POLL: A Question for Lefties re: Socialism

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Always with the continuum

Yes...stubborn "reality", always standing in defiance of overly simplified, bumper sticker talking points....damn you, reality!

 

[jasonnfree]

Thank God for Venezuela. It's starving masses have provided so much joy and hope to right wingers who've been taught that capitalism is the answer. Which it is, till it fails, which it does frequently. Then it goes to the taxpayers for it's bailout, which it does, frequently.

 

[karpenter]

How is China doing?

How Was China Doing Before It Dropped Pure Communism ??
China Is Still An Authoritarian Economy

This Question Was Asked About Japan When It Was Roaring
And Then What Happened ??
Japan's Been In Near Economic Stagnation For Almost 30yrs Now
The Same Can Happen To China -- US Too

For Now, America And It's Dollar
Still Drives The Economy Of The World

 

[Some Guy]

Last try:

What I am actually saying is that (a) the Right keeps conflating pure socialism with democratic socialism, and (b) the Right keeps using Venezuela as the example of what it appears to think the Left is after.

The rest of these constant straw man fantasies you're trying about what you WANT me to be saying exist in your mind, only.
.

The right puts forth Venezuela as the effect of socialism when the left puts forth socialism as the solution.

Right leaning DO NOT think the left wants the US TO BE LIKE VENEZUELA.

Venezuela is the failed outcome of socialism.

The Left puts forth democratic socialism as the solution.

They see a difference. I see a difference.

Do you?
.

I'm not a right winger, but I don't. In explanation, sure. In practice, nope. Can you find any democratic socialists who have nice things to say about capitalism, or free markets? Can you find any that don't want to play favorites in the market with their green energies and penalizing or outright banning/shutting down fossil fuels? Can you find any democratic socialists who won't argue in favor of minimum wage until they're blue in the face? Can you find any democratic socialists who wouldn't unanimously laud sin taxes like cigarettes and sugary drinks? Would you find any that aren't in favor of jacking up corporate tax rates? Nope. All of the above is economic interventionism in pursuit of greater government control over the markets, plain and simple.

Beyond that, adding the word "democratic" in front of "socialism" makes it worse. Stupid people think democracy is great. It's not. Straight up democracy is a horrible idea because it's just a fancy word for "mob rule." If you're going by the definition of the words alone, "Democratic Socialism" would mean "Mob Rule Redistribution of Assets." Sounds less appealing now, doesn't it?

Lastly, even if there were someone out there advocating for free markets to drive socialized programs, the concept of having our lives highly socialized is a toxic idea. Sure, you can have freedom do what you want to be productive, but we'll just take most of that money you make from being productive and give you what the government thinks you deserve. It's a giant step in removing people's individuality and sense of independence which sets the stage for more invasion into your lives. It's a gentler version of breaking a slave's spirit by making them think that resistance is futile, they may as well just accept their master and do what they're told.

Luckily for the democratic socialists out there, the public school system has failed our kids to the extent where they think "democratic socialism" sounds like a good idea. It's hard to think of a more fitting irony.

 

[Norman]

Always with the continuum

Yes...stubborn "reality", always standing in defiance of overly simplified, bumper sticker talking points....damn you, reality!

The "continuum" of those countries would almost certainly not include Mac, they are not mixed race countries.

How a welfare state is going to work in a country with large minorities, large military and debt of 20 trillion + unfunded liability of 150 trillion is something no one has explained. I am not expecting for an explanation as this is clearly, a leftist fantasy of infinite resources.

Sorry to say but the leftists will either have to get a job or learn to do with less.

 

[frigidweirdo]

Venezuela is the failed outcome of socialism, and other countries are the failed outcome of capitalism.

Does that mean all capitalism fails because one did?

Which countries are the failed outcome of capitalism ?

Let's try the Central African Republic.

Number 187 out 187 countries on the IMF's list of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita. 181st out of 181 on the World Bank's list of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita and 197th out of 198 on the CIA's list of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita.

It's not doing very well. Even with all the problems in Venezuela, it's still in a worse situation. Civil War has been going, on and off, since 2004. Before that there was
Patassé in charge of the government, and he was corrupt, erratic and led to loads of problems. The guy was democratically elected and served for 10 years.

