Is Dean drunk, or just insane?

[Odin]

Originally posted by Ned


Is that what Dean meant? I thought he referred to Republicans, some of whom are liberals on social issues.

Any attack on Democrats would similarly be misplaced as there are social conservatives in that party as well.

Also, I think there is a difference between traditional economic liberals who simply want to help the downtrodden, and socialists who despise private power. I personally think that most of the traditional liberals have moved to the Republican Party, but there are some remaining in the Democrat Party. Oerdin seems to me to be a traditional liberal, for example.

The Dems are not socialist, not by a long shot. Welfare is not Socialism, Socialism is industry being in the hands of the employees or the government. The Democrats are akin to a coalition of moderate social democrats and moderate christian democrats in Europe.

[Ned]

Odin, there are degrees of socialism. But they are all marked by a singular hostility to private power and wealth. They mask this by talking about the poor, but everything they do or say is aimed at reducing private power in favor of government power.

Welfarism, the urge to help the poor and downtrodden, is as old as the Christian church. It began with the concept of human dignity and equality that was begat by the idea that we are all equal in the eyes of the lord, etc. Traditional liberalisms efforts to take the rough edges off of capitalism is a concept now shared by most Americans, regardless of party. Democrats cannot claim these ideas exclusively to themselves.

What they can claim today, though, is that most Democrats seem to hate wealth and private power. That is socialism, which defines itself from its origins as a philosophy that teaches that wealth per se is "cruel" and must be eliminated. This is why socialists want to control the means of production. Control of the means of production is not socialism's motivating philosophy, but it is its means to an end: elimination of wealth.

[Stefu]

Ah, Ashcroft...wasn't he the frontman in 'The Verve'?

I'm imagining a music video where Ashcroft is walking through the White House bumping into people while singing "Let the Eagle Soar"