It isn't "where we are heading", its where we could have gone.
TB would have you believe socialism is forced on people by the government by dismantling benign private institutions and replacing them with massive and toxic government bureacracies. This need not be the case. As I point out, there are abundant historical examples, one of which I had the good fortune to personally catch the tail end of, where people band together and democratically pool their resources and create institutions to provide themselves with services neither industry nor government is willing to give them. In fact, this is what was originally meant by socialism, until the Soviets took it over and converted it to state capitalism.
Read up on the Paris Commune, the historically most important example of this, which required bayonets to crush it. Also study the wave of socialist revolts that swept Europe in the late 1840s. This struggle did not begin with the Great Depression, or even the October Revolution. The introduction of industrial capitalism powered by fossil fuels started a transformation in society that is only now starting to sort itself out. These are historical processes initiated by technological change manifesting themselves in class conflict.
It's not really a question of good guys versus bad guys, or even good versus evil. It's about societies undergoing profound internal changes and the inevitable friction and conflict that results. People who don't have it, want it. Those that have it, don't want to give it up. Nobody wants to wait and no one wants to share.
Flame » in reply to re: Let a hundred flowers bloom.
Read my post below, "A century ago in Ybor City"
The whole thread (61 posts)
- Test driving government health care
- We've driven the current system into a ditch for most Americans (n/t)
- What's going to change?
- A Century ago, in Ybor City
- "...before we put everybody in the country in the program"
- Here's the Finance Committee presentation
- Did you READ it?
- Since you love to just throw a link into a post, here's back at ya...
- Great stuff. Send us Part I.
- Non-profit medical
- No offense, but you guys are rather dense.
- All Conservatives need to justify the status-quo is "high profit".
- Great stuff. Send us Part I.
- and leave us with what?
- Since you love to just throw a link into a post, here's back at ya...
- "Are you ever going to put your strawman arguments to rest? "