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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dale Baker who wrote (236647)	11/3/2013 11:14:26 AM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542999

It always surprises me that otherwise reasonably smart posters fall for the "oh, this is socialism" trap, meaning unmitigated evil, without checking matters out. Even with fairly serious socialism, it's a long and winding downhill slide from Clement Atlee's views and, let's say, Lenin or Stalin. Enough to be different categories. As for democratic socialism, it's well known that it's subject to the disciplines of democratic politics. As evidence by the Scandinavian countries, for one. I think of two mistakes as parallel. The one is to take a very bad instance of socialism and then cherry pick into calling it the essence of socialism. The other is to take a very bad instance of capitalism and do the same. Both are failures of critical thinking. In short, we need to buttress the liberal arts portion of higher education; not undermine it as we are doing at present.

To: Dale Baker who wrote (236647)	11/3/2013 11:28:54 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542999

I know there's not much reason to weigh in on this stuff- because minds rarely change. But what you hear from the shriekers, as you call them aptly, is all about the exceptions and the abuses- and we can't legislate that way. Just because some people will abuse SNAP, that's no reason to take food away from legitimately hungry children. I have the same problem with weird responses to terrorism or mass shootings. Do stuff that makes sense for everyone. Don't put guns in schools for teachers- find a way to make ALL places more safe. Don't be stupidly reactive- make good decisions for everyone, without a knee jerk to the rare occurence. But that's rarely done.