The pseudonym "Philo Vaihinger" has been abandoned. All posts have been and are written by me, Joseph Auclair.

Friday, October 16, 2015

Bernie is, and Hillary is not, a socialist

The outlook of a progressive, not a socialist.

As Michelle Goldberg quotes in Slate,

Hillary Clinton defended capitalism, not bombastically, but earnestly: “[W]e are not Denmark. I love Denmark. We are the United States of America. And it’s our job to rein in the excesses of capitalism so that it doesn’t run amok and doesn’t cause the kind of inequities we’re seeing in our economic system. But we would be making a grave mistake to turn our backs on what built the greatest middle class in the [sic] history.”

Her remark reflects, though it does not define, the outlook of a progressive or, as we used to say in the late 20th Century, a liberal.

Not a socialist.

A social democrat?

Well, it's a question of dosage, really.

Bernie, an alleged fan of Denmark, seems really in his sympathies way over there with Castro, the Sandinistas, the Russians, and other practitioners of overwhelming and even totalitarian socialism from Lenin to Che.

Hillary's sentiments put her about where the progressive presidents' practice put them.

Let the lying denials, bullshit smokescreens, and phony accusations begin.

Salon's writers are all but universally fellow-travelers at best and outright reds at worst.

As I mentioned before, if you surf the net for it you will find that while some people and some dictionaries define "red-baiting" as (1) denouncing someone as a communist, anarchist, radical, socialist, or what have you others define it as (2) falsely denouncing someone as a communist, anarchist, radical, socialist, or what have you.

Calling Bernie a socialist is only red-baiting in sense (1); it is definitely not red-baiting in sense (2).

But calling Hillary a socialist is red-baiting in sense (2).

I note that the left has also drawn parallels between Bernie and Jeremy Corbyn, and between and among both of them and Syriza as well as Podemos.

But now, when others do the same, they portray it as sinister, wicked red-baiting.

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