How Bernie Sanders is Reviving an American Tradition

Telekat · Dec 14, 2015

http://inthesetimes.com/article/186...rnie-sanders-is-reviving-an-american-traditio

Socialism. For most of recent U.S. history, the word was only used in mainstream discourse as invective, hurled by the Right against anyone who advocated that the government do anything but shrink, as anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist once put it, to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.

How is it, then, that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a democratic socialist, has repeatedly drawn crowds in the thousands or tens of thousands in cities and towns throughout the nation and is within striking distance of Hillary Clinton in Iowa and New Hampshire? In a country thats supposed to be terrified of socialism, how did a socialist become a serious presidential contender?

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The United States has a richbut hiddensocialist history. Socialists and Communists played a key role in organizing the industrial unions in the 1930s and in building the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s; Martin Luther King Jr. identified as a democratic socialist; Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph, the two key organizers of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom were both members of the Socialist Party. Not only did Socialist candidate Eugene V. Debs receive roughly 6 percent of the vote for president in 1912, but on the eve of U.S. entry into World War I, members of the Socialist Party held 1,200 public offices in 340 cities. They served as mayors of 79 cities in 24 states, including Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Reading, Penn., and Buffalo.

Brutally repressed by the federal government for opposing World War I and later by the Cold War hysteria of the McCarthy era, socialists never regained comparable influence. But as organizers and thinkers they have always played a significant role in social movements. The real legacy of the last significant socialist campaigns for president, those of Eugene V. Debs and Norman Thomas, is how the major parties, especially the Democrats, co-opted their calls for workers rights, the regulation of corporate excess and the establishment of social insurance programs.

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Fascinating article.

Alucard · Dec 14, 2015

Democrat Socialism is non-violent, so, it is popular.

doombug · Dec 14, 2015

The socialist programs in the US have proven to be a failure.

jcarlilesiu · Dec 14, 2015

How can Bernie have a following? Because this country has become full of lazy, entitled, spoiled people.

That is all.

Socialism, and the movement is always supported by the have-nots who only have excuses and a victim mentality.

People who work for their money and expect to keep the fruits of their labor, while understanding the harm a large central controlling government can cause, are traditionally NOT socialist.

I am one of those.

Object227 · Dec 14, 2015

Alucard said: ↑

Democrat Socialism is non-violent, so, it is popular.
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Capitalism is also non violent so it is popular. Relative to socialism now? I don't know what is more popular. So much propaganda about both is so common that I doubt most public school graduates know what either actually is.

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How Bernie Sanders is Reviving an American Tradition

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How Bernie Sanders is Reviving an American Tradition

Telekat Member Past Donor

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