Untrue. Look, Marx didn't come up with socialism, go back to the llevelers (not a typo) and many Christian movements. Dorothy Day being a good progressive era reprentative in the US. Also remember the IWW. They got lumped in with the commies, but rejected Marx's politics, though not his economics, and insisted on an anarchist, not totalitarian view. Again, I'm a capitalist and reject them all, but I do think the idea of socialist=marxist just is plain inaccurate. Even with the right, there IS a strong authoritarian streak here in the US, but its very different from the European versions (except the neo-nazi/Christian identity types, who ape it). America is a weird and interesting place, and that is true of our non-mainstream politics. Don't just make assumptions until you read their lit, and it is facinatinating and bizare as hell. Those old political manifestos are a great way to spend a rainy day if you are a bored history geek.
FQ13
I was talking about modern socialism and progressives which are identical in every substantive way. You dredge up a group from the English Civil War?
Socialism does not equal Marxism.
Marxism is defined as Socialism plus tyranny.
What no one seems to realize is that socialism, communism, Marxism, llevelers, Christian millennial and Utopian movements all begin as responses to some existing political reality. In most modern cases they stem from a negative response to economically divided imperial governments. In the case of socialism and communism, it was European empires, with a strong history of oligarchical class of the "haves", and a huge population of "have nots".
Contrast that to America, where nominally at least everyone has an opportunity to achieve and excel, to "make it" politically and economically. Millions have proven that opportunity exists, can be achieved. And those opportunities allowed this country grew to a point where it was able to enter a world war and make the difference to destroy Imperial and Socialist regimes on different sides of this globe simultaneously.
So the key question is - why is socialism being crammed down our throats? It is clearly not a response to economic or political limitations on people - it is being pushed by the very elites that earlier would have been destroyed.
So why socialism with its failed history of providing an effective government to its own people, not to mention the abusive and aggressive forms that have devastated this world in the past 150 years?
Answer that question and you will understand why even the minutest support for bho and his minions is a profoundly un-American action.
And, as we learned in Watergate and elsewhere, always, always always follow the money trail to who is pushing the new socialist oligarchy.