Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America

by Kurt Andersen

Every time people on the right say that centrists like Barack Obama are socialists, or that “our public education system is a socialist institution” (Milton Friedman, 1999), or that “the state university system is as close to a socialist program as we have” (a National Review conservative in 2018), it actually reduces the stigma of the word and helps redefine social democracy as familiar and desirable. We can argue whether and how some proposed big new social program is or isn’t affordable or wise, but the instantly demonizing power of calling it socialism is weaker than it has been in nearly all our lifetimes, especially among people who didn’t grow up when the two huge countries that called themselves socialist were dysfunctional nuclear-armed tyrannies.