Seriously gunfighter? You can't be that obtuse. Social Security is a damn government program. You can't get government out of it. Government is what is keeping these old reactionaries fed and housed.

And how is it a Ponzi scheme? Who is the one doing the scheme exactly? Are seniors living the high life with their $1177 a month? Social Security is the most successful and popular government program ever.

Of course, cops have no problem with rightwingers bringing guns. But if leftists so much as bring a handkerchief they're rounded up as "rioters".

Yes, people who carry signs at Tea Party rallies are probably fools. People who carry signs like 'stand up to Christian fascists' are also probably fools on the other side. Just admit that there is a reasonable, rational human being who might enjoy a far right government. Of course it'd be someone who would benefit. That's why the voting system works: people vote for the government that benefits them most.

The only people who "benefit" from a far-right government are the big corporations, and they have the money to influence elections and laws that enable their cronies to win elections. There's nothing rational about the ideology. Indeed it prides itself on being anti-rational, relying on emotion, mysticism, and religious dogma while rejecting science.

So all Tea Party activists are brainwashed fools; but all socialist/environmentalist activists are courageous humans daring to question the status quo and promote a change in the world.

No of course not, Nubz, everything can be equated no matter how absurd the moral equivalency so you can stand above the fray and scold people. Socialists don't have billionaire donors who astroturf "movements" with well funded rallies broadcast and supported by a major television network. We have rallies none of the media outlets talk about, scrimping by with the little money we have and facing police repression in the process. Get that through your head, please, thanks.

And if Social Security is so good for so many people, why do people want to vote it out?

Nobody wants to "vote it out". Where'd you invent that poll?

Apparently your worldview follows this dogma that if some people believe something then it must therefore be valid, and all ideas are equally valid. One person's knowledge is the same as another's ignorance.

So the Tea Party doesn't want to remove social security?

Let's run through this: if socialism (or leftism in general, say) is so much better for so many people, why aren't they in government (assuming that American politics is as far to the right as people have said it is and the Dems are not exactly left)? It must either be that a) people don't understand that socialism is better; or b) it isn't.

According to the latest poll (September 6), only 23% of teabaggers want Social Security replaced or eliminated. That doesn't say if they want it replaced with something more "socialistic". Half of the time these polls say people oppose X plan or program, but that's because they want more government intervention, not less.

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2011/images/09/12/rel15b.pdf

You deliberately underplay the role of the media or well funded political campaigns in shaping public opinion. Many people think Obama is not an American. Does that mean that's a valid point of view? Or were they misled? How about the poll which says that a sizable number of Americans think Iraq had something to do with 9-11? Just another valid opinion I guess.

If you ask the American people, they seem to think Obama is a socialist. So does that answer your question? We apparently are in power.

http://www.mediaite.com/online/new-poll-shows-55-of-likely-voters-think-obama-is-a-socialist/

All kidding aside, polls show actual support for socialism to be quite strong, at about 35%. http://www.gallup.com/poll/125645/Socialism-Viewed-Positively-Americans.aspx

There are complex reasons for why a socialist movement or party has never taken off, I'll ge into that later.

"Just admit that there is a reasonable, rational human being who might enjoy a far right government."

I would argue that "far right" (depending on how far 'far right' is on your scale, it sounds pretty far to me) is incongruous with "reasonable".

@Sarg: If I was a capitalist I'd like a far-right economic policy: no capital gains tax, etc. That's certainly reasonable, no? And surely there are people who enjoy far-right social policy (I certainly don't and so I can't really justify this point as much personally): you can look up One Nation on wikipedia or something, movements featuring xenophobia, immigration control, etc. always have some support.

Yes, it's unlikely that there are people who overlap in both fields. But there are some people who will accept one for the other.

And Putin, yes. I'd enjoy hearing your complex reasons. What surprises me is that I watch American politics and 'socialist' is slung around like 'racist' and 'rapist'. Why is it considered inherently awful?

Reasons why I think a socialist movement never broke through in the US.

1) Abundance of land and the earliness with which white workers got the franchise.

Most white Americans had the right to vote by 1840, and some states had given it much earlier than that. At any rate because of the abundance of the land the property requirement wasn't as prohibitive as in Europe. Since voting rights were acquired before industrial labor became widespread, this meant that organizations of industrial workers didn't have the impetus to organize on behalf of their class. In Europe, working class men only got the right to vote in the 20th century. Parties of the working class mobilized and organized to expand their rights. Whereas in America the working class was easily co-opted into the "populist" agitation of pro-system parties like the Jacksonian Democrats, or later they basically supported the agrarian and middle reform parties like the Populists. Furthermore, the 'feudal' tradition gave Europeans a stronger sense of class consciousness. Whereas America has always had this "frontier" tradition where people can settle unoccupied land and be independent.

