The Critical Critic Loc: Turtle Island

If “we are that too”? Then why isn’t a simple majority sufficient enough to do things like amend the constitution, or override a president’s veto, etc. etc...?

Just note, you gave the definition of a “republic” - there are many republics, China, France, Angola, even Guyana .... are you saying our form of government is no different than they are?

Can you tell me why the word “democracy” is nowhere to be found in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, or the Bill of Rights? Or why the philosophy of a democracy is absent from those same documents? And yet, easily and readily detectable are philosophies of a Constitutional Republic...

Ricktloml

And of course in order to accept this false utopia you have to ignore history. This great societal ideal has resulted in unmitigated failure EVERY single time it's been tried. And part of that failure is imprisonment, torture and death for any who dare to dissent. From the USSR to C*******t China, to Cuba, and more recently Venezuela the exact same promises were made, and the same results occurred. E******y? Yes abject misery for 99% of the population, (those that survive the purges,) and ultimate power and control for the liars that promised everything, and delivered worse than nothing.

PeterS

Do you think the "average American" rejected social security and then Medicare when they were offered? Did they scream NO, SOCIALISM to education for their children? These are all elements of our economy that weren't addressed by Capitalism. There were no private schools for the average or below American. The average American wasn't paid enough to save for his retirement. And health care? You could forget it. Capitalism didn't address health care and it still doesn't address health care. And if we can provide K-12 then we can provide 4 more years or 2 years of technical training.

None of that is outlandish or something the "Average American" object's too. No, the only ones who will object are the radical right and no one else. There is nothing average about you at all. You are 20% to 30% of the population and nothing more. You are a minority and one that isn't worth listening to.

Right now, the only reason for our "booming" economy is because we are borrowing a trillion dollars a year and pumping it into the economy and Billionaires bank account. That isn't Capitalism. Capitalism doesn't revolve around an endless number of handouts disguised as tax cuts to the wealthy.

Seth

Seth

Social Security, at least the retirement variety, isn't socialism, one pays into it all one's working life and then receives it back in pieces later -- and it's not an "entitlement," because the same money invested in an interest drawing instrument would, over the same period of 40+ years, be worth more than double what one ends up getting back.

Medicaid is for those who are poor for wh**ever reason, this being America. We can't very well allow those who truly can't afford it to die when it can be prevented. We are a country that values life, with the exception of those of you who favor infanticide.

The rest of us pay for health insurance. In a socialist country, we wouldn't have that option, we'd all (except the folks on top, of course -- look at the double standards of top Democrats now, for example) have to live with the same "free" substandard healthcare that cost us the pleasure of being taxed into the next century.

"Tax cuts for the rich" and corporate taxes are totally different things. The people who run the corporations still have to pay their personal income tax, while taxing corporations less leaves them more capital to use to make more profits, which inevitably entails creating more jobs.

The more people working, the less people collecting "benefits" from the government. Less collectors of benefits means smaller government bureaucracies, which in turn means more funds to shrink deficits and rebuild infrastructure.

Socialism is a pipe dream for the naive, the heavy taxation needed to supply all those wonderful, free things, again, inevitably represses productivity, k**ls meaningful employment for millions and produces substandard services as does any enterprise run by career politicians, who are good at one thing and one thing only: jacking their jaws.

Did you ever see a Russian, during their early immigration here after the USSR ended, in a store looking to buy anything of a mechanical nature? If nobody stopped them, some of these guys would've taken the product apart to inspect it -- they were used to C*******t Bloc products being mostly junk, because there was no incentive to excel.

If you lived in Venezuela, by now one of your neighbors, if not you yourself, having eaten all the grass from the front lawn and the leaves off the trees, would have devoured your cat.

And meanwhile, because life degrades to misery in a socialist country and people become desperate, the government finds the need, inevitably, to have it's federal police and security forces become something along the same lines as the Gestapo, the Ton Ton Macoutre or the KGB's First Chief Directorate.

And things go downhill from there....

No matter what you are told, what you choose to believe or what you think is "very nice," these are the facts, and they've proven out every single time a country has gone socialist.

I understand that "progressives" have this naive streak in them that believes that if you keep doing the same things over and over, you'll eventually get a different result.

That's fine, but do those of us who are reasonably intelligent and love our country as it has, with great success, been run for the last 240+ years, a favor and try your socialism someplace else.

Ricktloml

The claim has always been "the right" people weren't in charge, that's why big centralized government, socialism/c*******m/collectivism/statism has failed EVERY time it's been tried, (and is as you point out failing miserably right before our eyes in Venezuela,) Maybe the useful i***ts are naïve. Those who want to be in charge KNOW they are pushing tyranny, because power and control is their goal. Hugo Chavez, and the USSR C*******t Constitution, (and every other socialist false promise maker throughout history,) say the same things Bernie Sanders and the other Democrat/socialists are now saying, it's all lies.

Seth

Which also explains why the Democrats, who essentially control our education system, have taken to dumbing things down.

Where K-12 once stressed teaching our youth to think for themselves, form their own opinions and provided the "tools" to do so, they now provide "progressive" indoctrination instead, substituting social justice & identity politics for American History and Civics while shirking on teaching "the 3 R's."

