Article from The Daily Wire by Ben Shapiro.

On Monday, Washington Post columnist Elizabeth Bruenig penned her latest ode to socialism – a column in which she pointed out the vagary of the “socialist” label, then utterly failed to define it while simultaneously touting the term. Now, Bruenig is right that people have applied the label in spotty fashion; I’ve been guilty of that myself, without a doubt. But Bruenig is similarly guilty of vaguely applying socialism to stuff she likes, while disowning stuff she doesn’t. She’s guilty of the “no true socialists” fallacy – thus, Venezuela, Cuba, and the Soviet Union aren’t truly socialist, but Norway and Sweden are.

Bruenig begins by pointing out the rising popularity of socialism once more among Democrats. And she rightly discusses the problem of defining socialism:

The United States doesn’t have a familiar, established socialist history to look to for guidance on what socialism might mean in this country. But that doesn’t mean socialism is hopelessly nebulous, or that Americans who are interested in the idea are wandering dabblers. It just means that socialism, like any sophisticated term, warrants thoughtful consideration. Socialism has meant different things to different people in different times and places, while maintaining a stable core of themes and objectives: social (as opposed to private) control of the means of production, and of all the societal, humanitarian and political-economic changes that entails, especially where the freedom and autonomy of working people are concerned.

All of this would be fine, except that Bruenig doesn’t exactly define her terms. Is she in favor of large-scale nationalization of resources – and are there any industries she’d exempt? If so, why? Is it possible for her to be any less specific when she talks about the “societal, humanitarian and political-economic changes that entails”? What level of compulsion is she discussing? What would the legal framework look like? All we’ve heard so far are buzzwords.

Read the entire article at The Daily Wire.

Image Credit: By Pax Ahimsa Gethen [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], from Wikimedia Commons