 

[initforme]

There is NO socialism in america. Its no threat and has no foothold. Its only in existence for alarmists.

 

[OODA_Loop]

Venezuela is the failed outcome of socialism, and other countries are the failed outcome of capitalism.

Does that mean all capitalism fails because one did?

Which countries are the failed outcome of capitalism ?

Let's try the Central African Republic.

Number 187 out 187 countries on the IMF's list of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita. 181st out of 181 on the World Bank's list of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita and 197th out of 198 on the CIA's list of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita.

It's not doing very well. Even with all the problems in Venezuela, it's still in a worse situation. Civil War has been going, on and off, since 2004. Before that there was
Patassé in charge of the government, and he was corrupt, erratic and led to loads of problems. The guy was democratically elected and served for 10 years.

Is that seriously your example?

 

[frigidweirdo]

Venezuela is the failed outcome of socialism, and other countries are the failed outcome of capitalism.

Does that mean all capitalism fails because one did?

Which countries are the failed outcome of capitalism ?

Let's try the Central African Republic.

Number 187 out 187 countries on the IMF's list of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita. 181st out of 181 on the World Bank's list of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita and 197th out of 198 on the CIA's list of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita.

It's not doing very well. Even with all the problems in Venezuela, it's still in a worse situation. Civil War has been going, on and off, since 2004. Before that there was
Patassé in charge of the government, and he was corrupt, erratic and led to loads of problems. The guy was democratically elected and served for 10 years.

Is that seriously your example?

Is that seriously lame response?

Is CAR capitalist or not?

 

[Dan Stubbs]

A question for anyone who thinks of themselves as being anything to the Left of Dead Center:

I'm constantly told that the Left wants America to be just like Venezuela, that's there is essentially no difference between Venezuela and social democratic countries like Canada, Australia, Germany & Finland.

So, do you want America to be just like Venezuela, and if so, WHY, dammit!
.

You know how lefties are, they get to close to the Bong and over smoke. Next their brain goes into "gear grinding" thinking and come up with the most sunshine and lollypops and rainbows. I just don't bother with them anymore.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Sorry to say but the leftists will either have to get a job or learn to do with less.

Apparently so will the trumpist trailer park nation... Have you applied anywhere, yet?

 

[BrokeLoser]

I am not left of center but my question to Mac is, what makes you think it's possible for US to become just like Finland? An almost 100% white nation that is smaller than one of our cities population wise.

Two different countries will never be "just like" each other. This all exists on a continuum.
.

Always with the continuum.

I meant that what makes you think US could become a social democracy from the current position? The social democracies just like social security in US started from a position of strength. Now people can't even figure their genders as a result of those policies among other things.

Where is the money going to come from?

Haha...you noticed too huh?
Mac1958 loves the word continuum.

 

[BrokeLoser]

Sorry to say but the leftists will either have to get a job or learn to do with less.

Apparently so will the trumpist trailer park nation... Have you applied anywhere, yet?

STFU liar

 

[night_son]

A question for anyone who thinks of themselves as being anything to the Left of Dead Center:

I'm constantly told that the Left wants America to be just like Venezuela, that's there is essentially no difference between Venezuela and social democratic countries like Canada, Australia, Germany & Finland.

So, do you want America to be just like Venezuela, and if so, WHY, dammit!
.

Honestly, Mac, I haven't been around USMB long but in that time I've come to respect if not often agree with the centrist tone of your posts seemingly anchored squarely to a confluence of ideological intersubjectivity. You do quite well as a crossroads or a "five forks" so to speak, of meeting places. In the end we all choose one of those forks in the road, even if in our refusal to do so, a road crew must come and divert the individual lanes thereof to one's right or left in order to represent choice of path.

That being said, in this thread a whiff of intellectual dishonesty rising about from somewhere, faintly, between the lines. Just a pellucid gray-blue tendril. From what you wrote in some other post, in some other thread, I gather you're a numbers guy? Thus your primacy of thought is given to economics? Also seems to be a bit of the humanist mixed in there amid all the digital accounting and forecasting? Very admirable a tendency to espouse among the cold calculus of counting.