This is the same sort of thing they did in the USSR and do in other C*******t/socialist countries. Pollute Program the minds of the young so they'll grow up brainwashed, to all intents and purposes, good little Ocacio Cortezes.

Louie27 Loc: Peoria, AZ

I don't believe what you spout. We pay for SS and Medicare they are not a part of welfare program. I for one, paid into that system for about 50 years. If the money I had put into SS were put into a account just for myself and not for the use of this government I would be receiving about double what I receive in SS payments. Capitalism doesn't revolve around hand outs for those that don't want to work. If there weren't many rich people there most likely wouldn't be such an booming economy that we have now. The rich are the one's that push the economy with their money to manufacture products.

Ricktloml

It used to be that an 8th grade education was close to a Bachelor's degree. Now a high school diploma is almost worthless, many first year college students have to take remedial courses. Children are taught to conform, not how to think critically.

Seth

Another thing we have the Democrats to "thank for."

Ranger7374 Loc: Arizona, 40 miles from the border in the DMZ

Do you listen to Fox News, ABC-NBC-CBS-CNN? Do you read the Washington Examiner, Washington Post, New York Times, Chicago Herald, or Los Angeles Times? Where are you getting your information?

After four investigations two by the FBI, and 2 by Congress, Donald Trump was found innocent of collusion. Yet those who support the misinformation campaign started and written by Russia, reported to Christopher Steele, and paid for by Hillary Clinton and the DNC, then turned over to the FBI.

If Donald Trump read my post, he would agree with the fact, that neither He nor I agree with this "Manifesto". Every point in the post, or Russian Constitution, is what the Democrats want to do to this country.

Just like Obama's Administration and HRC and the DNC bought the lies of Russian Disinformation, so is the Democrats buying the lies of the success of the USSR. In the beginning of this post, I asked you where you got your information, what media outlet did you hear the information within your post. Because I believe you are an intelligent man, but I believe you are being duped by the media.

Do you believe Trump and Putin are conspiring with each other?
If you do, please look at the actions of Trump and Putin in the past two years then write another post here.

Ranger7374 Loc: Arizona, 40 miles from the border in the DMZ

Does that apply to the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republic?

PeterS

Well, everything being proposed so far people will pay into. If that's not socialism then why do you keep calling it that?

Seth

Reread my post. Reread your post.

You're the one who referred to Social Security as socialism. I said it isn't, because the money one receives after retiring is money one has paid in himself, not "free" money off the back of other taxpayers.

I also mentioned that this specifically refers to retirement Social Security. If anything, it is giving the recipient the short end of the stick because a personal retirement account with the same denominations over the same four decades and change, bearing interest, would pay more than double to the retiree.

However, you're wrong on certain issues. Why should, say, a wage earner with no children or one whose children are tradesmen or military pay other people's children's college tuition, or a healthy young person pay taxes for the healthcare of someone who could afford their own insurance, or pay for the a******n of a stranger, particularly if he/she doesn't support a******n? Why should anyone's taxes have to finance the ever-expanding bureaucracies that accompany every single Democrat agenda?

And what you still don't get is that the smothersome taxation entailed in socialism would cost jobs in the private sector, which pay the salaries, benefits and retirements of those overblown bureaucracies, putting still more people on government doles.

This would continue to snowball until we have a full blown Venezuela on our hands, and this is not conjecture, it is a reality that has proven out every single time a country has gone socialist. How many times does something need to fail before you dumbjohns realize that the outcome doesn't change?

Ricktloml

[quote=Seth]Reread my post. Reread your post.

You're the one who referred to Social Security as socialism. I said it isn't, because the money one receives after retiring is money one has paid in himself, not "free" money off the back of other taxpayers.

I also mentioned that this specifically refers to retirement Social Security. If anything, it is giving the recipient the short end of the stick because a personal retirement account with the same denominations over the same four decades and change, bearing interest, would pay more than double to the retiree.

However, you're wrong on certain issues. Why should, say, a wage earner with no children or one whose children are tradesmen or military pay other people's children's college tuition, or a healthy young person pay taxes for the healthcare of someone who could afford their own insurance, or pay for the a******n of a stranger, particularly if he/she doesn't support a******n? Why should anyone's taxes have to finance the ever-expanding bureaucracies that accompany every single Democrat agenda?

And what you still don't get is that the smothersome taxation entailed in socialism would cost jobs in the private sector, which pay the salaries, benefits and retirements of those overblown bureaucracies, putting still more people on government doles.

This would continue to snowball until we have a full blown Venezuela on our hands, and this is not conjecture, it is a reality that has proven out every single time a country has gone socialist. How many times does something need to fail before you dumbjohns realize that the outcome doesn't change? [/quote

But, but the "right tyrant" hasn't been in charge yet. The new tyrant will MAKE it work THIS time. They aren't called useful i***ts for nothing. They fall for the same garbage EVERY time, the words don't even change, the outcomes don't change, the ONLY thing that changes is the new tyrant, which the useful i***ts assure us is the answer, over and over again.