Socialism - A lesson for Republicans

[Mac1958]

The communism I saw and what you seem to agree with is where if the commies in charge don't like what you say/think/do, they shoot you in the face. Got it yet?

You still haven't provided a definition.

That's okay, I get this all the time here. You're free to wallow in your ignorant paranoia.

 

[Mac1958]

Socialism is a socioeconomic philosophy where all means of production and resources are controlled by the Government. The Military and police forces are not socialism they are funded by the tax payer not the Government. All safety net programs are paid for by the tax payer. The Government is also funded by the tax payer. Thank you capitalism.

You morons are trying your hardest to make Socialism seem like a great thing even going so far as to make shit up.

No one is advocating for having all means of production and distribution owned and controlled by the government.

You're certainly free to provide examples if you'd like.

I'll wait here.

 

[Natural Citizen]

You still haven't provided a definition.

That's okay, I get this all the time here. You're free to wallow in your ignorant paranoia.

Then why don't you define it for us? We all like to learn, Mac. Yu;re welcomed to make it applicable to history while you're at it. That's always a bonus.

Show us your wisdom rather than tantalize us all like you know a secret that's just too darned good to tell.

We'll all wait.

Thanks!

 

[Mac1958]

You have already been taken to school on this. Marxist Socialism is a pre-cursor to Communism. That isn’t a fabricated idea, but literally a definition. You chose to ignore that post for obvious reasons.

Great. What is "Marxist Socialism"?

 

[Mac1958]

Then why don't you define it for us? We all like to learn, Mac. Yu;re welcomed to make it applicable to history while you're at it. That's always a bonus.

Show us your wisdom rather than tantalize us all like you know a secret that's just too darned good to tell.

Thanks!

Look at the post before yours.

You're welcome.

 

[dblack]

Then why don't you? We all like to learn, Mac?

Show us your wisdom rather than tantalize us all like you know a secret that's just too darned good to tell.

Thanks!

This is the standard song-and-dance with socialists these days. Instead of directly defending their ambitions, they deflect with a shell game, equivocating on definitions. Lame, but it works. Most threads that attempt to discuss the merits and flaws of socialism vs. capitalism get derailed with this shit - thus insulating their views from real examination.

 

[Natural Citizen]

This is the standard song-and-dance with socialists these days. Instead of directly defending their ambitions, they deflect with a shell game, equivocating on definitions. Lame, but it works. Most threads that attempt to discuss the merits and flaws of socialism vs. capitalism get derailed with this shit - thus insulating their views from real examination.

Mac is a Keynesian. His very subsistence is dependent upon it.

And he knows precisely where it leads.

He's not fooling anyone. Heh heh.

He is entertaining, though. Such a poser...

 

[ThunderKiss1965]

No one is advocating for having all means of production and distribution owned and controlled by the government.

You're certainly free to provide examples if you'd like.

I'll wait here.

If you are advocating socialism then you are for the Government controlling production.

 

[Anathema]

Nowhere in America's Constitution is the word "Capitalism" written. From the preamble right thru to the last penned word, it is not mentioned one single time.

Republicans - Do yourselves a favor, and stop putting your ignorance on display. America was not designed to be a purely Capitalist nation, if it were, then our Army, Navy, Courts, Congress, and law enforcement entities would all be privatized, so please stop sniveling about Socialism. America had elements of Socialism from the very beginning ...

Those are the facts Jack - Just the facts!

Yes they are the facts… at least some of them.

Capitalism didn’t need to be written into the Constitution because Article I, Section 8 limits the powers of the US Congress to 18 SPECIFIC items. Nothing more. In doing so, the Constitution forces ALL other issues back to the States or The People, thereby forcing them away from the Federal Government.

Unfortunately, Mr Lincoln and his successors have ignored the Constitution, and fundamentally damaged the way the nation evolved.

 

[Mac1958]

If you are advocating socialism then you are for the Government controlling production.

Yes. And I'm not advocating socialism.

Anything else?