To understand the truth in the real intersubjective fear beneath the accusations of alarmism you proselytize so passionately, you must get beyond the surface strata of "Chicken-Little-ism" you read as unnecessary conflation in other posters anti-socialism rants. While the underlying numbers of functioning economies and their polynomial prognosticators very obviously make vital spheres of any civilization go around in complex balance, the amalgamation of philosophies on which the same civilization was founded become ideologies which act as object vehicles to advance or devolve them, and not "can be" but rather are more dangerous when misinterpreted or misused than thermonuclear weapons.

Epistemology is the theory of knowledge. However, is all understanding of knowledge, or knowledge gained for that matter, representative of the truth? Can the truth be interpreted in more than one way? How many truths can exist in aggregate or aggregations of the definitions of truth--subjectively-- before truth becomes something else when desired to be arrived at objectively? Everyone it seems these days wants to talk about radical political philosophies--you know, the sexiest ones like socialism, communism, anarchism and the "N" one. What most of us fail to analyze, however, are the uniting philosophies our founders derived from antiquity and brought together in the formation of our American civilization.

Our founding fathers epistemic interpretive conclusion was among, if not the first--in near Modernist history at least, to bring the individual citizen's unique persona and personality into the question of equalization with the feudal lord and even the monarch from antiquity, to the forefront of the political philosophy of being or existing within a governed social structure, rather than assigning to him, as was done from ancient times, a group identifier or identity. In effect, for the first time, the everyman's freedom and right(s) was to be made as important as was for millennia that of the highborn alone.

In truth, while the political theories of our founders did not vanquish the historical aristocracy from the social strata so much as renaming it, it did greatly limit their social and political authority over the commoner. Further, the common man was armed with an unprecedented tool in the form of well paid hard labor for great reward, and awarded the great trust of self-editing his own behaviors to be in accordance with the law through personal responsibility, rather the since time out of mind doctrine of having the law imposed on him to coerce socially acceptable behavior at sword point.

In the middle of this great American experiment the lowest caste could meet the highest caste in the middle to form a new, historically unheard of caste: the middle class. Barring excessive familial social advantage, we all start from humble beginnings and yet the true magnificence of our system is in our ability to move up, branch out, become better--all dependent upon the willingness and measure of our personal effort. We the people were never intended to be a species of citizen who received government, but rather a body of citizenry who forged our own through suffrage, and if need be, rebellion. Our government was never meant to be something that happened to us, but for us--willingly--and by our own contractual handshake of permission.

The episteme or the core interpretation of the knowledge of governing observed by Moore, Marx, Engels and others to become the philosophies and derived ideological products of socialism is antithesis to the above described political, social, economic and epistemological interpretations of our founders. While you assert with reasonable if not somewhat exasperated dialectic that today's American democratic socialism proffered by now mainstreamed elements of the Democratic party is nothing similar to Marxist-Leninist theory or historical application, I would agree to disagree agreeably--in the spirit of an annoyingly over complicated Hegelian dialectic sense.

Neither universal healthcare, nor universal education, nor nationalized living wages are socialist institutions--I will grant you that much. However, beneath the surface strata of those proposed levels of infrastructural economic interventionism, is a decades running cultural ideological revolution starkly the opposite in every way to the nature of our founders ideology. That below the surface radical political and cultural philosophy aligns with historical Marxist-Leninist authoritarian socialism and in solid truth is as deadly for our American way of life as a nuclear demolition charge on a timer ticking down to zero.

The middle class is where the poor and wealthy meet. Original American political theory holds and-- surprisingly well-- provides the poor man with, the tools to rise up if not to the very top then at least past the middle. Marx and Engels viewed both the upper class--and its product the middle class--as eternal enemies of the poor working class who could never be upwardly mobile in a capitalist society and were in fact, fixed in place with economic oppression not unlike some kind of social prison.

What true socialism--the full Monty--calls for is cultural, social and political revolution. What it promises the oppressed working class is ownership of their destinies by means of ownership of government infrastructure from the top down. What true socialism implemented results in is not the elimination of the wealthy, but rather the nationalization and centralization of all wealth into the hands of the few who call themselves the government of the People. Fewer, more wealthy rich men.

