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Those on the right, define "socialism" and "socialist"..

Grizzly Bear said:
What's socialist? Pretty much everything to a certain extent... it comes in many flavors. "Socialist" is way too broad to define one brush of character and for all practical purposes Obama, European nations, and the likes of Chavez, and similar are all socialist, but of entirely different kinds. Obama may not be a great president in my opinion, but he isn't a Chavez by any stretch of the imagination (whom I consider a raving lunatic).

It's one of the examples where the use of the terms needs a well defined context if it's going to be used to talk about a person's politics. There's no solid threshold that suddenly makes you something
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Would Obama do like Chavez if he could. That is if our laws allowed it or the right judges were in place.
 
logger said:
What would this country look like if Conservatives were not in power to stop liberalism/socialism?:eek:

What if liberals were able to do what ever they wanted?:jaw-dropp
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if you had any real liberals in america, we could find out.
however, america has only sane and insane (GOP) shades of far right.
hopefully, the rest will see what a pack of loonies the tea party is and will re-elect obama.
 
RandFan said:
Not if it's the change Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot or Kim Jong Il brought.
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How about the change Washington, Jefferson and Franklin? These guys were a bunch of radical liberal leftist progressives for their day, and terrorist supporters to boot (if only the word "terrorist" had existed back then)!
 
logger said:
Would Obama do like Chavez if he could. That is if our laws allowed it or the right judges were in place.
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Would he be a Chavez, he would make it possible, he would simply change the laws and put the "proper" judges in the "proper" positions
 
Randfan - you say "The purpose of this thread is to end the equivocation of the words "socialism" and "socialist"." I think the real issue that can be addressed (many of the users of "socialism" are using it as pejorative so there is no substance to address - as Orwell wrote about) is the equivocation of "social" and "socialism" - it seems to me that because the words share a similar root many folk don't understand they are not synonyms. For example they will describe the UK's NHSs as "socialist healthcare" which makes no sense at all if you use any coherent definition of "socialism" in its political meaning.

Social refers to "of society", socialism to a political ideology, two very different things.
 
DC said:
Would he be a Chavez, he would make it possible, he would simply change the laws and put the "proper" judges in the "proper" positions
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That's how Franklin D. Roosevelt pushed through a whole slew of policies that heretofore would have been regarded as blatantly unconstitutional, and set the precedents which have, ever since, continued to further violate the Constitution as it had been understood before then. He was in office long enough that he was able to stack the courts with judges who would rule his way.

That, in turn, is the major reason why the Twenty-Second Amendment—limiting a President to two terms—was put forth and ratified, to prevent further abuses of this sort. Unfortunately, the damage had already been done.
 
Bob Blaylock said:
That's how Franklin D. Roosevelt pushed through a whole slew of policies that heretofore would have been regarded as blatantly unconstitutional, and set the precedents which have, ever since, continued to further violate the Constitution as it had been understood before then. He was in office long enough that he was able to stack the courts with judges who would rule his way.

That, in turn, is the major reason why the Twenty-Second Amendment—limiting a President to two terms—was put forth and ratified, to prevent further abuses of this sort. Unfortunately, the damage had already been done.
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And your definition is?
 
logger said:
Would Obama do like Chavez if he could. That is if our laws allowed it or the right judges were in place.
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If you don't have checks and balances you'd risk the abuse of power with pretty much any president. How much power does the government's policies take hold of? How little? Describing policies as socialist right off the bat doesn't really answer that IMO.

KoihimeNakamura said:
And your definition is?
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Irrelevant really... the policies are what define the politician. Bob's post does a lot more at least than the simple "socialist!!!ONE!" pejorative, which is essentially what my own point was. There's no line to draw, politics is about power balance, not "left" vs "right"

DC said:
reducing poverty? i bet Obama would if he could.
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DC, don't forget:
Unlimited presidential terms
Power to expropriate private property before getting a court's approval
Civilian militias to "fight the United States in their future invasion"
etc.... etc..

That kinda happens when you remove checks and balances... Again, the reason why I don't like the "socialism" label as it's commonly used; it doesn't address differences like these.
 
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Bob Blaylock said:
That's how Franklin D. Roosevelt pushed through a whole slew of policies that heretofore would have been regarded as blatantly unconstitutional, and set the precedents which have, ever since, continued to further violate the Constitution as it had been understood before then. He was in office long enough that he was able to stack the courts with judges who would rule his way.

That, in turn, is the major reason why the Twenty-Second Amendment—limiting a President to two terms—was put forth and ratified, to prevent further abuses of this sort. Unfortunately, the damage had already been done.
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Oddly enough we saw unprecedented growth and prosperity. The 50s are seen as a golden age by many Conservatives. In any event, your post is simply generalization and bald assertion. Could you provide specifics and evidence?

Oh, and your definition?
 
Grizzly Bear said:
Irrelevant really...
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???

It's the purpose of the thread. How on earth could it be irrelevant?

...the policies are what define the politician.
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Then your complaint is with the politicians who use the words "socialism" and "socialist" as epithets.

Bob's post does a lot more at least than the simple "socialist!!!ONE!" pejorative, which is essentially what my own point was. There's no line to draw, politics is about power balance, not "left" vs "right"
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Contradictory and fatuous.

DC, don't forget:
Unlimited presidential terms
Power to expropriate private property before getting a court's approval
Civilian militias to "fight the United States in their future invasion"
etc.... etc..

That kinda happens when you remove checks and balances... Again, the reason why I don't like the "socialism" label as it's commonly used; it doesn't address differences like these.
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Whatever this means, it's not on topic.
 
RandFan said:
Will those on the right adopt this?
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Probably not. Much of RationalWiki is a criticism of Conservapedia (my bolding):

RationalWiki said:
The site was founded on 21 November 2006 by Andrew Schlafly,[2] spawn of professional anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly,[3] in an attempt to offset what he perceived as an excessive liberal bias at Wikipedia.[2] Conservapedia's goal is to try to create a version of Wikipedia that has a conservative bias, especially when it comes to issues where politics and fundamentalist Christianity overlap, such as creationism, evolution, sexuality, morality, and hate of Muslims.[4]

No prominent conservative politician, writer or pundit (except Andy's mommy on one of her podcasts) has ever aligned themself with, or recommended, Conservapedia, making it extremely unpopular, and non-prominent. After all, aligning with Conservapedia would be committing an act of career-suicide.
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Linky.
 
Grizzly Bear said:
DC, don't forget:
Unlimited presidential terms like many many other countriesPower to expropriate private property before getting a court's approval with compensationCivilian militias to "fight the United States in their future invasion" Yeah thank FSM there are no Militias in the US or in my country etc.... etc..

That kinda happens when you remove checks and balances... Again, the reason why I don't like the "socialism" label as it's commonly used; it doesn't address differences like these.
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removing checks and balance has nothing to do with socialism.
 
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