America's New Socialist Party

[ClayBarham]

In 1917, Lenin told a gathering of his followers, “We will now proceed to the construction of a socialist society.” Can we expect to hear the same thing in January of 2009, when the Democrats take over the American government? Marx said, “All history is nothing but a continual transformation of human nature.” The scientific socialist planners elected in 2008 will simply change the social relations and culture and all people must simply adjust and follow along with it. In short, no manner of evidence to the contrary can convince these people that men and women have a basic nature, where legitimate self-interests reflect their individual values, interests, skills, talents and aspirations in life and the world around them. Socialism, where tried, has always been an escape from reality in an attempt to reengineer men and women, make them ideal to manage and guarantee their equality of condition. Men and women are created equal by our Creator, not guaranteed life on a set of railroad tracks all going the same speed toward the same destination with the same luggage. In America, the ideal society has risen around the un-ideal man, and resulted in the best of human behaviors. They cannot believe prosperity rises only out of individual freedom.

[stannis]

What is with this scare-mongering about 'socialism'? Are you afraid that your opponents might have workable policies? Socialism as we knew it, in the US and Europe and elsewhere, is all but dead. Please get over it. Red scares just don't wash any more.

[Buck Laser]

What is with this scare-mongering about 'socialism'? Are you afraid that your opponents might have workable policies? Socialism as we knew it, in the US and Europe and elsewhere, is all but dead. Please get over it. Red scares just don't wash any more.


You have to understand that Clay is coming from an entirely idiosyncratic interpretation of US history and, for all I know, of socialism. He thinks that the model for American thought was established in the Plymouth colony sometime shortly after 1620. The enlightenment, Ben Franklin, Tom Paine and Thomas Jefferson never happened for him. If you take that kind of perspective, you can believe almost any damned thing.

[ClayBarham]

Buck:
Seems to me that 1620 came along time before Ben Franklin. Also, why is it impossible for men and women living their lives in freedom to have evolved a social pattern for their lives long before the Enlightenment in Europe? Is it a hatred for anyone living in America at that time that drives your thinking, or that they, being Christians, were too stupid to evolve? Read Tom Paine's Common Sense and you'll see where he is saying things worked in America that should be proof for Europe that there is a better way. Jefferson wrote the Declaration as a statement that Americans did not want what the King had to offer, not that he was establishing a whole new society. Everything our Founders did was a reflection of what most Americans living in America had and wanted to continue to have. Is all that impossible to imagine that our Nation existed before we told the King to buzz off and stop trying to interject his government's policies on us?