Do You View Socialism Positively?

[Richard-H]

It is a lot tougher being a liberal. We actually THINK. It would be so much easier to be a right wing pea brain.

LOL. Which is why libs rely so heavily on emotion and demonizing their opponents, right?

Conservatives think, liberals feel.

If conservatives think at all, it's only of themselves and their little world.

 

[Bfgrn]

As opposed to you and your ilk?

Blatant deflection noted.

I'll assume you're admitting I'm right. Why so defensive then?

And oh, by the way, I think we should add two personal marginal tax rates at 44.9% and 49.9% (see, I'm not afraid to get specific), and I agree with the Tea Party on very few topics.

Did you think you "had" me there?

Do you think you could be more wrong?

Partisan ideologues are just too freakin' easy.

Speaking of "brainwashed".



.

You are the biggest liar on this board. You feign non partisanship, then you ALWAYS side with the right, IMMEDIATELY, without hesitation.

I see.

What are my positions on foreign policy, war, personal income taxation (see above, maybe?), gay rights, abortion and health care, all of which I have discussed thoroughly on this board?

Your partisan ideology has blinded you. Absolutely blinded you.

Not my problem.

.

It's getting old. You keep spouting the same BS, Yet on every thread you ALWAYS side with the right, IMMEDIATELY, without hesitation.

“If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.”
Douglas Adams

It is a lot tougher being a liberal. We actually THINK. It would be so much easier to be a right wing pea brain.

ALL our problems are caused by government. There is nothing else to even consider. Our beloved captains of industry and Wall Street bankers are always the good guys. And all we have to do is get government off their backs and PRESTO...they will suddenly stop swindling the people, they will suddenly stop polluting our environment and they will suddenly offer health insurance that isn't garbage..

So now you're just completely making stuff up, tossing out straw men all over the place.

You're just another partisan ideologue, dime a dozen. You don't think for yourself. Everything is so simple and black & white for you people.

Always a good sign when others misrepresent my positions, and this one was a gem.

Stop lying.

And by the way, here's the post that has you so upset:

There are clearly many Americans who would be perfectly comfortable living under a significantly more authoritarian central bureaucracy.

Are you claiming that I'm wrong?

And, once again, please stop lying.

.

NOTHING is black and white to me, except life and death, and right and wrong. The liberal mind is able to comprehend nuance, hold dissenting views at the same time and see all sides of issues. Liberals come up with pragmatic solutions.

Conservatism is driven by fear. Conservatives only see black and white. But where there is no grey matter, there can be no shades of grey.

I have no desire to live under any type of authoritarian bureaucracy. I do support social programs, especially for the citizens who are the most vulnerable; children and the elderly. We see every other industrialized nations run successful government health care programs. None of them slid down a 'slippery slope' to socialism. But that is where FEAR engulfs the conservative mind.

And I am VERY strongly against government intruding into our privacy. That is why liberals and most Democrats voted against the Patriot Act.

SO, let's address your premise Mac...

There are clearly many Americans who would be perfectly comfortable living under a significantly more authoritarian central bureaucracy.

YES, you are right Mac...they are called Republicans and tea partiers...

The tea party hates BIG government? The same tea party who voted 122 to 17 FOR renewal of the Patriot Act??

And the 'evil' left who would have ENDED the Patriot Act if it wasn't for the overwhelming YEA votes by the right???

House Vote Roll Call on 2006 Patriot Act Renewal on March 7, 2006

FYI...

2011

And how did the 'Tea-party 'patriots' vote?

122 Tea Party Members of Congress who voted FOR final passage of H.R. 514, reauthorizing the Patriot Act without reform

17 Tea Party Members of Congress who voted AGAINST final passage of H.R. 514, reauthorizing the Patriot Act without reform

 

[Richard-H]

The fallacy in American beliefs is in that they have been brain-washed into believing that the U.S. has been capitalist country and that there is only pure capitalism vs. ure socialism.

The fact is that the U.S. has not been a pure capitalism (or even close) since the beginning of the twentieth century. In fact there has never been a pure capitalist society and almost certainly, there never will be.

Secondly, the U.S.S.R was not a true socialist country. It was more of a military dictatorship that pretended to be socialist.

The U.S. has been a highly-regulated socialist-capitalist hybrid, so when most Americans are asked whether they'd prefer capitalism or socialism, they tend to think in terms of the U.S. vs. the U.S.S.R. This is plainly inaccurate.

