What makes one a Socialist?

[Eric 88 Carrera]

Originally Posted by porwolf

Copy and past someone's writing is not an argument. These lenghty treatises waste a lot of space here. They seem to be coming almost exclusively from one corner of this forum. Also, I suspect they are only read by the few people in your corner.

Steyn's point is central to the topic at hand. It doesn't matter what label is used: Progressive, Socialist, European Social Democrat, Communist, Fascist or American Liberal. The problem is the same: an entitlement mentality that says people can live off the labor of other people and are entitled to use the sword of government to secure their lifestyle from the productive class. However History has shown that this path has always failed because you eventually run out of other people's money.

Care to address Steyn's central point?

In the twilight of the West, America and Europe are still different but only to this extent: They’ve wound up taking separate paths to the same destination. Whether you get there via an artificial common currency for an invented pseudo-jurisdiction or through quantitative easing and the global decline of the dollar, whether you spend your final years in the care of Medicare or the National Health Service death panels, whether higher education is just another stage of cradle-to-grave welfare or you have a trillion dollars’ worth of personal college debt, in 2012 the advanced Western social-democratic citizen looks pretty similar, whether viewed from Greece or Germany, California or Quebec.

That’s to say, the unsustainable “bubble” is not student debt or subprime mortgages or anything else. The bubble is us, and the assumptions of entitlement. Too many citizens of advanced Western democracies live a life they have not earned, and are not willing to earn. Indeed, much of our present fiscal woe derives from two phases of human existence that are entirely the invention of the modern world. Once upon a time, you were a kid till you were 13 or so; then you worked; then you died. That bit between childhood and death has been chewed away at both ends. We invented something called “adolescence” that now extends not merely through the teenage years but through a desultory half decade of Whatever Studies at Complacency U up till you’re 26 and no longer eligible for coverage on your parents’ health-insurance policy. At the other end of the spectrum, we introduced something called “retirement” that, in the space of two generations, has led to the presumption that able-bodied citizens are entitled to spend the last couple of decades, or one-third of their adult lives, as a long holiday weekend.

The bit in between adolescence and retirement is your working life, and it’s been getting shorter and shorter. Which is unfortunate, as it has to pay for everything else. This structural deformity in the life cycle of Western man is at the root of most of our problems.

Do you have the courage of our convictions or you just another smug Liberal bankrupt of ideas?

[RWebb]

Originally Posted by Eric 88 Carrera

the productive class

who is that, exactly?

[Lothar]

Originally Posted by porwolf

Those who insist of painting "Socialism" in a bad light forget history. It was the "Socialism" of FDR that saved the country and a reasonble and workeable form of Capitalism!

You are absolutely wrong. It is the socialism of FDR and LBJ that this country may not survive. Mobilizing and expanding U.S. industry for the war effort saved the country in the near term. The downside was the creation of the military-industrial complex.

Maybe you need a civics lesson. What makes capitalism "workable" is the rule of law, not socialism.

[porwolf]

Originally Posted by Eric 88 Carrera

Steyn's point is central to the topic at hand. It doesn't matter what label is used: Progressive, Socialist, European Social Democrat, Communist, Fascist or American Liberal. The problem is the same: an entitlement mentality that says people can live off the labor of other people and are entitled to use the sword of government to secure their lifestyle from the productive class. However History has shown that this path has always failed because you eventually run out of other people's money.

Care to address Steyn's central point?



Do you have the courage of our convictions or you just another smug Liberal bankrupt of ideas?

I don't consider that a useful ideas but plain demagoguery! You can tell just by looking at the language and I don't intend to waste any time on that kind of verbiage.

[Heel n Toe]

Originally Posted by porwolf

I don't consider that a useful ideas but plain demagoguery! You can tell just by looking at the language and I don't intend to waste any time on that kind of verbiage.

Translation...

