The link: In Bad Times for Capitalism, Socialists in Europe Suffer (nytimes.com)
A quote:
Some American conservatives demonize President Obama’s fiscal stimulus and health care overhaul as a dangerous turn toward European-style Socialism — but it is Europe’s right, not left, that is setting its political agenda.
Europe’s center-right parties have embraced many ideas of the left: generous welfare benefits, nationalized health care, sharp restrictions on carbon emissions, the ceding of some sovereignty to the European Union. But they have won votes by promising to deliver more efficiently than the left, while working to lower taxes, improve financial regulation, and grapple with aging populations.
In other words, socialism can be implemented to various degrees, and tweeked and adapted in different ways, and embraced by people who operate under labels other than “Socialist Party.”
The correct conclusion from the information in the article is it’s the Socialist Party that’s suffering in the eyes of the people, not socialism.
The NY Times writer uses the labels “conservative” and “right” as if they’re not basically socialists, as if the contrast between the so-called right and left in Europe is near identical to the so-called right and left in the United States.
Many of the so-called right in the United States have accepted many socialist policies, but it appears to me that in the U.S., the right is much less socialist oriented than the so-called European right.
Right, left, conservative, liberal, using these words without some modification (such as economic liberal or economic conservative) has become near useless for any real transmission of information.
