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The horror...
I guess there's not much of pressing importance going on in the country, given what some Republicans are spending their time on (from CNN):
Members of the Republican National Committee appear to have reached a compromise that would let GOP leaders avoid a possible dispute over a controversial resolution that calls on Democrats to re-name their party the "Democrat Socialist party."
Now to be fair, there are clearly Republicans who think this is a stupid idea, hence the need to reach a compromise--say, one that doesn't insist that Democrats change their name. My first reaction to hearing about this was that, given the experience of the past 8 years, perhaps the Republicans should be encouraged to change their name to the Totalitarian Republican Party or perhaps just Republican Fascists. Of course, I quickly simmered down, because that's ridiculous. Whatever substantive differences I've had with the Republican policies under Bush, however much I think his regime went too far with things like the Patriot Act, Gitmo, and the like, I do still realize that calling him a fascist is hyperbolic (we can argue degrees of hyperbole if you want). As this affair shows, some Republicans understand overblown political rhetoric too. Now, the more fair and balanced name would be the Religious Zealotry party, neatly covering both the fundamentalists and those followers of the "free-market" religion under the GOP tent (okay, still hyperbole here, but perhaps not as much...).
Stopping to think about it, perhaps the real issue is the way that the right wingers insist on making words demonize their opponents. It wasn't so long ago that they turned "liberal" into a bad word, as in "John Kerry is the most liberal Senator." Oh no! Not a liberal! Eight years of conservative mismanagement of the nation, though, has made the country more than willing to let a liberal try his hand at running things, so they've had to find a new bad word. Some of the right-wing carnival barkers tried "communist," since of course every good American hates Communists, but they've finally settled instead on socialist, probably figuring that since they can't tell the difference between a socialist and a communist, no one else will be able to do so either.
But really, if you take a look at the countries that are both "democratic" and "socialist," it turns out to be a whole bunch of awfully nice places. Oh please, Mr. Republican, don't let our country become a hellish place like Germany, Italy, France, England or--God forbid!--Sweden!
The horror... the horror...