Political scientist Mason Williams cited this cheeky but accurate comment by New Deal lawyer Jerome Frank to make a point easily lost in the new war on socialism President Trump has launched: Socialism goes back a long way in the United States, and it has taken doses of it to keep the market system alive.
Going back to the late 19th century, Americans and Europeans, socialists and liberal reformers, worked together to find creative ways to solve problems capitalism alone couldn't, and to humanize the system's workings. This has been well documented in separate books written by historians Daniel Rodgers and James Kloppenberg.