[weikel]

Bump great article.

[Sam Cree]

bump

[USA21]

Socialism=America

[Billthedrill]

The difficulty in using gradualism in trending social and political movements is that it makes perfect logical sense but fails in the face of human perversity. For example, the aristocrats were doing pretty well in France up to about, oh, 1795 or so, just before the heads started coming off. You really couldn't complain about the trend away from serfdom and toward democracy in Russia in 1890 - 1910 or so, either. You couldn't but lots of people did. "If things continue in this direction, we'll be at point B in another couple of decades" doesn't work if somebody decides he doesn't really want to go to point B and blows up the wagon. Or if he decides he's not getting there fast enough and figures that by blowing up the wagon another wagon will magically appear.

I'm minded of Claire Wolfe's dictum: "America is at that awkward stage where it's too late to work within the system and too early to start shooting the bastards." If we do reach the latter stage before we arrive at the lovey-dovey utopia of world socialism, then things get lively, and very interesting. I'm guessing that's a little more likely than a gradual slide to socialism, based mostly on the known cussedness of my fellow Americans, typifed by the well-expressed cussedness of my fellow FReepers. It may not even be that far off.

[Billthedrill]

...now, does that make me a pessimist or an optimist?

My head hurts...

[Texas_Jarhead]

bookmark BUMP

[Eala]

The revolution has been developed very quietly and stealthily with due respect for the legal forms. None of this is dramatic.

Exactly. And the effect, from one who went through it not so very long ago, is well documented in the book (link is to the essential excerpt) They Thought They Were Free. We're already so far down this road, it's hard to imagine us successfully turning all the way back.

[sport]

On one crisp fall day, the founder of the modern Democratic Party was
> explaining the most effective method of choice to gain support from the
> people and to assure control of the government for the party for decades
to
> come.
>
> He took a small bird from its perch and slowly and ever so gently picked
its
> feathers from its body. One feather at a time. Incrementally the bird
was
> soon naked and lying piled in the palm of his hand, shivering from the
cold
> winds that could now attack its delicate skin. "See how the bird is now
> grateful for the human warmth of my hand". If you are there ready to
solve
> a problem, people will forget that it was your fault that the problem
> exists, if you create the problem "gently".
Author Unknown

[madfly]

pinged and bookmarked

[sauropod]

Ping!

[Auntie Mame]

bttt

[Aggressive Calvinist]

When I was younger, the original stace of the Conservative movement was two-fold:

1. Right-to-Life

2. Right-to-Work

I bet you couldn't rustle up ten conservatives in any GOP gathering today who would insist that these are basic principles of political ideology.

We've forgotten our roots.