via Harold Meyerson – Revolutionary Rush – washingtonpost.com.
Ah, the delicious irony of it all:
According to a Rasmussen poll released last week, 37 percent of Americans under age 30 prefer capitalism, 33 percent prefer socialism and 30 percent are undecided. Among all Americans, 53 percent prefer capitalism, 20 percent prefer socialism and 27 percent are undecided…
…The data on the young are particularly telling. Twenty-somethings are more open to socialism — or social capitalism — than 30-somethings not only because they never lived through the Soviet threat but because the economy, during the years in which deregulatory policy and Wall Street financialization were at their height, hasn’t worked very well for them. Americans under 29 scored well to the left of the general public in a recent survey by the Center for American Progress, and voters under 30 backed Barack Obama by a 34-point margin in November, 66 percent to 32 percent.
The young may now disdain Wall Street — but what do they know of socialism, past and present? Who even speaks of socialism in America today? The answer, of course, is the demagogic right. According to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and their ilk, Obama is taking America down the Socialist Road. As Benjamin Sarlin has noted on the Web site the Daily Beast, the talkmeisters of the right have linked a doctrine that never commanded much support in America to a president whose approval rating hovers around 60 percent and much higher than that among the young.
Rush and his boys are doing what Gene Debs and his comrades never really could. In tandem with Wall Street, they are building socialism in America.
Go Fox, go Rush, go Sean, heck of a job there boys! They’re doing more to build socialism in American than Molotov, Trotsky and Mao put together. Their nearly complete ignorance of what socialism is coupled with a willingness to throw around the accusation willy nilly is having the effect of pushing American youth further to the left.
This is not to say that I believe a “worker’s paradise” is imminent or even desirable, but the excesses of the right are chipping away the future of the right and the GOP. As I’ve said several times before, we need a right center party to counter balance the Democrats.
Look we’ve already tried it their way and the results are in: utter failure for American world standing and its economy. A very narrow swath of already very wealthy people did even better. But that’s about it. The rest of us have suffered stagnant wages, joblessness and destitution. Perhaps it will all accidentally bring a bit more balance to American political life.
