I just learned something new, and I am horrified.

While I often condemn socialists and socialism, until today I had not realized that the word "socialist" is code language for "black":

The "socialist" label that Sen. John McCain and his GOP presidential running mate Sarah Palin are trying to attach to Sen. Barack Obama actually has long and very ugly historical roots.

J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI from 1924 to 1972, used the term liberally to describe African Americans who spent their lives fighting for equality.

Those freedom fighters included the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who led the Civil Rights Movement; W.E.B. Du Bois, who in 1909 helped found the NAACP which is still the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization; Paul Robeson, a famous singer, actor and political activist who in the 1930s became involved in national and international movements for better labor relations, peace and racial justice; and A. Philip Randolph, who founded and was the longtime head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and a leading advocate for civil rights for African Americans.

McCain and Palin have simply reached back in history to use an old code word for black. It set whites apart from those deemed unAmerican and those who could not be trusted during the communism scare.

Shame on McCain and Palin.

I think it may be too late for tragedy, so I'll just take my lumps and throw myself on the mercy of the court of political correctness.

So if it's shame on McCain and Palin, I should say shame on me too! After all, I've been condemning socialism in this blog for nearly six years, and for many years before that in my pre-blogging life. And not once did anyone tell me.

I'm stunned. Flabbergasted.

But if socialist means black, what are the implications for National Socialism? I mean, we all knew how sneaky Hitler and those Nazis were, but this!

To think that after all this time it turns out they were secretly running a black nationalist front.

Who knew?

(Looking back, maybe I should have suspected something was up when Louis Farrakhan said "Hitler was a very great man.")