For once, I agree with Sen. Bernie Sanders. How about you?

Of course when the government builds roads it is Socialism. What else would it be?

What it comes down to is – what is a good definition of socialism? If you define Socialism ONLY as planned economies and government controlled wages, like the USSR had, then that is BAD socialism. Building roads (obviously an activity requiring social interaction) that is GOOD socialism.

The point is that the GOP, the Koch Brothers, and others want people to think things that are –good- for them are in fact –bad- for them.

You fit yourself for chains when you can’t make good decisions.

President Lincoln called it:

“These expressions, differing in form, are identical in object and effect--the supplanting the principles of free government, and restoring those of classification, caste, and legitimacy. They would delight a convocation of crowned heads, plotting against the people. They are the van-guard--the miners, and sappers--of returning despotism.

We must repulse them, or they will subjugate us.”

- A. Lincoln, 4/6/59

Applied to our own situation – the GOP, the Koch Brothers, and others are trying to convince – have apparently already convinced you – that ‘social’ programs undertaken for the good of all back in the 1930’s should be rolled back, eliminated, de-funded. Just because they are ‘socialist’.

Why would you let them do that?

Walt

Here is Lincoln's whole letter. It is brilliant.

Springfield, Ills, April 6, 1859
Messrs. Henry L. Pierce, & others.
Gentlemen
Your kind note inviting me to attend a Festival in Boston, on the 13th. Inst. in honor of the birth-day of Thomas Jefferson, was duly received. My engagements are such that I can not attend.
Bearing in mind that about seventy years ago, two great political parties were first formed in this country, that Thomas Jefferson was the head of one of them, and Boston the head-quarters of the other, it is both curious and interesting that those supposed to descend politically from the party opposed to Jefferson should now be celebrating his birthday in their own original seat of empire, while those claiming political descent from him have nearly ceased to breathe his name everywhere.
Remembering too, that the Jefferson party were formed upon its supposed superior devotion to the personal rights of men, holding the rights of property to be secondary only, and greatly inferior, and then assuming that the so-called democracy of to-day, are the Jefferson, and their opponents, the anti-Jefferson parties, it will be equally interesting to note how completely the two have changed hands as to the principle upon which they were originally supposed to be divided.
The democracy of to-day hold the liberty of one man to be absolutely nothing, when in conflict with another man's right of property. Republicans, on the contrary, are for both the man and the dollar; but in cases of conflict, the man before the dollar.
I remember once being much amused at seeing two partially intoxicated men engage in a fight with their great-coats on, which fight, after a long, and rather harmless contest, ended in each having fought himself out of his own coat, and intothat of the other. If the two leading parties of this day are really identical with the two in the days of Jefferson and Adams, they have perfomed the same feat as the two drunken men.
But soberly, it is now no child's play to save the principles of Jefferson from total overthrow in this nation.
One would start with great confidence that he could convince any sane child that the simpler propositions of Euclid are true; but, nevertheless, he would fail, utterly, with one who should deny the definitions and axioms. The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society.
And yet they are denied and evaded, with no small show of success.
One dashingly calls them "glittering generalities"; another bluntly calls them "self evident lies"; and still others insidiously argue that they apply only to "superior races."
These expressions, differing in form, are identical in object and effect--the supplanting the principles of free government, and restoring those of classification, caste, and legitimacy. They would delight a convocation of crowned heads, plotting against the people. They are the van-guard--the miners, and sappers--of returning despotism.
We must repulse them, or they will subjugate us.
This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.
All honor to Jefferson--to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.
Your obedient Servant
A. Lincoln--

Capt Walter Miller - socialism
noun so·cial·ism \ˈsō-shə-ˌli-zəm\ : a way of organizing a society in which major industries are owned and controlled by the government rather than by individual people and companies
Full Definition of SOCIALISM
1 : any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
2 a : a system of society or group living in which there is no private property
b : a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state
3 : a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done

Yup. So what?

So I guess you advocate for getting rid of say, "Social" Security?

Building roads and all that, like I said, is a -social- activity. Are you going to throw out progress because of the way 'socialism' is defined?

Geez.

Walt

You don't need an infinite number of monkeys to come up with some of the stuff you see on RP.

Walt

Here's a story about Senator Coburn holding up that bill:


http://www.defenseone.com/politics/2014/12/sen-coburn-holding-veterans-suicide-prevention-bill/101169/

I'd invite him to a special commemorative dinner at the nearest PVA or DAV post.

What does that bill actually do for Veterans? What I've read, its an inspection of the VA, and repayment of doctor's student loans.