Evidence suggests that socialism is becoming more popular in the United States. Yet there is reason to believe this is at least partly because Americans are pretty much clueless as to what socialism is. It’s been shown time and again that many people who say they love socialism cannot accurately describe its basic tenets if their life depended on it.

Exhibit A:

 

 

Man on the street videos depicting students are one thing, one could say. Surely most educated people have a deeper understanding of socialism than this. 

Don’t be too sure. A case in point can be found at Big Think, a publication whose videos and short articles I often enjoy. An article detailing the recent surge in the popularity of socialism was teed up this way by the brand’s social media editor: If you’re against socialism, don’t drive on public roads or call 911!

The comment, which was liked more than 2,500 times, demonstrates either an appalling ignorance or a blatant disdain for truth and accuracy.

 

 

 

 

Fact: In 1806, more than a decade before Karl Marx was born, the United States Congress passed, and President Thomas Jefferson signed, legislation authorizing construction of the Cumberland Road, an interstate highway that would stretch more than 600 miles, connecting the Potomac and Ohio Rivers.

But we shouldn’t stop there. Nearly two thousand years before Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels penned The Communist Manifesto, Rome had established what many historians consider the grandest engineering achievement of the ancient world: a system of stone-paved highways that snaked across more than 100 provinces, stretching some 250,000 miles. These highways were funded almost entirely with public funds. (Exceptions were made when rich senators offered to pony up involves “abolishing private ownership of the things we all need and use — factories, banks, offices, natural resources, utilities, communication and transportation infrastructure — and replacing it with social ownership, thereby undercutting the power of elites to hoard wealth and power.”

So please, once and for all: can we retire the tired fallacy that government services and socialism are one and the same? They’re not.