reminiscence

[kodalai]

When I was younger, much of my political education/entertainment came from reading through back issues of MAD magazines (and Bloom County, of course.) I remember being surprised and puzzled at the scuffles surrounding labor unions and worker's rights. It seemed to me, as an eight-year-old, that Americans ought to really like labor unions. They embodied all these American values, after all: a lot of people getting together and speaking up about how they wanted things to be run, the oppressed rising up against the tyrants just like the Founding Fathers revolted against King George. (This was also about the same time as my first American History class.) I couldn't really understand why anybody would be against that.

My father made an attempt to explain to me the difference between communist and capitalist economic systems, and why worker's rights movements were generally supposed to be a communist thing, and we were against that.

I thought about that, and then said, "So we're a capitalism?"

"That's right," my father said.

"Oh," I said. "I thought we were a democracy."

Comments

[reikah.livejournal.com]

... You were so cute. And accurate.

[aging-parents.livejournal.com]

You might be surprised at how many conservative Americans are taught to be gung ho about unrestricted laissez faire, free trade capitalism, but to be suspicious of democracy (at least in this country; at the moment, in Right Wing circles, democracy is OK as long as it is being exported to Iraq, rather than practiced at home).

[foxglove6.livejournal.com]

hey, i think i was there for that explanation too! I seem to recall reading bloom county and MAD with you and then asking questions like, yeah but why don't we like communism or socialism, don't those mean that everyone is taken care of? don't we want everyone to be fed and healthy??
then of course we went and labelled everything in your house... ;-)