So Republicans believe in Socialism after all

I guess the major oil disaster in the Gulf has a way of focusing the mind. What ever happened to Republican beliefs like pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps, rugged individualism, and states rights? It seems that Republicans have dumped all that stuff and become Socialists.

Look at their calls for federal intervention. Watch them scurrying to get in front of a camera and blame Obama for not "taking charge." Have they lost all confidence in “the magic of the marketplace?” Don’t they believe that BP can end the disaster because they are unregulated?

Actually, there’s nothing new or surprising about Republican hypocrisy. It’s just amazing that those who constantly vote for them don’t seem to notice when the label on the bottle of snake oil is changed from “Free Markets” to “Socialism.”

.. I was listening to a radio show that I thought was about investing a couple weeks ago, called Wall Street Shuffle.

The bozo on there started pontificating about how the Federal government was showing feet of clay and how this was "just like Katrina".

I about fell out of my chair. These people are truly the stupidest of the stupid, or they are pandering to an audience of such. It's really unbelievable.

First, they gut all regulation, continually float the meme that government can't do anything, and the moment their interests are threatened they do a 100% about face. These people truly have no guiding principles at all.

Here's what I do when a right winger uses the word "socialism" as a pejorative term to characterize progressive institutions such as our system of social insurance, the minimum wage, the auto bailout, the stimulus bill, wealth redistribution, etc.

Instead of defending myself, or the institution, against the charge of "socialism", I own the word.

I say, hell yes, of course I'm a socialist. This is a Socialist Nation. Americans love Socialism. That's why we have a system of Social Security.

Then, I proceed to point enumerate the many ideas championed by the Socialists which the U. S. has adopted. The platforms of the Socialist and Progressive Parties from the late 1800's to the present contain many good ideas that we have adopted.

For example: Presented below are excerpts from what as known as the Gotha Program of 1871. I have underlined the demands in the program that have been adopted, at least to a degree, by the United States.



In a nutshell, I flip the table on the right winger and accuse him of holding views that are not those of the majority of Americans.

Then, I go into a little history lecture on the social problems caused by the industrial revolution and how political leaders, including conservatives, designed the institution of Social Insurance/The Welfare State to head off the demand of the Socialists for "the erection of socialistic productive establishments under the democratic control of the laboring people...to place industry and agriculture in such relations that out of them the socialist organization of the whole may arise."

Then, I go into a lecture, most of which I stole from Teddy Roosevelt, about how "neither doctrinaire socialism nor unrestricted individualism will work in the real word and how Americans, including Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt and William Taft, learned that collectivism and individualism must be used as supplementary, not as antagonistic, philosophies.

Does any of the above make sense to anyone?

Thanks

Fred