Socialism piece bad journalism, not even good sensationalism

As an Eastern alumnus, I was pretty discouraged to read the article "Socialism will not fix our country,” written by opinions columnist Chris Hoitash.

While it's true that this was in the Opinions section of the paper, it is my belief that an opinion must be based on, and presented with, factual information. Anything else is disinformation, poor journalism, and agenda setting at its worst format.

When Hoitash writes, "At least they're honest about being a bunch of Reds," he's making the assumption that socialism is the same as communism. It isn't. Ask anyone in the political science department, I'm sure they can explain the difference much better than I can.

Likewise, Hoitash uses the Wall Street bailout as his sole reasoning behind the inadequacy of certain socialistic governmental practices. It's fairly obvious that either Hoitash has absolutely no idea what he's talking about, or he's sensationalizing his argument so much that it stops being an argument and starts being rubbish about halfway through.

The bailout happened just over a month ago. Although we live in an information age where we expect results to be instantaneous, that simply isn't how large capitalistic economies work. We can't possibly expect everything to be sunshine and rainbows after a mere month. The bailout was a complicated endeavor that I am fairly positive governmental and Wall Street officials are still embarking on.

No one, not even the inexplicably loathed Obama, is assuming that we are going to switch to socialism overnight. As I understand it, Obama's economic strategy wouldn't even work in a socialistic society. We depend on capitalism, we depend on bank loans and purchasing power, and no one is attempting to change that.

Adding a little regulation into the mix could have stopped this economic crisis early on. Much of our current economic crisis is the housing market crash, which is finally starting to affect businesses and corporations on Wall Street.

This whole "socialism is not the answer" argument is weak and built on false information. Poor journalism practices are certainly not the answer when involving such a sensitive topic.

If Hoitash could offer factual and sensible criticisms of the potential “socialistic” scenarios he describes, then perhaps his argument would be respectable. Now it is merely sensationalism, and not even very good at that.