Ha!  I get it...

Look - I was just about to step out for the night and I've got this stuck in my head, so let me get it out before I leave...

I have this horrible feeling that there may be a perception misconception going on here...

Let me be honest and upfront here - I'm doing some mind-reading of my own - I read your posts Scott, and based on the words and phrasing, I'm "hearing" you ranting and yelling - but I've been accused of that here (on other threads, in the past) and those who know me know that that's not me or my character - it's hard to read things on internet postings like "intent" or "emotion".

I can honestly say - I meant no thinly veiled attacks on you - well, aside from the name gag - so, if you're misunderstanding my posts, it's entirely possible that I'm misunderstanding yours!

You end your latest with some accusation of me being some thugish bully - which - I have to be honest - is how I felt about you - and my first reaction to you posting that was that you were playing some sort of trick - trying to turn it around on me - but after walking away from the computer - I realize that, you know, we both may be mis-reading each other.

Maybe!  Maybe you are playing a trick on me - I'll never know. 

But I tell you what - I stand by my political points - I have issued answers to your points in the past, and you have yet to give answers to any of our questions to you or our replies, follow-ups, rebuttals or answers.  I stand by that.

But I think you and I don't need to question each other's character in this - I'm going to stand by the idea that we're both just mis-reading each other.

I'm willing to appologize for it, and offer the glad-hand of friendship if you are.

But I do expect answers on the political questions!

Bad mind-reading.  Tsk tsk.  How do you know what my intentions are?  And by the way - that's just factually wrong.  You bring up these aforementioned talking points about Rev Wright and he's a socialist and he's going to cut the military - and I showed how they were either irrelevant or factually wrong each time.  You asked for a reply from Obama supporters and I took the challenge and answered.  I asked for replies from Obama non-supporters and where were you?  Keith gave a great answer to my question.  No talking points or buzz words - just facts and good logic. 

I'd suggest you go back and re-read your own posts before you start pointing fingers.

Had you forgotten about this post of mine where I give some very specific details.  You replied to it and liked most of the things that I didn't.  That doesn't make them any less valid.  I hope I don't need to cut and paste this every time someone can't remember that I did make specific points.  I could have been a little less dramatic with the way I presented it, but the points still stand.

What I would like to know from Obama supporters is how Mr. Obama is going to save us from what Bush leaves us?  Pull our troops out within 2 months now that things are finally starting to stabalize?  How about raising taxes to help the idiots who bought houses they couldn't afford (to the tune of $10 billion dollars)?  Get us wrapped up in the Millenium Declaration which is a wonderful idea brought on by the U.N?  Obama talks about helping Americans, yet this Declaration will cost us around $850 BILLION dollars (from the US) in aid to "poor countries".  We see none of that $$ in return.  So exactly how does that help "us"?  Don't we have homeless people here?  Oh yeah, that also comes with a side order of the Kyoto Protocol.  Another genius idea that a majority of the countries that signed it didn't adhere to the requirements.  I especially like his wife's comments...something to the effect of "If Americans want better education and health care "some" people are going to have to give up a piece of their pie".  Um right, those horrible rich people that earned their money, those jerks!!  How dare they do well for themselves and forget about the little people.

That, along with the post where I had personally counted every single "obstain" vote since I couldn't find a site that had the full statistics of the voting records already.  I do my home work on the candidates.  I try to make informed decisions.  Part of that comes from pure facts.  Some of it comes from opinion.  But, believe me, none of it comes from sour grapes wishing it were Clinton and being upset that Obama has more delegats.  I really do want what's best for this country.  In my honest opnion, that's not Obama.  If I was looking out for my own needs over what I thought was good for the country, as a gay man, I would be backing Obama, but I would see that as winning the battle but losing the war.

I'm willing to appologize for it, and offer the glad-hand of friendship if you are.

But I do expect answers on the political questions!

It sounds like there was some misunderstanding on both sides then.  I definitely saw you as someone completely on the offense trying to take down anyone who had any disagreement with you or Obama.

