How does "Harrison Bergeron" relate to current society?

wrote
"" in 1961, which was in the midst of
the Cold War and just after the end of the
Joseph McCarthy-era of
anti-Communist witch hunts by the U.S. Congress. While this story has
been
used by many different political groups to mean many different things, conservative
groups
have latched on to this story's anti-equality message. Conservative
groups have read this story
as a warning that the equality required by
socialism and communism require conformity and
reduces society to its
lowest-common denominator instead of requiring the competition that is

inherent to capitalism.

They take George Bergeron's warning to his
wife as a
warning of what would happen if equality was enforced by the U.S.
government:

"If I tried to get away
with it ... then other people'd get
away with it-and pretty soon we'd be
right back to the dark ages again, with everybody competing
against everybody
else. You wouldn't like that, would you?"

This idea has been applied to many other...