“Over the years, our constitutional rights have been incrementally infringed upon for safety, for the children, for the war on drugs, the war on terror, the war on poverty and on and on to the point where we have “free speech zones” in a country that is supposed to be a free speech zone wherever you happen to be standing! We have “rights groups” like the NRA who are trying to preserve a right that according to the constitution isn’t supposed to be infringed upon at all! We have to hire a lawyer to defend ourselves from the patriot act when our right to privacy is spelled out for us, the government can now revoke our rights and rename us “enemy combatants” and evade the burden of our constitutional rights yet again! Last year they passed the “hb1955 homegrown terrorism law” which simply complaining about the government can get you jailed for “suspicion” without access to a lawyer!
It’s not just a label anymore, it’s whats happenening to our country in tiny fragments and being swallowed by the people “as being good for them and their safety!”

In your indictment, it looks like both the Democrats and the Republicans have started us down a path beside Socialism. I hope that this administration is at that fork in the road I spoke about and will choose another path although it will not be easy to completely undo all of the infringements and interferences that you speak off.

I found this:

“In a capitalist economy, the government acts only as a referee by protecting property rights, enforcing contracts, and prohibiting force and fraud. Because our modern federal government has strayed so far from its limited constitutional powers, it controls the economy far more than the founders intended. (But sometimes it is those in power that sets the agenda, while we accuse the government) As a result, our economy is becoming more and more socialist. Federal taxes, regulations, welfare, subsidies, wage controls, and price controls, along with Fed manipulation of interest rates and the money supply, all represent socialist government intervention in the economy. No matter what the Democrats or Republicans want to call it, socialism is socialism. We should have the honesty to identify exactly what is being advocated when some call for even more government control of the economy.”

Sepp, Knowing that these rights have slipped away under both parties, we are not on opposite sides. but sometimes the government does need to step in to right the ship if they have the intelligence and the concerns of the nation at heart. But sometimes when it appears that it is government that is getting into the business of controlling everything, sometimes it is very powerful capitalists pulling their strings like bankers, corporations, drug company executives, and insurance corporations. Remember the Wizard of OZ! By the way , I said “just a hint of socialism” not a full fledged walk on the wild side of socialism. I for one am not sure how an administration can turn around all of the extreme problems that we now have, but I am sure that some of them will not please everyone.

You may have the last word on this subject as we will obviously talk again on other subjects.

You have spoiled me with your courteous discourse.

When I see the government creating laws that make anything I do or, say a criminal act…while only protecting the government…I get suspicous!
Don’t you?
Our own files are probably even more frightening than the KGB’s.
Check this video from my blog out…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbNIU2KEz4g&eurl=http://uncommonsqualor.blogspot.com/&feature=player_embedded

“No ww, I’m not going to get silly with you or be spitefull.”

Lisa, What about a Glass City Jungle peace prize for the way that Sepp reponded to input on the socialist blog. Sepp shows that it is possible to hold a blogging conversation without being a pitbull with a computer.

Sepp, Socialism, like an alien being, probably starts to grow within the body of many governments, government leaders and business leaders once they get the power. Not only does socialism come into play once one gets the power, many other repressive systems in the history of the world sometimes get into the mix.

On the subject of Socialism, the problem is labeling this attitude and getting one to admit whether it is socialism or not and then to decide if it is a path down socialism or just a close walk beside the path of socialism on the way to something else! Is it really pure socialism or just a hint. Sometimes you must go partially down the same road but when you come to a fork in the road and you continue on the same path, that is when the labeling can stick. But remember, One man’s label is one man’s opinion.

“I just happen to have an interest in soviet history and, especially the now available and declassified kgb archives.”

Sepp, Get back to me when our files are fully declassified.

“Oh you Americans! You’re so gullible! We’ll spoon feed you socialism until you’re Communists and don’t’ even know it. We’ll never have to fire a shot!” -Nikita Kruschev

And…look around you! The sad thing is that we watched the soviet system implode only to have our own elected officials trying to lead us down the same path.

