We get into the habit in this country of having an argument over ideologies and what seems to be the “closing shot” for what used to be conservatives is “that’s just socialism.” Boom. End of discussion.

Now, for progressives, it’s “that’s just capitalism.” Boom. End of discussion.

Coming from what used to be the “conservative” side of the ledger, I always wondered why that was the “closing argument.” And… for everything.

Didn’t like a Democratic candidate? “Oh, they’ll turn us into socialists.”

Didn’t like the Civil Rights movement? “That MLK? Yeah… socialist.”

I mean… WHAT?!?!?

So… where did the “socialist” label that was meant to shut down the argument come from?

But in 1870, Congress created the Department of Justice to enable the federal government to protect the right of Black men to vote. Attorney General Amos Akerman oversaw the prosecution of more than 3,000 members of the Ku Klux Klan, winning more than 1,000 convictions. Meanwhile, Congress passed laws to protect Black voting.

Suddenly, it was harder for white southerners to object to Black rights on racial grounds. So they turned to a new argument, one based in economics.

They did not want Black men voting, they said, because formerly enslaved people were poor, and they would vote for leaders who promised to build things such as roads and hospitals. Those public investments could be paid for only with tax levies, and most of the people in the South with property after the war were white. Thus, although the infrastructure in which the southern legislatures were investing would help everyone, reactionaries claimed that Black voting amounted to a redistribution of wealth from white men to Black people, who wanted something for nothing.

Black voting was, one magazine insisted, “socialism in South Carolina.”

When you can’t win the argument you WANT to make (we think blacks are inferior), you go with the argument that doesn’t make sense but it hits people in the pocketbook (it’s socialism).

Go figure.

More HERE.

And beyond that… it would be truly nice if we would quit trying to use one word comebacks (or quick phrases) to try and shut down arguments, no matter what direction we’re coming from in our beliefs.