What they should be asked is whether they'd prefer to live in a pure free liberation society - no regulation and no government social programs - or if they'd prefer to live in a European style social-democracy:

Would you rather live in the Congo or in Denmark?

That should be the question.

 

[Rikurzhen]

What they should be asked is whether they'd prefer to live in a pure free liberation society - no regulation and no government social programs - or if they'd prefer to live in a European style social-democracy:

Would you rather live in the Congo or in Denmark?

That should be the question.

OK, so if I chose Denmark, then how do you plan to ethnically cleanse the US so that our demographics match those of Denmark. I'm interested in your plan.

 

[Richard-H]

What they should be asked is whether they'd prefer to live in a pure free liberation society - no regulation and no government social programs - or if they'd prefer to live in a European style social-democracy:

Would you rather live in the Congo or in Denmark?

That should be the question.

OK, so if I chose Denmark, then how do you plan to ethnically cleanse the US so that our demographics match those of Denmark. I'm interested in your plan.

Red Herring!

Please try not to post nonsense. Most of us would like to have intelligent debates.

 

[Rikurzhen]

What they should be asked is whether they'd prefer to live in a pure free liberation society - no regulation and no government social programs - or if they'd prefer to live in a European style social-democracy:

Would you rather live in the Congo or in Denmark?

That should be the question.

OK, so if I chose Denmark, then how do you plan to ethnically cleanse the US so that our demographics match those of Denmark. I'm interested in your plan.

Red Herring!

Please try not to post nonsense. Most of us would like to have intelligent debates.

What red herring? You'd have to be an idiot to believe that there is no connection between a sharing society and the ethnic/racial composition of the society. Liberals keep pointing to high sharing societies which are ethnically homogeneous and declaring that this should work here. Why don't you instead find an ethnically/ racially heterogeneous society that also has a high sharing social structure and use that as an example for the US?

Telling 65% white American that we can have a social system like 98.5% white Finland is joke of a position.

 

[Richard-H]

What they should be asked is whether they'd prefer to live in a pure free liberation society - no regulation and no government social programs - or if they'd prefer to live in a European style social-democracy:

Would you rather live in the Congo or in Denmark?

That should be the question.

OK, so if I chose Denmark, then how do you plan to ethnically cleanse the US so that our demographics match those of Denmark. I'm interested in your plan.

Red Herring!

Please try not to post nonsense. Most of us would like to have intelligent debates.

What red herring? You'd have to be an idiot to believe that there is no connection between a sharing society and the ethnic/racial composition of the society. Liberals keep pointing to high sharing societies which are ethnically homogeneous and declaring that this should work here. Why don't you instead find an ethnically/ racially heterogeneous society that also has a high sharing social structure and use that as an example for the US?

Telling 65% white American that we can have a social system like 98.5% white Finland is joke of a position.

Wow, you a seriously racist asshole!

There are few countries, if any that are as racially heterogeneous as the U.S. and there is absolutely no valid reason to believe that racially heterogeneous societies can not be a sharing society, except for racist assholes like yourself that refuse to allow us to be a sharing society.

But just to show how wrong you are, both France and Canada are considerably more racially heterogeneous than most and have very successful socialist societies - both have a higher average quality of life than the U.S.

 

[Rikurzhen]

Wow, you a seriously racist asshole!

There are few countries, if any that are as racially heterogeneous as the U.S. and there is absolutely no valid reason to believe that racially heterogeneous societies can not be a sharing society, except for racist assholes like yourself that refuse to allow us to be a sharing society.

Step away from your religious views and let social science inform you. What I'm talking about is better explained by this article:

A bleak picture of the corrosive effects of ethnic diversity has been revealed in research by Harvard University’s Robert Putnam, one of the world’s most influential political scientists.

His research shows that the more diverse a community is, the less likely its inhabitants are to trust anyone – from their next-door neighbour to the mayor. . . .

The core message of the research was that, “in the presence of diversity, we hunker down”, he said. “We act like turtles. The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. And it’s not just that we don’t trust people who are not like us. In diverse communities, we don’t trust people who do look like us.”
​

And this analysis which ran in The Guardian:

But as Britain becomes more diverse that common culture is being eroded.

