We're all socialists -- including conservatives

[Armstead]

The only way to be a complete non-socialist is to live off in the woods somewhere, dig your own well, never drive on a road or use a public utility, don't pay any taxes,, oppose the existence of the military (common defense), never ever collect social security or unemployment...in short be absolutely and completely self-sufficient with absolutely no involvement with anything outside of your own privately contained bubble.

The only issue is the degree of socialism and the nature of socialism on any specific instance.

It is sickening to see the Democratic Party establishment doing their best to obscure and distort and join the GOP in demonizing the social system that keeps our nation together.

[redstateblues]

1. Running on Socialism and raising taxes in the GE

Will put a Republican in the White House. Good luck with that.

[Armstead]

3. Don't have to run on it -- But don't have to demonize it either

I know politics is about competing. But in the process why feed the GOP Right Wing Corporate narrative and continue to perpetuate the message of the Reagan Revolution?

This fear and dread of "socialism" is nothing but political posturing. It fits on the GOP. But Democrats are supposed to be better than that.

[aidbo]

2. Actually.........

I am a solipsistic utopianist.

But whatever.

[Armstead]

4. I thought that was illegal

[aidbo]

5. Grandfathered in.

[Babel_17]

6. "Everyone now is more or less a Socialist." Charles Dana, Lincoln’s Assistant Secretary of War, 1848

These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people.

—Abraham Lincoln, from his first speech as an Illinois state legislator, 1837

Everyone now is more or less a Socialist.
—Charles Dana, managing editor of the New York Tribune, and Lincoln’s assistant secretary of war, 1848

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln

http://www.occasionalplanet.org/2011/12/16/lincoln-and-the-socialist-roots-of-the-republican-party/

Lincoln was an avid reader of newspapers, especially of the New York Tribune, which was the great Republican paper of the day. It took a strong stand against slavery in the south. But it also had forceful opinions on the relationship between Labor and Capital, arguing that “Labor needs not to combat but to command Capital.” Greeley wanted to “expose the crimes whereby wealth is amassed and luxury enjoyed.” Nichols writes:

Greeley welcomed the disapproval of those who championed free markets over the interests of the working class, a class he recognized as including both the oppressed slaves of the south and the degraded industrial laborers of the north.

Nichols writes that after Lincoln addressed the challenges of the war, he also spoke of another, perhaps deeper, division. He wanted to speak about the danger of government favoring the interests of capital over labor. In doing so he presented the radical analysis of Marx and others of his time.

"It is not needed, nor fitting here [in discussing the Civil War] that a general argument should be made in favor of popular institutions; but there is one point, with its connections, not so hackneyed as most others, to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effect to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor, in the structure of government. It is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital; that nobody labors unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it induces him to labor. This assumed, it is next considered whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own consent, or buy them, and drive them to it without their consent. Having proceeded thus far, it is naturally concluded that all laborers are either hired laborers or what we call slaves. And further, it is assumed that whoever is once a hired laborer is fixed in that condition for life.

Now, there is no such relation between capital and labor as assumed, nor is there any such thing as a free man being fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer. Both these assumptions are false, and all inferences from them are groundless.

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights."

Edit: Found what I consider an enjoyable and worthwhile read about Dana and Lincoln. A quick read, but a remarkable one.

http://www.mrlincolnswhitehouse.org/inside.asp?ID=44&subjectID=2

[Cali_Democrat]

7. So is this the new motto?

Vote for Bernie Sanders or you'll be living in the woods and drinking out of a well you dug yourself?

[Recursion]

8. I go the opposite way: nobody is talking about workers' control of factories and farms

If you don't have that, to me it's not socialism in any real sense.

[safeinOhio]

9. Given the choice, I'll take

Democratic Socialism over Neoliberal Economics any day of the week.

All of the repubs running for Pres. are neoliberal.

[raouldukelives]

10. Our entitled shareholder class remind me of the Bundy freaks.

They take it all today, for themselves, by the accumulated force of their own investments.

Air, ground, trees, animals, water, education, health, peace, justice, democracy, futures. All up for grabs.

All thanks to the combined power of the biggest grifters to ever exist. The corporate shareholders.

The more invested, the more that align themselves with the goals of Wall St, the more lobbying and political power they wield, the more of our common fields they can tear down the fences around and unleash massive herds of corporate free grazers.

The more within, today, the more without, tomorrow.

[William769]

11. Vice President Biden would disagree with you. nt