I probably shouldn’t post this and Rachel Maddow never should have broadcast this lest Republican voters get the joke before they nominate Herman Cain.

I first learned about John Nichols’ book The “S” Word: A Short History Of An American tradition … Socialism when I watched the video from the Free School University at Occupy Boston in my previous post Professor Victor Wallis Speaks on the “Roots of the Current Crisis.”

I found this book to be even more eye-opening than my various posts about Capitalism Hits The Fan.

I learned that there has been a long tradition of Socialism in this country since before The American Revolution.  The famous American revolutionary pamphleteer Thomas Paine promoted many socialist ideas.  The Republican Party was founded on Socialist ideals.  Its second presidential candidate, Abraham Lincoln, also espoused many socialist ideals.

There have been many successful Mayor, Governors, Senators, and Representatives in our history that have been socialists.

There has always been a backlash against these ideas, but maybe the worst of it started when the Socialists in this country started taking stands against our participation in World War I.  Woodrow Wilson wanted no dissent about his war, so he introduced anti-sedition laws that made it a crime to express any doubts about the war.   He used his power over the U.S. Postmaster General to get him to rescind second class mail privileges for the distribution of Socialist magazines and newspapers.   Some publishers and speakers who dissent about the war were jailed under the anti-sedition laws.  Some were deported after serving their sentences.

During the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt implemented many ideas that were first proposed by Socialists.  Many Socialists became part of or advisors to his administration.  This sort of cross-fertilization of ideas and programs went on through the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

With the Cold War and the likes of Senator Joseph McCarthy, many people with Socialist leanings were fired from their jobs and hounded from public view.

Is it any wonder that with this 90 year concerted assault on all things Socialist, that our view of Socialism and its value has been turned very negative.  My grandfather, Louis Kaplan, had  socialist leanings and background since he came to this country in the early 1900s.  I always had the impression that this was an odd outlook for someone in this country.  I now realize that my opinion had been badly tainted by the propaganda war to destroy socialist ideas that started way before I was born.

Now, having read the book The “S” Word: A Short History Of An American Tradition … Socialism I am ready to give these notions another look, this time with a more open mind.  Many of these ideas already align with some of what I have been thinking and proposing.

I have already posted a few items from Democratic Socialists Of America as a result of this research. See What is Democratic Socialism? and Stop Digging: The Case Against Jobs.

I found the pamphlet What is Democratic Socialism? Questions and Answers from the Democratic Socialists of America. You might find it to be a little different from what you expected.

Here is the introduction:

Democratic socialists believe that both the economy and society should be run democratically — to meet public needs, not to make profits for a few. To achieve a more just society, many structures of our government and economy must be radically transformed through greater economic and social democracy so that ordinary Americans can participate in the many decisions that affect our lives.

Democracy and socialism go hand in hand. All over the world, wherever the idea of democracy has taken root, the vision of socialism has taken root as well—everywhere but in the United States. Because of this, many false ideas about socialism have developed in the US. With this pamphlet, we hope to answer some of your questions about socialism.

The short article Stop Digging: The Case Against Jobs provides a completely different way to look at our economic situation.

I’ll give you the conclusion, and leave as an exercise to the reader to read the logic that leads up to  it.

John Maynard Keynes famously observed that “If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths … and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again … there need be no more unemployment”. One of the things that ought to distinguish socialists from liberals is that we think it’s possible to do better than this. Today, it seems that hole-digging has come to occupy a central place in the imagination of the left. But socialism should be about freeing people from wage labor, rather than imprisoning them in lives of useless toil.

The Raw Story article Credit union flap may reveal Goldman Sachs is bullying community banks provides a link to the video below.

When it was announced recently that Goldman Sachs had withdrawn its sponsorship of the small community bank at which Occupy Wall Street had set up an account for its donations, it appeared to be merely a petty act of vindictiveness.

According to investigative reporter Greg Palast, however, the motivations go much deeper and may involve that Goldman Sachs is misusing TARP bailout funds as a “political weapon” to bully smaller banks.

Watch the video to the end to catch the sign.  I think it is in English, but the words don’t seem to match the actions we see in the video.

The story Republicans Cry Uncle On Spending … When Cuts Hit Home on Talking Points Memo starts with the following paragraphs:

It took months of fighting — the threat of a government shutdown, the graver threat of a default on the national debt, and now a new threat of major, automatic cuts to Medicare and defense programs — but Congress’ deficit obsession has finally exposed the rarest of all species: Republican Keynesians.

With just a under a month until the deficit Super Committee must recommend policies that cut the 10 year deficit by $1.2 trillion, members of the Republican party — the same party that’s been on the war path for deep spending cuts, and that decries President Obama’s “failed stimulus” — are making uncharacteristic arguments against slashing spending. Trim too much, too quickly, they warn, and people will lose their jobs!

Call them Defense Keynesians — GOP members who represent defense interests, veterans, service members, contractors, and others whose livelihoods would be impacted by deep cuts to defense spending. They don’t want the Super Committee to cut much more, if any, from defense, and they certainly don’t want to pull the so-called “trigger” which would cut defense across the board by about $600 billion starting in 2013, if the panel gridlocks.

They laughed at the flippant comment that John Maynard Keynes is reported to have made that if you couldn’t find anything better to spend stimulus money on, you could keep people employed by just having them dig holes and then fill them up again.  What is it when you spend billions of dollars to employ people to build bombs and guns?  Don’t they just dig holes?  Then you hire people to repair what the others you hired blew up.

There must be some better way to spend the money.  What if you didn’t hire people to blow things up, but put those people to work fixing infrastructure?  Also the people you used to have to hire to fix what was blown up could instead work on building new things.

Instead of destroying future generations, you could  keep the teachers employed teaching our next generation of innovators and builders.

I cannot understand why the Republicans would want to run this video ad.

So they have figured out just what it is about Elizabeth Warren that makes us want her for our Senator so much.

You wouldn’t think they would want to let any more people know that haven’t already figured this out.

More evidence, if you needed it, that the Republicans are completely out of touch. They think there is still a market for their snake oil remedies.

It’s funny how the repeated mention of Socialism by modern day Republicans has finally made me want to read more about it. So far I have found that the Republican party of Abe Lincoln was founded on socialist ideas by avowed socialists.

I have just finished reading Chapter Two “A Broader Patriotism”: Thomas Paine and the Promise of Red Republicanism from the book The “S” Word: A short history of an American tradition… Socialism. I guess they don’t call them red states for nothing.

We in Massachusetts have tried “Bambi” aka Scott Brown. We are tired of the caught in the headlights look. Bring on the “Matriatch of Mayhem”.

In the article New TV ad rips Jean Quan: “Stop the police brutality” (VIDEO) on The San Francisco Chronicle web site, they show the video below:

I am expecting an email from MoveOn.org any moment now so I can sign a petition.

The Raw Story article Olbermann interviews roommate of Iraq veteran injured in Oakland provided the video below.

Notice in the video some description of the “violence” that “provoked” the police.