And therein lies one of the central dilemmas of political life in developed societies: sharing and solidarity can conflict with diversity. This is an especially acute dilemma for progressives who want plenty of both solidarity (high social cohesion and generous welfare paid out of a progressive tax system) and diversity (equal respect for a wide range of peoples, values and ways of life). The tension between the two values is a reminder that serious politics is about trade-offs. It also suggests that the left's recent love affair with diversity may come at the expense of the values and even the people that it once championed.

It was the Conservative politician David Willetts who drew my attention to the "progressive dilemma". Speaking at a roundtable on welfare reform, he said: "The basis on which you can extract large sums of money in tax and pay it out in benefits is that most people think the recipients are people like themselves, facing difficulties that they themselves could face. If values become more diverse, if lifestyles become more differentiated, then it becomes more difficult to sustain the legitimacy of a universal risk-pooling welfare state. People ask: 'Why should I pay for them when they are doing things that I wouldn't do?' This is America versus Sweden. You can have a Swedish welfare state provided that you are a homogeneous society with intensely shared values. In the United States you have a very diverse, individualistic society where people feel fewer obligations to fellow citizens. Progressives want diversity, but they thereby undermine part of the moral consensus on which a large welfare state rests." . . .

Moreover, modern liberal societies cannot be based on a simple assertion of group identity - the very idea of the rule of law, of equal legal treatment for everyone regardless of religion, wealth, gender or ethnicity, conflicts with it. On the other hand, if you deny the assumption that humans are social, group-based primates with constraints, however imprecise, on their willingness to share, you find yourself having to defend some implausible positions: for example, that we should spend as much on development aid as on the NHS, or that Britain should have no immigration controls at all. The implicit "calculus of affinity" in media reporting of disasters is easily mocked - two dead Britons will get the same space as 200 Spaniards or 2,000 Somalis. Yet every day we make similar calculations in the distribution of our own resources. Even a well-off, liberal-minded Briton who already donates to charities will spend, say, £200 on a child's birthday party, knowing that such money could, in the right hands, save the life of a child in the third world. The extent of our obligation to those to whom we are not connected through either kinship or citizenship is in part a purely private, charitable decision. . . .

Yet it is also true that Scandinavian countries with the biggest welfare states have been the most socially and ethnically homogeneous states in the west. By the same token, the welfare state has always been weaker in the individualistic, ethnically divided US compared with more homogeneous Europe. And the three bursts of welfarist legislation that the US did see - Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, Harry Truman's Fair Deal and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society - came during the long pause in mass immigration between the first world war and 1968. . . .

In their 2001 Harvard Institute of Economic Research paper "Why Doesn't the US Have a European-style Welfare State?", Alberto Alesina, Edward Glaeser and Bruce Sacerdote argue that the answer is that too many people at the bottom of the pile in the US are black or Hispanic. Across the US as a whole, 70% of the population are non-Hispanic whites - but of those in poverty only 46% are non-Hispanic whites. So a disproportionate amount of tax income spent on welfare is going to minorities. The paper also finds that US states that are more ethnically fragmented than average spend less on social services. The authors conclude that Americans think of the poor as members of a different group, whereas Europeans still think of the poor as members of the same group. Robert Putnam, the analyst of social capital, has also found a link between high ethnic mix and low trust in the US. There is some British evidence supporting this link, too. Researchers at Mori found that the average level of satisfaction with local authorities declines steeply as the extent of ethnic fragmentation increases. Even allowing for the fact that areas of high ethnic mix tend to be poorer, Mori found that ethnic fractionalisation still had a substantial negative impact on attitudes to local government.

Finally, Sweden and Denmark may provide a social laboratory for the solidarity/diversity trade-off in the coming years. Starting from similar positions as homogeneous countries with high levels of redistribution, they have taken rather different approaches to immigration over the past few years. Although both countries place great stress on integrating outsiders, Sweden has adopted a moderately multicultural outlook. It has also adapted its economy somewhat, reducing job protection for older native males in order to create more low-wage jobs for immigrants in the public sector. About 12% of Swedes are now foreign-born, and it is expected that by 2015 about 25% of under-18s will be either foreign-born or the children of the foreign-born. This is a radical change and Sweden is adapting to it rather well. (The first clips of mourning Swedes after the murder of the foreign minister Anna Lindh were of crying immigrants expressing their sorrow in perfect Swedish.) But not all Swedes are happy about it.

