by Ed Klein, Peoria, IL

How often have conservatives warned us that state and federal entitlements along with other programs designed to help the poor, aged and disabled are leading the U.S. down the path to socialism? They point to European countries as an example of government supporting its citizens from the cradle to the grave. Individual responsibility, they say, will be traded for government responsibility leading to the loss of initiative, motivation, creativity and drive … the very qualities that make the U.S. the great nation that it is. If that is true, and it very well may be, then why are those conservatives doing the very thing that could lead us into a socialistic society?

They start us on the way by declaring war on teachers, firefighters, police officers, and everyone else they accuse of freeloading on the public payroll. Their mantra is fire ‘em, bust their unions, take away their democratic rights, increase their workload, eliminate their pensions and pay raises and turn them into second class citizens. Got the connection yet?

Let’s take a look at how all this is unfolding. Legislation is being pushed by Florida’s Governor Scott to cut jobless payments and reduce unemployment benefits while slicing the number of weeks the unemployed are eligible. He also is pushing legislation to make it easier for a corporation to fire employees, making them ineligible for any unemployment assistance whatsoever. In Maine, Governor LePage plans to repeal worker’s bargaining rights, restrict the ability of unions to collect dues from members, cut pension benefits for state employees and eliminate programs that benefit Maine’s middle class. And in Michigan, Governor Snyder gave corporations a sixty percent cut in taxes, and to help make up the revenue loss, proposed to tax the pensions of working class retirees and kill the state’s earned income tax credit for the poor.

Those are only a few of the battlefields. Other governors, mayors and congressional members are pressing the attack. They are driving millions of Americans into poverty and stripping them of their rights while creating a class war in which the wealthy are made even wealthier by the conservative powers that be; stealing from the poor and giving it to the rich. Robin Hood, where art thou?

OK, but what has that got to do with socialism? Think about this. When millions of Americans will be living at a subsistence level, unable to afford to feed their families, provide proper housing, medical care and the other things needed to live any kind of life, who is it that will be forced to support them? The answer, of course, if you haven’t already figured it out, is the government. And when the government takes on that responsibility, we automatically have a socialistic state. And it becomes one because under the aegis of its conservative rulers, the freedom and very means of existence will have been stolen from its citizens to keep the middle and lower classes in powerless poverty, subject to the will of a corporate oligarchy.

Those powers that be don’t like to hear the term class war. But with the continuously expanding wealth gap between the haves and those who will become the have-nots resulting from the enthronement of corporate political money and state-by-state offensives against worker power, that is exactly what we will have – in a U.S. Socialist Republic … once the greatest country in the world.