Originally Posted by Spidey's mom 
You may try to get off the hook a bit here by saying you didn't mean me. But you did - remember, I've listened to Rush for a long time
. I like Dick Cheney. I love Star Parker. I respect Thomas Sowell. I admire Ronald Reagan. . . . . you did mean me when you paint conservatives the way you did.
steph
Well you're the only one that can determine that so I'll take your word for it.
I'm actually pro-life. But I mean it. I'm worried about the child from conception until he/she is an adult. What I see in the pro-life movement is that what they really mean is pro-birth. After that they don't seem to care too much. I am not for pumping out all these babies regardless of what their socioeconomic, mental, and basic environmental conditions will be at home.
Then theres the issue of rape, incest, child pregnancy, the health of the mother, etc. Anyway, as you can see the issue of abortion is complicated and very nuanced and is another topic of its own. I for one think its overblown and that its just a political football used to wedge the electorate. There are more important matters at hand.
The boogie man word of Socialism comes up often as in this case. I think that this is a very nebulous word that many conservatives use interchangeably with commie, pinko, unpatriotic, anti-American, etc. So lets get it clear.
Socialism is the control of all the means of production in a country by the government. The government also distributes the goods of the production instead of using free-market principles. If the government is a single person, its a socialist totalitarianism. If its a group of people its a socialist oligarchy. If its democratically elected, its a socialist democracy. Lets get that clear.
Now a simple crash course in social contract will reveal the basic functions of any sort of society. One of the reasons for supporting such a social contract/government is the collective organization, specialization, and economy of scale we see when we centralize and streamline certain services. For example, lets say the military. If there was any example of a truly socialized organization it is the military. As a soldier you are trained and assigned duties. In return, all of your needs are accounted for. There is a clear chain of command and decisions are made by this hierarchy and ultimately by a few senior officials (so it is more like a socialist oligarchy). Anyway, I don't want to write a dissertation - so basically we approve the use of our taxes to fund a single military. If every community (divided up in whatever many ways people can divide them up into) in the country decided to make their own military, this would clearly be foolish.
Another example is FDA or the EPA. The government takes on the role of protecting us from dangerous drugs, chemical spills etc. Even with such regulatory bodies, we still see regular catastrophes (think Vioxx, Heparin, contaminated water, etc). Think of how bad it would be if we allowed the free market to sort out such problems.
Some things do simply work better when the government takes a role. So exactly what is it that you're afraid of? What "radical socialist" policies of the Democrats are you so deftly afraid of? I mean, the way many extreme right wingers seem to characterize the Democrats makes it sound like Joe Biden, Che Guevara, and Stalin are going to factories across the country to seize the means of protection.
I mean c'mon...reallY?
Re: The GOP’s Paranoid Foreign Policy
my: scary . . . isn't it? 
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