Mike Pence recently said that the Trump administration stood for freedom, not socialism, and it was this that made America great. In fact, the US is nowhere near as ‘free’ as he implies, and socialism often enhances freedom.
US political leaders love to boast don’t they? Earlier in the week, Mike Pence declared the US to be “the most prosperous and powerful nation in the history of the world”. And what makes America GREAT? Why, it stands for ‘FREEDOM’ (remember to cap those words up in case someone misses them), and not socialism.
And this insulting of our intelligence is still going on.
It’s a concern that, at least for the time being, Britons don’t have, thanks to the 1945 Labour government which gave us the NHS.
In any capitalist society (in America or anywhere else) the amount of freedom which any individual has is in direct proportion to the amount of money that they possess. The rich can buy their freedom but the poor and not-so-rich cannot.
Far from being inimical to freedom, socialism, or at least certain types of socialism, can greatly enhance it, by protecting the minnows from the pikes.
The US has never experienced socialism, but the nearest it came to it was in the Roosevelt New Deal period and the era following WWII. Interestingly, this was also a time in which crime rates generally fell. Not surprisingly a lot of older Americans look back nostalgically to these times. Yet for ‘freedom crusaders’ Roosevelt was a villain, particularly after his ‘Four Freedoms’ speech of January 1941, in which he listed ‘freedom from want’ and ‘freedom from fear’ alongside ‘freedom of speech’ and ‘freedom of worship.’