Staff Reports
It took roughly 30 seconds on CNN for a tidy piece of left-wing revisionism to go viral. Corbin Trent, a progressive strategist who helped build the Justice Democrats brand, told the audience that “East Tennessee … was built by socialism.” CNN commentator Scott Jennings pushed back, calling that a muddled claim. The back-and-forth mattered because it forced a simple question into the open: are federal public works the same thing as socialism, or is that just political theater dressed up as history?
What sparked the TV moment
On a recent State of the Union panel, Corbin Trent argued that projects like the TVA, Oak Ridge and factories in East Tennessee were born of socialism. Scott Jennings quickly replied that having a government is not the same as having socialism. The short exchange blew up because the examples Trent used are real and recognizable — which made the slippery use of the word “socialism” all the more striking. If you want political impact, point to famous regional projects and then make a broad, catchy claim. It gets shared. It also deserves a reality check.
Definitions matter: socialism vs. government projects
Words have meanings. Socialism, in its commonly understood sense, involves social or public ownership and democratic control over the means of production, or a planned economy where the state runs or directs major industries. A government building a dam, a research facility for a wartime project, or funding electrification programs is not automatically socialism in that strict sense. Confusing public works, wartime mobilization, or federal investment with full socialism is sloppy politics — and it’s bad history dressed up as a campaign talking point.
What TVA, Oak Ridge and Alcoa actually were
The Tennessee Valley Authority was created by Congress as a federally owned corporation to tackle electrification, flood control and regional development. Oak Ridge was a government-built, wartime Manhattan Project site. Alcoa, by contrast, was a private company that built plants and even company towns. Those are three different stories: one is a public utility created to solve a market failure in a desperate era, one is a wartime government project, and one is private industry. None of them, taken together, proves that America was “built by socialism.” What they do show is that government sometimes steps in — for better or worse — to solve problems where markets stumble.
Why conservatives should care — and what to say about it
We should call out the confusion when it appears. That doesn’t mean pretending government never plays a role in American life. It does mean refusing to let every public action be relabeled “socialism” as a rhetorical trick. The TVA is a better warning than a boast: it shows how government-run enterprises can drift into monopoly, poor incentives, and expensive outcomes when they operate with little accountability. If Democrats want to praise public investment, fine — say that plainly. If they want to argue for public ownership of whole industries, make that case honestly. Voters can judge. But don’t expect conservatives to lose the language war because progressives stretch words until they fit a headline. Next time someone says “socialism built Tennessee,” remind them that building bridges and building an economy are different things — and that winning the argument starts with using words that actually mean something.