Denmark has a more restrictive and "nativist" approach to immigration. Only 6% of the population is foreign-born, and native Danes enjoy superior welfare benefits to incomers. If the solidarity/diversity trade-off is a real one and current trends continue, then one would expect in, say, 20 years that Sweden will have a less redistributive welfare state than Denmark; or rather that Denmark will have a more developed two-tier welfare state with higher benefits for insiders, while Sweden will have a universal but less generous system.​

Observe that Denmark is only "liberal" when it comes to benefits for Danes and they don't extend that liberalism to immigrants. It's not liberalism, it's ethnic solidarity.

But just to show how wrong you are, both France and Canada are considerably more racially heterogeneous than most and have very successful socialist societies - both have a higher average quality of life than the U.S.

African-Canadians constitute only 2% of the population and Latin-Canadians only 1% of the population. They're not dealing with the same undertow that America deals with. Nevertheless, as diversity has increased in Canada so too has the rise of private medicine. Coincidence?

In France they're paying minorities to leave France:

While the new regime in Paris is determined to curb illegal immigration, it is also looking to encourage legal migrants to reconsider their decision to stay in France -- by paying them to go back home.

New immigration minister, Brice Hortefeux, confirmed on Wednesday that the government is planning to offer incentives to more immigrants to return home voluntarily. "We must increase this measure to help voluntary return. I am very clearly committed to doing that," Hortefeux said in an interview with RFI radio. Under the scheme, Paris will provide each family with a nest egg of €6,000 ($8,000) for when they go back to their country of origin.​

 

[OnePercenter]

More accurately, 'socialist ideals' should have been the question. Since everyone enjoys the benefits, you can see the uneducated percentage by the negative answers.

(chuckle)
What benefits of socialism do we all enjoy?

The psychic benefit of knowing that our hard work goes to pay for slothful slobs to watch reality TV all day while eating junk food.

Since you've probably driven down a city street today without paying a toll, you must be a slothful slob.

 

[OnePercenter]

More accurately, 'socialist ideals' should have been the question. Since everyone enjoys the benefits, you can see the uneducated percentage by the negative answers.

(chuckle)
What benefits of socialism do we all enjoy?

The psychic benefit of knowing that our hard work goes to pay for slothful slobs to watch reality TV all day while eating junk food.

It's even worse. The streets are littered with seemingly healthy - albeit scruffy - young men (and even women) sitting on my city's curbs holding signs reminding me they are hungry and would like me to buy them a meal (or give 'em some cash).

Voting for Republicans made that possible.

 

[boedicca]

More accurately, 'socialist ideals' should have been the question. Since everyone enjoys the benefits, you can see the uneducated percentage by the negative answers.

(chuckle)
What benefits of socialism do we all enjoy?

The psychic benefit of knowing that our hard work goes to pay for slothful slobs to watch reality TV all day while eating junk food.

Since you've probably driven down a city street today without paying a toll, you must be a slothful slob.

What a crock of excrement. I pay a boatload of taxes, including local and gasoline taxes which are justified as being for road and highways.

 

[OnePercenter]

The poll question: "Just off the top of your head, would you say you have a positive or negative image of socialism?"

Dems/left leaning - 53% pos ... 41% neg
Repubs/right leaning - 17% pos ... 79% neg
All Americans - 36% pos ... 68% neg

Strangely, Americans are almost unanimously positive about small biz (95%) and very positive about free enterprise (86%) and entrepreneurs (84%), all of which are contrary to socialism.

Socialism Viewed Positively by 36 of Americans

More accurately, 'socialist ideals' should have been the question. Since everyone enjoys the benefits, you can see the uneducated percentage by the negative answers.

And if we lived in a socialist "workers paradise" your pompous opinion of how Gallup should word their polls might matter but as Gallup doesn't have to listen to your whining in the matter, neither will I.

More like a condemnation toward whomever paid for the poll.

I'm certain Gallup is very concerned about your sensibilities. No, wait ... maybe not.

Gallup conducts the polls, others pay for the polls. The question is whether the payee can manipulate the way the poll is conducted.

 

[Zander]

Socialism is a disease. An evil malignant tumor that rots any vessel that contains it. It's an insidious filth, bred of fear and envy.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Vigilante]

 

[OnePercenter]

More accurately, 'socialist ideals' should have been the question. Since everyone enjoys the benefits, you can see the uneducated percentage by the negative answers.

(chuckle)
What benefits of socialism do we all enjoy?

What benefits of socialist ideals do we all enjoy? All tax based services.

Oh. I thought you might have had an actual answer.
Silly me.