So yes, in closing, so-called American democratic socialism is neither an advertisement for Moor's Utopia, nor Marx's manifesto, nor even homicidally angry young Lenin's Bolshevism. However, Mac, the de facto political ideology of today's radical Left is all of the preceding and more in the form of political correctness, moral relativism, factual relativism, patriotic relativism, censorship of opposition, violent youth movements, coerced and forced speech, denial of biological fact, fear of hate speech and so on. Democratic socialism is the surface of a much deeper than it first appears glacial lake of very dark ideological chasms. Perhaps . . . America could float well enough on its surface, and yet if that boat were to ever capsize or be intentionally sunk, all of our greatest nightmares would become reality.

To neither heed history's warnings nor listen for a moment to what your Chicken Little's have to say is, in my humble opinion, the opposite of the veritable mature cooler head. Sometimes the best intended desire to unite the saner voices of opposition can rob one of sight faster even than crying wolf.

Remember . . . government is not something our founders or first American ancestors intended to happen to them or to later generations. "By the people . . . ." Yes? Neither reliance on government nor forced acceptance of government was ever intended to be in the cards. "For the people." American men and women rise or fall by their own effort. Poverty is not a disease requiring a government cure. The "antidote" to being poor is already inborn within all of us. The wealthy will always exist. Unless of course, we follow the socialist way of stripping them all of their fortunes, demote them to work in the fields, imprison them or shoot them at dawn.

 

[Norman]

A question for anyone who thinks of themselves as being anything to the Left of Dead Center:

I'm constantly told that the Left wants America to be just like Venezuela, that's there is essentially no difference between Venezuela and social democratic countries like Canada, Australia, Germany & Finland.

So, do you want America to be just like Venezuela, and if so, WHY, dammit!
.

Honestly, Mac, I haven't been around USMB long but in that time I've come to respect if not often agree with the centrist tone of your posts seemingly anchored squarely to a confluence of ideological intersubjectivity. You do quite well as a crossroads or a "five forks" so to speak, of meeting places. In the end we all choose one of those forks in the road, even if in our refusal to do so, a road crew must come and divert the individual lanes thereof to one's right or left in order to represent choice of path.

That being said, in this thread a whiff of intellectual dishonesty rising about from somewhere, faintly, between the lines. Just a pellucid gray-blue tendril. From what you wrote in some other post, in some other thread, I gather you're a numbers guy? Thus your primacy of thought is given to economics? Also seems to be a bit of the humanist mixed in there amid all the digital accounting and forecasting? Very admirable a tendency to espouse among the cold calculus of counting.

To understand the truth in the real intersubjective fear beneath the accusations of alarmism you proselytize so passionately, you must get beyond the surface strata of "Chicken-Little-ism" you read as unnecessary conflation in other posters anti-socialism rants. While the underlying numbers of functioning economies and their polynomial prognosticators very obviously make vital spheres of any civilization go around in complex balance, the amalgamation of philosophies on which the same civilization was founded become ideologies which act as object vehicles to advance or devolve them, and not "can be" but rather are more dangerous when misinterpreted or misused than thermonuclear weapons.

Epistemology is the theory of knowledge. However, is all understanding of knowledge, or knowledge gained for that matter, representative of the truth? Can the truth be interpreted in more than one way? How many truths can exist in aggregate or aggregations of the definitions of truth--subjectively-- before truth becomes something else when desired to be arrived at objectively? Everyone it seems these days wants to talk about radical political philosophies--you know, the sexiest ones like socialism, communism, anarchism and the "N" one. What most of us fail to analyze, however, are the uniting philosophies our founders derived from antiquity and brought together in the formation of our American civilization.

Our founding fathers epistemic interpretive conclusion was among, if not the first--in near Modernist history at least, to bring the individual citizen's unique persona and personality into the question of equalization with the feudal lord and even the monarch from antiquity, to the forefront of the political philosophy of being or existing within a governed social structure, rather than assigning to him, as was done from ancient times, a group identifier or identity. In effect, for the first time, the everyman's freedom and right(s) was to be made as important as was for millennia that of the highborn alone.

