What it means to be a Democratic Socialist

There is almost as much anticipation for Bernie's speech on Democratic Socialism as there was for the first GOP debate. It's pretty safe to say that more persons will be tuning into his speech on the Internet than Hillary's foreign policy speech scheduled for the same evening. After all, we have heard so many bad things about socialism. It has been compared to Soviet and Chinese communism and Nazi national socialism.

It used to be that socialism was a good word. NPR and other news outlets have been more favorably comparing Sanders to Eugene Debs. From what I've heard so far, Bernie is closer to William Jennings Bryan who ran as a Democrat back in 1896. His was a populist form of socialism that resonated with a greater number of persons, especially his Cross of Gold speech, which called for the federal government to back the dollar with silver so that it would have a far greater circulation.

Bernie is not a socialist in the strict sense of the term, which is probably why he has opted for "Democratic Socialism," with numerous references to Scandinavian models that appear to have struck the right balance between free market capitalism and socialism.

This of course is what the United States has tried to do as well, but with varied results. Each state more or less embraces socialism, depending on the degree to which a state provides a social security and health care safety net. There are union and anti-union states. They have better or worse education systems depending on how much money a particular state invests in it. But, politicians generally tend to avoid the word "socialism," and even "Democratic socialism," because of the nasty references that all too often come up.

Bernie will have a forum to discuss his views and take questions from students at Georgetown University. This is one of those "teachable moments" where he has the opportunity to make the case for the country as a whole to more firmly embrace Democratic socialist ideals, rather than ceding this responsibility to the states with greatly varied results. It should be a packed house.

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The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro

Dylan in America

Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan. Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose. Looks like only yesterday. Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

Dispatches from Vilnius

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