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Rock-solid documentation of Socialist pronouncements
"No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned. Every dollar received should represent a dollar's worth of service rendered, not gambling in stocks, but service rendered. The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size, acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective: a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion, and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate."
Notice that the call is not only for a progressive Income Tax, but for a virtually confiscatory Estate Tax as well.
Who would have the temerity to so unabashedly tout the "Socialist line" in the United States?
Teddy Roosevelt, in 1910.
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As solid as the rock at Mount Rushmore....Teddy was clearly a class warfare socialist (and probably he hated America as he did not live in a small town) who did not know how to be a Loyal Republican.
October 21, 2008 6:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
The terms, "socialism" and "capitalism" are so freighted with menace and dread, that hardly anyone has the courage to ask, "What's so bad about socialism(communism)? Exactly what, pray tell?"
We have been trained well to unthinkingly denounce those systems; and we have neither the education, nor the historical sense, nor the economic expertise, to know why we dread them.
The Reaganites in their dark hour of triumph embarked to do the same thing to the term "liberal" And perhaps they succeeded. When someone is called liberal, they stammer and backtrack and say something evasive, like "No, I am a progressive." It is so despicable and so unnecessary.
If you are a liberal, don't bother defending it or denying it...simply ask your interlocutor why he or she isn't one?
It you are a socialist or communist, my advice is the same.
But do your homework first. Understand the systems per se and their history. Understand where their strengths were and their weaknesses.
And don't back down.
October 21, 2008 7:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'd say pure capitalism leads to dead bodies on the side of the road, while pure socialism leads to dead bodies on the other side of the road.
October 21, 2008 8:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
even handed as always, Donal!
As I said somewhere else a day or so ago, economic systems in their pure form don't exist. They are changed by the cultures and traditions of the societies they operate in.
In order to get to some kind of Rawlsian utility floor, we have to reverse engineer from where we want to go to where we actually are. And proceed by slow steps.
I do know this, I feel American capitalism is as failed an experiment in its way, as was communism a failure by the 1970s in the old USSR. It took a massive government intervention in the thirties to rescue it, and when it stripped itself of the life-support mechanisms the New Deal fastened on to it, it blew out of control and crashed again in only a quarter century.
Everytime the bernie types inveigh against socialism I would like them to spend a few years living in Europe and see what socialism can do for living standards, health care, and general income equality.
October 21, 2008 9:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Exactly right. It's interesting -- and apparently too complicated for Republicans to grasp -- that some of our closest European allies have systems consisting of:
Monarchy,
Democracy, and,
Socialism.
And their living standards are at least the equal of our middle-class.
October 21, 2008 10:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just ask the dip-shits if they've ever been hunting or fishing in Canada. My Lord, what is wrong with these people? Have they ever been outside Nebraska? Manitoba has, oddly enough, the only "socialist" government in North America. Socialized medicine, public auto insurance, 100% of electricity & gas from a 100% public utility, subsidized tuition, daycare, pro-Kyoto, etc.
It also has a redhot economy, 9 years of balanced budgets, the highest charitable contribution rates on the continent, houses a Level 4 Lab in its capital to held the CDC and others work on Ebola etc., allows Catholic & religious schools, and is led by a Premier who hunts, fishes, and supports Canada's active role in Afghanistan.
You can like it or loathe it (he's won 3 terms and is enormously popular), but are these people insane with their "socialist" rants? Ye gods.... what fools.
October 21, 2008 10:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
People who are pedophiles or liberals certainly should not admit it in public. What's wrong with being a liberal? Nothing if you are 15, live with your parents, haven't worked a day in your life and like the idea of someone else taking care of you for the rest of your life.
Socialists, communists, leftists should hide their true political leanings just as those who harbor pro-Nazi sentiments. It's nothing to be proud of.
October 21, 2008 7:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the humor.
Do you really believe what you just wrote? Really?
If so, why, exactly? Do you have more to offer than your simple boo/hurrah?
October 21, 2008 8:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Liberals get laid more.
October 21, 2008 8:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Remembered from a t-shirt at Berkeley in 1967: "Girls say Yes to boys who say No"
Yes, Lux was there.
