{"id":35393,"date":"2019-02-10T02:24:17","date_gmt":"2019-02-10T02:24:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=35393"},"modified":"2019-02-10T02:24:17","modified_gmt":"2019-02-10T02:24:17","slug":"socialism-is-a-serious-straw-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=35393","title":{"rendered":"Socialism is a serious straw man"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Donald J. Trump stood before a joint congressional session and received his share of cheers — mostly from Republicans sitting in front of him — during his State of the Union speech.<\/p>\n

One applause line deserves a brief comment here. He declared, without an ounce of equivocation, that the United States is never going to become a “socialist nation.”<\/p>\n

GOP lawmakers stood and cheered. So did a handful of Democrats.<\/p>\n

Why mention this here? Because the president of the United States only revealed his acute command of the obvious.<\/p>\n

He was taking a direct shot at one member of the Senate, Vermont independent Bernie Sanders. He also was targeting a handful of House Democrats, too, namely the rookie lawmaker, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has become a media superstar<\/em> while serving for an entire month<\/em> in the House of Representatives.<\/p>\n

Is the president’s declaration actually intended to stave off some hidden stampede toward socialism? He clearly intends with that statement to stoke some kind of made-up fear that there is enough support in Congress to allow for a government takeover of heavy industry. He is breeding panic among those who believe that the United States of America is going to forgo capitalism in favor of socialism.<\/p>\n

Let’s catch our breath. There is no way in the world that the United States of America is going to adopt a socialistic economy.<\/p>\n

The issues that some congressional progressives can be resolved without converting our economy from one that produces individual wealth to something that distributes wealth evenly among all 300 million-plus Americans.<\/p>\n

“Medicare For All” is no more of a socialistic solution than, say, the original<\/em> Medicare was when it was enacted in 1965. Or when Social Security became law in 1935. Yet lawmakers and, yes, the president insist that the Affordable Care Act — President Obama’s signature domestic policy initiative — marches the nation down the road toward socialism.<\/p>\n

There remains a tremendous amount of individual wealth in this country. I happen to believe firmly that individual wealth will continue to flourish likely until the end of time — whenever that occurs! Socialism, as I understand the meaning of the concept, seeks to redistribute wealth through some nefarious government grab of individual assets.<\/p>\n

Does anyone seriously believe that is going to happen? Ever?<\/p>\n

If you believe it, then you likely have swilled the Kool-Aid dispensed by demagogues who flourish in a climate of fear.<\/p>\n\n

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Donald J. Trump stood before a joint congressional session and received his share of cheers — mostly from Republicans sitting in front of him — during his State of the Union speech. One applause line deserves a brief comment here. He declared, without an ounce of equivocation, that the United States is never going to … Continue reading Socialism is a serious straw man<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7910],"tags":[131,8255,540,597,848,1424,2989,3376,4301,5512,4314],"class_list":["post-35393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economic-news","tag-aca","tag-alexandria-ocasio-cortez","tag-barack-obama","tag-bernie-sanders","tag-capitalism","tag-donald-trump","tag-medicare","tag-obamacare","tag-social-security","tag-socialism","tag-sotu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35393"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35395,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35393\/revisions\/35395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}