I'm glad if that isn't the case.  Apology accepted and I offer one back if you thought I was trying to attack you.

As for asnwers.  Scroll up one post :)

"Why restrict the definition of socialism to government owned properties, when the state can simply control how property is used and take a share of all revenue? "

If you equate heavy (or unbearable) taxation with socialism, then George III and his parliament (who legislated the actual taxes, the british king had no such power), Louis XVI and Czar Nicholas II were all socialists. So was Prince John Lackland, and thousands of minor lords, popes, kings and queens throughout history.

The ideal of socialism is, in the economic area, to use the economy to serve the needs of the whole people (at least the basic needs).  This is done in part by cutting out the expensive middle-man. (granted sometimes that middle man is the reason there's profit in the first place, but very often it's not.)

If government owns the land, funds the infrastructure and guarantees the profits, then passing the job of harvesting the land (whether for timber, ore or oil) to private companies is in fact needlessly passing a big chunk of the profits off as well. Taxing 50 percent of the profits is a hell of a lot less than getting 100 percent. Especially when the government has to negotiate with tax accountants for every cent.

You may not like that "ownership of the means of production" is a defining feature of socialism, yet it is. 

Many of the ideals of socialism are ideals that most other ideologies claim to share.  Don't tell me that republicans don't claim that their policies will benefit all of society (or even all of mankind), that it will aid the sick, elevate the poor, that all men are created equal and entitled to equal protection under the law, that they will fight corruption etc.  Very nice words, but on either side people have been very good at translating it into very bad acts.

American Democrats are not socialists. I'm saying this as someone who wishes that they were.

In our country the people who share the political principles of the (Right) Democrats are mostly in the party we call "Høyre"  ("Right") while the (Left) Democrats are in the party we call "Venstre" ("Left"), names they were given after their seating arrangements back when we, too, had a two party system like you do (about 100 years ago). Both these parties are predominantly economic and social liberals, the distinction being that "Left" is more green and more liberal on social issues. They would find the idea that they were somehow socialists laughable.

Because you have a two party system, you may have people on the left who are socialists and are voting pragmatically. (I know that in our country, under the two party system, "Left" pushed for the universal vote, and for representative distribution of seats in plural-representative districts rather than first-past-the-post in one representative districts. Workers and other socialists voted for "left" until they had changed the system, after which they voted Labour. And got a substantial win.)

Then again, I don't think the Republican party really wants to be tied too closely to their supporters on the right, either. (I'm talking about those who don't really share the core principles of the party, but vote Republican out of pragmatism because they can't get further right.)

Socialism, like many other words used inappropriately, seems to be used here as invective by people who disapprove of it, not as an accurate description of policy. This is unwise.  You either use the terms correctly or the debate degenerates into (if you'll pardon the pun) idiocy.

Socialism is the doctrine that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that his life and his work do not belong to him, but belong to society, that the only justification of his existence is his service to society, and that society may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be its own tribal, collective good.

---Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand is an idiot.

---Kevin M. Hagerman

Ayn Rand. (sigh). First off, she conflates the spiritual and racially based Nazi definition of "socialist" with the Marx-derived materialist concept of socialism, although they are miles apart. She improperly confuses political terminology, which tecnically makes her an "idiot" (someone with only a layman's understanding of politics.)

Secondly, her selection is a bit skewed, isn't it? Perhaps because of the times. Communism has all the failings she describes, the social democratic movements of Western Europe do not.  In fact, we (Norway) owe our prosperity in no small measure to socialism and the ideal of government ownership. It's the reason our oil made us a prosperous nation while a state like Venezuela had less benefits from its vast oil resources (until recently).  Look at Saudi Arabia - wealth without measure, yet you don't see all the people benefitting, do you?

She also has a painfully naive and idealized vision of capitalism. She paints a picture of how capitalism works under ideal conditions without force, coercion or deceit. This is a version of capitalism that has never existed and never will. (Just like the idealized version of socialism is a pipe dream.) Force, coercion and deceit (albeit packaged under more user-friendly names, perhaps) have been integral parts of historical capitalism.