2) The inequality within the working class itself and the development of a 'labor aristocracy'.

Within the working class itself, the people who dominated the early trade unions were the skilled workers unions of the AFL, while most workers were unskilled and very often immigrant labor. This combined with the fact that America at the end of the 19th century became an imperial power and therefore was able to extract superprofits from their colonial possessions, meant that the bourgeoisie could effectively "pay off" the upper section of the working class, making the latter content with their *middle class* lifestyle and resentful of the unskilled laborers who might undercut it. The steady flood of immigrant labor led to inevitable classes on issue of race and ethnicity. Ethnic homogeneity has, unfortunately, been a cornerstone of holding together many of the European welfare states, I must say.

3) Finally and perhaps most importantly is the unparalleled power of the American bourgeoisie. American monopoly capitalism was enormously strong at the time when the working class was starting to awaken to class consciousness, in the late 1800s. We all hear about the "trusts" and big corporations of that time period like Standard Oil, etc. Monopoly capital was able to wage savage *class warfare* against radicals and trade unionists with their private security forces, state troops, and strikebreakers.

"Thanks for helping the lunatics win. Hope you don't have relatives on Social Security.
Do-nothing leftists are equivalent to rightwingers."

1. I'm really not interested in your dichotomies.
2. who exactly would you have me vote for putin?

Its considered inherently awful due to the effects of the two red scares and the contentious half century of the Cold War. America ha built it twentieth century identity to directly oppose socialism

And to answer the question, Huntsman. If the guy has the balls to stand up to the crazy wing now, he might be able to bring the moderate elements of the parties together for a meaningful compromise

I'm not interested in your indignation at the suffering at the hands of the national security state if you're too self-righteous to vote for a party that doesn't meet your standards of ideological purity. There are very real differences between the Sane Party and the Insane Party and to ignore that is to completely surrender the working class, unemployed, retired, women and minorities to the savage attacks of the Insane Party. Not to mention the people of other countries. Imagine if Bush was around during the Arab Spring, or during the Iranian political crisis of 2009.

Vote for the Democrats while helping to build a real progressive movement that can be a strong independent political force. We must annihilate this fascist "libertarianism" as an ideological trend and build a progressive America on its grave.

And I frankly expect a litany of complaints or so-called 'examples' about how the two parties are not different at all. Whatever, tell that to the working class of Ohio that had its collective bargaining rights stripped away as soon as the Republicans got into power. And tell that to the women who are about to have to endure the most anti-choice legislation in all of America, the so-called "heartbeat" bill.

Gringwhich, Johnson, Paul and Cain are the only ones I like.

I would take Romney or Perry over Obama though.

Romney is the only Republican I'd consider voting for, and I'm still voting Obama next November.

I'd choose whoever has the least capacity and support for election vote fraud.

I've yet to talk to a socialist for long enough to hear how the system actually works. I understand that it's different to communism but I'll ask the question anyway: how do you encourage people to be, say, doctors? Any highly-skilled, highly-paid (now, anyway) job that requires years of training? Perhaps not doctors because it's the sort of thing people say they have callings for, but, I don't know, actuaries.

How? Well socialist Cuba produces more doctors per capita than anywhere, and they're paid only slightly above average. So the question is why would anybody want to be a doctor in a capitalist country with byzantine paperwork and bureaucracy like the US?
Some people work, believe it or not, because they believe in what they're doing. They want to feel good about themselves as people, and Cuba makes it easy to become a doctor because of low to non-existent cost of medical training.

Not everybody worships the almighty dollar.

Its like saying why would anyone want to be a history major in a Capitalist system...

or PhD god forbid

Okay, so you subsidize training cost. I understood that that was probably true. And I agree that doctor was a bad example because it's a well-respected and well-known profession (like lawyers and accountants) that people say they "just want to do". How does it work for less known but still qualified jobs, like actuaries. I've never known anyone to have a calling to be an actuary.

And I understand that a government can implement policies to maximise supply of education and drive the cost down, but what happens if you simply can't get enough people who want to be Job X? Under capitalism, the wage rises until people have enough incentive to switch. What happens under socialism?

Just because you've never heard of it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

"Under capitalism, the wage rises until people have enough incentive to switch." - Pfft yeah right. Find me a hospital in North America that couldn't use more nurses. Now tell me how much nurses salaries have gone up recently.

LotN you're approaching the topic of socialism from the wrong perspective. You're thinking about a socialist system in the way that someone who has been socialized to think within a capitalist system would think. You're underestimating the power of the economic structure to impact the way people think and the processes by which they make decisions. Your position kind of presupposes that humans are meant to be capitalist, as though wanting more money is necessarily something that will motivate people, when in reality the only reason we're motivated by money is because of a social system which has constructed this idea of people being driven by money. I realize that hasn't actually answered your question, but I still felt it needed to be said.