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What’s So Scary About Socialism?
The socialism label has long worked as a way to trick people into voting against programs they might actually love
Vice President Mike Pence took the stage last week in front of a packed house of Ohio oil and gas executives to deliver a speech about the White House’s efforts to expand energy production. Yet he still found time during his oration to decry Democrats’ “socialist” agenda. It was “freedom,” he reminded the audience, that created a clean environment and prosperous economy. The fawning crowd came to its feet as Pence declared, “And so we must say as the president has said: America will never be a socialist country.”
Pence has been singing that tune for awhile. At the Conservative Political Action Committee’s annual meeting just a week earlier, he boldly declared, “Under the guise of Medicare for all and a Green New Deal, Democrats are embracing the same tired economic theories that have impoverished nations and stifled the liberties of millions over the past centuries. That system is socialism.”
Across the country, Republicans more broadly appear eager to stir up a frenzy by dismissing progressive policies as socialist propaganda. In Ohio, Pence was quoting Trump’s own red-baiting CPAC speech. Arizona Republican lawmaker Kelly Townsend condemned…
