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New York Times Ethicist: Socialist Not an Insult
Federal Review ^ | 06/20/10

Posted on 06/20/2010 6:08:03 PM PDT by Behind Liberal Lines

NEW YORK--Answering a question from a reader as to whether a teacher should post a cartoon on his door that disparages President Obama as a socialist, New York Times columnist Randy Cohen writes:

[W]hile this teacher does not transgress ethically, he does seem to fall short intellectually, offering not deft political analysis but slogans and clichés...

Incidentally...how does it defame a person to call him a “socialist” (outside of nutty far-right circles) — a set of ideas many advanced Western democracies find congenial, what with the accessible health-care, affordable higher education and good public transportation?

Cohen, who writes the Times' "Ethicist" column, answers readers' questions on whether a particular conduct is moral. As far back as 1999, when the column debuted, he was criticized for using the column to advance government control of the economy. In 2004, he was discovered to be making donations to the left-wing political group MoveOn.org, in violation of the Times' ethics policy. He was allowed to keep his job, claiming the organization was no more political than the Boy Scouts.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: cohen; communism; ethicist; fascism; insult; mediabias; newyorkslimes; randy; socialism; times
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To: Behind Liberal Lines

The guy should have said he was a National Socialist, like I did.

Obama is a National SocialistOct 27, 2008 ...
Liberals are so friggin stupid that we could call Obama a National Socialist and they wouldn’t even know that we just called him a NAZI. ...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2116981/posts


21 posted on 06/20/2010 11:55:21 PM PDT by Kevmo (So America gets what America deserves - the destruction of its Constitution. ~Leo Donofrio, 6/1/09)
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To: Lancey Howard
“Socialist” is just the politically correct word for “communist”.

And a communist is just a socialist in a hurry.

22 posted on 06/21/2010 12:40:24 AM PDT by uglybiker (BACON!!)
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To: Behind Liberal Lines

Socialist = Thief.

So if you don’t mind being called a socialist, you don’t mind being called a thief because that is what you are.


23 posted on 06/21/2010 12:58:27 AM PDT by DB
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To: seowulf; Behind Liberal Lines
He is correct, of course - "socialist" is not an insult and is not meant to be - it's an accurate description of the socialist.

On the other hand, "liberals", "progressives" and other unwitting socialists often throw the "Nazi" or "fascist" to anyone they disagree with and mean it precisely as an insult, without understanding the meaning of the word or realizing that fascism is just a form of economic socialism slightly different from communism, and that it's really applicable to their ideology of absolute governmental ownership or control of means of production and human behavior...

Nazi was short for National Socialist in Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers Party).

They've kept trying to revive or rehabilitate Marxism / socialism (Marx himself used socialism and communism interchangeably) under different labels since early 20th century, despite its numerous failures written in and paid for by the blood of the millions of innocent people...

"Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion..." - Peter F. Drucker / Friedrich A. Hayek (in The Road to Serfdom)

24 posted on 06/21/2010 2:51:18 AM PDT by CutePuppy (If you don't ask the right questions you may not get the right answers)
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To: CutePuppy

But they make the trains run on time!!!


25 posted on 06/21/2010 10:22:41 AM PDT by WarEagle (Can America survive a President named Hussein?)
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