Ahira's Hangar

So a few days ago, I'm watching part of the last Pres. debate and during the lead in coverage Matthews (corporate tool) is interviewing the crowd outside the auditorium. And these McCainites are launching into a rant about Obama's "Socialist" policies. EXcuse me, there are NO US socialist politicians! Debs, well he's been dead for over seventy years, Michael Harrington, he's been dead for over twenty five or so, and Bernie Saunders, claimed a Socialist Party identification, I think, when he was mayor of Burlington, VT.

No Socialist US politicians? Well, in order to be a socialist one has to subscribe to the three fundamentals of socialism: 1)belief in the materialistic dialectal theory of history, 2)believe in the inevitability of class struggle, 3)belief in David Ricardo's labor theory of value. Belief in these three fundamentals is necessary and essential in order to be a socialist. No US politician subscribes, or believes in, to these three fundamentals.

Nah, even your most liberal politicians are pretty far on the right of a global cons/lib comparison. Socialist? Not even close.

--A

Yes, most people I talk to from Europe are laughing their asses off while simultaneously cringing in horror at American politics right now.

They all keep telling me that Obama would be on the right (not left) side of the aisle in their countries.

Socialist? No way in hell.

Let's consider, remote possibility, that the modern welfare state is an expression of socialistic political policies. We know that the historical origin of the modern welfare state is in the earliest days of the German empire in the 1880s under its Iron Chancellor, Otto Von Bismarck. Does that mean Bismarck was a socialist, most likely not? Another historical root of the modern welfare state is found in the Conservative party governments that lead England between 1918 and 1946. Therefore, based on the historical record it would seem that conservative (aristocratically lead, from the landed gentry and sympathetic and supportive to the societies traditional roots) hold the root of the modern welfare state. And from much of the political blathering that goes on today one would be lead to the conclusion that the modern welfare state has its roots in the Communist International (Comitern), the writings of Leon Trotsky, Joe Hill (the IWW agitator and not the horror writer).

I could agree that the welfare state has roots in a fragment of socialist ideology, sure. Personally, I think y'all should worry more about a de facto police state than a socialist one.

--A