From: Charles Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Wed Oct 23 2002 - 09:10:32 MDT
Samantha Atkins wrote:
> ...
> Well, while I think there is some truth in what I just said I also
> think some of it is darn foolish. The "debate" was never properly
> aired in the first place. Large measures of socialist agenda have
> become accepted norm to the detriment of all of us. Many of "our"
> government offices treat their clients not much better than a Soviet
> ration line used to treat citizens. Literally trillions of dollars of
> our money, yours and mine, are mishandled and/or unauditable in the
> jungles of government bureaucracy. Hundreds of billions in cash and
> goods simply disappear into unexplained "budget adjustments". What we
> have today sure as heck ain't capitalism or a free country.
>
> - samantha
But it's useful to consider what portions of the socialist agenda were
adopted, and why. Most of the time at least one of the effects was to
increas the power of whoever was in charge of making the decision. It
didn't always happen that way, but that usually appeared to be an
expectable consequence.
E.g., "The Great Society" was one of Lyndon Johnson's attempts to
increase his popularity. It worked pretty well until he squandered it
by bogging down in Vietnam. Johnson wasn't a particularly likeable
person, but he knew the value of pork-barrel. He just ran afoul of the
fact that people don't like to be drafted. (Nobody was ever, to my
knowledge, able to explain sensibly why we ended up in that Vietnam
imbroglio. And you can't sell a war if you can't explain it in vivid
emotional terms.)
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