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It’s time to give socialism a try
Washington Post ^ | March 6, 2018 | Elizabeth Bruenig

Posted on 03/07/2018 11:31:22 AM PST by C19fan

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To: C19fan
From the WaPo:
Elizabeth grew up in Texas, graduated from Brandeis with honors in 2013 and attended the University of Cambridge as a Marshall Scholar, where she earned her master’s in Christian theology.

She joined the New Republic in 2015 as a staff writer, and in early 2016, she became an assistant editor for The Post’s Outlook section, commissioning and editing thoughtful stories on big ideas. Elizabeth lives in Washington D.C. with her husband Matt and her daughter Jane.

She is a "Texan" in the same way as the Bushes are "Texans". What self-respecting Texan would attend Brandeis? It is a far left school named for ultra-liberal Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis, and oriented toward the Northeast Jewish liberal community. The girl is a screwball.
 
41 posted on 03/07/2018 12:14:31 PM PST by Governor Dinwiddie (CNN is fake news.)
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To: Lazamataz

“The Washington Post came right out and *admitted* they are communists.”

I am actually keeping record. It is not the first time. This year they gone full communist.


42 posted on 03/07/2018 12:15:25 PM PST by NorseViking
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To: C19fan
Ship this idiot directly to Venezuela to experience what happens when you "give socialism a try". It fails every time it is tried. No need to inflict damage on US soil when you can see it first hand in Venezuela. A one-way ticket would be best.
43 posted on 03/07/2018 12:18:36 PM PST by Myrddin
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To: Myrddin

Yup. Pure socialism is the equality to starve to death.

Its shared misery. No sane country has ever kept it.


44 posted on 03/07/2018 12:21:30 PM PST by goldstategop ((In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives In My Forever))
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To: Myrddin

She can come back when she earns, by herself, enough Bolívars to buy her own plane ticket...


45 posted on 03/07/2018 12:22:28 PM PST by null and void ("If you see something say something." "If we say something *DO* something!!!")
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To: Rebelbase

Wizdom. Let's pee on a good thing.

46 posted on 03/07/2018 12:22:34 PM PST by Myrddin
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To: C19fan
Americans, in the beginning, did try it. Like every other people who tried such a non-starter for providing individual incentives, individual freedom, and prosperous economy, they failed. Here is the story:
Free Enterprise

The Economic Dimension Of Liberty Protected By The Constitution

"Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are the most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise." 

- Thomas Jefferson

"The enviable condition of the people of the United States is often too much ascribed to the physical advantages of their soil & climate .... But a just estimate of the happiness of our country will never overlook what belongs to the fertile activity of a free people and the benign influence of a responsible government." 

- James Madison

America's Constitution did not mention freedom of enterprise per se, but it did set up a system of laws to secure individual liberty and freedom of choice in keeping with Creator-endowed natural rights. Out of these, free enterprise flourished naturally. Even though the words "free enterprise' are not in the Constitution, the concept was uppermost in the minds of the Founders, typified by the remarks of Jefferson and Madison as quoted above.

Already, in 1787, Americans were enjoying the rewards of individual enterprise and free markets. Their dedication was to securing that freedom for posterity. The learned men drafting America's Constitution understood history - mankind's struggle against poverty and government oppression. And they had studied the ideas of the great thinkers and philosophers.

They were familiar with the near starvation of the early Jamestown settlers under a communal production and distribution system and Governor Bradford's diary account of how all benefited after agreement that each family could do as it wished with the fruits of its own labors.

Later, in 1776, Adam Smith's INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF THE WEALTH OF NATIONS and Say's POLITICAL ECONOMY had come at just the right time and were perfectly compatible with the Founders' own passion for individual liberty. Jefferson said these were the best books to be had for forming governments based on principles of freedom.

They saw a free market economy as the natural result of their ideal of liberty. They feared concentrations of power and the coercion that planners can use in planning other peoples lives; and they valued freedom of choice and acceptance of responsibility of the consequences of such choice as being the very essence of liberty. They envisioned a large and prosperous republic of free people, unhampered by government interference. The Founders believed the American people, possessors of deeply rooted character and values, could prosper if left free to:

  • acquire and own property
  • have access to free markets
  • produce what they wanted
  • work for whom and at what they wanted
  • travel and live where they would choose
  • acquire goods and services which they desired
Such a free market economy was, to them, the natural result of liberty, carried out in the economic dimension of life. Their philosophy tend­ed to enlarge individual freedom - not to restrict or diminish the individual's right to make choices and to succeed or fail based on those choices. The economic role of their Constitutional government was simply to secure rights and encourage commerce. Through the Constitution, they granted their government some very limited powers to:
  • assure that the ground rules were fair (a fixed standard of weights and measures)
  • encourage initiative and inventiveness (copyright and patent protection laws)
  • provide a system of sound currency with an established value (gold and silver coin)
  • enforce free trade (free from interfering special interests)
  • protect individuals from the harmful acts of others
Adam Smith called it "the system of natural liberty." James Madison referred to it as "the benign influence of a responsible government." Others have called it the free enterprise system. By whatever name it is called, the economic system envisioned by the Founders and encouraged by the Constitution allowed individual enterprise to flourish and triggered the greatest explosion of economic progress in all of history. Americans became the first people truly to realize the economic dimension of liberty.
Footnote: Our Ageless Constitution, W. David Stedman & La Vaughn G. Lewis, Editors (Asheboro, NC, W. David Stedman Associates, 1987) Part III:  ISBN 0-937047-01-5

47 posted on 03/07/2018 12:23:06 PM PST by loveliberty2
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To: C19fan

what does ‘decommodifying labor’ mean?

collectivism is and always has been the rape of an innovator’s mind and of the rewards earned from his intelligence. Collectivism is greed in its basest form.