The real truth isn't that the inventors and innovators prosper from their creations under capitalism while they suffer under socialism.  The basic principle of capitalism is buy cheap and sell dearly. Which in many  cases means creative people get screwed. That communism isn't any better (for the creative individual) doesn't mean that there aren't political measures that can better safeguard the rights and interests of the people making the creative contributions. And some of these measures may be "socialist". 

Most ideologies, when put into practice, lose the purity of theory and become pragmatic, messy constructs, a lattice-work of dozens of different ideologies and sets of principles.  And often they become all the better for it. Capitalism, Liberalism, Socialism and quite a few other, smaller -isms make up our modern societies. On their own they fail, because people aren't perfect little automatons that can be pushed into acting according to  models of idealized behaviour.

The US founding fathers had a very brilliant idea that encapsulates how society must work: Checks and balances. Only it shouldn't be restricted to just the three branches of government. Every powerful faction in society should be watched over, examined and, if necessary, impeached by someone else. We need unions to safeguard against the abuses of employers, we need employers or others to challenge the abuses of unions. We need government to watch over the abuse of business, we need the free press to challenge all possible abuses by anybody. et cetera, et cetera.

As people we can be profundly selfish, to the detriment of society and even our own well-being. No-one or nothing is too "good" to be questioned.

And it is too easy to dismiss policies because you "think" they are socialist. The policies either have merit or they don't. You can disagree with policies because you think they don't work, because you don't want what they can achieve if they do work or because you think they may have negative implications (such as producing big government). But dismissing them because you don't like the possible source? How is that good?

It sounds like there was some misunderstanding on both sides then.  I definitely saw you as someone completely on the offense trying to take down anyone who had any disagreement with you or Obama.

I'm glad if that isn't the case.  Apology accepted and I offer one back if you thought I was trying to attack you.

Agreed!   Thanks, Scott.  I extend the same apology and hope we can agree to disagree like this in the future!

About the hate speech laws in Canada, Mike: It is true (as far as I've heard) that only one person has actually been tried under the law but it is also true that just having the law on the books tends to damper dissent. As a tool to root out racism I think it is badly flawed in that I believe the true, and best way to end racism is to allow all opinions to be spoken in a public forum and then argued with as a way to dismiss them. By crafting a law against hate speech I feel a lot of stuff that used to be seen (and argued with and eventually dismissed) has gone underground. When that happens it seems to be harder to end the racism by exposing it to the light of day.

Also we have human rights tribunals that often act as de facto judges and juries, prosecuting and fining people who say things that the human rights tribunals believe to be discriminatory. Lately it has been used to quiet people (usually religious people) who speak out against homosexual marriage in public (letters to the editor for example) and has also been used to punish a printer who didn't accept the business of homosexuals as it conflicted with his religious beliefs (I think, though it's been a while since I read the story, that he was asked to print out wedding invitations for the homosexual couple and declined. Also there seemed to be the sense that the couple had gone to him precisely because he was known to be a religious man and the couple wanted to get someone who disagreed with them to 'bless' their union by aiding it in a small way).

To be clear, I don't like what churches have to say on the subject, I don't agree with what they have to say on the subject, but at the least they have a right to say what they believe just like anyone else.

The worst example I can think of is of a man named Ezra Levant who decided to publish the infamous Danish cartoons in his magazine; the Western Standard. He felt they were newsworthy and should be shown so that people could understand what had triggered the waves of rioting that followed the initial publication. I agree with him, a description of the artwork could not convey (to me, maybe it was different for others) the meanings of the images in the way seeing them could. A choice he made, but someone complained and he was called before a human rights tribunal to justify that choice. A magazine editor called before a government body with threats of fines (which for a fledgling magazine like his could have ended its existence) because of a politically driven editorial decision. Ezra Levant got a lot of mileage out of mocking the tribunal and making the whole thing look insane but the fact that it actually happened in my country pissed me off beyond belief.