In truth, while the political theories of our founders did not vanquish the historical aristocracy from the social strata so much as renaming it, it did greatly limit their social and political authority over the commoner. Further, the common man was armed with an unprecedented tool in the form of well paid hard labor for great reward, and awarded the great trust of self-editing his own behaviors to be in accordance with the law through personal responsibility, rather the since time out of mind doctrine of having the law imposed on him to coerce socially acceptable behavior at sword point.

In the middle of this great American experiment the lowest caste could meet the highest caste in the middle to form a new, historically unheard of caste: the middle class. Barring excessive familial social advantage, we all start from humble beginnings and yet the true magnificence of our system is in our ability to move up, branch out, become better--all dependent upon the willingness and measure of our personal effort. We the people were never intended to be a species of citizen who received government, but rather a body of citizenry who forged our own through suffrage, and if need be, rebellion. Our government was never meant to be something that happened to us, but for us--willingly--and by our own contractual handshake of permission.

The episteme or the core interpretation of the knowledge of governing observed by Moore, Marx, Engels and others to become the philosophies and derived ideological products of socialism is antithesis to the above described political, social, economic and epistemological interpretations of our founders. While you assert with reasonable if not somewhat exasperated dialectic that today's American democratic socialism proffered by now mainstreamed elements of the Democratic party is nothing similar to Marxist-Leninist theory or historical application, I would agree to disagree agreeably--in the spirit of an annoyingly over complicated Hegelian dialectic sense.

Neither universal healthcare, nor universal education, nor nationalized living wages are socialist institutions--I will grant you that much. However, beneath the surface strata of those proposed levels of infrastructural economic interventionism, is a decades running cultural ideological revolution starkly the opposite in every way to the nature of our founders ideology. That below the surface radical political and cultural philosophy aligns with historical Marxist-Leninist authoritarian socialism and in solid truth is as deadly for our American way of life as a nuclear demolition charge on a timer ticking down to zero.

The middle class is where the poor and wealthy meet. Original American political theory holds and-- surprisingly well-- provides the poor man with, the tools to rise up if not to the very top then at least past the middle. Marx and Engels viewed both the upper class--and its product the middle class--as eternal enemies of the poor working class who could never be upwardly mobile in a capitalist society and were in fact, fixed in place with economic oppression not unlike some kind of social prison.

What true socialism--the full Monty--calls for is cultural, social and political revolution. What it promises the oppressed working class is ownership of their destinies by means of ownership of government infrastructure from the top down. What true socialism implemented results in is not the elimination of the wealthy, but rather the nationalization and centralization of all wealth into the hands of the few who call themselves the government of the People. Fewer, more wealthy rich men.

So yes, in closing, so-called American democratic socialism is neither an advertisement for Moor's Utopia, nor Marx's manifesto, nor even homicidally angry young Lenin's Bolshevism. However, Mac, the de facto political ideology of today's radical Left is all of the preceding and more in the form of political correctness, moral relativism, factual relativism, patriotic relativism, censorship of opposition, violent youth movements, coerced and forced speech, denial of biological fact, fear of hate speech and so on. Democratic socialism is the surface of a much deeper than it first appears glacial lake of very dark ideological chasms. Perhaps . . . America could float well enough on its surface, and yet if that boat were to ever capsize or be intentionally sunk, all of our greatest nightmares would become reality.

To neither heed history's warnings nor listen for a moment to what your Chicken Little's have to say is, in my humble opinion, the opposite of the veritable mature cooler head. Sometimes the best intended desire to unite the saner voices of opposition can rob one of sight faster even than crying wolf.

Remember . . . government is not something our founders or first American ancestors intended to happen to them or to later generations. "By the people . . . ." Yes? Neither reliance on government nor forced acceptance of government was ever intended to be in the cards. "For the people." American men and women rise or fall by their own effort. Poverty is not a disease requiring a government cure. The "antidote" to being poor is already inborn within all of us. The wealthy will always exist. Unless of course, we follow the socialist way of stripping them all of their fortunes, demote them to work in the fields, imprison them or shoot them at dawn.

