Good point! Many of those things DO go far beyond the scope intended for the government, especially the federal government.
Most should be done at the State or local level and only after referendum votes to insure people are actually willing to spend their money in such a fashion.
If it’s done by the local and/or state governments, it’s still Socialism.
You just go right on thinking that, dandelionsalad. 😉
Thanks Jonolan for giving me permission to continue to be a Socialist. 😉
So, what socialized services are you willing to give up? Medicare for your parents? Public school for your kids? Libraries, police or fire protection for all?
I’m more than willing to give up almost all of what you mentioned actually, insofar as purely publicly funded options are concerned.
Of course my actual disagreement was in your defining some of these things as Socialist. You know quite well that you chose to present an extreme definition of Socialism in order to further your point. 😉
And the military, too? Heard someone say that Blackwater mercenaries make about 10 times the pay of a publicly funded soldier.
Ready to give up your car or not drive on publicly funded and maintained roads/highways?
When roads, resources, services are all privatized who profits?
I still suggest that you learn more about what Socialism truly is, not what you’ve been told. You may be quite surprised.
Again, you’ve chosen a very inclusive and yet strict definition of Socialism for the purposes of this post. Just because something benefits a society as a whole does not make it Socialist.
Nice try though. It sounds a lit like the apologetics of the Abrahamics…
Again, I suggest that you learn more about Socialism before you condemn it.
What does benefit Society as a whole?
On Society, from Wikipedia: One common theme for societies in general is that they serve to aid individuals in a time of crisis. Traditionally, when an individual requires aid, for example at birth, death, sickness, or disaster, members of that society will rally others to render aid, in some form—symbolic, linguistic, physical, mental, emotional, financial, medical, or religious.
An ideology based in the pursuit of personal and corporate greed at the expense of everyone and everything else hardly benefits society as a whole. And yet this is what the medical/industrial/insurance complex has become.
It’s enough with the neocon extremists already. Reforming healthcare is hardly state-mandated totalitarian communism, any more than banning assault weapons threatens your beloved fascination with shooting things for fun.
The capitalist model, as it’s evolved in practice, is not so much about freedom to pursue personal financial success or promoting excellence through competition.
Instead industrial capitalism mutated entrepreneurship into this globalized cancer which through marketing manipulation, lobbying abuses the world’s work-force, the environment in order to manufactures a need for its product and so often twists morality and social responsibility to serve its selfish cause.
Calculate the true costs to us all of industrialized capitalism and it becomes clear that this free-market run amok is the most expensive sacrifice of all.
Its one thing to apply this model to widgets, laptops and appliances (annoying and wasteful as the resultant planned obsolescence is), but entirely another to apply capitalist theory to the manufacture of weapons of war or the health industry. You do not want such industries manufacturing a need for their products!
Bottom line is the capital is there in vast medical and insurance expenditures to reorganize the healthcare budget as a separate entity properly so that society as a whole is covered. It works, and wealthy people will still always be able to buy the best surgeons for their eyelifts & tummy-tucks.
Conservative republican bank bailouts and military/industrial mania are the misappropriated $trillions.
You wouldn’t even need to raise taxes on billionaires if we just reversed these and other republican ‘conservative’ tax & spend military/industrial entitlements dismantled the republican-sponsored corporate crony-capital welfare-state, we would free up vast resources for a healthy society, in the real sense of the word, instead of the violent, selfish cult of greed the ‘conservatives’ so militantly pushed on this culture.
But the Obomba plan hardly looks like socialized medicine to me! These conservatives who rant and mock oBomba in their diatribe against ‘liberals’ are just fighting one of their own.
Loved your conclusion, Natureboy.
Musta missed this in Motorcycle Diaries:
“Socialism cannot exist without a change in consciousness resulting in a new fraternal attitude toward humanity, both at an individual level, within the societies where socialism is being built or has been built, and on a world scale, with regard to all peoples suffering from imperialist oppression.”
— Che Guevara, Marxist revolutionary, 1965 [51]
Sounds like a plan. Let’s put the existence of the military up to state referendums (the single most expensive right-wing nationalized allocation ever concoted after social security) and see how many citizens are actually willing to let the corrupt state governments extract 55% of their tax dollars to sustain illegal, gratuitous foreign wars for corporate profit, fought by gunmongering warfarists who kill for fun like Mr. Nolan here.
There is a time for people to flatly resist and dissent federal appropriations, and it starts with the Dept. of War. Once we kill the military budget, there will be ample funds to insure anyone who needs it.
(But… what will we do when saddam invades Colorado like Red Dawn? )
Yes, but we could cut back on the military budget by at least half and still have a defensive army, etc.
Funny that so many people complain about their tax dollars going to fund healthcare but not a peep out of them about the amount going to fund foreign wars.
Dandelion Salad 
Pingback: Bill Maher: New Rule: Not Everything in America Has to Make a Profit « Dandelion Salad
Pingback: Friday: Key Vote on Single Payer Healthcare « Dandelion Salad
Pingback: Tax the rich to pay for health care? + Weiner Blasts the Critics of Health Reform « Dandelion Salad
Pingback: Bait and switch: How the “public option” was sold + Take Action « Dandelion Salad
Pingback: Kucinich keeps Single-Payer healthcare alive by Michael Carmichael « Dandelion Salad
Pingback: Obama’s Press Conference: Health care key to economy « Dandelion Salad
to those against socialized medicine , i say this : a sick country is a weak one . a healthy country is a strong one. period.
