Eugene Debs was a Socialist

Absent the comic genius of Carlin, I used his logic in my article to talk about the word "social". The conclusion I came to was that the word "social" in almost all of its variations carries a positive ambiance; in almost all of its variations. However, combine the word social with the suffix "ism" and, voila, Mr. Hyde! A word otherwise used to describe a desired relationship among people becomes instantly dangerous.

I don't bring this up as a veiled attempt to get readers to go back and read my article. That having been said, I don't write for practice, so I'd never discourage anyone from reading or rereading any of my articles.

I bring up this article to explain why the following question doesn't shock me:

"Does anyone reading this realize how close we came to having a completely socialistic government?"

This question was submitted in a letter to the editor of Montana's Billings Gazette. The writer reminds us that 60 Democratic seats in the senate would have given them "unbridled control of this country."

The letter writer is determined that this "socialistic" Congress, along with its "Messiah", would be certain to go from hunter's home to hunter's home confiscating rifles and ammo.

Obama's stance on gun control, and guns need to be controlled to some extent, can be found at the On The Issues web site.

He wants most semiautomatic guns banned and he wants to keep guns out of the inner city where they serve one purpose and one purpose only. Aside from those caveats, it's clear that it's not his intention to take sports men's guns away. The letter writer's insistence that The President does, indeed, want to take them away shows the lack of research effort that was made before the letter was submitted.

According to the writer, it gets worse. "..goodbye Bush tax cuts- which people living on the backs of working taxpayers hate - and goodbye freedom."

The tax cuts that The Regime passed were passed for the benefit of those who collect their money by waiting, not by working. The tax cuts that The Regime passed lessened the tax burdens for nonworking taxpayers and corporations, not for "working taxpayers". If people are living on the backs of these wealthy taxpayers, that can be easily resolved. The filthy rich taxpayers and corporate upper management can get them off of their backs and hire them.

"Good-bye freedom" is an interesting phrase. We see this man's warning progressing from a hunter's weapons search and destroy mission, to a repeal of tax cuts for people who don't need them and whose taxes would pump needed revenue into the economy, to some kind of government driven incarceration. The writer predicts all of this because of a change from capitalism to socialism that's never been proposed by anyone in the Obama Administration. Ah, but let's not lose site of the "ism" that magically creates high stepping Soviet troops marching through Moscow – or, possibly, Billings - on Mayday.

Fortunately, in the opinion of the writer, "Chambliss, the Republican incumbent senator" won Georgia's revote. There's no doubt that the writer attributes this good fortune to the fact that Chambliss's "Democrat" opponent brought in "old drunken, skirt-chasing Ted Kennedy and self-confessed war criminal John Kerry" from the "socialist state of Massachusetts" to stump for him.

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Michael Bonanno is an associate editor for OpEdNews.

He is also a published poet, essayist and musician who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Bonanno is a political progressive, not a Democratic Party apologist. He believes it's (more...)
 

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