Dear Favre,
I do not know how to approach you, because you really sound quite stressed out and have a hair-trigger. Nor does it help that some people are also taunting you, because your emotions are so wide open and you flare up.
I have recently read a very interesting book, The Blank Slate, by Steven Pinker, an evolutionary psychologist, granted, but he makes a very sound and convincing case that the Left has truly lost its ideological case. Using evolutionary biology he demonstrates that conservatives’ traditional view of human nature is much more being borne out by this research than is the leftist view, that mankind can be remade into somehow better people through socialist ideology. He points out, that socialist and communist gov’ts always fail and truly have no major adherents left. What we see are the remnants in places like N. Korea, Cuba and a few more. (Wait, let me finish).
Everywhere we look, the only successful countries have been democracies. The Left is no longer talking about government ownership of production. Even in W. Europe, the leftist parties, such as Tony Blair’s, are only talking about the market as the best economic “planning” device, and that its own task now is only to regulate it when things go wrong.
Mr. Favre, I don’t know how old you are, but this is an amazing transformation from the 1960s and 70s. Everywhere privatization is up, capitalist economies are spreading into ever more countries (with cyclical ups and down). Workers today are much better off than even the royalty of 200 years ago, what with longer life expectancy, central heating, medicines, and very much more. Capitalism works, communism failed, and compared to 1975, there is almost no lefty insurrections anywhere in the third world, except in maybe some very minor back waters. Everywhere else, capitalism is what people aspire to. They may not want it to be dominated by our nation, but the old USSR is history and is only a model for how NOT to develop a nation. So to say the Left has won tells me that your way of defining what the left is has left the big picture behind, and what you are really angry about is the lack of the kind of Conservatism YOU desire. These really are separate issues, and you are letting yourself get very worked up unnecessarily. The trend is still very much away from Communism and towards conservatism.
The guy who pointed out that the GOP rules all branches of US gov’t, has the bulk of business support etc, is really quite right. He couldn’t resist taunting you, however, with a threat, but I wouldn’t take it too seriously.
Your observation that there is a welfare class created as a built-in Democratic constituent is true enough, and there are many, myself included, who would like to see this end. However, having taken decades to get there, I believe it should also take a suitable number of years to wean away, instituting job training and support systems, especially for the young to get them to become self-supporting tax-paying citizens (tax-paying to help defray the costs and share the load for things we all need, such as education, roads, defense, blah blah blah). You too want as much. I do not think the battle lost at all, in fact work-related welfare programs are spreading even in Europe, but any such program ought to be a good one, well thought-out and fair to both recipient and funder. Yes, the current welfare system is a mess, and it may damn well take awhile to fix, but the work has begun and is progressing. Do not despair. Nor does it help that the economic cycle is in a low. The lack of good jobs makes any get-off welfare program that much harder. Seriously, where are they to go for the time being? Thus it is important to get the economy moving for workfare to work.
There is a difference between wanting to see the poor get better off (including a willingness to let tax money keep destitution at bay—as long as it leads to self-sufficiency for the recipient [who wants a return to Dickens’s 1840s?]) and communism, with its production in the hands of the workers, no incentives to excel, lack of private property etc… Do not kid yourself that any Democratic politician wants to give up their house, putting families of poor in each bedroom!
I do not how to tell you this softly, so I won’t: Your definition of communism is simply wrong. Regulation and taxation is not communism.
Regulation is a necessity for the modern high standard life and economy we want. The question has always been the degree. We would die without regulation, defined in its broadest sense: all organism work via hormones, cell membrane gateways, metabolic pathways, etc in which some chemical is produced and regulated for keeping its effects within safe limits. All societies have traditions, mores and customs; and these too are regulations broadly defined. Christianity, as do all religions, specify moral rules. Ever drive in a newly paved parking lot without any lines being yet painted? Imagine car or air traffic without any regulations whatsoever. The Food and Drug Act was made necessary because some unscrupulous business people were doing whatever they could get away with in selling food and medicines.
