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We've had this for almost a century at least.
Is it because of the Soviet Union? or because the Nazi's?
Neither of them actually practiced true Socialism.
Why can't socialism exist in a democratic society? It perfectly can exist.
In fact, socialism has a place for capitalism, because it distributes wealth according to your production, not your needs like the Soviet Union did.
Here in USA, we throw the word socialism around and link it to Soviet Russia and the Nazi's as if it's the same thing
IT'S NOT! We could benefit from it, couldn't we? A hybrid of capitalism and socialism economic models?
We've had this for almost a century at least.
So why are people freaking out and throwing the word around as if it's the end of America, the end of "freedom and democracy" ?
Why indeed.
It's rhetoric people use to cause people to freak out. To divide everyone.
Government runs medicare, medicaid, and social security. We're already a socialist country in some ways.
The Cold War and the rhetoric that went along with it.
because socialism goes against the founding of our country.
Because Socialism is one of the core tenants of the Christian Bible and the people who cry loudest about socialism are definitely NOT Christian.
Which happened a long time ago when people walked or rode horses, and died before 50. The internet goes against their principles, too. Cars, also, you lazy sloths.
you should ask somebody that lived during the hottest time period of the cold war. communism meant being a 5 yr old on the sand thinking "when is it going to rain bombs?"
come on MH. any basic economics class would tell you thats all we've been about post-great depression.
Really, its because the word 'liberal' started losing its negative connotation.. so the free-market, sell-out-our-economy-for-cheap-chinese-crap crowd had to come up with a new word to scare the gullible....we're no more socialists than China is laize-faire...
because about 7 years ago the Right got smart and realized that calling people communists...what they really think the left's goal is...was too easily discredited by saying we aren't the Soviet Union.
So they chose to call the left socialists instead which encompasses a much broader scope and is an easier charge to defend.
I think its funnier that the left calls themselves "progressives" even though that term was about as dirty a word as you could call yourself, it basically did mean you were calling yourself a communist, during the early part of the 20th century.
It's not liberal versus conservative anymore, its Progressive versus Traditionalists, and there is some mixture of both in both movements...the tea-partyer and Progressive goals, while masked in procedure, are actually quite similar if you look at them...of course, the modern democratic party is going to attract real liberals too, just as the GOP attracts monetary conservatives...
Is that why Teddy Roosevelt was so popular?
I would argue that most societies that have tried to implement heavily socialist policies tend to not fare so well. If you look at the highly socialist countries today, their citizen don't seem much better off in general than non-socialist societies. I think a mix of capitalism and socialism seems to work.
the problem is that the media and a lot of right wing nuts or political neophytes place all forms of socialism under one generalized banner. this is not the "socialism" of marx, engels or robert owen. this is a statist breed of socialism, where the government has been pushing for centralization of power in the hands of the state, via large proxi corporations to maintain the guise of "free market capitalism." and as admiral pointed out this has been going on for decades. in no way, did it start with obama.
Socialism defies basic human nature. Here's a better essay on the subject than I could provide.
Read it and critique.
http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives...-a-hate-story/
Hot Air is the perfect name for that site.
Ann Althouse is a poor writer, and regularly engages in logical fallacies. Does she honestly argue that Obama is the first administration to show favoritism towards corporations? GTFO.
After that, she just knocks down strawman after strawman. Instead of, ya know, providing facts to back up her claims, or logical argumentation. Which is the status quo for her articles.
Edit: Ah, I misread it. Doctor Zero just used a quote from her. Regardless, his article is full of logical holes, as hers often are.
Last edited by LnGrrrR; 04-20-2010 at 10:37 AM.
Also, a bright poster at the bottom skewered that old trope that humans are "rational actors". If anything, science is proving that rational reasoning regarding finances is limited at best. This is why "paternalistic libertarianism" is making a push nowadays.
Mixed economies as in Europe, aka, socialist democracies, are more stable and humane than cowboy/rugged-individual/bowling-alone/social-Darwinism America. Nearly all of them give 5 weeks vacation vs the USA barbaric 2 weeks (or none), have universal health care systems that cost 1/2 per capita as US's failed system. No families go bankrupt from medical bills.
Hard-core, 100% pure socialist/communist countries are failures or have failed.
Of course, "free market" capitalistic democracy in USA has also failed except for the very top and continues to fail worse for the lower 95%.
i love the way the author pointed out that: " Moore’s method involves finding people who are unhappy with their cir stances, lying about the particulars of the cases to make them illustrate his points better, and converting them into wholesale indictments of the free market, and America in general." and then goes on to make the same logical fallacies for the rest of the blog.Hot Air is the perfect name for that site.
Ann Althouse is a poor writer, and regularly engages in logical fallacies. Does she honestly argue that Obama is the first administration to show favoritism towards corporations? GTFO.
After that, she just knocks down strawman after strawman. Instead of, ya know, providing facts to back up her claims, or logical argumentation. Which is the status quo for her articles.
Edit: Ah, I misread it. Doctor Zero just used a quote from her. Regardless, his article is full of logical holes, as hers often do.
It wasn't a dirty word at all, considering in the election of 1912, all four of the candidates from Republican Taft to Socialist Debs all were calling themselves Progressives. They welcomed the label and even went out of their way to give reasons in their speeches why they were really Progressives and their opponents were not.
Because, on the continuum of the extreme you can't have freedom without capitalism and you can't have capitalism without freedom. They go hand in hand. On the other extreme, you can't have socialism without tyranny. Those are the extremes.
The fact of the matter is, any country, including ours, has a little bit of both. You have to have roads, for example. I'm pretty far right I guess but what irritates me about some right wingers is they act if if ANY regulation of the market is BAD, and it's not.
It absolutely infuriates me what telecom companies and credit card companies and banks get away with. At the same time, it irritates the out of me what the government gets away with. Any man who is divorced and has kids knows the tyrannical hammer of the state. But, fairness is subjective. Anyone who's dealt with the IRS knows the power of the government. Get those guys on your back and you'll turn revolutionary 'overnight'.
With health care, the fact of the matter is, we already HAD socialized medicine. The very idea that if you're poor you can't get health care in this country was the biggest fallacy the left perpetrated and even with this health care bill, STILL, about 5 million will be without government health insurance and it was only 12 million when they started.
The idea here, is to get uninsured people out of the ER for health care, but as has been seen in Massachusettes, that hasn't worked, thus far. The health care system is going to be redesigned. Whether or not it's going to be 'better' will depend who you are.
But as far as 'straight socialism' just look at Cuba, land of the 58 chevy. It's all a matter of where you want to be on that continuum and people, as has often proven correct, are afraid of the slippery slope.
Further, what we're seeing is Alexis de Tocqueville's description of why America won't last. "The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money."
He also said, 'Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.'
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