I thought you might have had an actual rebuff of my answer rather than you usual bloviating.

 

[bripat9643]

More accurately, 'socialist ideals' should have been the question. Since everyone enjoys the benefits, you can see the uneducated percentage by the negative answers.

(chuckle)
What benefits of socialism do we all enjoy?

The psychic benefit of knowing that our hard work goes to pay for slothful slobs to watch reality TV all day while eating junk food.

It's even worse. The streets are littered with seemingly healthy - albeit scruffy - young men (and even women) sitting on my city's curbs holding signs reminding me they are hungry and would like me to buy them a meal (or give 'em some cash).

Voting for Republicans made that possible.

It's always been possible, moron. There have always been people in this world who don't want to work or who are mentally unfit for work. Republicans aren't responsible.

For your next trick you'll blame Republicans for cancer.

 

[bripat9643]

More accurately, 'socialist ideals' should have been the question. Since everyone enjoys the benefits, you can see the uneducated percentage by the negative answers.

(chuckle)
What benefits of socialism do we all enjoy?

What benefits of socialist ideals do we all enjoy? All tax based services.

Oh. I thought you might have had an actual answer.
Silly me.

I thought you might have had an actual rebuff of my answer rather than you usual bloviating.

Excrement doesn't need to be rebuffed. It just needs to be avoided.

 

[Shrimpbox]

Make your point.

Walk me through it.

No games.

.

The paragraph I posted does a good job of explaining socialism.

"Socialism is not a political system, it's a way of distributing goods and services."

Here is an expanded view...

What is Socialism?
Central to the meaning of socialism is common ownership. This means the resources of the world being owned in common by the entire global population.

But does it really make sense for everybody to own everything in common? Of course, some goods tend to be for personal consumption, rather than to share—clothes, for example. People 'owning' certain personal possessions does not contradict the principle of a society based upon common ownership.

In practice, common ownership will mean everybody having the right to participate in decisions on how global resources will be used. It means nobody being able to take personal control of resources, beyond their own personal possessions.

Democratic control is therefore also essential to the meaning of socialism. Socialism will be a society in which everybody will have the right to participate in the social decisions that affect them. These decisions could be on a wide range of issues—one of the most important kinds of decision, for example, would be how to organise the production of goods and services.

Production under socialism would be directly and solely for use. With the natural and technical resources of the world held in common and controlled democratically, the sole object of production would be to meet human needs. This would entail an end to buying, selling and money. Instead, we would take freely what we had communally produced. The old slogan of "from each according to ability, to each according to needs" would apply.

So how would we decide what human needs are? This question takes us back to the concept of democracy, for the choices of society will reflect their needs. These needs will, of course, vary among different cultures and with individual preferences—but the democratic system could easily be designed to provide for this variety.

We cannot, of course, predict the exact form that would be taken by this future global democracy. The democratic system will itself be the outcome of future democratic decisions. We can however say that it is likely that decisions will need to be taken at a number of different levels—from local to global. This would help to streamline the democratic participation of every individual towards the issues that concern them.

In socialism, everybody would have free access to the goods and services designed to directly meet their needs and there need be no system of payment for the work that each individual contributes to producing them. All work would be on a voluntary basis. Producing for needs means that people would engage in work that has a direct usefulness. The satisfaction that this would provide, along with the increased opportunity to shape working patterns and conditions, would bring about new attitudes to work.

- See more at: What is Socialism World Socialist Movement

That's a lovely cut & paste and all, but you didn't answer my question.

In your own words, please walk me through what you posted:

In socialism, "more people have some say in how the economy works"

If you're not going to do this, or if you can't, just say so, and I won't burn any more time on this.

.

What is so hard to understand? Socialism means EVERYONE has an equal say in how goods and services are distributed.

Come on.

In socialism, HOW does everyone have an equal say in how goods and services are distributed? Precisely?

And your affection for socialism is clear. Fair enough to say you would join Franco and MikeK and proclaiming you're a socialist?

Two very clear questions, easy to answer.

.

In pure socialism, there is no private ownership. Pure socialism calls for public rather than private ownership or control of property and natural resources.

I am not a socialist. I am a liberal and a capitalist. What I strongly believe in is democracy; everyone has a say in how their government works. I believe in free and open elections. I believe our founding fathers understood that a pure democracy was not the best model. That is why the form of democracy they chose was a representative republic. Beliefs I have that could be called 'socialist' has to do with our environment. They are beliefs that go all the way back to the Magna Carta...the rule of the commons; the air we breath, the water we drink, the soil we seed. The 'commons' are owned by all of us.



