Red-baiting seems silly in 2026

The Communists are coming! The Communists are coming! They are lurking behind every lamp post and under your bed.

So goes the admonition of our current day Joseph McCarthy (aka Donald J Trump) in shouting the dire warning beneath the stone faces of Mount Rushmore and the Capital Mall as a part of his bringing unity to our nation during our celebration of 250 years of independence.

President Trump just cannot help himself. Every speaking opportunity and Truth Social blurb is an occasion for him to heap praise upon himself and to engage in partisan attacks.

The latest targets of his attacks are the few Democratic Socialists in New York and Colorado who have won elections and now, Trump warns us, present a current-day communist threat to our very future as a nation.

So serious is this threat, according to Trump, that they must be purged from our political system — now. His message will be repeated countless times until the November election as he and U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson attempt to portray Communists, Social Democrats and Democrats as peas from the same pod to keep GOP control of the House and Senate.

Our younger citizens are probably wondering what the communist threat is all about, as Joseph McCarthy has been dead for more than 60 years and the Cold War intended to stop the spread of global communism ended around 1990.

Most of us might question whether Democratic Socialists and Communists are one in the same without knowing the tenets of either. Both belief systems include a theory of the means to pursue ends and a theory of the ends to be sought.

Democratic Socialism advocates reliance upon democratic processes while Marxist Communism asserts violent revolution as the necessary means. The Socialism component of Democratic Socialism envisions an economic system that includes state ownership of the major means of production and distribution to best secure the well-being of the citizenry.

Marxist Communism theorizes that capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction and envisions a withering away of the machinery of the state followed by a dictatorship of the proletariat (working class) but necessarily preceded by governance by the vanguard of the proletariat.

Do not fret if my Readers Digest version of two complicated belief systems makes no sense to you because neither theory has found a place in the real world.

Democratic Socialist parties have functioned in Europe for a century with some success, particularly in the Scandinavian nations, but have fallen short of state control of all major means of production and distribution and a movement back toward privatization is gaining popularity today. Marxist Communism had its revolutions but never got beyond the vanguard of the proletariat controlling (Stalin, Mao dictatorships, and others).

Communist and Socialist parties have long existed in the U.S. without electoral success. The modern-day Social Democrats that Trump is equating with Communism shy away from advocacy for state ownership of the major means of production and distribution but do advocate very progressive policies( radical to some) that the moderates and even progressives in the Democratic Party are hesitant to publicly endorse.

These policies include universal public childcare, universal public healthcare, free post-high school education, an expanded and improved safety net for our low-income residents, greater regulation of corporate America, expanded statutory rights of American labor and a more steeply graduated progressive income tax, among other proposals. These policy proposals may provide reason to support or oppose Social Democrats, but to equate Social Democrats with Marxist Communism is nothing but modern-day red baiting and ought to be seen for what it is.

The outcome of a couple of House races in New York and Colorado is not going to preserve or destroy our democracy.