Right wing political strategists are shamelessly resorting to the tactics Senator Joseph McCarthy used effectively in the 1950s until wiser Americans exposed him for the deceiver that he was. Slap a label on a person you wish to discredit; and whether or not the appellation fits or its meaning is even understood, ignorant people are easily manipulated into believing the worst about the person being smeared. To gain control, politicians with the help of loud-mouth radio and television talk-show hosts, like schoolyard bullies, intimidate and scare people into believing the nation is at risk. Their message is that we should be afraid, very afraid.

When right wing ideologues accuse the President of being a socialist, they fail to acknowledge that they themselves are the benefactors of socialist institutions. Public schools and the Post Office are probably the clearest examples of socialism working for the benefit of all, but there are many other socialistic institutions and services in Americans cities. While there are some hard-line capitalists who might vote to disband all systems of public education and turn them into proprietary businesses, the vast majority of Americans receive their education in public schools and are generally like the idea of public education. Street, road, and highway systems, public transportation systems, water and sewage systems, parks and public recreation facilities, and the post office are socialist institutions most of us use regularly. Would the proprietary Federal Express be willing to take a letter from San Diego to New York for forty-one cents? Is there anyone who would seriously like to disassemble the New York subway and bus system or the Washington’s Mass Transit System and turn all those people out to further paralyze rush hour traffic? Without public services provided to all citizens, America could not be the world’s most powerful nation.

Perhaps the most egregious deception promoted by those determined to discredit the President is that capitalism is always right and is always good. Many years ago Karl Marks and Friedrich Engels made a case for extreme socialism, which they called communism, and half the world was plunged into economic and social disaster. Their biggest mistake was to make anathema the very notion of capitalism. Capitalism was the dirty word, the evil. In 1991 when the Soviet Union was dissolved, capitalism was lifted up as the solution for all the problems of post-Soviet Russia. Not quite two decades later, Russia is a country where a few people are obscenely rich, and the majority of Russians are living near or below the poverty level in a country with crumbling infrastructure. When America has been strongest and our system has done the most good and the least harm, we have enjoyed a blending of capitalism and socialism within a two-party system of government. Just as strict communism was a calamity for Eastern Europe, the gradual unbridling of capitalism over the past quarter century lead to the current disastrous economic recession. The financial weakening of the American middle and lower classes has resulted in a tremendous imbalance in the economy. It takes the monetary and material resources of the bottom ninety-five percent of Americans to equal the wealth of the top one percent.

We are witnessing the incredible power of the top five percent as we watch the insurance and pharmaceutical industries maneuver to defeat , or at least weaken, President Obama’s Health Care Program. Money for reelection buys representatives and senators of both parties The oligarchs who control American business can be successful in keeping control only if they do what schoolyard bullies do: show exaggerated strength, intimidate and frighten... and if enough ignorant people can be deceived into believing the top one percent who control our nation’s wealth will look after the interests of all Americans, President Obama’s efforts to get health care for all americans will fail.