Obama responds to a town hall meeting on health care in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

By: Sam Ferenc

On Tuesday, September 8, President Barack Obama delivered a speech to a school in Virginia that was broadcast live to public schools across the nation. In this speech, the president focused on personal responsibility and the importance of a good education to future success and prosperity; in short, America's kids were encouraged to stay in school for the benefit of themselves and their country. To the casual observer, this seemed like sound, neutral advice for our nation's schoolchildren, similar in message to speeches given in the past by former presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. However, to the skeptical conservative, President Obama's speech was nothing short of indoctrination: a shameless attempt to brainwash innocent kids into subscribing to the socialist agenda of the Democratic Party.

Parent Brett Curtis, an engineer from Pearland, Texas, explained his objections to the New York Times: “The thing that concerned me most about it was it seemed like a direct channel from the President of the United States into the classroom, to my child ... I don’t want our schools turned over to some socialist movement.” Curtis' words indicate a profound and honest fear of what the president had to say; indeed, this statement did not come from a right-wing talking head with a political agenda but rather from an average Joe Six-pack (to use a Palinism) who had no purpose with his words other than to air his opinions. Curtis seems genuinely concerned for his children, a sentiment with which any parent can surely sympathize. But what exactly are Curtis and so many others like him so desperately afraid of? And from where does this fear originate?

The common buzzword among the fearful is, of course, "socialism." In the past, the term has referred to an economic system in which the freedom to hold private property does not exist and a government controls a society's means of production and resource allocation. This term is often mistakenly conflated with Communism, a form of government that utilizes a socialist economic system, and fear of which led to the Red Scares of the late 1910s and 1950s in America. Today, we are seeing a mild resurgence of Red Scare-style fear, although it is now focused directly on the government instead of private individuals and spread by media figures like Glenn Beck instead of elected officials like Joseph McCarthy.

By looking at the true definition of socialism, it seems impossible that anyone could believe that President Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress would want to abolish private property and take over the economy of the United States. And yet everyday quotations are published from ordinary people who seem legitimately scared of socialism coming to America. How can this be?

The answer lies in two fundamental issues. The first is that many Americans simply do not understand what socialism is. Since Joe the Plumber told Fox News during the 2008 presidential campaign that then-candidate Obama's plan to "spread the wealth around" was "kinda [sic] a socialist idea", right-wing media sources have incorrectly used the term to characterize virtually all Democratic policies, an effort we see the fruits of when Brett Curtis describes a non-partisan speech on education as the workings of "some socialist movement." Fear of that which we do not understand is a natural human process, but fear of that which we should understand but do not because of the misleading use of loaded vocabulary is unnatural and unacceptable.

The second issue is that, thanks to Glenn Beck and his fellow talking heads, many Americans are in fact very scared of real socialism coming to this country; indeed, many think it already has. "I have never seen my America turned into what it has turned into, and I want my America back," sobbed a woman at an August 6 town hall meeting. Her words can be virtually traced to Beck and other media conservatives: "He is literally ripping apart the foundation of the America that we knew and grew up in," said Sean Hannity on June 7. Statements such as these are not few and far between on Fox News and one must ask: What, exactly, are these people talking about? At this point, most Democrats are concerned that we haven't seen enough change since the election of President Obama. What could Hannity, Beck, and others be referring to?

There is, of course, no reasonable answer to this question; on the contrary, the answer lies in somewhat murkier territory. Fox News commentators (and indeed, those on MSNBC and CNN as well) are interested not so much in telling the truth as they are in achieving high ratings (not to mention smearing their opponents). One avenue to doing so that Fox News in particular has exploited since the last election is sensationalism, wild exaggeration, and in many cases outright fabrication, of news stories for the purpose of attracting more viewers. At a continued loss for any substantive suggestions to counter the Obama administration's proposals, right-wing commentary has had to resort to outrageous claims about the destruction of American values to keep viewers watching. The simple fact that Glenn Beck is still on the air after the absolutely ludicrous claims he made about President Obama's views toward Caucasians is testament to this fact.

There, then, is the answer. Fears of an Obama-led socialist revolution stem directly from right-wing media figures who spout utter nonsense for personal and political ends. These pundits are completely aware of their actions and the detrimental effects they have on the American populace. Yet they continue to carry on about the impending Obamapocalypse and compare the president to Kim Jong Il, Saddam Hussein, and Adolf Hitler (although saying that Glenn Beck is aware of the insanity of his statements may be giving him too much credit). As former Republican presidential candidate John McCain explained to an angry woman at an October 2008 rally, Barack Obama is a "decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States." It is a terrible shame that the loudest voices of the Republican Party have disowned the words of the man they once nominated for president.