Excellent Socialist Pope Is Excellent, Socialist And Also Too Maybe Marxist
In the strictest search result for "socialism" sense of the word, Pope Francis is not a socialist because he has not (to our knowledge) ever argued for "[a] society in which major industries are owned and controlled by the government". But the definition of "socialism" is changing. Socialism is now understood by a lot of people to mean "the government helping people, and sometimes taxes," because that is how literally every conservative politician and commentator uses the word. So by that definition, Pope Francis's message to a UN meeting in Rome wasso, so socialist:
"In the case of global political and economic organization, much more needs to be achieved, since an important part of humanity does not share in the benefits of progress and is in fact relegated to the status of second-class citizens," Francis said.
That does sound borderline actual socialist, but it's really just saying our organizing principles suck and God thinks so too. One remedy Francis proposes is "legitimate redistribution by the State," which is not socialism either, but populism. The normal old fashioned William Jennings Bryan kind, not the new entertainment-focused revisionist Christian history kind that's ruining America.
Speaker For The Dupes Jim Hoft skips right over "socialist" to good old Karl Heinrich Marx. Good God, the Pope is a closet philosopher!
But let's call Pope Francis a socialist and a Marxist anyway, because we are on board with the redefinition of these terms that's stupidly being driven by conservatives. It's like they wanted to shift the Overton window, but instead they threw it into reverse doing sixty on the freeway and the tranny went HHHEEENKKKH and the car still goes for now but you have a feeling it's gonna be expensive down the line. "Pope Francis is a Marxist? He sounds pretty reasonable to me. Maybe I'm a Marxist too."
Maybe that's optimistic, but why not be optimistic? The sun still shines. There's some food around here, somewhere. Elizabeth Warren.
And the Pope! No, he hasn't condoned gay marriages or female priests and probably won't. But he really does seem to feel for people in a way his predecessor could only feel for shirtless acrobats:
Hmm watched everything on Netflix let's see, shall we summon some shirtless acrobats to tumble and cavort as we watch from our throne? When is Netflix gonna get more Antiques Roadshow anyway? This is bullshit.
Because destroying great art and/or selling it to the Koch brothers and the Wallmart family is definitely the best way to solve poverty - as opposed to, say, a progressive taxation system that can fund a social safety net.
Pope Francis's problem is that he keeps reading the Jesus part of the Bible, not the important part. Jesus keeps yammering about teh Poorz, and doesn't say a damn thing about the really important stuff: faith-versus-works, the uselessness of laws and government, and how wealth is a sign of God's grace.