From Where I Sit

Yesterday someone called me a "socialist." It is not the first time someone has called me that; the last time was as a result of an email that I'd sent, speaking against Bush's first 700 billion-dollar bailout of banks, back in late 2008. The person who at that time gave me that appellative was a conservative Georgian who couldn't think of anything intelligent to use as rebuttal to my communication, other than the cliche phrase, "you're just a socialist!". As if that were the ultimate insult someone could bestow on someone else. Actually, I've never considered myself a socialist; in fact, when socialist Salvador Allende was elected president of Chile back in 1971, it became quite a scary proposition, because in those days the Soviet Union and its satellites were a power to be reckoned with, and their nefarious influence usually meant chaos and mayhem wherever it was allowed to enter--a typical example of a good idea ("from each according to