Trent Lott said, “Talk radio is ruining America.” An advisor to Mike Huckabee piled on late last year, stating “Rush [Limbaugh] doesn’t think for himself. That’s not necessarily a slap because he’s not paid to be a thinker–he’s an entertainer.”

“While right-wing talkers like Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, and Melanie Morgan continue to spew inflammatory rhetoric to incite their base, there are increasing signs that their influence in the conservative movement is temporarily evaporating.”

They could not save the GOP.

“We have seen the character of private citizens and of Government employees virtually destroyed by public condemnation on the basis of gossip, distortion, hearsay, and deliberate untruths.” The Tydings Committee Report on McCarthy’s Charges(1950).”

Sound familiar?

“In the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s, Americans suffered from a political and cultural hysteria caused by fear and anxiety about the Soviet threat’ (Today it is fear of Democrats.) In addition to government blacklists, private organizations also printed blacklists of their own. One of the more prominent non-government blacklists was Red Channels, which published lists of names of individuals and organizations suspected of being communists. If your name was placed on one of these blacklists, you could lose your job and your life and reputation could be ruined. To give you a sense of how these blacklists work, let’s look at the case of Nancy Reagan. In the early 1950s, Nancy Davis discovered her name was on one of the blacklists and she could not longer work as an actress. Nancy went to the President of the Screen Actors Guild, Ronald Reagan, and begged him to take her name of the list. Reagan got her name off the list, and he
later married her.”

Today if you are a Democrat, some are accused of destroying America. Sound familiar?

“Because of this growing anti-communist hysteria in the early 1950s created by McCarthyism, Americans began to look over their shoulders wondering whether if there weren’t in fact communists in their midst. Some people used the charge of communism to defeat their enemies and their competition.”

Today we have accusations that if you were a Democrat you could not even be considered for a job in the Whitehouse attorney pool and some talk shows have even advocated violence! (Sounds like McCarthyism to me.)

“Some accused the Girl Scouts of being a communist front. Others charged that Rock and Roll musicians were communists. Some accused people who supported putting fluoride in the water of being communists. Political activists such as feminists and Black Civil Rights and students were accused of being communists. Teachers and University professors were accused of being communists, trying to undermine the values of young Americans. ”

Fear, Fear fear. Today the Democrats are accused of being soft on America defense putting us all in danger. Sound familiar?

“McCarthyism allowed the government to violate the basic civil and political rights of Americans throughout the Cold War. In the 1950s and 1960s, the FBI and the CIA opened people’s mail, followed and harassed political groups challenging government policy, and attempted to “neutralize” Americans who did not support America’s aggressive Cold War policies. It was only in the mid-1970s that Americans discovered the full extent to which the government violated their basic rights under McCarthyism in the early years of the Cold War. Revelations about government violations of the laws and of American’s basic rights caused many Americans to question their government and its commitment to democracy.”

McCarthy, Hoover and Richard Milhouse Nixon at work again. What a team and what a finish for them all!

kateb Says:
“It is such a far cry from being merely verbally pilloried on a radio show that no one is even required to listen to – with being given a subpoena to be brought in front of Senate panels and excoriated on national television with the threat of prison hanging over your head. With the resultant loss of employment and community shame as a result of not having any evidence produced against you. McCarthy’s name is synonymous with witch hunt.”

Being “merely” daily pilloried on radio, has cost loss of employment, community shame with sometimes no evidence produced against you and a fear of reprisal at work, in their career, with their neighbors and at home. Not even mentioning the accusations and threats made against the new president and his family. Some talk shows have spread hatred, racism and vindictiveness. Some talk shows are not designed to unite but to make money. Maybe it would be better if a subpoena were issued so that some of those accused of trying to destroy America by voting Democrat could defend themselves!

It is said that ten people went to jail as a result of the McCarthy hearings, not for being convicted of being communist but for failure to answers questions. How many are hurt by the hateful rhetoric and disinformation heard on some talk shows to day? And how is Americas’ healing process going?

You may have the last word on this issue.

Socialism is the transitional period between capitalism and communism. It is the unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done.

Communism, with a capital ‘c’ is a totalitarian system of government in which a single authoritarian party controls and owns production facilities and distribution of goods. (An absence of private property).

