THIS IS THE FIFTH INSTALLMENT IN MY REPLY TO Chris, which begins here.
Toward the end of your comment, Chris, you suggest an experiment:
So, why do you not just give it a go on your own and see how you do. If you survive and create a “Utopia” where everyone works just as hard as everyone else and everyone gets just what they need and nothing more, so be it.
I have two responses to that:
- My first response is that we've been doing just that for the last 230 some years.
When America was founded, it was a liberal enterprise.
"Conservative" at that time meant having a king, and royalty, and a national religion—like the state religion in England, which many Americans came here to escape.
It meant slavery, women as the property of their husbands, child labor, and economic tyranny.
Since then liberals have established a democracy, separated church and state, abolished slavery, given women the vote, given all races the vote, abolished child labor, and given individuals the right to negotiate contracts with their employers.
It's true that we've had to contend with conservative resistance the entire time, but I still think we've done pretty well.
And the truth is, no matter how much conservatives resisted us each step of the way, few of them would turn back the clock on most of our achievements.
I don't hear Rush Limbaugh calling for a King to be enthroned, or Glenn Beck calling for a return to slavery.
Compared to what we started with, the United States—and most of what you like about it—is a liberal Utopia. - My second response is to your characterization of a liberal “Utopia” where "everyone works just as hard as everyone else and everyone gets just what they need and nothing more."
What you're describing there is a rather silly (sorry, but it's true) conservative fantasy about what liberals actually believe.
On the one hand I do think it would be great if everyone worked hard: hard work is a liberal value.
On the other hand, I'd love to see everyone get a liberal portion of prosperity—not "just what they need and nothing more," and certainly not much less than what they need, which is what they get in the sweat shops and third world factories run under unregulated capitalism.
I don't know a single liberal (though there probably are a handful, somewhere) who actually want the kind of socialist state that conservatives are always screaming about—not even the ones who call themselves socialists.
If you've taken the time and energy to check the facts, you've probably noticed that when the Democrats overhauled health care, they didn't go for a government owned system, but right from the first opted for a system based on the private sector, profit incentives, and a free market.
(Unless you just believed what the conservative media told you.)
And, even though I've defended the idea of socialism from absurd conservative attacks, I don't for one minute think we should do away with a market economy—I just think the market ought to be a free market, which, like a free country, will require some rules.
And I said so, in my response to John Wall.
It's only fair, if we are going to disagree, that you disagree with me about opinions I actually hold.
And I want to address the opinions you actually hold.
Which brings me back to the details of your proposed experiment.
Next: Plain Old Hard Work...
