Skip to main content

Is socialism fringe?

Fox News in a story on the "Socialism Rising" talks about the new crop of democrats entering congress and their "socialist" ideals as being a fringe movement. Ideals, like accessible healthcare and education, funded in part by higher marginal tax rates for the ultra-wealthy are seen as insane concepts.

It's like calling the metric system a fringe idea. Every country in the world uses it except Burma, Liberia, and the US. according to the author of the 1981 book Metric Madness: Over 150 Reasons for NOT Converting to the Metric System, the conversion process was considered by many to be a communist conspiracy.

In fact, most of the western world embraces those ideals. College tuition in most European countries is free or relatively inexpensive. American tuition costs are among the highest in the world. Almost all developed countries offer universal healthcare. United States is one of the few countries that do not guarantee access to healthcare.

These kinds of policies are not fringe. They are accepted and adopted by almost every country but the US. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

When did "progressive" become a bad word?

I see the term "progressive" used in a negative context more often than not. It's used to describe people on the fringe. Since when did progress become a negative thing? From a political standpoint, progressives are tired of things not working. They are tired of political inaction on the problems that face society today. They want thing to move forward, which is the original sense of the word. "When did "progressive" become a bad word?"  In Canada, one of the leading political parties is the Progressive Conservatives. They realize that being conservative does not mean keeping the status quo when the status quo is not working. The world is changing whether we like it or not and we need to be progressive to deal with these new realities. Today's problems can't be fixed with yesterday's solutions.

The amateurization of politics

In an article titled Activist groups are ‘amateurizing’ our political candidates , the authors make a point that a concern is that "the groups are magnets for amateur candidates." He is right. They are amateurs. That's the way politics was meant to be. People from communities who were elected to represent their communities in Washington and then return home to pass the torch to another person who was committed to community or public service. They were very much connected to their communities and could represent their needs effectively. The political system breaks down when politics becomes a professional career. We can see the detrimental effects of this shift as politicians stop servicing their communities and start servicing the businesses and individuals who can support their professional career. And since their salary is limited, they start accepting bribes from the wealthy. Of course, doing so is only self-serving and doesn't serve the people who they supp...