48 posted on 03/07/2018 12:28:02 PM PST by blueplum ( "...this moment is your moment: it belongs to you... " President Donald J. Trump, Jan 20, 2017)
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To: C19fan

Raise the voting age.

49 posted on 03/07/2018 12:28:44 PM PST by McGruff (It's time to investigate the investigators)
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To: C19fan

Ironically, you have to pay to read the article. Her article has been commodified.


50 posted on 03/07/2018 12:30:38 PM PST by brianr10
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To: C19fan

We already have a National Socialist Party.


51 posted on 03/07/2018 12:31:10 PM PST by DungeonMaster (There is nothing new under the sun.)
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To: C19fan

52 posted on 03/07/2018 12:33:05 PM PST by OttawaFreeper ("If I had to go to war again, I'd bring lacrosse players" Conn Smythe)
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To: According2RecentPollsAirIsGood
Thanks for posting the link. Here are some other Ayn Rand quotes on socialism.

Oh, and Elizabeth, have your read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged? After that, read The Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn. Some more food for thought for you:

Ayn Rand quotes first:

"Socialism is the doctrine that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that his life and his work do not belong to him, but belong to society, that the only justification of his existence is his service to society, and that society may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be its own tribal, collective good."

"The essential characteristic of socialism is the denial of individual property rights; under socialism, the right to property (which is the right of use and disposal) is vested in “society as a whole,” i.e., in the collective, with production and distribution controlled by the state, i.e., by the government."

"Socialism may be established by force, as in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—or by vote, as in Nazi (National Socialist) Germany. The degree of socialization may be total, as in Russia—or partial, as in England. Theoretically, the differences are superficial; practically, they are only a matter of time. The basic principle, in all cases, is the same."

"The alleged goals of socialism were: the abolition of poverty, the achievement of general prosperity, progress, peace and human brotherhood. The results have been a terrifying failure—terrifying, that is, if one’s motive is men’s welfare."

"Instead of prosperity, socialism has brought economic paralysis and/or collapse to every country that tried it. The degree of socialization has been the degree of disaster. The consequences have varied accordingly."

"There is no difference between the principles, policies and practical results of socialism - and those of any historical or prehistorical tyranny. Socialism is merely democratic absolute monarchy—that is, a system of absolutism without a fixed head, open to seizure of power by all corners, by any ruthless climber, opportunist, adventurer, demagogue or thug."

Another pearl by Margaret Thatcher:

"I would much prefer to bring them down as soon as possible. I think they’ve made the biggest financial mess that any government’s ever made in this country for a very long time, and Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money. It’s quite a characteristic of them. They then start to nationalize everything, and people just do not like more and more nationalization, and they’re now trying to control everything by other means. They’re progressively reducing the choice available to ordinary people." - Mrs. Margaret Thatcher

And, in closing, a classic by Solzhenitsyn:

""And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you’d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur — what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked. The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!" - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, from "The Gulag Archipelago"

Elizabeth, let us know what you think after some open-minded thoughtful soul searching.

53 posted on 03/07/2018 12:37:32 PM PST by Art in Idaho (Conservatism is the only Hope for Western Civilization.)
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To: C19fan
Here's another really stupid and ignorant money quote:

(As a business-savvy friend once remarked: Nobody gets rich off of bilateral transactions where everybody knows what they’re doing.)

To see its pure stupidity and blazing ignorance just imagine a taxi driver who fills his gas tank at a gas station, a bilateral transaction between him and the gas station owner, and uses that gas to run his cab, transporting many passengers. The gas station owner makes a profit by selling the gas and the cab driver makes a profit transporting his passengers. That's basically the way all capitalism works, benefiting both parties to each transaction.

54 posted on 03/07/2018 12:43:12 PM PST by libstripper
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To: C19fan

OK, let’s start with her stuff. I’m pretty sure she has a nice apartment and makes a nice salary. Let’s move some homeless folks into her digs, and half her salary and give it to the local Barista at Starbucks.


55 posted on 03/07/2018 12:50:11 PM PST by TallahasseeConservative ( Isaiah 40:31)
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To: TallahasseeConservative

The problem, is we all support the ideals behind socialism: freedom, justice, equality and an end to human deprivation and exploitation.

My problem with it is not with the ideals but with the methods socialism uses, which are a perversion of them. I cannot condone or justify them.

A more and free world is not going to be achieved by taking away some things from some people in the name of the common good.


56 posted on 03/07/2018 12:56:36 PM PST by goldstategop ((In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives In My Forever))
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To: goldstategop

says the 2013 college graduate! She’s just a puppy, when she grows up, things will look different to her. Unfortunately all that we have in media are a bunch of children.


57 posted on 03/07/2018 12:57:19 PM PST by nobamanomore
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To: TallahasseeConservative

“Socialism is Communism one drink at a time”. PJ O’Rourke


58 posted on 03/07/2018 12:59:54 PM PST by EQAndyBuzz (What is a Blue City? First world cities run by third world politicians.)
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To: C19fan

So many say REAL COMMUNIST SOCIALISM has never been tried.

Why is it no one ever says REAL NAZI SOCIALISM has never been tried.


59 posted on 03/07/2018 1:02:04 PM PST by Ruy Dias de Bivar (Re-open the insane asylums, stop drugging the kids.)
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To: simpson96

When it all falls apart someday, morons like this dumbass Bruenig won’t survive the first day.


60 posted on 03/07/2018 1:06:29 PM PST by july4thfreedomfoundation (No DACA Caca....Send the Nightmares home. "Americans are Dreamers, too." President Trump)
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