America is an illegal and racist country much like Israel

**Gandalf** · 09-25-2010 04:33 PM

Originally Posted by El Kabong

Originally Posted by miles

To be honest, I don't like the aggressive tone of your language there, Lyle. "Fucking hippy"..."dirty fucking hippy"...."nutjob socialist"....

I don't use that kind of language or condescending tone with you so please don't do it with me. I attack political systems and use logic and reason to express my ideas. What you are doing here is resorting to base insults on a personal level and I don't think that is called for.

Even when we disagree, long time posters have a duty to adhere to a certain code of conduct. I could very easily stoop to that level and choose not to as well, but I don't. I ask you to do the same.

If you want to debate anything, then for sure let's do that, but let's not degenerate into plain filth or personal attacks on one another.

I'm sorry miles, I think that is a problem with the inability to show tone on the internet....when I say "fucking hippy", "dirty fucking hippy", and "nutjob socialist" my disdain is more geared towards the actual group as opposed to a personal attack on you. So in other words I fucking hate hippies and socialists I certainly hope you're neither of those, but with your views on "imperialist elites" and "the oppressed" one can't help but wonder.

No, that's alright then. I'm not one for the keyboard warrior stuff, so was just a bit irritated. Thanks for explaining what you meant.

I think my definition of socialist is probably quite different from yours anyway. I do believe that society should be a system for drawing together rather than alienating, but I am no communist. I am no Friedman style capitalist either. I certainly don't believe in exploiting society and allowing the rich to get richer whilst the poor get poorer and lose job opportunities because jobs are lost overseas and services get cut left, right and centre.

I am in the middle of that, which is a position which respects the need for capitalism, but also sees the need for corporations to be reigned in by governments to support societal interests. That is difficult in this globalised age where home grown corporations relocate to sweatshops overseas and leave swathes of unemployment in previously prosperous cities, but that is where government does need to step in.

In that regard I see absolutely nothing wrong in taxing the upper echelons of society more in order to offer support to those who have been sold out by corporations who exist only for profit; especially considering that the rich have the largest stakes in those corporations.

I don't even regard that as a particularly socialist measure, I regard that as humanitarianism. A rich man being asked to give a small portion of his taxes over to help others gain a more equal footing in society is a reasonable thing to ask, more so if that company originally grew from the hard labour of those that have been dumped for cheap overseas workers.

Socialism is such a dirty word in the States, but it isn't elsewhere in the world. Socialism seems to be so strongly linked to communism there, which has no connection with reality. Many governments around the world are what you might term 'socialist', but in reality are 'social democracies'. The goverment is obliged to provide services such as health care, education, child support and so on. These aren't dirty terms, but are normal the world over. However, in the states you have everything being privatised in a frenzy of capitalist glut. New Oreans failed to recover in years because of this. The government simply absolved responsibility.

The same happened in Iraq too. And Argentina. And countless other countries where free scholarships were granted for students around the world to study at the Chigago school of economics and were then encouraged to go back to their home countries and be provided with US backing to overthrow democratically elected governments and cause serious problems with unemployment and cutbacks in public services whilst allowing US corporations to run riot and cash in on natural resources and the supply of overpriced and mediocre services.

Now that kind of capitalism I am not in favour of, that is an evil system. But like I say, I don't regard myself as a 'socialist' in the US media sense of the term. I do though believe in socialist democracy, which is the common rule of law in many countries the world over.