As my fellow blogger AZ noted some time ago in the post The Use of Language in Society, “Americans have been precariously open to language with historically oppressive connotations.” This does seem to be the case, as we see more folks embracing the terms “socialist” or “social justice progressive.”

But apparently this is not so widespread that Obama is comfortable being labeled a socialist. In fact, he took the rather unprecedented step of calling the New York Times, from which a reporter had earlier asked him whether his policies could accurately be described as socialist, to “clarify” if his position. He justified his actions by noting that:

The fact that we’ve had to take these extraordinary measures and intervene is not an indication of my ideological preference, but an indication of the degree to which lax regulation and extravagant risk taking has precipitated a crisis.

But even without accepting the label, where his actions socialist? According to the first returned result for “socialism” on Wiktionary, it means:

Any of various political philosophies that support social and economic equality, collective decision-making, and public control of productive capital and natural resources, as advocated by socialists.

The policies Obama has implemented and advocated definitely can be couched within this definition. But all my railing against socialism its advocates may have something right — it does help bring about equality — an equal level of misery. As Larry Reed noted in an interview with Strike the Root a few years back, “the only thing socialism has ever really done for poor people is give them lots of company.”

And unfortunately such rights-violating and proposerity-hindering actions have support in many areas of pop culture.

Take the Che t-shirt. How many people have you seen donning one of them, with no clue about the atrosities he  or those proffering his beliefs caused? Hell, there’s even a Che Guevara-related group on Facebook that bills itself as “The group for Che Guevara fans from around the world” with over six thousand members.

Really?

Fortunately this groups rival — Che Guevara was a murderer and your t-shirt is not cool has close to 53,000 members (and though I’m obviously not one who believes that might makes right, but in this case, there is no question).

Bad ideas (Statism under any banner — socialism, fascism, totalitarianism, etc.) have bad consequences. People die. If you happen to find that the views you currently hold place you in that camp do yourself a favor and check out some other perspectives with an open mind. And you may just discover that the best, most efficient and rights-respecting way to bring about prosperity and peace can never be through force but through private property, free trade and voluntary interactions.

Need some intel? Check out the Communism Kills and Stop Statism overviews, and for a more positive spin, the Freedom: My Anti-Gov overview. Ready to engage others in this ideas war? Then consider making some tshirts from our Contraband operations part of your uniform.