The most insightful and in depth understanding of a true free market comes from one of my favorite liberals, an environmental lawyer who is a member of my favorite liberal family.

I urge you to read the whole speech.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

"I want to say this: There is no stronger advocate for free-market capitalism than myself. I believe that the free market is the most efficient and democratic way to distribute the goods of the land, and that the best thing that could happen to the environment is if we had true free-market capitalism in this country, because the free market promotes efficiency, and efficiency means the elimination of waste, and pollution of course is waste. The free market also would encourage us to properly value our natural resources, and it's the undervaluation of those resources that causes us to use them wastefully. But in a true free-market economy, you can't make yourself rich without making your neighbors rich and without enriching your community.

But what polluters do is they make themselves rich by making everybody else poor. They raise standards of living for themselves by lowering the quality of life for everybody else, and they do that by evading the discipline of the free market. You show me a polluter; I'll show you a subsidy. I'll show you a fat cat using political clout to escape the discipline of the free market and to force the public to pay his production costs. That's what all pollution is. It's always a subsidy. It's always a guy trying to cheat the free market.

Corporations are externalizing machines. They're constantly figuring out ways to get somebody else to pay their costs of production. That's their nature. One of the best ways to do that, and the most common way for a polluter, is through pollution. When those coal-burning power plants put mercury into the atmosphere that comes down from the Ohio Valley to my state of New York, I buy a fishing license for $30 every year, but I can't go fishing and eat the fish anymore because they stole the fish from me. They liquidated a public asset, my asset.

The rule is the commons are owned by all of us. They're not owned by the governor or the legislator or the coal companies and the utility. Everybody has a right to use them. Nobody has a right to abuse them. Nobody has a right to use them in a way that will diminish or injure their use and enjoyment by others. But they've stolen that entire resource from the people of New York State. When they put the acid rain in the air, it destroys our forest, and it destroys the lakes that we use for recreation or outfitting or tourism or wealth generation. When they put the mercury in the air, the mercury poisons our children's brains, and that imposes a cost on us. The ozone in particular has caused a million asthma attacks a year, kills 18,000 people, causes hundreds of thousands of lost work days. All of those impacts impose costs on the rest of us that in a true free-market economy should be reflected in the price of that company's product when it makes it to the marketplace.

What those companies and all polluters do is use political clout to escape the discipline of the free market and to force the public to pay their costs. All of the federal environmental laws, every one of the 28 major environmental laws, were designed to restore free-market capitalism in America by forcing actors in the marketplace to pay the true cost of bringing their product to market.

At Riverkeeper, we don't even consider ourselves environmentalists anymore. We're free marketers. We go out into the marketplace, we catch the cheaters, the polluters, and we say to them, "We're going to force you to internalize your costs the same way that you internalize your profits, because as long as somebody is cheating the free market, none of us get the advantages of the efficiency and the democracy and the prosperity that the free market otherwise promises our country. What we have to understand as a nation is that there is a huge difference between free-market capitalism, which democratizes a country, which makes us more prosperous and efficient, and the kind of corporate-crony capitalism which has been embraced by this (Bush) White House, which is as antithetical to democracy, to prosperity, and efficiency in America as it is in Nigeria.

There is nothing wrong with corporations. Corporations are a good thing. They encourage us to take risks. They maximize wealth. They create jobs. I own a corporation. They're a great thing, but they should not be running our government. The reason for that is they don't have the same aspirations for America that you and I do. A corporation does not want democracy. It does not want free markets, it wants profits, and the best way for it to get profits is to use our campaign-finance system -- which is just a system of legalized bribery -- to get their stakes, their hooks into a public official and then use that public official to dismantle the marketplace to give them a competitive advantage and then to privatize the commons, to steal the commonwealth, to liquidate public assets for cash, to plunder, to steal from the rest of us.

And that doesn't mean corporations are a bad thing. It just means they're amoral, and we have to recognize that and not let them into the political process. Let them do their thing, but they should not be participating in our political process, because a corporation cannot do something genuinely philanthropic. It's against the law in this country, because their shareholders can sue them for wasting corporate resources. They cannot legally do anything that will not increase their profit margins. That's the way the law works, and we have to recognize that and understand that they are toxic for the political process, and they have to be fenced off and kept out of the political process. This is why throughout our history our most visionary political leaders -- Republican and Democrat -- have been warning the American public against domination by corporate power.

