R's H,
Go back and read the explaination he give latter for using the word "scum" in quotes. and you will feel a little differently.
Why socialism will not work in America...
by zeroday 254 Replies latest jw friends
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restrangled
Frankie...I read his explanation. I also read his original post. I also read his follow up. Just what the world needs...another white kid who's thinks he can save the urban youth of America from themselves.
R's Hubby
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DanTheMan
It just kills me - where do you all get the time to read apparently thousands upon thousands of pages on these subjects? And remember what you've read on top of that?
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hillary_step
Journey On,
Your stupidity is showing again, H.S. "It's" is what is called a contraction. It's a contraction of the two words it and is.....dumbass.
I know what a contraction is. I happen to have a degree in English Literature, from a UK university I might add, where degrees are not given away because a person can throw a ball into a hoop. ;)
It is flawed grammar to use a contraction to begin a sentence. Ask your "Government Professor" for details. ;)
HS
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hillary_step
Steve,
Dude, without knowing anything about me you suggest I'm a looser and simply do not share your belief system because I '"failed" in attempting to take advantage of the wonderful "American system". Please, how do I respond to such nonsense without sounding like a capitalist I despise. I have been DAMN successful but I will not lower myself to proving it it this context. HS as well, if he will forgive me, has been VERY successful. Maybe in a more private situation, if you care to know the truth, I will dispell your misconceptions about the capitalistic successes of the people you suggest are failures. But not tonight. PM me if you sincerely want to evolve.
I am just back into this mele again.
I find the comments that 'Journey On' made about you most amusing...lol. As amusing as the ones where he suggested that I was fat (incorrect), lazy (incorrect) and poor (incorrect). You must admit that he/she is entertaining. It is always fun to watch a person whose ignorance of the thread subject is obvious, blunder around pontificating like an Elder at a Nuclear Fission Conference with an Awake in their hands as research material.
Journey On for example, though full of confidence, has actually contributed nothing whatsoever to this thread that indicates he actually understand the subject at hand, and I challenge any readers to go back and prove me wrong.
What is even more telling however, is a point I made on another thread recently and that is how the often the most agressive, belligerent, and nasty posters on the Board are the ones who are trying to teach us Christian Ethics....lol. BurnTheShips, Journey On, etc. etc.
Imagine Heaven full of these characters. Vipers in the Love of the Lord. ;)
Take care Steve - HS
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BurnTheShips
Journey On for example, though full of confidence, has actually contributed nothing whatsoever to this thread that indicates he actually understand the subject at hand, and I challenge any readers to go back and prove me wrong.
The only thing you posted on this thread that was not a "you are an idiot" comment was a wikipedia link and a Mein Kampf reference.
You have done very little to advance the dialogue HS. You appeal to your person as if you were so much more wise and worldly than those that disagree with you and then you spice you comments with little digs such as this latest one:
the most agressive, belligerent, and nasty posters on the Board are the ones who are trying to teach us Christian Ethics
You sir are very belligerent. You are just a sophisticated troll. As for our Universities, quite a few people come over from your "neck of the woods" to be educated in them. Our public school system leaves much to be desired, but we have excellent Universities, your sarcasm notwithstanding.
I am just back into this mele again.
Incidentally, Hitlery_GooseStep the Grammar Nazi, you may be correct on contractions, but it is spelled "melee". So much for that vaunted UK "edumacation".
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OICU8it2
Well said, Gregor. Take the utopian example of liberal socialism run amok in this country-New Orleans. By continually giving the money of working stiffs like me you perpetuate an incapable entitlement society. When the tax base in this country reaches the point (very close, now) where more than 50% pay no income tax, they can vote in all the "tax the rich" schemes they want until the tit is empty and the cow has left. You can do better for yourself if you are rewarded for your work directly. By lowering taxes the LLC. business owner who pays his taxes as income tax can hire more workers, or buy a piece of machinery which in turn creates jobs. A person making 150 to 300 thousand is not rich in my view. The government doing good is a great thing if they are not wasteful and create entitlement situations where generations of people just live on what they are given. In a society which rewards hard work more money can come into the federal reserve. Right now the top 25% pay 86% of the tax. In 2000 it was 84%. That can be viewed as if tax cuts raised more people into higher tax liabilities and hence, higher income. The top 50% pay almost 97% of the income tax now. The top 1% pay 39%. According to the Wall Street Journal: "In 1980, when the top income tax rate was 70%, the richest 1% only paid 19% of all income taxes; now with a top rate of 35%, they pay more than double that." This country needs capital investment by its own citizens, not higher taxes. The US has been paying the lion's share of protecting the world. Other nations can not begin to match the US in military spending. We have carried them long enough. Of all nations the US citizens give more to charity by far. The country gives more charity than any other. The navy shows up with hospital ships when natural disasters strike other countries. The US should stop being the benefactor of the world.
