Even for a politician preaching to the choir, this was a doozy: Alabama Rep. Spencer Bachus, back home in Birmingham for the latest congressional recess, reported breathlessly to a suburban crowd that there are socialists on Capitol Hill.

Ooooooh. Tell us more, Congressman.

Well, he said, he's been keeping a list: 17 of 'em in the House of Representatives.

And who, pray tell, are these enemies of the people?

Can't say, he replied — leaving the clear impression that they know who they are ...

And so do we, Representative: There's the notorious You Know Who, from You Know Where; you know, the one who supports the federal income tax that New Mexico's former governor, Gary Johnson, was out on the Santa Fe Plaza protesting just last Wednesday.

Yessir, the income tax positively reeks of a famous old heresy: from each according to his abilities to each according to his needs. And who promoted that notion? None other than Karl Marx.

Then there are Whatsisname and Whatsername, congresspeople from the Left Coast: They've campaigned to keep Sequoia National Park and its surroundings from becoming the industrial-lumber supply it could have been and still could be. Do they truly represent their constituents, as we (shudder) hope Bachus does? Or do they get their marching orders straight from the Kremlin?

And to think there are 14 more pinkos, or downright reds, running loose in the halls of Congress. Has there been a graver threat to American security since Sen. Joe McCarthy waved what he said were lists of commies holding positions in the military and other important parts of our government?

Poor ol' Joe got discredited by, well, them; he was even asked, rhetorically, amid Senate hearings, by the attorney for his tormentees: "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"

Was that any way to treat a self-confessed patriot? Don't answer that ...

As our freshest ex-vice president claims, we're in greater danger than ever with these people in power.

So thank goodness there's a Spencer Bachus to keep alive the spirit of Tailgunner Joe, by darn ...

Except that, since those benighted times, it has occurred to America that there's a right to be a socialist — and even to run for Congress in that guise.

Bernie Sanders of Vermont was elected to the House, then the Senate, as an independent — but he makes no bones about being a socialist. 'Course, as the only one in the Senate, he caucuses in front of a mirror — so he's gotta be wondering where the rest of his Red Army is. Name 'em, challenges Sanders.

Maybe if Sanders listens carefully, he'll hear certain colleagues whistling the Internationale under their breath. After all, they can't hide their communisticity forever, can they?

But hark! A recent Rasmussen poll says that, while
37 percent of young Americans prefer capitalism, a full
33 percent say socialism's the way to go, while another 30 percent aren't so crazy about either ideology.

Hmm, sounds to the ears of those opposed to taxes like a new war cry: Don't trust anyone under 30 ...

Is the day of a new Eugene Debs dawning? He ran for president in 1912 as a socialist — and got 6 percent of the vote. Nearly a century later, there's no real socialist organization around — and, some experts note, the socialist surge in that poll probably has more to do with disillusionment over Wall Street than any incipient Trotskyite uprising right-thinking Americans might fear.

Well, thank goodness for that; here we were, worrying that it'd be socialism today, communism tomorrow — and you know what they say: You can trust a communist ... to be a communist ...

These are trying times — and Rep. Bachus, along with any number of commentators posing as political leaders, are certainly trying ...