Prometheus 6

Interesting to know that the writer is a Jack-and-Jill alum. It is disturbing how conservative intellectuals have distorted peoples' perspective of the political spectrum to such a degree that a neo-liberal like Obama is characterized as a socialist and American liberalism, in general, is continually compared to the regime in the Soviet Union which existed under Stalin. I don't even want to think what folks at the National Review would think of Professor Spence's critiques of Obama.

It's all magic words to them. Socialist doesn't mean "socialist"...their folks have no more idea what socialism is that McCarthy's peers knew what communism really is.

what folks at the National Review would think of Professor Spence's critiques of Obama.

They'd love anything that challenges Obama.

It’s a really really important article.

It’s jarring to read Elanor Roosevelt’s FBI files and see Mary McLeod Bethune described as a “communist”.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eleanor/sfeature/fbi_ec_01.html

But it also serves as a reminder that at one point her ideas were considered radical and dangerous.

I remember years ago reading the FBI file on the local Ethical Society. When they had filed an amicus brief in regard to Brown v Board, the agent investigating them wrote criticizing their “radical integrationist” philosophy which would break down the fabric of American society and play into the hands of the “Godless Communists.”

The American Prospect article does on some level acknowledge the degree to which racial equality was seen as UnAmerican and dangerous to America. “This hierarchy, which holds that whiteness is synonymous with American-ness, is one conservatives are now instinctively trying to preserve. Like black civil-rights activists of the 1960s, Obama symbolizes the destruction of a social order they see as fundamentally American”

But on the other hand “King, for his part, welcomed everyone who embraced the cause of black civil rights, regardless of their ideological ties. This included communists and socialists, but the idea that a devout man of God like King saw black rights as a mere step in a worldwide communist revolution was absurd”.

I don’t know to what degree this is playing by conservatives rules.

Would King’s legacy and achievements actually mean less if he was interested in worldwide revolution?

Is A Phillip Randolph any less legitimate because he ran as a Socialist.

It’s important to understand the history of the use of “socialist” and “communist” as a slur against Black leaders without disowning/deligitamating Dubois, Claude McKay, Paul Robeson, Mukasa Dada, Randolph, etc.

I’m not sure how exactly you do that. But pretty clear that it’s not a concern of the American Spectator article.

What makes me approve of the article is...context. Adam is both cool and knowledgeable. But he's writing for a DLC organ, for people who actually think Charles Murray is an intellectual with points worth considering. Singularly, totally ahistorical people. Liberal neocons.

I see Adam's work at TAPPED as shaped by politically correctness. Someone's gotta do it, I guess, and EYE damn sure won't. They wouldn't want me to.