1. I have my fingers in my ears, figuratively.
2. I don't have to do it, and you can't make me.
3. My opinions are mine and don't challenge me on them.
4. I'm not comfortable with exposing myself to other, perhaps reasonable viewpoints.
5. I am comfortable with my own demagoguery.
6. Did I mention my fingers are in my ears? Figuratively?
7. I will continue to whine and complain, but will not attempt to offer any feasible alternative ideas.
8. Stay tuned for more whining and complaining.

[porwolf]

Originally Posted by Lothar

You are absolutely wrong. It is the socialism of FDR and LBJ that this country may not survive. Mobilizing and expanding U.S. industry for the war effort saved the country in the near term. The downside was the creation of the military-industrial complex.

Maybe you need a civics lesson. What makes capitalism "workable" is the rule of law, not socialism.

I think you are looking at the "Socialism" issue through the glasses prescribed by preachers of extreme capitalism, dog eat dog, "think tanks" financed by über-capitalists in our country. Other countries doing much better and they would cringe in horror if they would have to adopt our system.

[porwolf]

Originally Posted by Heel n Toe

Translation...

1. I have my fingers in my ears, figuratively.
2. I don't have to do it, and you can't make me.
3. My opinions are mine and don't challenge me on them.
4. I'm not comfortable with exposing myself to other, perhaps reasonable viewpoints.
5. I am comfortable with my own demagoguery.
6. Did I mention my fingers are in my ears? Figuratively?
7. I will continue to whine and complain, but will not attempt to offer any feasable alternative ideas.
8. Stay tuned for more whining and complaining.

You seem to express your attitudes rather well!

[Heel n Toe]

Originally Posted by porwolf

You seem to express your attitudes rather well!

1. Whining and complaining is your trademark. Can you find evidence I'm a whiner or complainer?

2. Are you happy with the results of the Wisconsin recall attempt?

3. If not, what are your solutions to the problems in Wisconsin that Gov. Walker has been turning around?

4. Am I wrong when assuming we should stay tuned for more of your whining and complaining?

[porwolf]

Originally Posted by Heel n Toe

1. Whining and complaining is your trademark. Can you find evidence I'm a whiner or complainer?

2. Are you happy with the results of the Wisconsin recall attempt?

3. If not, what are your solutions to the problems in Wisconsin that Gov. Walker has been turning around?

4. Am I wrong when assuming we should stay tuned for more of your whining and complaining?

Your are mistaking critiquing your heroes GW, Cheney, Romney, etc. for whining. Somewhat super sensitive, aren't you? Where are you taken critique with grace, examples?

[Heel n Toe]

Originally Posted by porwolf

Your are mistaking critiquing your heroes GW, Cheney, Romney, etc. for whining. Somewhat super sensitive, aren't you? Where are you taken critique with grace, examples?

So... all eight points of the translation above are accurate. Got it.

[Heel n Toe]

Now back to these. It's only four. I know you can handle them with ease:

1. Whining and complaining is your trademark. Can you find evidence I'm a whiner or complainer?

2. Are you happy with the results of the Wisconsin recall attempt?

3. If not, what are your solutions to the problems in Wisconsin that Gov. Walker has been turning around?

4. Am I wrong when assuming we should stay tuned for more of your whining and complaining?

[Lothar]

Originally Posted by porwolf

I think you are looking at the "Socialism" issue through the glasses prescribed by preachers of extreme capitalism, dog eat dog, "think tanks" financed by über-capitalists in our country. Other countries doing much better and they would cringe in horror if they would have to adopt our system.

You speak looter/moocher very well.

The countries that are doing better are the ones moving toward capitalism and free enterprise. We are moving away from these concepts and the results speak for themselves.

[Eric 88 Carrera]

Originally Posted by RWebb

who is that, exactly?

If you have to ask, then you aren't a member.

[RWebb]

I asked because righty-tighties often trot out such nonsense as "the productive class" without understanding economics.

You have no idea, do you.