A young woman just defeated a long-time congressman in New York and ran as a democratic socialist. Bernie Sanders came close to winning the Democratic nomination for president as a democratic socialist. What is a socialist anyway? If you ask around you will find many answers but not the true definition. At the same time we have many liberals calling those on the right fascists. But what is a fascist? Then we have the democratic and republican forms of government, but many do not understand what they are since we seem to have stopped teaching social studies and history in our schools. Let’s try to define these forms of government and put them in the right place in our country since we incorporate all of them.

    Democracy was first practiced by the Greeks and soon turned into something else since it is impossible to run a country with a pure democracy. With democracy, every citizen has to vote on every matter that arises, and it is impossible to have that many votes and communicate all of the issues to allow the vote. The next form is republicanism, which allows groups of citizens to be represented by one person, and they will do the voting on government issues for the group. This is our government, and the democracy enters in when all citizens vote to elect the representatives and the chief executive or the president.

    Socialism can be democratic when the government can be voted on by the citizens but the government owns most commercial entities in the state and runs them with government employees. An example is the government owning the movie studios and the actors would be government employees. I wonder if left-leaning Hollywood has ever thought about this. The difference between socialism and fascism is that in socialism the government owns all of the commercial entities but allows private citizens to run them. Fascism, as we know it, has a strong central government, which may include a dictator. Communism is socialism where everyone works for the government and receives the same compensation without regard to their skill level.

     Now we can start giving some examples of these forms of government and find out how they are all incorporated into our own country in many different ways. The most striking example of fascism was Hitler’s Germany. This government started as fascist but ended up as a pure dictatorship, which was ended by WWII. We see socialism in some of the European countries and, while some are pure socialist, most mix socialism with some form of capitalism to enhance their economies. There are no pure democracies, but there are many republican governments where they follow the US in many ways. Of course we remember the old USSR and its claim of communism, but it was actually a dictatorship with communism that offered incentives to the special few. It fell apart as all other attempts at communism have. One of the most famous tries was the Plymouth colony of pilgrims. After one year the communal living was abandoned because many received their equal portion but did not work to provide it. Many were living off of the few who were willing to work. Communism offers no incentive to achieve because there is no reward. Socialism is close, but since the would-be entrepreneurs cannot achieve through the business world they migrate to the place where they can achieve power and esteem. They become the rising stars in government. Most socialist governments grow until they are dictatorial, and eventually a dictator evolves. We see this in Argentina today.

     If one reads a little history, you will find that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson read every book available in English, Latin and Greek, and they studied all the forms of government that had been tried for the past two thousand years that had been recorded. It became apparent to both of them that no government had ever been successful for very long and most ended up in dictatorships. The Romans started as a republican government and ended with emperors. The Greeks started with democracy and ended with kings and dictators. Our forefathers established a government that allowed the citizens to continually determine their government through the Constitution and its ability to be amended. Unfortunately, the minority of citizens have found a way to short circuit that process by appointing judges who write law instead of interpretation of the law. We find many changes to our government that have been decreed instead of enacted through Congress. At the present, the Congress is allowing the president and judicial branch to determine immigration law instead of putting up a bill and voting on it. Our republican form of government works when the representatives actually work for the people they represent instead of the lobbyists who pay for their next campaign.

    So where are the different forms of government in our society today? We have democracy that elects our representatives and president. We, also, elect our city councilmen and county commissioners along with many others who make up our government bodies. The republican form enters when we send representatives to Washington, DC, and to our state houses to act for our benefit. But where is the socialism? Well, take a look at the city or county bus line. It is owned by the government and run by the government with government employees. The fascist form takes place in our modern medical system where the state, county or city owns hospitals and turns them over to private corporations to run them for profit although they are considered non-profit entities. All of these exist, and very few people know or care about it. The bus company could be a private company, and the hospital could still be a government run facility. There are private hospitals available in many areas, but they have little chance competing with the large state-owned facilities. Much of the cost of medical treatment is determined by these government-owned and privately run hospitals.

     So if you see a liberal call a conservative a fascist you might conclude that the liberal is much closer to being a fascist than the conservative. Probably neither of them knows what a fascist is and do not have the gumption to find out. If the argument has resorted to name calling, it is easy to believe that both have run out of vocabulary or brain power, or both.