More MSNBC Goodness: "Socialist" = Conservative Codeword for N-Word?

Here's some more scintillating food for thought from our good friends at MSNBC:



Okay, let me get this right: referring to Obama et. al. as "socialists" is on par with people on the Left calling Obama critics "right-wing nutjobs."

So now it's a "generic Conservative bludgeoning tool" to refer to someone as a "socialist," or one who believes in socialist policies?

Let's have a little refresher as to what constitutes socialism:

Socialism refers to various theories of economic organization advocating state, public or common worker (through cooperatives) ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods, and a society characterized by equal access to resources for all individuals with an egalitarian method of compensation...

Socialists mainly share the belief that capitalism unfairly concentrates power and wealth among a small segment of society that controls capital, creates an unequal society, does not provide equal opportunities for everyone to maximize their potentialities and does not utilize technology and resources to their maximum potential nor in the interests of the public. Therefore socialists advocate the creation of a society that allows for the widespread application of modern technology to rationalize the economy by eliminating the anarchy in production of capitalism, allowing for wealth and power to be distributed more evenly based on the amount
of work expended in production, although there is considerable disagreement among socialists over how and to what extent this could be achieved....

Economically, socialism denotes an economic system of state ownership and/or worker ownership of the means of production and distribution.

Nah, that doesn't sound like what Obama's doing at all. Slapping someone whose policies promote increased state ownership of industry (Government Motors, anyone? Banking bailouts? Government-run health care?) with the label "socialist" is definitely name-calling. It MUST be a codeword for... that one word that starts with N and rhymes with Tigger. There's no way I'll type that one out.

I mean, how on earth could we possibly come up with such a crazy idea that Obama's a Socialist?!

Oh yeah. Because we're racist right-wing nutjobs.

PS: I think Winston Churchill had it right when he said:

...socialist policy is abhorrent to the British ideas of freedom. Socialism is inseparably interwoven with totalitarianism and the object worship of the state. It will prescribe for every one where they are to work, what they are to work at, where they may go and what they may say. Socialism is an attack on the right to breathe freely. No socialist system can be established without a political police. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance.