Treason Season??

[Rajvik]

So, how do you define socialism?

sorry, something like this tends to require an actual keyboard and more time than i really have to answer, because it is a many nuanced thing

Socialism is a political/economic philosophy of "From those who have, to those who need" which in philosophy is fine, it takes from those who have excess to their personal need and gives to those who lack. The first problem lies in the human condition of the mechanism to move said largesses. HUMAN BEINGS ARE GREEDY. As George Orwell stated in his novel "Animal Farms" the philosophy becomes "Some pigs are more equal than others." and because of this people will skim from top, from the very best of what is available to make their own lives just a little bit better than anyone else.

The second problem with socialism is, in my mind, a toss up between the identity politics of saying, "HE HAS MORE THAN YOU AND THUS IS EVIL."  and the fact that it forces a social paradigm of totalitarianism just to keep the people from continuing to take from the people who are doing the leveling. Margaret Thatcher said it best here when she said, "Socialism is great, until you run out of other people's money to spend." David Weber has shown us what happens when you have socialism writ large, (Haven), China shows us what a nation is willing to do to maintain the information control necessary to keep the peace in a large area socialist regime, and Venezuela is showing us why this is the case. In short, BA, your socialist utopia is an outlier, not the norm, and i honestly wonder why that is. (note that i wonder why its the outlier)

As best I've been able to tell, he "defines" it the same way he defines "liberal-progressive-globalist" over on the Irish oddsmaker thread, a way explained by one "vituperative, foul-mouthed blogger" back in 2009 when Andrew Sullivan was insisting that his objections to the Republican Party, as it had come to present itself during the Cheney adsinistration, emphatically did not "make [him] a 'radical leftist' as Michelle Malkin would say":

Yes, Mr. Sullivan, your objections emphatically do make you a "radical leftist", because in the hands of the shitkicker demagogues of the Right like Malkin, phrases like "radical leftist" have long since lost any meaning. They are just the pejorative-du-jour, pulled from a random grab-bag of Limbaugh-words -- socialist, elitist, feminist, Marxist, anti-American, compassionate, cut-and-run, surrender, Liberal, extremist, collectivist, queer, Communist, fascist, atheist, humanist, "New York", "San Francisco", “Chicago”, French, European -- that each used to have discrete and very different meanings, but are now bleated interchangeably by the Pig People and their overlords at anyone with a softer heart than Curtis LeMay and less imperial ambitions than Genghis Khan.

(I'm being specious and unfair, I know. Rajvik may never have listened to Limbaugh. He may instead get all his information from Fox "News", the network that has been scientifically proven to leave its viewers less informed about the world than people who watch literally no news at all. Or both. It wouldn't surprise me either way.)

Thank you Mamorien for putting words in my mouth, I do happen to listen to Rush whenever i get the chance, though i lament that it is not as often as i would like due to the only station in the area that carries him being an AM station and the fact that I AM WORKING at a job where i cannot listen to any radio station at all. Now, what this driftglass fails to note is the reason that the phrase "Radical-Leftist" has become a pejorative among the right. It is because in their pursuit of that libertine value of equality, (one i can actually empathize with to a large degree) is that they have decided that socialism/communism is the ONLY method to reach it.

Also Mamorien, Churchill was British, and as Dartz can probably attest, Brits have a thing about monarchy, they think that is the way things should be because thats the way it has been for years. For them is practically mimetic. Do not equate this with a hate of equality, the Russian people WERE better off under the Romanovs than they were under Stalin, at least in the later generations. 

Now, as to this persons comments of "Shit kicker Demagogues" better a shit kicker who will survive on their own as opposed to a elitist basement dwelling city boy who couldn't survive outside suburbia and requires a grocery store to eat. Are those things nice, oh yes, but not necessary to those of us that grew up in the country. Our agrarian ways will long outlive your "bourgeois" city by dint of one simple fact, YOU NEED US, WE DON'T NEED YOU!

Why do you vote for somebody who you don't feel is trustworthy?

That's a serious question; I'd appreciate a serious answer.

The short answer is that no one that is trustworth is running for office. Thats not me being glib, its just a fact of life. when dealing with politicians i have two philosophies, 

first: Politicians are like diapers, they end up dirty, and need to be changed often. 


Second: There is no one who searches for power, who is worthy of power, so pick the lesser evil.

i hope this has answered a good number of questions and appologize for taking as long as i did to answer, i don't sit in front of a keyboard all day.