Of course they are Socialists!

               Denial is a coping mechanism that prevents us from dealing with difficult problems.  I love my dog Cricket, partly because her lustrous black coat reminds me of the comfortable furry body of my late husband.   For months I denied her shedding problem, but I finally had to admit that she not only sheds, she molts, large tufts and scattering threads of hair, anathema to my house guests.

               John Beisner is in denial as well.  The Democrat agenda socialist?  “Hardly,” he says.  Norman Thomas, six-time Socialist Party candidate for president, said himself that we didn’t need a socialist party in America any more because the Democrats had so thoroughly adopted their platform. 

               According to Mr. Beisner,  I blame politicians of “the Democrat persuasion” for the shrinking of the middle class.  Actually, I respect Democrats for being forthright about their platform: raising taxes in order to increase the scope of government. The politicians for whom I have the least respect are Republicans who pretend to abhor large government waste but who, as one friend of mine says, “fall in love with the smell of marble” and abandon principle the moment get their first whiff.

               Beisner also fails to fully explain problems with with regard to income disparities.  It is probably true that incomes rose by 111 per cent between 1954 and 1982, but he fails to reckon with the fact that the cost of living rose by 300 per cent. The major reason the middle class has lost buying power is the grotesquely burgeoning cost of government regulations which have tripled in recent decades, strangling the middle class and suffocating entrepreneurship.

       President Obama scoffs at the notion that he supports socialist policies, but Newsweek magazine had it right.  “We are all socialists now.”  And history is undeniable.  Socialism is a kind of Dracula that feeds off the blood of its people, sapping them of strength and ingenuity. The ruling elite live lavishly in their seaside dachas, the rest of us stashed like worker bees in hive-like housing projects, carefully monitored, under constant surveillance, zoned out on alcohol or marijuana, or a daily ration of soma tablets.  

        Hello “Brave New World.”