Monday, March 1, 2010

An ideological Baskin-Robbins

Hendrik Hertzberg considers the many flavors of socialism as seen by the right:

Confusion about who is and who is not a socialist and what is and what is not socialism was endemic at C-PAC, as the conference’s participants affectionately call it. “The hope and change the Democrats had in mind was nothing more than a retread of the failed and discredited socialist policies that have been the enemy of freedom for centuries all over the world,” Senator Jim DeMint, of South Carolina, said, adding, in a reference to the President, “Just because you are good on TV doesn’t mean you can sell socialism to freedom-loving Americans.” Representative Steve King, of Iowa, listed the enemy within: “They are liberals, they are progressives, they are Che Guevarians, they are Castroites, they are socialists.” Then he mentioned a few more key segments of the Democratic coalition, including, besides Trotskyites, Maoists, Stalinists, and Leninists, “Gramsci-ites—ring anybody’s bell?” Strictly speaking, that should be Gramscians, followers of Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Communist Party leader of the nineteen-twenties. Ding-dong!

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2010/03/08/100308taco_talk_hertzberg#ixzz0gvyOpeeV

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