More than half of Democrats in a recent Gallup poll had a positive image of socialism. Over one-third of all Americans (36%) did. What gives? Are left-liberal mainstream media and the nation's educators putting us on the road to Professor Hayek's serfdom?

Time was, not too long ago, the very term socialism was frowned upon by most Americans.  It was almost a dirty word to knowledgeable, right-thinking citizens of this noble republic.

No longer. A Gallup Poll last month reflects the quite ominous result that 53% of Democrats (and those who identified themselves as "leaning" that way) regarded the simple term, socialism, as positive. All true, I swear. I am not making this up.

Equally alarming, more that one-third of all Americans (36%) likewise regard the term positively. Yikes!

Curiously, mainstream media virtually ignored this latest Gallup Poll. No headlines. Nary a word on network news.  Why all the hush-hush? Why, some of our readers might just now be learning, for the first time, about this remarkable poll.   

It was taken Jan. 27-28, 2010. Socialism was one of seven subjective terms put to a sample of nearly a thousand adult Americans. One of only two answers was possible, positive or negative. No in-betweens. No blue books to jot down crafty qualifiers or double-talk equivocations.

That slightly over half of the Democrats had a POSITIVE image of "socialism" was shocking to me. What is this country coming to? (Could this be one reason for all those Tea Parties? To save a nation? To inject a little common sense into politics?)

If you question the Gallup Poll, you could look it up here.

Republicans (and their leaners) regarded socialism as negative by a resounding 79%. The 13% of GOPers who thought positively of socialism were, let's see now: (a) having a bad day; (b) misunderstood the question; (c) were dummkopf RINO slobs; or, (d) all of the above. (If you checked (d), give yourself a pat on the back.)  

Of seven terms in the poll, socialism had the lowest percentage of positives and the highest negatives. Whew! The quickie poll question was, "Just off the top of your head, would you say you have a positive or negative image of 'socialism?'"  

Small consolation is taken that more than a few  Democrats, 41%, regarded the term as negative. At least some have their flinty heads screwed on right.

If taken seriously,or extrapolated or replicated, this should give concern to thoughtful Americans far beyond merely conservatives, to include moderate Democrats and all "centrists" who value their country's freedom, to say nothing of the Constitution. 

To speculate why socialism is regarded now as positive by so many Americans, especially by 53% of Democrats, might be instructive: Is it the result of a campaign, unorganized but systematic, to put down capitalism, led by know-it-all academia and its progeny, plus the self-important opinion leaders in mainstream media and in our school systems? Who, then, will tell the people, the truth? Does the humility of common sense have a chance in such a controlling, one-sided milieu?     

After all, these institutions are dominated by intractable left-leaners, the blame-America crowd, some of whom despise even the American Dream which of course, they envy to no end, and would toss the freedoms we all enjoy, for a disastrously failed economic system. (Think Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.)

Most campuses are now securely in the hands of tenured Sixties radicals. Remember, they took over deans' offices then, in protest. Now they occupy them legally with tenure. They are isolated from economic realities they simply — and defiantly — do not understand, and attempt to take down, for their charges. Mainstream media, taking hits nowadays with dripping circulation and network viewership, to say nothing of plummeting public respect, still underhandedly promote socialism. They impart the liberal Democrats' notion of Big Government as heading up a sort of nanny state, from health insurance to trading carbon credits. In short, government uber alles.

Instead of preaching freedom and free enterprise and innovation, they promote government-run cure-alls to bring about what they call "social justice" as if, in a more perfect world, that would be entirely possible, if only more restrictive controls were imposed on all our freedoms. It's a Faustian bargain, folks. The kind that, good intention-like, blows up in faces at the end, destroying all that's honorable and fair in a market economy and non-collectivist society.

Nobel Prize-winning economist (when that prize meant something) Frederick Hayek, in his magus opus, The Road to Serfdom, argues that, no matter altruistic it sounds, capitulation to collectivism, a.k.a. socialism, leads ultimately to tyranny. It is a sham promise of a better day tomorrow by sacrificing basic freedoms in a hopeless quest for an ever-elusive and fantastical Sir Thomas More's Utopia.

In Road, Professor Hayek uses the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany as examples of collectivism run amok. In both, the will of the people was subjugated to the will of an all-powerful, Big Brother-like state, lording over their serfs. Disaster was the result. Millions died. Economies slid into chaos. Socialism indeed carries the seeds of its self-destruction. It simply does not supply the goods or personal freedoms as a pie-in-the-sky solution. That's now a given, given history.  

Control of others is collectivists' end game. A will to power, to command others. Big Brother Looms. Committees rule. Ends justify means. "Ignorance is Strength!" For the good of, ah, all humanity! But individualists [non-collectivists] are not so easily herded, Hayek insists, proving a roadblock to hellbent collectivism and its attendant tyranny.

Controlling people, as part of an amorphous aggregate, aims to remake them (that's Us!) into willing automatons, marching in lockstep into the glorious future under the guise of bringing "social justice" to all, without fail, or exception. What a beguiling ruse. It drew many "intellectuals" and hangers-on to promote the movement in years past. Alger Hiss, anyone?  Kim Philby?   

Before leaving the alarming Gallup poll, it is encouraging to note that responses on other terms suggest an inner contradiction, a paradox, even the 53% of Democrats who somehow, God knows how, viewed socialism positively.

Because responses to three other terms in the survey were uniformly POSITIVE: Small Business (rated 95% positive); Free Enterprise (86%) and Entrepreneurs (84%), the latter invoking the image, maybe, of Ayn Rand's novel character (in more ways than one) John Galt?

All three items are bulwarks of NON-collectivism, not amenable to herding into convenient boxes by social scientists and by Big Government, ardent liberals out to control others' behavior, or social engineering tinkering teams envisioned by the pie-in-the-sky collectivists.

So take heart! All is not lost. Not yet, anyhow. To wit:  Americans were more positive than negative on the term capitalism itself, at least as a term, by nearly two-to-one — 61% to 33%. It should have been greater than that mere 61%, to be sure. With a less politicized left-media and mamy "educators" not quietly peddling their internal belief in socialism, it would be greater than 61%. No question about that. If only fairness reigned.  Amen.