Pages

Monday, September 28, 2009

An interesting Canadian view of the rhetorical device of beating up on "socialism."

It gets into the specifics of individual Canadian public persons, in ways that suggest politicians are a universal lifeform that recently emerged from beasthood. As in lifting a rock and seeing the politicians underneath it.

This link, this initial short excerpt:

Sunday, Sept. 27, 2009 -- When did Socialism become a bad word?

My children attend public schools, paid for by taxes and run by the province of Ontario. When I go to the doctor or hospital, the services I'm provided with are invariably paid for out of the public purse. The police who enforce various laws, and the courts and justice system which uphold them...the entire apparatus is financed by levies, charges and taxes collected by various levels of government.

And yet I am constantly being bombarded with messages about the evils of socialism.

The U.S. media is full of them now due to Obama's continuing efforts to reform the world's most expensive health care system, a system which leaves tens of millions with no health coverage whatsoever. Well, costs may be out of control and millions of American children may not have access to even basic medical care...but at least its not "socialist".

I want to be clear on one point here, I do not view pure unadulterated socialism as a panacea for all of society's ills, far from it. Likewise I don't consider unfettered capitalism the answer either, we've been down that road before with work houses and child labour. There are areas of vital public importance that are best removed from the sphere that is dominated by the need for profit. And there are entities under government control that would benefit from the discipline market forces impose.


Then, this comment, where I also have been puzzled with people being wholly indifferent, even hostile, to what's best for them:

Like yourself, I'm beyond annoyed with people on both sides of the border treating socialism as it's a dirty little word. I'm also more than fed up with those same people promoting the free market.

Fear of socialism: folks think of Stalin or Mao, assuming they're literate enough to remember world history lessons.

If not, they have jumped on some strange bandwagon both feet first without even thinking. A good example is state side, some people are crying "Get your government hands off my medicare". Clearly the rantings of someone ill-informed & not stopping to wonder why he's on that side.

Pro Free market: they don't remember that General Pinochet of Chile murdered for the free markets.

I understood why rich people being ultra-capitalist (ie identifying with Ayn Rand's John Galt). I don't agree with them, but I get that. What puzzles me is why the working class or the disappearing middle class would be for it.


It looks to be a moderate blog of a thinking person, hence, worth reading, to some.

This is another recent post on that blog.

____________________

I am disdainful of so much of the rhetoric that passes these days for thought.

Try this, "conservative."

What does that mean?

Tell me what exactly they want to conserve?

I understand "conservationism" as wanting to shepherd natural resources in a wise way.

But isn't it the "conservatives" that were behind "Drill here, drill now, pay less," with that latter part the lie of their rhetoric? And with little "conservationism" to that silly mantra.

And then you have Ron Paul, being used by Michele Bachmann, with her glomming onto him now almost as tactlessly as she glommed onto President Bush after that one State of the Union speech.

Michele Bachmann calls herself a "conservative."

Can anyone explain what she means? I only see an opportunist who picked up first the anti-tax mantra being used by the rich who wanted their taxes lowered while having enough wealth to get by suitably, even with diminished government services for the public, and I view her motivation consistently to have been to sell her political candidacy, offering it in order to attain a bigger paycheck and better benefits than the private sector and her activities there ever yielded; but that's nothing beyond gunning for a cushy government job; wanting the "socialism" of the government paying elected civil servants more than she'd attained in "the market," that being in the market outside of including sitting in Congress as a part of "the market."

Am I wrong, did she not look at "the market" in its largest sense, and decide to pursue a "socialist" niche within "the market" as a more productive direction than the "private" niches she'd seen? Earlier being a tax collector - lawyer for the IRS, call it whatever you want, but it was doing "socialism" for a wage packet in my view.

___________________

And now this special politician-lady is glomming onto Ron Paul.

And Ron Paul seems to now be lacking the ability to discern what's best for his own credibility by letting her hobo along on his train.

____________________

I do not believe Michele Bachmann wants to "conserve" the decades-old precedent of Roe v. Wade.

I understand what Barry Goldwater wrote, but see little to nothing of it in Newt Gingrich; who as with Bachmann, appears to be more personal opportunist than anything else.

Certainly not anything deep, as if either had ever read Edmund Burke. My guess is Ron Paul, unlike Bachmann or Gingrich, has read Burke.

Again: What exactly does a modern-day self proclaimed "conservative" want to conserve?

It seems they consistently have wanted more to change things within a somewhat socially responsible status quo that existed after World War Two, more than to conserve anything.

We certainly can have differing views of what exactly motivated post-war domestic policies, but that is separate from the question ---- rhetoric aside, what's a "conservative?"

And in the rhetoric games, what's "socialism" other than existing things a "conservative" wishes not to conserve, but to alter?

________________

To be entirely explicit - I would prefer that when policy A and policy B are being debated the merits of one over the other be the issue, with that issue debated free of rhetorical label mongering.

In current politics I suppose such a thought is "radical socialism," to be avoided at all cost.