by Mary Fahnestock-Thomas, Hamilton
Socialism is a political system in which the government owns the means of production, distribution, and exchange of goods. I suppose that sounds scary enough … unless, of course, the government is democratically elected by the people.
In the United States the word was used most adamantly starting before the Civil War by wealthy plantation owners (they were called Democrats at the time) who did not want enslaved people in the South to be freed or treated as equal to whites because it would cause a “redistribution of wealth.” That is, they would end up having to share their hard-earned riches with people of “lower class” and different skin color.
“Hard-earned riches.” Who was it that worked in the fields, sometimes under constant threat of flogging and mutilation, to make cotton “king”? It wasn’t the landowners, though they presumably did the paperwork.
The word “socialism” has apparently been used here ever since to mean that wealthy people think they have done all the work to get where they are, and they don’t want to share with the rest of us. Thus, if the federal government uses taxes to provide a social safety net for the less wealthy, like affordable healthcare and childcare, that’s socialism and a threat to their millions and billions and even trillions – which the Republican Party doesn’t even want to tax responsibly.
Well, I don’t think it’s fair that particular people should have most of the money, that particular other people should do all the work, that particular teams should win all the sports, that only particular people should be allowed to speak up, etc. So I must be a “socialist.”
But, despite capitalism, aren’t fairness and even generosity American values? Perhaps especially out here in the West? Or do our rights consist of having what we want, regardless of the wants and needs of everyone else?
It sounds as if the series “Yellowstone” supports this view, and if so, I’m disappointed in Kevin Costner and everyone else involved. It’s not the view I absorbed from the westerns I watched on tv as a kid. Do we have any idea where we are or where we’re headed?