“Communist,” “Progressive,” Whatever

By Ed Kilgore

I would have thought that the one thing we could expect from Allen West is that if he didn’t have the decency to apologize for his bizarre characterization of “78 to 81” Democratic Members of Congress (later modified to refer to the Progressive Caucus) as members of the Communist Party, he’d at least shut up about it.

But no. West has published a column at The Hill that seeks to defend this idiotic slander as a brave effort to spur a “debate” over fundamental principles. Those offended by being red-baited are, he suggests, focusing on “semantics” and “nuance,” qualities that he found deadly when on the “battlefield.”

Well, nobody’s going to accuse West of “nuance,” though he gets very slippery in his column:


Of course not, congressman, which is why you chose the most inflammatory label imaginable, right? But that’s a quibble, since “progressive” is just the latest name for the people who used to go by “socialist” or “communist,” as the eminent historian Glenn Beck has so often explained. After all, it should be obvious to anyone that supporting an approach to health care crafted by the Heritage Foundation and test-driven by the 2012 Republican presidential nominee is indistinguishable from supporting a dictatorship of the proletariat, state ownership of the means of production, and the liquidation of the kulaks. The total disappearance of liberty and private property in those Western countries (all of them!) with far greater government involvement in the economy than anything anyone in the Progressive Caucus has ever demanded is so obvious as to require no documentation, of course.

- more -

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_04/communist_progressive_whatever036922.php