 

[Pellinore]

For someone with a limited understanding of history, only learning that the Founding Fathers were white Christian nationalists racists who should be stricken from the annals of history, let me try to spalin something.

The move AWAY from England was an attempt to distance from a tyrannical centralized unfeeling behemoth. In stead, they opted for a representative and limited government. In fact, many were wary of the Constitution because they felt it gave too much control to the Federal government, something we see that has occurred over the years. For you see, Socialism is all about centralized power and control, not Federalism, which is divided control between local and state and federal powers. But we see this erode away every day. Now the CDC controls evictions. LOL.

Did you even know that the Father of the Constitution, James Madison, believed in limited government and not a populace led by the nose by a centralized group of elitists? News to you I'm sure, or if you do know, he was just a racist slave owner and so you don't care, so which is it?

But the part of the Constitution that communists like yourself point to that allows government to blow up exponentially with unlimited spending and power is the General Welfare clause. You kids use this to justify the path that has been taken today by saying that it is all justified to secure the general welfare of society. However, Madison wrote about this as well, and clearly told us this is NOT how it should be used.

But as usual, the Left either is ignorant of this fact or they simply don't care and will begin to attack Madison personally, thus making anything he ever thought or said unimportant.

Anyway, this is what Madison wrote about Madison wrote about the General Welfare Clause he wrote.

“If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress... Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America.”​

So what is next? Are you going to tell me that the source is fake, or will you begin to assault the character of Madison, or will you launch into a diatribe of how what he had said is not really how it reads?

One thing is for certain, socialism owns you, it consumes you, you are its tool, so you must choose one of the three of the following to continue your little lesson on socialism to conservatives like me.

I would like to respond to this one. First, I applaud your use of actual primary sources, which most people don't do. In this case, there were cod fisheries asking the federal government for what we would now call subsidies under military readiness because the fishermen became experienced sailors during wartime. This letter was Madison (at the time, a Virginia House Rep) arguing that to be too much federal overreach, so in that sense, you are correct in that he was arguing for a small federal government.

However, they're not asking for the federal government to own the fisheries, just to subsidize them. This means that he is not arguing against the idea of (what we would now call) socialism of a national or even individual-industry scale, but against this particular issue. Madison never refutes the idea of Congress paying for the military, for example.

Also, he talks about Congress, not the government. This was a federal bill, so he's speaking specifically of the brand new federal government, and makes no statement whether the States could institute whatever they liked. In fact, he mentions "that this government was unlike the state governments, which had an indefinite variety of object within their power ..." That tells me that he is arguing more about federal intervention vs. state intervention, and less about government vs. private ownership.

Finally, this was written in 1792, and a lot has changed since then. We now have many, many industries now that could only be run by government ownership—socialism, on a one-industry scale—that weren't around in the 18th century, such as the police and fire departments. I also don't need to point out that our government hands out *piles* of subsidies these days, so if this letter was a blanket argument against those, it's one we have been ignoring for more than a century now.

The whole letter: Founders Online: Bounty Payments for Cod Fisheries, [6 February] 1792

 

[whitehall]

Notice how the ignorant socialist/communist/fascist left frames it's anti-capitalist argument by adding the word "purely" as in "purely capitalist? Watch out when lefties start quoting the Constitution, it means they are thinking about taking it away.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

Free enterprise means you have ample opportunity to conduct business and commerce free of undue official barriers or unfair competition. Capitalism is a system where wealth may be used to generate more wealth. Very few people directly participate in capitalism. Even our retirement investment accounts are products sold by real capitalists.

And why could wealth not generate wealth under your definition of free enterprise? It seems to me that, being free of "undue official barriers," I might use whatever wealth, or, say, capital, I've acquired, to accumulate more wealth by conducting business freely with others.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

Free enterprise requires a fair degree of government involvement. Capitalism does not want any government involvement except to keep the rabble in line.

A "fair" degree of government involvement, with fairness, of course, being defined by the government, while no one asks themselves what the fair amount of others' property they have a "fair" right to. The answer, of course, being none.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

This is the standard song-and-dance with socialists these days. Instead of directly defending their ambitions, they deflect with a shell game, equivocating on definitions. Lame, but it works. Most threads that attempt to discuss the merits and flaws of socialism vs. capitalism get derailed with this shit - thus insulating their views from real examination.