Pingback: Kucinich on States and Single Payer Health Care « Dandelion Salad
Pingback: The Great Tax Con Job By Thom Hartmann « Dandelion Salad
Pingback: Exclusive: The Warsaw Ghetto and Gaza Strip by Gary Sudborough « Dandelion Salad
Pingback: What is Socialism? (archive of posts) « Dandelion Salad
Good point! Many of those things DO go far beyond the scope intended for the government, especially the federal government.
Most should be done at the State or local level and only after referendum votes to insure people are actually willing to spend their money in such a fashion.
If it’s done by the local and/or state governments, it’s still Socialism.
You just go right on thinking that, dandelionsalad. 😉
Thanks Jonolan for giving me permission to continue to be a Socialist. 😉
So, what socialized services are you willing to give up? Medicare for your parents? Public school for your kids? Libraries, police or fire protection for all?
I’m more than willing to give up almost all of what you mentioned actually, insofar as purely publicly funded options are concerned.
Of course my actual disagreement was in your defining some of these things as Socialist. You know quite well that you chose to present an extreme definition of Socialism in order to further your point. 😉
And the military, too? Heard someone say that Blackwater mercenaries make about 10 times the pay of a publicly funded soldier.
Ready to give up your car or not drive on publicly funded and maintained roads/highways?
When roads, resources, services are all privatized who profits?
I still suggest that you learn more about what Socialism truly is, not what you’ve been told. You may be quite surprised.
Again, you’ve chosen a very inclusive and yet strict definition of Socialism for the purposes of this post. Just because something benefits a society as a whole does not make it Socialist.
Nice try though. It sounds a lit like the apologetics of the Abrahamics…
Again, I suggest that you learn more about Socialism before you condemn it.
What does benefit Society as a whole?
On Society, from Wikipedia:
One common theme for societies in general is that they serve to aid individuals in a time of crisis. Traditionally, when an individual requires aid, for example at birth, death, sickness, or disaster, members of that society will rally others to render aid, in some form—symbolic, linguistic, physical, mental, emotional, financial, medical, or religious.
An ideology based in the pursuit of personal and corporate greed at the expense of everyone and everything else hardly benefits society as a whole. And yet this is what the medical/industrial/insurance complex has become.
It’s enough with the neocon extremists already. Reforming healthcare is hardly state-mandated totalitarian communism, any more than banning assault weapons threatens your beloved fascination with shooting things for fun.
The capitalist model, as it’s evolved in practice, is not so much about freedom to pursue personal financial success or promoting excellence through competition.
Instead industrial capitalism mutated entrepreneurship into this globalized cancer which through marketing manipulation, lobbying abuses the world’s work-force, the environment in order to manufactures a need for its product and so often twists morality and social responsibility to serve its selfish cause.
Calculate the true costs to us all of industrialized capitalism and it becomes clear that this free-market run amok is the most expensive sacrifice of all.
Its one thing to apply this model to widgets, laptops and appliances (annoying and wasteful as the resultant planned obsolescence is), but entirely another to apply capitalist theory to the manufacture of weapons of war or the health industry. You do not want such industries manufacturing a need for their products!
Bottom line is the capital is there in vast medical and insurance expenditures to reorganize the healthcare budget as a separate entity properly so that society as a whole is covered. It works, and wealthy people will still always be able to buy the best surgeons for their eyelifts & tummy-tucks.
Conservative republican bank bailouts and military/industrial mania are the misappropriated $trillions.
You wouldn’t even need to raise taxes on billionaires if we just reversed these and other republican ‘conservative’ tax & spend military/industrial entitlements dismantled the republican-sponsored corporate crony-capital welfare-state, we would free up vast resources for a healthy society, in the real sense of the word, instead of the violent, selfish cult of greed the ‘conservatives’ so militantly pushed on this culture.
But the Obomba plan hardly looks like socialized medicine to me! These conservatives who rant and mock oBomba in their diatribe against ‘liberals’ are just fighting one of their own.
Loved your conclusion, Natureboy.
Musta missed this in Motorcycle Diaries:
“Socialism cannot exist without a change in consciousness resulting in a new fraternal attitude toward humanity, both at an individual level, within the societies where socialism is being built or has been built, and on a world scale, with regard to all peoples suffering from imperialist oppression.”
— Che Guevara, Marxist revolutionary, 1965 [51]
Sounds like a plan. Let’s put the existence of the military up to state referendums (the single most expensive right-wing nationalized allocation ever concoted after social security) and see how many citizens are actually willing to let the corrupt state governments extract 55% of their tax dollars to sustain illegal, gratuitous foreign wars for corporate profit, fought by gunmongering warfarists who kill for fun like Mr. Nolan here.
There is a time for people to flatly resist and dissent federal appropriations, and it starts with the Dept. of War. Once we kill the military budget, there will be ample funds to insure anyone who needs it.
(But… what will we do when saddam invades Colorado like Red Dawn? )
Yes, but we could cut back on the military budget by at least half and still have a defensive army, etc.
Funny that so many people complain about their tax dollars going to fund healthcare but not a peep out of them about the amount going to fund foreign wars.