72% of Republican's still support Bush; and Palin
That does not imply that Republicans or conservatives, are anti-intellectual.
The last bastion of Republicanism is appalachia and the deep south.
After an extremely unpopular presidency, and with a candidate that many Republicans where not all that exited about, Republicans still kept Obama down to 52.9% of the vote. Just 4 years ago they won a majority. Politics goes back and fourth, the Republicans are down for now, but they are not marginialized nearly to the extent that your statement implies.
socialism is an economic idea. Democracy is a political idea.
and having more and more of the economy controlled by politics is a move towards socialism (or if the government doesn't actually own the parts of the economy it controls, than technically its a move towards economic fascism)
And you call public schools socialist?
Some things that resemble socialism in some way, and get called socialism by many libertarians or conservatives, are not technically socialism, in that the government doesn't own or directly control the means of production. Public schools are the real thing. The government owns and controls the system to produce the service of educating our young. That's socialism in the same way that government owned steel mills or car factories are socialism.
That is pure democracy in action!!!! Not socialism!
There is no conflict between the two ideas. Democracy and socialism are different things, but not exclusive.
If you vote for the people who will control the means of production then you have democratic socialism. If its a dictator who controls them than you have authoritarian socialism (or if the control is extensive enough you can just call it totalitarianism).
(Accurately) calling democratic socialism, "socialism", doesn't imply that its totalitarian, authoritarian, or not democratic.
You could in theory even have a totalitarian democracy (people vote for a government that controls almost every aspect of your life).
Democracy is a political system to determine what decisions are made, what laws are past, and systems put in place.
Socialism is one of the possible systems that could be put in place by a democracy (or by a non-democratic government).
Is the US socialist? Well no country is totally socialist or totally capitalist, and we are less socialist than many other countries, but we do have many socialist systems (such as public schools), and we have been moving more towards socialism (or more often technically towards economic fascism, but that term tends to get misunderstood, and we are to a lesser extent moving towards socialism as well). |
