The Republican tactic of implying that Barack Obama is a "socialist," and his programs constitute "socialism," is failing spectacularly, as it should.            

John McCain, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the Republican peanut gallery wouldn't know a real socialist (or bona fide socialism for that matter) if one came up and planted a big, wet, sloppy kiss on their lips.            

To be fair, most Americans have little if any idea what actually constitutes socialism, as opposed to Communism, or even simply social justice.  Conservatives tend to conflate any attempt at social, economic, or political justice and equalization of opportunity with socialism.            

I remember that the Civil Rights movement of the 1950's and 60's, headed by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was wrongly accused of being a socialist-if not actually Communist-conspiracy by people like J. Edgar Hoover, Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan.  So was the labor movement in the United States from the 1880's to the 1930's  (and, admittedly, sometimes it was), and most of FDR's New Deal Programs.            

My dictionary defines socialism as: "1. a. A social system in which the means of producing and distributing goods are owned collectively and political power is exercised by the whole community; b. The theory or practice of those who support such a social system." (The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition copyright © 1992 by The Houghton Mifflin Company.)            

Not one of Barack Obama's proposals fits these parameters, including the reality behind his comment about "spreading the wealth."  That statement is a concession to the simple truth that Voltaire pointed out almost two hundred-and-fifty years ago, "In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of the citizens to give to the other."  As I pointed out in my article "Taxing the System" (OpEdNews.com October 21, 2008), the sole choice is whether the wealth will be redistributed from rich to poor, or poor to rich.  For the last twenty-eight years, it has been redistributed from the poor, working, and middle class to the richest Americans, to the detriment of our nation and its institutions.             

To demonstrate the average American's ignorance of what constitutes socialism (as opposed to social justice); I have put together fifteen quotes from non-socialists and professed socialists, both Marxist and Fabian.  I have changed a couple of anachronistic words in these quotes, but I challenge you to tell me which quote came from a professed socialist(S), and which from a non-socialist (N).  My answers and sources are at the end of the article. 

If you correctly identified as socialist or non-socialist the author of more than nine of the fifteen quotes, without consulting your computer or a book; congratulations, you are extremely well read, or have had a first class education, or both.  I would guess the average score will be six or seven.  If you got three or fewer, turn off Fox News; quit reading Drudge, O'Reilly, and Coulter; quit listening to Hannity and Limbaugh.  Start reading.  Widely.  I suggest beginning with Kevin Phillips' Democracy and Wealth, Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, Thom Hartmann's Screwed, or Professor Ravi Batra's Greenspan's Fraud.  If you are ambitious, try Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations (followed by Kenneth Lux's Adam Smith's Mistake), and Thomas Paine's The Rights of Man. 

However, most Americans can take some comfort in knowing that they are not entirely at fault for their deficiency.  I lay much of the blame at the feet of Ronald Reagan and the Republicans, who have consistently underfunded education and de-emphasized the arts and social sciences for almost thirty years. I especially fault George W. Bush's "No Child Left Behind" program.  I think "No Child" has raised the dropout rate, as schools push people out to avoid loss of accreditation and funding.            

Not that the Republicans bear all of the responsibility for America's poor understanding of its history, and what is behind that history.  Too often, history classes have used rote memorization of trivial facts, rather than challenge the students to think critically about our nation's history.  We are not taught about the Greek and Roman history that influenced the writing of the Constitution, or the horrors of the Wars of the Protestant Reformation-including the English Civil War-which dominated the Framers' decision to erect a wall between church and State.            

The social sciences-history, geography, political science, anthropology, etc.-are important because they challenge the student's preconceived notions of how the world works and his place in it.  The arts (including literature) are important because they challenge our perceptions of beauty and reality.            

The inadequacies of our education system was brought home to me on Sunday night as I watched 60 Minutes, and the segment on the derivative market, and its relationship to our nation's current financial crisis.            

I had heard the term "bucket shops" in relation to Wall Street before, and was aware, tangentially, that they had been the cause of the Panic of 1907, in which J.P. Morgan had intervened to save several American banks.  This did not stop the resulting depression.  Several states passed laws outlawing this practice, as eventually did the Federal government.  This fiasco provided impetus to the creation of the Federal Reserve six years later.            

What I did not realize (until Sunday) was that what the "bucket shops" were engaging in was what we now call "credit default swaps."              

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