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May 13, 2015

Call him a ‘socialist,’ but many Americans agree with Bernie Sanders: "'[60%] of Americans agree with him that the ‘economic system unfairly favors the rich...'"

Is America ready for the “S” word?
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats in Congress, is the only candidate so far to challenge Hillary Clinton for the 2016 Democratic nomination for president.
Sanders, who is 73 and has been in Congress nearly a quarter century, describes himself as a “democratic socialist.” 
Although Sanders won re-election to the Senate in 2012 with 71% of the vote in his state, it is, to say the least, not politically correct in this country to call yourself any kind of socialist.
John Nichols, a writer for The Nation, titled his 2011 book, “The ‘S’ Word: A Short History of an American Tradition…Socialism,” precisely because, he said, “it is the subject of daily derision, a derision that is at once more intense and more ignorant than at any point in the long history of the United States.”
That is due in no small part to the sharp right turn taken by the Republican Party and the steady stream of right-wing blather on radio and television, where “socialist” is used as shorthand for big government, welfare, high taxes, and any other nefarious policy Rush Limbaugh and his cohorts care to attach to it.
But it is also due to the residue of the long Cold War demonization of communism and the failure of centrally planned economies in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Cuba, and China.
Of course, the Marxism-Leninism of those countries is only one strand of a progressive socialist tradition that also includes social democracy in its various forms, which is still a vital political force in most European countries — most prominently in Scandinavia.
Comfortable in the conviction that the U.S. is the biggest, strongest economy in the world with the highest standard of living, Americans have for decades tended to sneer at these European countries as inferior, bogged down economically by anti-business policies.
But it is slowly dawning on wide portions of the American public — crushed by stagnant wages, robbed of middle-class jobs by competition with low-wage countries, deprived of health care, burdened by student debt and the astronomical costs of a college education — that this supposed superiority of ours is no longer true, if it ever was.

7 comments:

  1. “There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” – Warren Buffet, NY Times 11/26/2006

    DAVOS ............ the Billionaire's UNION MEETING ...................... while the "Freedom to Work" JUDAS ISCARIOTS have been undermining the Worker's organizations,the BILLIONAIRES have become ever MORE organized. From the Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, Bilderbergers, DAVOS ..............they have tightened the noose around the neck of the Working Man. They screen members in their FRATERNITIES and at Country Club socials .......
    1) Doctors have UNIONS, one is the American Medical Association.
    2) Lawyers have UNIONS, one is the American Bar Association.
    3) ALL Professions have UNIONS ...... they have Trade Associations, They have Trade Publications
    Fraternities, Country Club Memberships are "screening" areas to ensure UNION solidarity............
    P.S. YOU pay for THEIR Union Dues &Meetings.
    Without Unions the WORKERS would not have living wages, vacations, sick days, pensions, 40 hour weeks, overtime, SAFE work conditions..... LOSING all that? Just as the Unions are undermined and destroyed? WHAT A COINCIDENCE !!!!
    Be sure to THANK a "RIGHT to SLAVE" propagandizer next time you see one.

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  2. 'divide and conquer', let's keep arguing over terms such as socialist or democrat, republican or communist...He is a veteran and an American...he has more integrity than most all of congress put together, Hillary included....as Gerald Celente said, 'America's business is war',
    Mr. Sanders has consistently voted against wars...Him and Ron Paul have this in common..stop killing people and bring our troops home!

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  3. Sanders will have to do something or he might actually stand a chance of winning. If the polls start to show Sanders winning on a consistent and wide basis his life would be in grave danger.

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  4. If 'socialism' means 'government redistribution of income,' then Republicans are socialists, because they use government power all the time to steal other peoples' land and oil. The Koch brothers wouldn't last two seconds without the government to protect them from angry villagers armed with pitchforks and torches whose clean water they've stolen.

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  5. Hail to the great US CEO crowd! Hail! You wouldn't like to see your CEO's impoverished and without private jets?


    Hail! Hail!

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  6. yep, you nailed it, and amen to everything.
    hehe
    instead of comenting, Il show the present with this video
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl160czHD-c

    peace

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  7. The whole point of democracy rest in the natural counterbalance to power by the masses of the people. The whole point of having the world's worst health care system, allowing GMO's, fomenting wars worldwide and inducing poverty is to kill off the masses.

    Our nation is literally run by murderers.

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