October 21, 2008 9:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Lux. I can't be held responsible for acts of terror which you committed back when I was 8!!!!
Please send written confirmation that you have been rehabilitated. Maybe some award from Chicago or similar trinket.
October 21, 2008 10:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Would an old Vanilla Fudge album do?
No make that an old Moby Grape album...NOBODY has one of those anymore.
October 21, 2008 10:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
I not only have my original vinyl Vanilla Fudge LP, but also have at least three Moby Grape LPs in vinyl, and a double CD of Moby Grape.
October 21, 2008 10:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Geebus! Jnag, I thought I was the only one who still had such stuff! Have any Pacific Gas & Electric?
October 21, 2008 10:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
My PG&E died a warped death. Still have the original Kooper/Bloomfield Super-Session live from the Fillmore West though (the one that has a then-little-known Carlos Santana jamming on one cut).
October 22, 2008 7:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
Two weeks babies Chambers Brothers, natch.
October 21, 2008 10:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Time has come today...tick tock tick tock.
October 21, 2008 10:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
That was about the draft -- and resisting it.
(I was there. Well, not in Berkeley, but I was "there".)
October 21, 2008 10:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, me also.
Met Eldredge Cleaver, and lots of other interesting folks. Wild, rich times...
October 21, 2008 10:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
I only got to spend an hour (with 30 other people in a class) with Alan Ginsberg. That work?
October 22, 2008 7:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
nah. Gingsberg's got too long a span. Even I got to spend time with Allen Ginsberg, and I wasn't born till 1974.
In Communist East Germany. hahaha (well, okay, technically it was the non-Communist West Berlin. but close enough for redistribution.)
October 22, 2008 2:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ignorance has a big mouth.
October 21, 2008 10:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
And stupidity, an infinite shelf-life. Thus saith the Zappa.
All we need now is for Bulldog to come barking in to join Bernie.... ;-)
October 21, 2008 10:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
You commie fag traitors!!! How dare you speak against the economic system blessed by the Founding Fathers? Capitalism is decreed by the CONSTITUTION itself, its in there under Article thirty something.
Democraps are crypto=commies and Pallin had it right; you all ought to be taken out and shot so our children won't be molested by you and your filthy ideas.
Bernie Bullpup
Will that do?
October 21, 2008 10:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think that's the best we can hope for. Bulldog isn't coming close to any thread Jnagarya is on after that rumble in the jungle on my blog.
October 21, 2008 10:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
B+. You omitted LIES, terrorists & Ayers.
Nagarya can out-bark the lad, I believe. Should have him drop by - his Bulldog imitation is uncanny.
October 21, 2008 10:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
The founders of this country were, by majority, liberal.
The Constitution is a shining example of a liberal document and thesis for how a country can operate.
Those reasons alone are enough to explain why the relatively new-to-the-American-scene neo-conservatives hate this country and our Constitution. That's why, over the roughly 40 year history of their existence (Reagan popping onto the national political stage during the Goldwater For President race), they have expended most of their effort to vilify the liberal founding principles and, over the past eight years, to shred the Constitution itself.
If there are, as Rep. Bachman (R-MN) alludes and Gov. Palin asserts, people or pockets of the nation that are anti-America, it's exactly the opposite of the people or segments of population they attest are pro-America.
It is the anti-intellectual, anti-liberal segment of the population that want to eliminate the dreadful "interference" the Constitution poses to their plans, they are the transformational characters -- who want to transform this country once and for all time to some more fascistic, imperial place our liberal founders would have recognized all too well...
...and against which they fought a revolutionary war.
October 22, 2008 7:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
The problem with this quote is that the person receiving the dollar that has been acquired in this case didn't earn it fairly either!
October 21, 2008 8:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
TR had his faults of course, but in many ways he was a stand up guy. As a rich man, he knew well the benefits and dangers of great wealth and he didn't fear going after the members of his own class. Too bad there's nobody like him on the scene today.
October 22, 2008 4:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Okay, as long as we're reminiscing about late 60's 'street cred', I'll admit I performed in a scene from Trial of the Cantonville Nine at a protest rally with Philip Berrigan and Elizabeth McCallister in Oklahoma City.
God, that was a long time ago.
October 22, 2008 5:00 PM | Reply | Permalink