And what we have to understand as Americans is that the domination of business by government is called communism. The domination of government by business is called fascism. And our job is to walk that narrow trail in between, which is free-market capitalism and democracy. And keep big government at bay with our right hand and corporate power at bay with our left.

In order to do that, we need an informed public and an activist public. And we need a vigorous and an independent press that is willing to speak truth to power. And we no longer have that in the United States of America. And that's something that puts all the values we care about in jeopardy, because you cannot have a clean environment if you do not have a functioning democracy. They are intertwined; they go together. There is a direct correlation around the planet between the level of tyranny and the level of environmental destruction.

The only way you can protect the environment is through a true, locally based democracy. You can protect it for a short term under a tyranny, where there is some kind of beneficent dictator but, over the long term, the only way we can protect the environment is by ensuring our democracy. That has got to be the number-one issue for all of us: to try to restore American democracy, because without that we lose all of the other things that we value."

Kennedy is such a BIG frigging hypocrite he would be a nobody if his last name was not Kennedy.

"A corporation cannot do anything philanthropic." Says Kennedy. Just discount him right there. How about donations to breast cancer, donations to scholarships, donations to preserve our heritage, on and on and on. It is BS and people that want to debate honestly have to recognize that or be considered charlatans. The amount of money donated just to hospitals and medical research is astounding. Kennedy spouts this bile only to keep his political bona fides current.

I have been a member of the Apalachicola Bay and river keepers. They needed a token fisherman and I was one of the few with a full set of teeth and an education. Trust me, they are happy to receive monies from corporations as well as donations from people whose wealth was accrued by working or investing in corporations.

But what really set me against Robert Kennedy was when this chapter wanted him to come speak at a fundraiser. This guy had the gall to say that it would cost us 15,000 dollars to get him to come to speak in support of the environmental organization he created and is promoting. So it is all about the money not the cause for this piece of dung. Our organization was very poor and his demands were out of the question. Kennedy is as bad or worse than any corporation.

Reality always busts the academic bubble.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Socialism is an economic tool. National Parks are socialistic. As are police departments, fire departments, and the military. All are supported and ran by the government. Our Interstate System is a creation of socialism.

I don't agree that's what socialism is. Those parks are funded by the private sector, capitalism, not state ownership. The state doesn't create any wealth, it doesn't fund jack shit, that's the people's money. The people fund the state, that's capitalism.

Your ignorance as to the definition of socialism doesn't alter the definition.

National Parks, police, fire depts, etc are all socialist by definition. Parks used to belong only to the wealthy, police forces were there to protect the wealthy from the rabble, the military was there to do the bidding of the wealthy.

Today We the People have formed a society where we have our own socialized parks, police, fire and military for our mutual benefit.

You might not understand this concept but it is socialism by it's very nature.

Go back to you knitting old lady. You've just defined government as socialism. The very basis of government is common defense. When you expand socialism to include the functions of government then you've shot yourself in the foot with respect to the a.) people treating you seriously, and b.) you've totally negated the "argument" that socialism is an economic tool, for how is establishment of a park or the creation of an army an economic act.

Gotta at Pastor Rikurzhen preaching his perverted "Gospel of Conservatism" without any understanding of what he is actually saying!

The very basis of government is common defense

Common defense, common ownership, common wealth, common interests, common legal systems, common roads, common parks, etc.

Socialism is about what we as a SOCIETY do in COMMON because it benefits us all. Common defense is a socialist concept because We the People are pooling our funds to provide for our common defense. Equally we are pooling our funds to provide roads, police forces and fire departments because they serve our COMMON interests.

Too bad your home schooling never included the foundation of what constitutes the purpose of a government.

So all governments are Socialist

What a fucking moron

 

[Mathbud1]

It is a lot tougher being a liberal. We actually THINK. It would be so much easier to be a right wing pea brain.

LOL. Which is why libs rely so heavily on emotion and demonizing their opponents, right?

That's a laugh.Conservatism is TOTALLY based on emotion, the strongest and most out of control emotion...FEAR

Liberalism is trust of the people, tempered by prudence; conservatism, distrust of people, tempered by fear.
William E. Gladstone (1809 – 1898)

Do you think that this quote you keep posting is proof of something?