The extreme centrism of Mac is noted.

I get the sense from him that he is a door mat who is not allowed to have opinions of his own. He comes from a very diverse environment so I bet that this means there are all sorts of political opinions going about. The obvious solution is to bend over and proclaim that you are in the exact center and trying to understand everyone.

I have yet to see Mac take a strong stand for what HE actually believes in. That would be a welcome change. All the talk about the continuum is only about not offending other people.

 

[Mac1958]

I am not left of center but my question to Mac is, what makes you think it's possible for US to become just like Finland? An almost 100% white nation that is smaller than one of our cities population wise.

Two different countries will never be "just like" each other. This all exists on a continuum.
.

Always with the continuum.

I meant that what makes you think US could become a social democracy from the current position? The social democracies just like social security in US started from a position of strength. Now people can't even figure their genders as a result of those policies among other things.

Where is the money going to come from?

Haha...you noticed too huh?
Mac1958 loves the word continuum.

Indeed, I have to use it frequently for people locked in simplistic, binary little worlds.

Doesn't seem to work for them.
.

 

[jillian]

A question for anyone who thinks of themselves as being anything to the Left of Dead Center:

I'm constantly told that the Left wants America to be just like Venezuela, that's there is essentially no difference between Venezuela and social democratic countries like Canada, Australia, Germany & Finland.

So, do you want America to be just like Venezuela, and if so, WHY, dammit!
.

That is absurd and insane

Just like the loons who make up that garbage.

 

[Mac1958]

The extreme centrism of Mac is noted.

I get the sense from him that he is a door mat who is not allowed to have opinions of his own. He comes from a very diverse environment so I bet that this means there are all sorts of political opinions going about. The obvious solution is to bend over and proclaim that you are in the exact center and trying to understand everyone.

I have yet to see Mac take a strong stand for what HE actually believes in. That would be a welcome change. All the talk about the continuum is only about not offending other people.

Please read the second line of my sig. It's specifically for comments like yours. The link at the end of the second line of my sig provides of list of my specific positions on the issues. I'll be happy to discuss any upon request. Have you done that? So much for that one, huh?

And my use of the word "continuum" to describe political and economic systems only offends and triggers those whose thought processes have been simplified down to binary, all-or-nothing status. They don't want to burn time thinking outside their little box, because they have been specifically conditioned NOT to. So the thought that much of life exists on continuum is just a bit beyond them.

And by the way, I happily take incoming from both ends every single day here. In this very thread, in fact. Do you? I don't have a nice, big, warm, cozy, comfy ideological Safe Space in which I can hide and from which I can fling poo.

And I don't need one.
.

 

[Mac1958]

A question for anyone who thinks of themselves as being anything to the Left of Dead Center:

I'm constantly told that the Left wants America to be just like Venezuela, that's there is essentially no difference between Venezuela and social democratic countries like Canada, Australia, Germany & Finland.

So, do you want America to be just like Venezuela, and if so, WHY, dammit!
.

That is absurd and insane

Just like the loons who make up that garbage.

Um, yes, it was meant to be.


.

 

[jillian]

I am not left of center but my question to Mac is, what makes you think it's possible for US to become just like Finland? An almost 100% white nation that is smaller than one of our cities population wise.

Two different countries will never be "just like" each other. This all exists on a continuum.
.

Always with the continuum.

I meant that what makes you think US could become a social democracy from the current position? The social democracies just like social security in US started from a position of strength. Now people can't even figure their genders as a result of those policies among other things.

Where is the money going to come from?

Haha...you noticed too huh?
Mac1958 loves the word continuum.

Indeed, I have to use it frequently for people locked in simplistic, binary little worlds.

Doesn't seem to work for them.
.

A question for anyone who thinks of themselves as being anything to the Left of Dead Center:

I'm constantly told that the Left wants America to be just like Venezuela, that's there is essentially no difference between Venezuela and social democratic countries like Canada, Australia, Germany & Finland.

So, do you want America to be just like Venezuela, and if so, WHY, dammit!
.

That is absurd and insane

Just like the loons who make up that garbage.

Um, yes, it was meant to be.


.

i know.

But you asked.