Socialism isn’t a dirty word – it’s our way of life

Does it irritate you to hear people speak derogatorily about socialism? They, often, make caustic, carping criticisms of our government. When foreigners, without first hand knowledge of our country, hear them, they might end up believing this pitiful palaver and believing that our government can’t do anything right. I’m writing this to give the socialism issue perspective, as westerners would say, so the political winds can blow free.

Nothing we know better than ourselves is there? So the following will be a bird’s eye view of what socialism has done for Bernie Hughes, and I presume that most of Twin Ports fellow citizens my age have had similar and maybe other forms of government help. Social security would be one federal level example.

My 12 years of elementary and secondary education was free public education supplied by Dunn County, Wis., schools with government financial support. My first experience with socialism, and I hadn’t even heard the carping yet.

My freshman college was obtained at Stout Institute, Menomonie, Wis., again provided by the government. After World War II military service, I completed my undergraduate education at Stout made possible by my government which also provided a GI family reimbursement check. Married then, we lived in a house with electricity made possible in that rural area by the Rural Electrification Program. REA was one of the alphabet soup government programs that Franklin Delano Roosevelt used in helping us to get out of the Great Depression.

During the next six years as a Montana secondary teacher, I completed a Master’s Degree at the University of Minnesota provided by my government. The following 14 years as a school superintendent, I completed (piecemeal) the doctorate degree at Washington State University, again provided by our government.

During those years of educational teaching and administering, we bought our first home with governmental financial assistance and our three children were born in hospitals governmentally financed and attended educational institutions again supported by socialistic government units.

During those years in Montana, we returned to Wisconsin several times on those socialistic federal highways and enjoyed the use of several federal, state and local governmental parks and other services. And, of course, we were constantly pleased to use the socialistic public libraries and mail delivery. We, luckily, have never had to make direct use of our socialistic police and fire departments, but have been most appreciative of the potential protection they provide.

I expect that I’ve forgotten a few things that will be obvious to perceptive readers. Luckily for those of us in the aging category, this latest recession hasn’t wiped out our private investment programs. We can’t let them take Social Security away and substitute an unreliable stock market.

Privatization has become a sacrosanct movement by some of our politicians. Get the government off our backs, they say. I wondered about it when first aware of this War on Terrorism. Reading about the formative years of our country, the Hessians hadn’t been a glamorous title. After our Iraqi costly financial misadventures, they can no longer say, with a straight face, that private enterprise can always do it better and cheaper.

Tags: opinion, commentary