Brassie,
Thank you for your response. I was, indeed asking Xavier for his honest take on the idea of American Socialism in this time.
I was raised listening to the fear factor of socialism ( the generation of my father-a right wing father)...thus, I feel it appropriate at this time to inquire within. The details offered here on the board give me food for thought, and I find it refreshing to learn about the truth of socialism according to folks like you.
I do worry that Americans will turn into a culture of ---if it aint workin' throw that sucker out with the muddy bath water--mentality.
There can't be a complete perfection point in any "ism"....
Can there not be a more workable system with a consolidation of effort?
Cindy,
I think there most definitely can be a workable consolidated system if all the parties involved are willing to relinquish some of their ideological tenets for the better good. More on that in a minute.
Were you around several years ago when I was constantly trying to convince everyone in 3DHS that we should embrace an RBE (resource-based economy)? Seriously? I dedicated several months of my 3DHS airtime to constantly trying to tweak it, massage it, better explain it, modify it in any way I could to accommodate as many of the complaints about political and economic system that came to be known (often mockingly) as the RBE in here.
Perhaps I was obsessed (hard-harded, a true-believer, idealistic, whatever) with the idea but that's just me. I wanted it to work because I loved the whole idea but no matter what I said, how I posited it, no matter how many questions I asked of everyone here (and others no longer here), I was always shot down, dismissed and never ONCE, not ONCE, Cindy, did one person every attempt to discuss the idea with me in any constructive manner because it was "socialism" or "communism".
Eventually, in order to find some kind of common ground, I altered the economic concept to be a blend of capitalism and socialism. I tentatively called it a Brass Economy because brass is actually an alloy of copper and zinc, a blend if you will. Again, the idea never got any traction because everyone was so reticent to discuss anything that had anything to do with socialism.
I've drawn parallel after parallel with these two systems with the current system we actually live with every day but those parallels were never even discussed or debated beyond, "you're a moron" or "you don't know how the world works" or "that's socialism".
Ironically, I often stated that the only way that people might be open to a more socialist point of view is if we have a large scale financial meltdown (something like a total market crash).
Now, here we are. Meltdown city. And though almost everyone here was against the bailout, it appears that the nation is moving to being a little easier with the idea of socialism. That is indicated by the way Obama continues to lead in polls while McCain and Palin and all surrogates are screaming that he is a socialist at every opportunity.
Brass