The real debate in western democracies is very much about what level of regulation is best, not whether private property is to be banned, people remade as socially responsible citizens, and the rest of the Marxist claptrap. Conservatism won the war, and what is being settled right now is the level of perceived fairness, and even here conservative ideas are still shading out liberal ones. But even here I wish we could restore the word “liberal” to its actual meaning and dispose the weird radical meaning of extreme leftism it has recently taken on.
Someone wanting environmental legislation to improve water quality by regulating the rules of PRIVATE companies is a liberal, not a commie. A commie would nationalize the company, then do absolutely nothing for the environment. Communist countries have always had the worst environmental records, not because their “compassion” was lacking, but because their economic theory left them broke and they could never afford to anything but whatever worked cheapest. It is only in the west, with its superior ability to generate wealth where enough surplus is generated that clean-up (or preventative) actions can be afforded. There is a difference, a big one.
Conservatives know that man is imperfect and can never be “perfected” by theory. That is why we trust the invisible hand of the market. We know that no one can plan a better distribution of production and consumption, like the commies tried. But at the same time, our own imperfections mean we do not always act in our own good. Many people never save for a long retirement, but spend way too much on the here and now. Payroll deductions for retirement truly help a lot of people face old age, although some, yourself apparently, do not fall prey to not saving for that rainy day. Would everyone have the means and fortitude.
Similarly, market forces are not going to react in time to save fish populations. Most commercial fish are gone from the North hemisphere, and the South too is getting depleted. Much is taken for livestock feed (protein). We know that fish is high-quality food for humans. We know too that removing a large portion of a food chain can have unexpected consequences. It is thus prudent to conserve a good thing (as in the word CONSERVATIVE). Clearly, while the market is the most efficient ECONOMIC regulator, it is not infallible in meeting all our needs, some of them noneconomic, such as food. Thus there is a role for regulation to preserve the good things we have.
There are many examples. Clean ground water. Clean surface water. Forests (which clean up pollution for us, as long as its capacity is not overwhelmed). Even our climate is as asset, not a free good. We know enough to vent car exhaust out behind the car and not up through the cab to capitalize on its heat! We should treat the entirety of our living space as well. Safe food. Safe medicine. Safe neighborhoods (imagine no criminal law). All this requires some regulation. But communism?
Dead and gone!!!! Long live capitalism: It won!! Socialism? It’s nothing but a left-over name, those still using it would not be caught dead without a market. A socialist from 1880 would beat the crap out of them for abusing the term.
Finally, our lefty universities? First, the Conservative Beltway think tanks have grown up as a counterweight, and they are influential. Second, Rome wasn’t built in a day either. Many of the 1960s generation are reaching retirement age, or will in a decade or two. Younger replacements are influenced by the tenor of today. They too will evolve a bit. You have to keep looking back at where we have been a few decades ago to understand that things are not as desperate as you believe.
You have a duty to yourself and your kids to keep your blood pressure a little better under control. Don’t give your foes the benefit of removing yourself from the fray due to a stroke; because, sir, reading your stuff, you are definitely working on one! When you start seeing commies under the bed in 2003 AD, something is not quite as it ought to be. One doesn’t need to be Sigmund Freud to read the inner tension between your lines. You are getting into full lather over things that really are not in your control to do much about. This is usually a sign of something else getting to you. Identify it, and make a
realistic plan to fix it. If it’s work-related, consult pros. If your kid went on her own way and not yours, learn to let go. But there are no commies. Quit reading Coulter! She, like Al Franken, is a gadfly exploiting partisan worrywarts for a buck. Look for more realistic matters closer to home and relax. You’ll be fine, and you’ll see this political stuff won’t really matter.
Good luck and God bless.
Dead and gone!!!! Long live capitalism: It won!! Socialism? It’s nothing but a left-over name, those still using it would not be caught dead without a market. A socialist from 1880 would beat the crap out of them for abusing the term.
Wouldn't want the less intellegent to get bored and start speed reading, again, so I'll 
for now.