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SickofLies
Excuse me but American's are the ones that are promoting these stereotypes around the world, where the people up here in Canada get our information about the American military? Michael Moore, popular music, all of which would promote the idea that it is the American poor who are doing the majority of the fighting.
Now I feel I can comment on this subject from a unique point of view, for one I lived in the US for over 7 years and have a degree from an American university, and I’ve served in the military (Canadian) for a brief period. When I joined the Navy I started as an officer because I had a degree, and everyone I worked with and was friends with was educated. However, if you were to look at the regular forces it would indeed be made up by a majority of people with no more than a high school education.
These people do often come from poor backgrounds and they are the ones on the front lines getting killed and not the educated officers. The same is true in the US military, the same is probably true in every military. You protect the assets which are harder to replace, that may not be fair, but if you are out to win it’s the best strategy.
However, one thing I know to be true is that many of these poor disadvantaged ones who joined the military were able to get a free education, great experience and learn discipline and go on to have successful careers afterwards. So I see nothing wrong with poor uneducated people joining the military, in all honesty it may be the best thing they could do with their lives as long as they don’t get killed.
The real question to be asking is not what the demographics of the army is like, but are the wars they are fighting and dying for just? Are these people dying to make the world a better place? If not then it is an immoral abuse of power by the government to use the military to enforce its own will.IMHO, military should be about self defense, and not used to intimidate other nations and control resources. This is the biggest difference between the Canadian and American armies and why Canadians are loved around the world and Americans are hated.
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BurnTheShips
The navy shows up with hospital ships when natural disasters strike other countries.
Indeed. I remember the Southeast Asian tsunami:
http://usinfo.state.gov/gi/Archive/2005/Jan/24-999249.html
Total U.S. private tsunami donations (December 23, 2005)
Cash (includes org anizations not publicly reporting their totals) $1,620,452,212
Value of in-kind gifts reported 254,497,493
Total cash and in-kind gifts to date $1,874,949,705 Here are state-based efforts:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/tsunami/
The US should stop being the benefactor of the world.
They will hate us even more. But kindness is in our national character. The Euros need state based redistribution because they are greedy classist skinflints. The state has to compensate for their character defects.
Burn
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hillary_step
Pop Tart,
The only thing you posted on this thread that was not a "you are an idiot" comment on this board was a wikipedia link and a Mein Kampf reference.
A comment which clearly evidences that you seldom read posts made by others, but just skim through and then slip into your customary bluster mode.
For the record, I will paste what I have written regarding this subject. I make no apolgogies for doing so, just to once again prove your intellectual dishonesty. UInlike yourself I have my own mind and do not need numerous cut and paste efforts to do my speaking for me. Everything I have written is open to the readers view. No rebuttal has been offered by yourself or Journey On. You are both content to whine like child
I left out the comment where I had to correct your over-positive statement regarding Hitler and his 'parasite' metaphor. I do not wish to embarass you for the second time over this. ;)
Note:
<<What you are describing is not a Socialist ideal, but the Capitalist ideal! Do you actually understand what you are saying.
Socialism at its most concentrated, (it is a big word with many dimensions), suggests the revolutionary overthrow of Capitalist government by the workers, the actual wealth-makers, and for power to be taken from 'the relatively few' and given to the majority. At its most evolved as seen in the concept of Social Democracy, as practiced in many quite successful European Countries, aims for this through democratic and not revolutionary means. To a Socialist, power in the hands of a few is what he fights against.
All political ideologies evolve. The ideals of socialism, which basically seek justice for all in a botherhood of humankind, are still alive and well in many sucessfully ruling governments in Europe, probably what you might know as the 'New Left'.
No government is perfect it is true, as can be evidenced by the ghoulish spectre of American politics that are said to have the democratic ideal buried in them somewhere, which a sector of its proponents feel confident enough to export to other nations by the edge of the sword al la Islam.