Totalitarianism refers to the Marxist theory that the citizen should be totally subject to an absolute state authority.

It is a grossly hyperbolic statement to relate talk radio to McCarthyism. It is such a far cry from being merely verbally pilloried on a radio show that no one is even required to listen to – with being given a subpoena to be brought in front of Senate panels and excoriated on national television with the threat of prison hanging over your head. With the resultant loss of employment and community shame as a result of not having any evidence produced against you. McCarthy’s name is synonymous with witch hunt.

I think that if a single mind in America is able to believe that an opinion they don’t approve of is the same as the tactics that McCarthy used to terrorize an entire nation is actually a good statement. It shows that there is no understanding of what kind of fear people lived under in America during the McCarthy years.

“McCarthy was for the most part…
Abosulutely correct!”

Sepp, I hope you are not one of the response bloggers that personally attacks rebuttals.
But here one is.

J. Edgar hoover, Sen. Joe Mccarthy and Richard Nixon…Go figure.

# 1950 Feb 9: Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin gave a speech at Wheeling, West Virginia charging that the U.S. State Department was ‘riddled with Communists’.

# 1950 June 1: Seven Republican Senators, led by Margaret Chase Smith of Maine, denounced Sen. McCarthy for attacking ‘individual freedom’. http://www.genordell.com/stores/lantern/blacklist.htm

wwforlife: It was a fishing expedition that ruined the lives of hundreds if not thousands of people. “Only the Ten unfriendly witnesses were sentenced; and only then for their refusal to admit and then disavow their affiliation with the Communist Party”

“At first glance it appears that the initial hearings were unjustified. Scholars and historians incorrectly grieve over how these initial hearings deprived hundreds of innocent people their ability to earn a living. But in point of fact, as a result of the 1947 hearings only the Ten unfriendly witnesses were sentenced; and only then for their refusal to admit and then disavow their affiliation with the Communist Party, however sophomoric and foreign that sounds today. The tenor of the times must be taken into consideration here. None can now say that in the late 1940s there was not a genuine Communist peril.
http://www.moderntimes.com/blacklist/

Congressional hearings were in effect, not hearings, but trials for crimes that were not really crimes, with congressmen serving as prosecutor, judge, and jury. Unable to deprive a person of their life and liberty, they deprived him of his livelihood. Other people who were not convicted of anything including being a communist were also in trouble, because headlines of newspapers and magazines wouldn’t miss the new story for the world.

1954 Dec 2: The U.S. Senate voted to condemn Sen. McCarthy for “conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute” for his actions during the Congressional hearings.
U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy stirred up anti-Communist fears and rose to power
in collusion with the House Un-American Activities Committee during the 1950s,
but his hell-bent disregard for Constitutional rights led to censure by Congress, a failed career,
and a lonely death from alcoholism. ”

Communism did not take over America and it was not because 10 witnesses failed to answer question. It was because of the American people. The return of McCarthyism is seen today by some people in the form of some talk radio that attempts to divide the people first, slanders second, name calls third and ridicules as a closing practice.

Does he

Call for the immediate incarceration/execution of all hedge fund managers because they are “enemies of the people”?

Demand that all CEOs be fired so that all companies can be run by democratically elected employee representatives from each sector of a company’s business (bonus points if he calls those representative councils “Soviets”)?

Tell all stockholders that henceforth, unless they actually work for the company they own stock in, all dividends they earn on their stock will be taxed at a 100% tax rate?

Arrest all wealthy Americans who attempt to move their assets to accounts in other countries?

Put those arrested Americans on trial in an overly public venue designed to make them look really, really bad?

Grow a big, bushy black mustache?

Have an inordinate fondness for brass band marches?

If you answer a significant number of these questions with a “yes,” then chances are your newly elected president is secretly a socialist. If not, then you are probably confused (yet again) about what the world “socialist” actually means.

link:

http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/16988.html

http://www.house.gov/mica/Stimulus%20HS%20Rail.shtml

It says “Funding for transit projects in the stimulus package could accelerate the Central Florida Commuter Rail project”