Red America
Turkey-based thinker Claire Berlinski writes at Ricochet:
Do your friends look at you as if you're an anachronistic, red-baiting fruitcake when you use the word socialist to describe recent trends in American governance? Well, let me assure you, you're not nuts. They are.Thanks to Ricochet member Okan Altiparmak and Gateway Pundit, here's a list of 70 members of Congress who are fully paid-up members of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Shall we have a little look at the highlights of the platform of the DSA, folks? Just so we can all be clear what we're talking about? The emphases are mine.
An excerpt from her highlights from their credo:
Economic Democracy. Economic democracy can empower wage and income earners through building cooperative and public institutions that own and control local economic resources. Economic democracy means, in the most general terms, the direct ownership and/or control of much of the economic resources of society by the great majority of wage and income earners. Such a transformation of worklife directly embodies and presages the practices and principles of a socialist society....
Social Redistribution. Social redistribution--the shift of wealth and resources from the rich to the rest of society--will require:
1. massive redistribution of income from corporations and the wealthy to wage earners and the poor and the public sector, in order to provide the main source of new funds for social programs,income maintenance and infrastructure rehabilitation, and
2. a massive shift of public resources from the military (the main user of existing discretionary funds) to civilian uses.
...Electoral tactics are only a means for democratic socialists; the building of a powerful anti-corporate coalition is the end.
Berlinski continues:
The DSA's platform is not a call to expand the social-safety net so better to protect the most vulnerable and infirm members of society; it is not a call to improve access to health care; it is a call for socialism--the echt item, the discredited ideology that immiserated and enslaved and murdered hundreds of millions of human souls in the past century. The numbers of DSA members in our Congress are not trivial. Every single one of them must go in the next election.DSA members of the judiciary committee include John Conyers [Chairman!], Tammy Baldwin, Jerrold Nadler, Luis Gutierrez, Melvin Watt, Maxine Waters, Hank Johnson, Steve Cohen, Barbara Lee, Robert Wexler, Linda Sanchez. That's to say, half the members of the committee are authentic, honest-to-God Reds.
More on the DSA here, at their site. And via ifeminists, great piece, "Ten Briefly Described Problems of Egalitarianism."
Comments
"We don’t agree with the capitalist assumption that starvation or greed are the only reasons people work." Right from their web site. This is the fundamental failure of ALL socialist societies. This simple misunderstanding of human nature is why ALL socialist societies will eventually fail and/or become totalitarian.
Most people would rather practice leisure activities than work. To think otherwise is lunacy.
Posted by: vlad at August 18, 2010 6:51 AM
gotta love number 2
"2. a massive shift of public resources from the military (the main user of existing discretionary funds) to civilian uses."
yeah, discretionary. This link shows the pie: wiki 2009 Fed Budget
You'll note that the DOD gets 23%, Interest gets 5% and essentially everything else is civilian uses. Thing is, that medicare and medicade are 19% NOW, and will be going up with the new healthcare regime. Other Mandetory is 17%, SS is 20%... so 56% is MANDETORY social spending, currently.
And this is not enough? Personally the ONLY thing I want from the feds is Defence of the Country. The rest of it is prolly better off local...
Posted by: SwissArmyD at August 18, 2010 9:26 AM
The list of 70 members of Congress who are fully paid-up members of the Democratic Socialists of America is stunning: http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2010/08/american-socialists-release-names-of-70-congressional-democrats-in-their-caucus
The fact that more of your American readers don't seem to car is equally stunning.
Posted by: Robert W. (Vancouver) at August 18, 2010 2:33 PM
the building of a powerful anti-corporate coalition is the end.
This is probably the dumbest thing I have ever read.
Where do these fucks think money comes from?
"We don’t agree with the capitalist assumption that starvation or greed are the only reasons people work."
Ok, THIS is the dumbest thing I have ever read.
Work is something you do that you would not do if you weren't being paid to do it. Starvation (specifically the avoidance thereof) and the acquisition of material goods are precisely the reason people work. If it didn't require work to get food and shelter, people would eat, drink, and fuck all day.
Posted by: brian at August 18, 2010 6:54 PM
Obviously they think Ayn Rand is a total fruitcake. Unfortunately she was right.
The question is whether we can pull back and rebuild without a total collapse.
Posted by: Jim P. at August 18, 2010 7:39 PM
The question is whether we can pull back and rebuild without a total collapse.
Posted by: Jim P.
I dont know - might be a total collapse is what is needed for the majority of americans to pull their heads out of their asses and start paying attention.
If we manage to pull out without crashing and burning how long until the spin doctors instist the recovery was all part of the paln and proof that we need to march back twords socialism once again?
Posted by: lujlp at August 18, 2010 10:01 PM
Even if you like what you do for a living, would you really want to do it 40 hours a week, every week? I don't think so. We do it because we get paid, which is nice when you want to have food and shelter. I like my work most of the time, but if I were suddenly amazingly wealthy, I might want to start taking some really long vacations :) Travel, just be lazy for a while, go on a cruise.
Posted by: Kris at August 19, 2010 6:48 PM
