Bill Moyers with Mike Davis

I'm not advocating any position,

but this interview was interesting.

BILL MOYERS: Many film scholars believe the movie is a paranoid parable, warning of a Communist takeover of America. But today, the body snatchers are you ready for this? Socialists! That's right. Socialists, reportedly swarming over the city and making off with the means of production, namely the Federal budget.

I'm not making this up. Newsweek was the first to spot the aliens a month ago and it was us. Here's the headline of a recent article on Salon.com. Newt Gingrich, reincarnated once again as himself, sounds as if Obama ate his Contract with America for lunch and coughed it up as "European Socialism."

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BILL MOYERS: So what does a real live Socialist think about all this? We consulted the Endangered Species Act and actually found one, way out to the People's Republic of Southern California. That state's economy has tanked with one of the country's highest number foreclosures and unemployment above 10% and climbing. California is a financial earthquake off the Richter scale.

All of this is grist for the socialist writer and historian who is sitting with me now. Once a meat cutter and a long haul truck driver, nowadays, Mike Davis teaches creative writing at the University of California, Riverside. This recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" has written so many books we can barely get them on the screen for you. Two of his histories of Los Angeles and Southern California, CITY OF QUARTZ and ECOLOGY OF FEAR were best-sellers. His latest: IN PRAISE OF BARBARIANS: ESSAYS AGAINST EMPIRE.

Mike Davis, welcome to the JOURNAL.