Most Americans Believe in Socialism

There aren’t enough people in the world, he reasoned, who admit to being socialists and communists to account for all the evil attributed to socialism and communism the speaker had told about. Could the evil possibly exist in those who do not themselves comprehend it and, thus, have no basis for admitting that they are infected? He then recalled reading a study made in 1949 by Link and Freiberg which showed that 75 per cent of the American people believed themselves to be against socialism, yet 66 per cent of them favored governmental measures that fell within their own definitions of socialism. Perhaps he was one of these and had the disease himself, shocking as was this honest and searching thought.

He could not avoid the question: Is there any of this inconsistency in me? What a venture in introspection his search for an answer turned out to be! Here he was, a man who had often proclaimed his faith in “the American way of life.” He had pledged allegiance to the flag. He had sung lustily about “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” Now he was about to inquire into his own status as a possible socialist-communist. He had what it took: courage to make the inquiry and honesty to look at the facts regardless of what they revealed.