The Socialist Mystique

I've been puzzled recently by why the crowds at McCain rallies are booing wildly at McCain and Palin's claims that Obama is a socialist who wants to "spread the wealth." Part of my confusion is due to the fact that I have no problem with redistribution of wealth, but I think a larger part is because calling somebody a socialist hasn't been a common political tactic for most of my lifetime. I seriously doubt that most Americans even know what socialism is. In that case, what is the resonance of the term for people a generation older than I, people for whom "socialist" is a bad word?

I initially hypothesized that socialism is just a 21st-century way of accusing Obama of being a communist, and I'm well aware that calling somebody a communist during the Cold War was both a very serious charge and a cynical political tool. To be a communist was--as, if you follow McCain's rhetoric, being a socialist is--to be anti-American. What I hadn't considered was the connection such accusations had to race. As Adam Serwer explains in the American Prospect, "Conservatives, now and in the past, have turned to 'socialism' and 'communism' as shorthand to criticize black activists and political figures since the civil-rights era."

What I am still at a loss to explain is the McCain supporters' horror at the idea of "spreading the wealth." That is (to a limited degree) what taxes and church tithes have done for centuries. Were the Republican party still pro-small government and anti-spending, I could understand opposition to this idea. But can you remember who our last fiscally-conservative, Republican president was? Popular consesus among my historian friends says--Herbert Hoover. Ah, the irony.