re: #22 Killgore Trout

Good points but I will take exception to this…

Of course the wingnuts have been abusing the socialist thing for years but there are real socialists.

My point is, we really are “real” socialists! If you believe that there is a common good, a social responsibility upon the government to redistribute wealth by taxing people and giving money to others… then that is socialism. We believe in regulating enterprises - business, industry, agriculture - for the common good. We also believe in regulating the exchange of items of value (not just income.)

And I bet all of us here would qualify, to some extent (maybe more, maybe less) as socialists in this regard.

That’s one reason why we take umbrage at Ron Paul and all the self-declared libertarians who want to dismantle government, eliminate government restraints on enterprises, etc.

What keeps me and most likely all of you from being properly termed “communist” is the belief in private property. I think private property is the inevitable result of humanity’s move (about 10,000 years ago) toward settled existence, agriculture, and the like, which convinces me that communists proper have missed (or are just in denial of) reality. That’s why I believe the real marxists are wrong to assume socialism is some sort of transition to another ideal state. Modern civilization is likely, IMO, to bounce around different flavors of socialism as the means of organizing our nations, for quite some time.