There are many nations much closer to the true ideals of democracy than the US, but of course finding out about these requires some effort, which precludes the intellectually lazy from finding them.
This is the whole point. What if I told you Katie DOES work very hard but is born on the wrong side of the tracks from your daughter. Hard work is no guarantee of success under the Capitalist system, which has imbued within it the injustice of advantage or disadvantage by sleight of birth. Where is the level-playing field of a just society in this? Social Democracy seeks to address such concerns by giving the power of decision-making to its working people, who after all are the very reason for the success of nations. The sharing of wealth with all its citizens is imo an ideal that should be elevated by governments, not sneered at.
Under a Capitalist ideal, all men are created equal, but some are more equal than others. It always amuses me that the religious right in the US who view Darwin as the equivalent of the Devil's fart and who back 'capitalism' to the extreme, cannot see that they actually DO believe in the 'survival of the fittest' and apply it in its most cynical form.
I have seen the name Chavas noted on this thread. Was he not elected by a democratic process?
I measure the worth of a nation by the way it cares for its most unfortunate citizens, not by the 65 million dollar per annum bonuses it pays to it stock market gurus. Such disgusting excesses should pull at the justice strings of the system.
As to your indication that I am prejudice against the 'wealthy' in American society, well this is nonesense as any person who read my posts carefully would ascertain. What I have suggested is that the economic EXCESSES in ANY society are repugnant to any person with a sense of justice and an understanding of the real needs of society and that a more even spread of wealth serves societies needs much more justly than the opposite.
You are quite wrong and have made a very common mistake, that of failing to see the difference between Socialism and Communism. They were different to begin with, and have certainly evolved along very different paths. One can argue, and with success that neither grass roots Socialism nor Communism as encapsulated in its ideals, has ever been used in anything other than name. This is why comparisons, and the arguments hung upon them, are always flawed. "It did not work in Russia or Cuba" etc. Social Democracy has worked in many parts of the world, but of course, these examples are ignored, and this thread is a good example of this.
Simply put, I agree with Winston Churchill when he said that good government should 'provide the ladder for the people to climb, and a net should the people fall'. This is at the core of Democratic Socialism. It does not rely on the 'survival of the fittest' in society, but rewards the climbers and cares for those less fortunate.
Yes, it falls way short of my ideals as well, though it has also done much in some ways to help society in providing direction for those who need it.
What needs to be understood is that there are no static political ideologies, whatever they may be. They are in constant move like a pendulum adjusting to social evolution. Socialist ideals have changed, are changing and will change. This however, is the same as Capitalist ideologies, democratic values (you have seen just how they can change the past eight years or so) etc. These are forever changing and need to. That which does not bend, breaks.
The Socialist ideals of the 1840's are very different to the Social Democracy that grew from them. The world as envisioned by the Founding Fathers of the US Constitution is very different now. I have no fear of change. I fear the lack of it.
You are correct Steve, but good luck in trying to convince some people that criticism of some parts of a nations government and ideology is not the same a 'deep dislike' of that nation. It has been a battle long fought on this Board to get people to understand this, but it is slow going. My criticisms are no more focused that those of SixOfNine, Flying High etc. etc. etc. etc. - all of whom are Americans!
Since when, however, did these people ever let logic get in the way of their viewpoints? I wonder how Gregor and his ilk view Americans who criticize the US? As apostates? ;)
For those of you who are still clueless as to what practical Socialism has evolved into in the modern age, I have given in to the blight of Wikipedia and posted a link that simply must be read. It explains what Social Democracy is, where it is going and where it has been proven as valid:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy
It is astonishing that when this subject is discussed the spectre of C18th revolutions are raised in order to defeat the ideals of Socialism, when the excesses of capitalism and democracy that date to similar times are ignored with a completeness that stinks of evangelistic zeal.
As I have noted, political ideologies change and develop. This has happened to ALL ideologies, including the one that presently abides in the US, the UK and some parts of Europe
In Europe critisicm of ones country is seen as a healthy thing, not a treasonable offence. Perhaps when Americans learn to criticize their nation without a feeling of ire welling up inside their chests, it would be a healthier day for that nation. It would certainly allow for a mind that is more receptive to new ideas, and one that does not fear ideologies that are not wrapped in a flag and tears.
I doubt very much whether you have a clue what Socialism actually is, let alone its history, yet you continue to clutter this thread with your vapid inanities.
HS