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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Thomas A Watson who wrote (171829)	8/16/2001 12:13:16 PM
From: ThirdEye	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 769667

Consider one central precept of socialist ideology: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." This is one of the principles underlying the so-called redistribution of wealth that occurs in so-called socialist societies. Looking at the US from this point of view, it is clear that to a degree we are already a socialist society because a significant amount of wealth "produced" by a minority is distributed to the general population in the form of infrastructure and services. A minority of the population pays a majority of the taxes and those funds are distributed to others, to a degree, "according to their need." The logical conclusion of the conservative argument that wealth should remain in the hands of those who produced it is that the disparity in standards of living would increase dramatically, since the mechanism for the redistribution of wealth, the government, would be taken out of the equation. No one in his right mind thinks that the government creates wealth. There is no point in trying to pin that idea on AS. But the leftist idea that the role of(our) government is to "provide for the general welfare" is rooted in the reaction to centuries of European oligarchic or monarchist privilege in the midst of generalized proverty. We all benefit from the revolution, but there will always be a war over how much redistribution is too much. We are very much becoming an oligarchy in this country, but if the balance ever tipped too far to the right, you can be sure that all the money of the right would not be adequate to prevent another civil war. Parenthetically, I find it odd that the ones who reject Darwin for religious reasons are also the first to embrace social Darwinism.