recently admitted that his faith was mis-
placed.

The truth is that our government has been
spending tax money to advance the public
good from our earliest days. In 1803 Tho-
mas Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase,
acquiring in one visionary stroke what is now
about one-third of our land. Abe Lincoln
not only gave away millions of acres of that
land through the Homestead Act, and mill-
ions more to the states for land-grant col-
leges, but also millions of acres to railroads
along with multi-million dollar loans to
build a transcontinental railroad. These
were all public programs that supported
private enterprises without the slightest
harm to capitalism. They used public funds
to promote the public good.

Also in the early days, the state of New York
built the 300 mile long Erie Canal to connect
the Great Lakes with New York City, making
the latter the biggest and richest city in the
country. Under Teddy Roosevelt, the U. S.
government built the Panama Canal, con-
necting the two great oceans. Previously,
corporations had attempted that difficult
feat, and failed. That is a great story, and
is told brilliantly in a new book by Felix Ro-
hatyn entitled: Bold Endeavors: How Our
Government Built America, and Why It
Must Rebuild Now. This book gives a fasci-
nating history of leadership required, and
the political obstacles overcome to get these
and other programs, like F. D. R.'s reforms
accomplished during the Great Depression.
I'll plan to go into these more later.

Jgoodwin004@centurytel.net