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9 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
They are capitalism-based democracies just like us, with some government functions socialized. Again, like us with our capitalist business, but we have only one big socialized program, the VA, and they've gone further with other government services. Imo, we could and should do that. No revolution or extreme collectivist ideology needed, just once again voting our good sense where it makes good sense.
Racism is not actually the big obstacle to a happy new world, though it is definitely a factor in socialism's lack of popularity with fair proportion of conservative voters. But not even all of them.
For a mammoth other reason, socialism requires sacrifice of important liberties, which most feel is not compatible with the founding principles of our nation. You know, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness -- for the individual? Our government was formed to protect the individual from having collectivists like Sanders and authoritarians like Trump dictate how people should be allowed to live their lives.
Sanders is soft-peddling that little liberties detail, to put it in the most euphemistic possible way. He's presumably happy to give up his liberties for his universalist ideal and feels everyone else should be happy to also. But they're not. Capitalism is as old as mankind and built into all our cultures. Both our children started and happily own and run businesses in, or serving, industries that Democratic socialists believe would need to be taken over for collective ownership and labor. Our kids would be extremely unhappy if their businesses were seized or just made illegal and their only choice was to become members and employees of a collective.
Also a far, far, far, far, far, FAR! larger reason than racism is that NO experiment (i.e., violent revolution) in national socialist economy has succeeded. Most degenerated into various forms of dreadfully impoverished authoritarian states, often mostly indistinguishable from RW dictatorships.*
Those that survived only did it by reintroducing capitalism, which turns out to be critically important engine of prosperity. Unfortunately, they still retain the oppressive, authoritarian centralized governments and widespread poverty.
These are the big reasons Sanders has never been able to give socialism away, much less sell it.
And once again, to underline, all those European nations named are capitalist nations. NOT socialist. Another difference, though they're having with problems with the growth of uber-powerful wealthy classes, also, they were not suckered into loosing so many of the controls on capitalism the way that American voters were. We ourselves removed the controls our grandparents created to protect US from them. "We have to get off the back of business." Anyone remember that mantra? Well, we put them back on once enough people decide to vote Democrat and just do it. The answer really is simple and very doable. Just vote for it.
*There's a great deal of similarity between LW and RW extremists. Many LW extremist leaders end up both ideologically, finding RW methods indispensable for controlling what took initial form as one of the LW universalist forms of government as opposed to RW hierarchical.
Racism is not actually the big obstacle to a happy new world, though it is definitely a factor in socialism's lack of popularity with fair proportion of conservative voters. But not even all of them.
For a mammoth other reason, socialism requires sacrifice of important liberties, which most feel is not compatible with the founding principles of our nation. You know, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness -- for the individual? Our government was formed to protect the individual from having collectivists like Sanders and authoritarians like Trump dictate how people should be allowed to live their lives.
Sanders is soft-peddling that little liberties detail, to put it in the most euphemistic possible way. He's presumably happy to give up his liberties for his universalist ideal and feels everyone else should be happy to also. But they're not. Capitalism is as old as mankind and built into all our cultures. Both our children started and happily own and run businesses in, or serving, industries that Democratic socialists believe would need to be taken over for collective ownership and labor. Our kids would be extremely unhappy if their businesses were seized or just made illegal and their only choice was to become members and employees of a collective.
Also a far, far, far, far, far, FAR! larger reason than racism is that NO experiment (i.e., violent revolution) in national socialist economy has succeeded. Most degenerated into various forms of dreadfully impoverished authoritarian states, often mostly indistinguishable from RW dictatorships.*
Those that survived only did it by reintroducing capitalism, which turns out to be critically important engine of prosperity. Unfortunately, they still retain the oppressive, authoritarian centralized governments and widespread poverty.
These are the big reasons Sanders has never been able to give socialism away, much less sell it.
And once again, to underline, all those European nations named are capitalist nations. NOT socialist. Another difference, though they're having with problems with the growth of uber-powerful wealthy classes, also, they were not suckered into loosing so many of the controls on capitalism the way that American voters were. We ourselves removed the controls our grandparents created to protect US from them. "We have to get off the back of business." Anyone remember that mantra? Well, we put them back on once enough people decide to vote Democrat and just do it. The answer really is simple and very doable. Just vote for it.
*There's a great deal of similarity between LW and RW extremists. Many LW extremist leaders end up both ideologically, finding RW methods indispensable for controlling what took initial form as one of the LW universalist forms of government as opposed to RW hierarchical.
