Tired of the "Straw Man" Socialists (aka Enough with the Socialist Classroom Posts)

A Straw Man argument is when somebody falsely restates another’s argument and then attacks the other person for a position they don't actually have.

I've seen the post about “Classroom Socialism” so often it makes me weep for our country. Why? Firstly, the original author doesn't understand the distinction between basic concepts of socialism vs. communism. The title is Classroom Socialism but then goes on to describe on experiment based on Marxist Communism.  

Secondly, its likely the intended purpose is to “warn” us about the direction our country is headed in. I suppose that it’s possible that someone just decided, apropos of nothing, to author an economics lessons on the dangers of communism (and then label it socialism). But that seems unlikely.

Where were these people in the 30 years after WWII? (ok, besides the John Birch Society)

* We had much higher marginal and effective tax rates on the wealthy and corporations.

* We had stronger unions and labor laws.

* The government spent nearly twice, in terms of % of GDP, on investments in our country, i.e. education, job training, science & technology, research, physical infrastructure, etc..

* The government, when excluding health care costs, spent more on safety net programs, again as a % of GDP.

* We didn’t have members of our government (at least not many) demonizing teachers, police officers, firefighters, and other civil servants as overpaid and lazy.

* Individuals and corporations didn’t have the ability to give unlimited amounts of anonymous money to political campaigns.

No rational people, and I’m excluding the denounced-as-crazy-even-by-conservatives-of-the-day-JBS from rational people, seemed to be warning us of the dangers of the socialist dystopia that we were living in back then. But maybe that’s because even though the wealth of the top 1% was growing far faster than inflation, the income/wealth of the bottom 90% was doing so as well. So you’ll excuse me if I ignore the straw man on my way to support of policies that are at most a mild restoration of the “socialism” we suffered through during the 30 years after WWII.

I didn’t link the post. You can’t throw a dead cat on Facebook without hitting somebody that has it on their wall. So if you don’t know what I’m talking about just search Facebook or Google for “Classroom Socialism” and you’ll find it.