Chris Matthews Wants to Know Why Socialism is a Bad Word in America « NewsReal Blog

Chris Matthews Wants to Know Why Socialism is a Bad Word in America « NewsReal Blog: "When my family lived in West Berlin, some of the simple personal freedoms Germans enjoyed — freedoms that we here in the US don’t have — amazed me. They were small things, really – like no speed limit on the autobahn (highway), and no legal restrictions on the drinking age. Such restrictions have become so commonplace for us, that we can scarcely imagine life without them.

I told a German friend of mine that I found it odd that her fellow countrymen had so many more personal freedoms than we do in America. She shrugged her shoulders and said, with a sly smile, “We know first hand what socialism is, and constantly fight it. You don’t know it when you see it.”

Until recently, I didn’t realize the depth of the truth that statement held. Throughout the 2008 presidential campaign, John McCain refused to label Barack Obama a socialist, probably because he didn’t want to be accused of mud-slinging. On Friday, Chris Matthews, host of Hardball on MSNBC, brought the S-word out into the open for just few brief moments.

With socialized health care inching our way, it’s more important than ever that we stop using the vocabulary handed to us by leftists. We must force them to defend the real-world ramifications of their ideas, rather than gloat about the cheerful figments of their Utopian imaginations.

Yesterday, with the health care vote just hours away in the Senate, Matthews brought his guests, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Sen. Judd Gregg (R-New Hampshire), onto his show to discuss health care.

One accusation Matthews constantly flings at Republicans is that when they were in control of Congress and the White House, they didn’t “fix” health care, and that every time the Democrats have tried (to socialize it), the Republicans have said they had a better answer—but have done nothing."