Socialism

Despite the accusations that have been hurled and will be hurled in these last days of the election, Obama is not promoting socialism.He wouldn't dare as it's been a bad word to many people-- even if most probably don't even know what it is. The fear of it causes Republicans to vote in a knee-jerk reaction to prevent it.

Socialism is from American Heritage Dictionary: "An economic system in which the production and distribution of goods are controlled substantially by the government rather than by private enterprise, and in which cooperation rather than competition guides economic activity. There are many varieties of socialism. Some socialists tolerate capitalism, as long as the government maintains the dominant influence over the economy; others insist on an abolition of private enterprise. All communists are socialists, but not all socialists are communists."

On that basis, the United States has had some of it already in a lot of different areas that Republicans generally promote, and it didn't begin with the recent vote to more or less take over the banks (only temporarily according to GW Bush).

What is our farming program? We pay people to not grow crops based on government subsidies. The government pays for certain crop practices but not others. Ranchers receive almost no subsidies while those who grow crops can receive many kinds accompanied by the myriad of rules that follow.

On Bill Maher last night Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont was on the panel. Sanders proudly calls himself a democratic socialist but runs as an Independent. He gets elected in Vermont because the independent folks there don't fear the word. Today all you have to do is say certain words and people get in a tizzy.

Here is what Sanders wrote about the recent bailout: [Billions for payouts! Who pays?]. I know, you who fear socialism right next to lack of godliness will be terrified by the very idea that who can pay should pay. That would be unfair and worse, leads to socialism.

For some, the fear of socialism is that it is a stage on the way to communism. If the government can control monopolies, if it can tell you what to grow and when, if it can balance out your banks, if it can buy up home mortgages to let people stay in their homes, how long before they say they own it all and you have communism? (but don't forget McCain and Bush just favored the socialist bailout of the banks)

Ronald Reagan didn't like Social Security, most extreme righties don't even today. Reagan saw Medicare as-- well here's what he said in 1961: “Write those letters now. Call your friends, and tell them to write them. If you don’t, this program I promise you will pass just as surely as the sun will come up tomorrow. And behind it will come other federal programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country, until, one day…we will awake to find that we have socialism. And if you don’t do this, and if I don’t do it, one of these days, you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.”

I am not sure how he figured the average person would afford to live out those sunset years, but it's clear that to him, true freedom means the ability to die of an illness because you don't have the money for a doctor.

(Reagan saw fear of socialism in anything the government did except maybe Iran-Contra which resulted in many Reagan administration members being indicted and may have been a factor in our increased drug trafficking in this country because the Contras dealt drugs to pay for their weapons. The same network to take them arms evidently also transported drugs-- or so some claim. It's not legally been proven, but we did have a flood of drugs from that time forward.)

If I understand this right, to Reagan having the government involved in supporting wars secretly is one of its purpose but programs for its own poor is not? It appears that when the government does something that benefits the ordinary people and the poor, that's socialism but if it benefits the rich, it's free enterprise. Free enterprise for banks on their way up and socialism as soon as they have milked out everything they can get.

Many countries in Europe have democratic socialism and they do have their problems with paying for it. There has to be a balance in what we ask one person to do in helping another. Any programs for large numbers of people are going to have problems. We don't live a frontier lifestyle anymore. We do have people, who through no fault of their own, need help. Is it socialism when the government has programs to help them?

To the far Right, Medicare and Social Security limit our freedom, Welfare and Medicaid are likewise bad. For some even public education is something to be destroyed. Pay for your own, you freeloading parents! True freedom means what exactly? The Bobbie McGee song-- nothing left to lose?

Or is government being involved in our lives okay when it blocks our right to decide to die on our own terms, which mood altering substances we can ingest, whether we carry to term a pregnancy, who we can marry, whether we pay to have sex or seduce someone into it, and which banks make out like bandits. Programs that help the elderly and poor are not good. They are socialism. I think I get it!

(This is the last bounty from our garden before we let the sheep in to eat it all down. Hard freezes are on their way.)