Bill Maher gets it right

"… over the last 30-odd years, the Democrats have moved to the right, and the right has moved into a mental hospital. So what we have is one perfectly good party for hedge-fund managers, credit-card companies, banks, defence contractors, big agriculture and the pharmaceutical lobby - that’s the Democrats. And they sit across the aisle from a small group of religious lunatics, flat earthers and Civil War re-enactors … who actually worry that Obama is a socialist. Socialist! He’s not even a liberal! ... Democrats are the new Republicans” (Real time with Bill Maher June 19).

Yeah, if only. If only Obama all along had been a closet socialist and when he won election in November 2009, stripped off capitalist lackey covering and showed his true colors, to govern for 4 years implementing a program of reform the likes of which this country hasn't seen since, say, the Nixon era.

Its amusing... how did socialism get to be a bad word? I understand how communism became loaded with negative imagery because of 1950s-70s cold war rhetoric, and because of the authoritarian policies of the governments in Eastern Europe; but socialist? The socialists made Europe the relatively benign place to live that it is today (see this book).