It's very boring here anymore. What's half this thread? One group calling the others commies, and the other calling them nazis. How interesting.

 

[Bootney Lee Farnsworth]

They also get capitalism mixed up with free enterprise. A person is not actually a capitalist until they have made or inherited enough money to be able to use it to make more money off someone else's hard work.

Which means there will be no free enterprise under socialism.

Goddamn!

 

[Votto]

I would like to respond to this one. First, I applaud your use of actual primary sources, which most people don't do. In this case, there were cod fisheries asking the federal government for what we would now call subsidies under military readiness because the fishermen became experienced sailors during wartime. This letter was Madison (at the time, a Virginia House Rep) arguing that to be too much federal overreach, so in that sense, you are correct in that he was arguing for a small federal government.

However, they're not asking for the federal government to own the fisheries, just to subsidize them. This means that he is not arguing against the idea of (what we would now call) socialism of a national or even individual-industry scale, but against this particular issue. Madison never refutes the idea of Congress paying for the military, for example.

Also, he talks about Congress, not the government. This was a federal bill, so he's speaking specifically of the brand new federal government, and makes no statement whether the States could institute whatever they liked. In fact, he mentions "that this government was unlike the state governments, which had an indefinite variety of object within their power ..." That tells me that he is arguing more about federal intervention vs. state intervention, and less about government vs. private ownership.

Finally, this was written in 1792, and a lot has changed since then. We now have many, many industries now that could only be run by government ownership—socialism, on a one-industry scale—that weren't around in the 18th century, such as the police and fire departments. I also don't need to point out that our government hands out *piles* of subsidies these days, so if this letter was a blanket argument against those, it's one we have been ignoring for more than a century now.

The whole letter: Founders Online: Bounty Payments for Cod Fisheries, [6 February] 1792

A lot has changed since 1792? You mean other than the US Federal government taking over every aspect of our lives? You mean other than printing and handing out money to every man, woman, and child on the globe for political influence? You mean since creating a national debt larger than any in human history? You man other than having troops in over 70 countries around the world?

Yea, there is that. So I reckon for people like yourself to start to fight now seems sort of silly. But the thing is, the more powerful you kids get the more demanding, self righteous, and invasive you become. Collectivists really are detestable.

BTW, I much prefer using the term collectivist to socialist. Socialism is one of a billion flavors of collectivism, like fascism, communism, etc.

 

[Vrenn]

Notice how the ignorant socialist/communist/fascist left frames it's anti-capitalist argument by adding the word "purely" as in "purely capitalist? Watch out when lefties start quoting the Constitution, it means they are thinking about taking it away.

Speaking of ignorant. You can't be a Fascist AND a Socialist at the same time.

 

[westwall]

Capitalism is only as good or bad as the people using it. Any economic system can be used for the betterment of the nation if that is the goal.

That's true. Socialism is, on the other hand, ALWAYS bad, no matter who uses it.

 

[SweetTea]

Great. What is "Marxist Socialism"?

Marxists Socialists want to get rid of Capitalism all together and replace it with government controlled means of production. Currently, most social Democrats are blinded by the supposed greener pastures of Utopian Socialism. They don’t realize that those pulling their strings, and our president’s strings, are more Marxists, but unlike the sheep that follow them, they are smart enough to realize that they must glamorize Socialism.

A disdain for Capiltalism, which is the impetus for Marxism, is slowly swelling, particularly among younger, more impressionable people. This disdain also manifest itself in older, less successful people in the form of envy of the more successful. Nothing is “fair”, rich people are “evil”…it is all due to Capitalism. We can all live in peace and harmony with some Socialism. That is the sentiment of many on the left, which is exactly what our enemies prefer. It is part of a brilliant, long-term plan to bring the US down. Capitalism has made us far to strong and must end.

You are one of those that can’t see it. You won’t likely see it until it is too late.