Agnapostate,
One of the many concepts that I have come to understand, thanks to coming to places like this one, is the meaning of the adage:
There are none so blind as those who will not see.
You can attempt to school these people until you are blue in the face, but since they cannot fit the true definition of socialism into their world point of view, they have reassigned its meaning to describe whatever government does which they do not personally approve of.
They must continue to deny the definition of that polticial philosophy in order to reassign blame from the cleptocrary they bow down to and WORK FOR, to some mythical mythical conspiracy of collectivists.
Remember , you are writing to long time supporters of George Bush II who, upon reading that he was forced to come to the aid of his banking masters to once again save capitalism from its propensity of eating itself, declared Bush II, possibly one of our cleptocracy's most loyal supporters -- a socialist.
Word magic such as theirs is in the nature of people seeking to delude themselves. Socialism is, to these folks , at least, nothing more than a convenient scapegoat word meaning BAD GOVERNMENT.
Such circular logic is impenetratble by facts and logic, Agna.
I wasn't a big fan of Bush...but I was less a fan of Gore and Kerry....that's simple enough that you can even understand E. Next....most of us on here prefer capitalisim over any other kind of government intervention. Now can you understand THAT? I think you can. I don't know, it may be a stretch for you.
No stretch at all, actually. I can understand it perfectly.
Honest capitalism is undoubtably the most productive economy system yet devised by man.
I personally would LOVE to see us living in a meritocracy which is what HONEST capitalism must have to suvive.
What I fail to understand is why so many people who claim to be conservtive, keep voting and supporting the very same people who TALK TALK TALK about economic conservatism, but who have consistently for the last thirty years done EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of what they claim they believe in.
Neither party is a party which supports either HONEST CAPITALISM or merit.