Recently, an opinion column by Doyle Beck in these pages caught my attention (ISJ, Dec. 19). In it, Mr. Beck contends that conservatism has an opposite — not liberalism but rather that bete noire, socialism.

As a Bonneville County Republican Central Committee member, Beck must know, as I do, that if you get up on your soapbox and assert your views in the public arena, your words are likely to invite criticism. So in our currently sharply divided country, where we are repeatedly encouraged to speak with and listen to those who disagree with us, I am inclined to say a few words to him and those who might in knee-jerk fashion agree with his observations. My response comes not from opposed political ideology but from a persuasion that his assertions are somewhat careless and unsupported by actual evidence.

With jaw-dropping oversimplification, Beck asserts that many of our current problems like low wages, job scarcity, unaffordable housing and inadequate public schools/universities are the result of government interventions. Government should just get out of the way and let free markets and private enterprise make America great again. His solution: Enshrine conservatism and banish all thoughts of socialism.

“Socialism,” says Beck, “always has one result: destruction, poverty, ambivalence, complacency and scarcity. There’s never been a country in the world that has thrived on socialism. There’s never been a society or a country that has been made better because of it.” (Italics mine.)

Wow. That sounds pretty damning. But is it true?

Beck’s version of socialism is an example of what the Canadian intellectual Jordan Peterson calls “low-resolution thinking.” Peterson’s metaphor comes from digital imaging. The denser the pixels, the sharper and more accurate the image; conversely, the lower the pixel density, the fuzzier and less reliable the image. That difference applies to political language as well. You have to get into the details; nuances matter if you want a clear picture.

Let’s make sure we’re talking about the same thing. Socialism is not communism, which many confused Americans, hyperventilating, assume. Socialist governments do not take over the means of production. The socialist countries of northern Europe do provide more programs like social security, universal health care, free childcare, free higher education, etcetera — and they tax more heavily to pay for such benefits. But they are democratic and have market economies.

If Beck had bothered to look beyond his ideology, if he had done a little research before pontificating, he’d have discovered that significantly socialist countries like Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands currently rank among the very highest nations in assessments of quality of life and of citizen satisfaction with their governments, higher in fact than the United States. Thus, Beck’s use of words like “always” and “never” clearly reveals very low-resolution analysis.

In the 2021Best Country Rankings from the prestigious Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and from the BAV Group, nations were comparatively evaluated on such categories as cost of living, environment, health care, safety, education system, income equality, job market, per capita GDP and citizen happiness. In the Quality of Life category, Denmark was No. 2, Sweden No. 3, Norway No. 4. The United States was No. 20.

In the 2021 comparisons by The World Population Review and Numbeo, a large global database, with rankings based on similar categories as above, Denmark was No. 2, Finland No. 4, Iceland No. 6. The United States trailed at No. 17.

For the CEOWORLD Magazine, a panel of diverse experts rated countries based on 258,000 interviews worldwide and information from numerous international databases. They found Finland No. 1, Denmark No. 2, Norway No. 3, Belgium No. 4 and Sweden No. 5. The United States came in at No. 14.

Oops! Beck seems to have missed that in those Nordic countries, there seems not a lot of “destruction, poverty, ambivalence, complacency and scarcity” to be found. Quibble with the exact rankings if you will, but clearly the socialists are in the top tier internationally.

Having established that a number of democratic socialist countries score high based on significant measures, the U.S. in some categories less well, is the comparative case closed? Not entirely. Other factors may be present. There are nuances. In part because of its size, the U.S. does well in terms of power and influence. And those northern European countries are not nearly as large as the United States, not as racially or culturally or geographically diverse and, thus, quite possibly easier to govern equitably. That may explain in part why America is dealing less effectively with some of its current problems, its citizens overall not as happy.

Superficial, abstract thinking oversimplifies. Words like conservatism and socialism are imprecise. They mean different things in different contexts. Would you call the U.S. a socialist country? Of course not, but we’ve adopted some very important socialist programs — and most Americans like them. Conversely, the Scandinavian social democracies with their capitalist economies enjoy relatively high prosperity. The differences between American democracy and the socialist democracies of northern Europe are a matter of degree, not total opposition, as Beck would have you believe.

The success of socialist democracies comes from smartly combining the best of both systems. It’s a good idea to acknowledge the value of such hybrids and realize that America might adopt some of what the Scandinavians have learned without our country utterly disintegrating..

This much is clear. The kind of “either/or” political thinking Beck offers us is not only highly over-simplified, it’s not helpful. It contributes to misunderstanding and stalemate. If we want to solve real problems, we have to get beyond ideology and look objectively at facts and real outcomes.

H. Wayne Schow, a native Idahoan, is a professor of English emeritus at Idaho State University. Schow lives in Pocatello.