The quote is over a hundred and fifty years old. Joe Hill is dead and gone, no matter what Joan Baez says. This is the 21st century, and if we haven't figured out from hard experience and many examples that socialism doesn't work as well as capitalism, I don't know where to go from there.

I'm fighting socialized medicine not because I think children ought to be boiled and served as Soylent Green, but because I do not think it will deliver the health care the private system has delivered for the U.S. I don't think it will work, and I don't think we can afford what it would cost to make it work through that channel.

From surveys, for every person not happy with his health care in the U.S., there are four people that are. Talk to me about helping that 1 in 5, and we'll get somewhere. Keep pushing wrecking the current system, and I'll keep pushing back.

As far as entrepreneurs, and the wellsprings of progress, it's human nature to want to believe that it's "the system," or impersonal forces that create progress instead of individual initiative (this often boils down to "government has created our modern industrial civilization")

This kind of thinking soothes those who haven't made such accomplishments. It's why entrepreneurs, and those who have obviously earned their wealth or status, rub many leftists the wrong way. "Atlas Shrugged" has its problems, but Rand nailed the collectivist psychology down solid.

You have some good points on social progress, but I have noticed that in every nation where "progressives" have been allowed to take their collectivist concepts to their endpoint, the result has been rank poverty and misery, which almost always includes political repression.

My views are largely based on the fact that nowadays I see a lot of forces pushing us that direction, and damn few balancing forces in the other direction.

As I mentioned in another post, do you really think the "progressives" pushing socialized health care are going to quit with that? Have they ever said "this is enough collectivization? This issue doesn't need government control?" Have you ever seen ANY major issue where their answer isn't more granting more power to the State and leaving less choice and freedom for individuals?

Much of Europe seems to be hanging in a somewhat stable, if somewhat stagnant, zone between the two extremes. Maybe the U.S. will luck out and not go the whole route. I'm not sure I want to bet on that. Used to be free-minded people around the world could up stakes and head West. I'm as far West as I can get now without hitting the Pacific.

One reason I keep bringing Venezuela up on this board is that it is a classic laboratory example of a nation that has hit the aforementioned "progressive" downslope, and there are lessons to be learned from it. Remember that Chavez's individual actions have, for the most part, been applauded by the American Left. The accumulation of those actions is where the problem lies.