[americandream]

In fact the framers of the American constitution were rather radical in as much as they, I believe, contemplated a society the very antithesis of hierarchical Britain. A society of free and vigilent men and women whose means of livelihood did not overwhelm the social intent of the Constitution.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', 'G')od I'm so sick of this "socialist" BS.

The right used to be content with "liberal" for a dirty word, then all the Democrats became Republicans and so now "socialist" is the boogeyman du jour. But the thing is, we don't even have any socialists in this country. And before someone shouts "Bernie Sanders," I mean a REAL socialist bloc, that actually has power.

And even if we did have a lot of "socialists," why is that so scary? Socialism means things like affordable education without a lifetime of bankster debt slavery. Socialism means universal healthcare and not getting dumped in the gutter by a corporate hospital because your Mastercard declined. Socialism means living wages, union protection, workers' rights -- a whole bunch of things that would benefit 95% of everyone in this country.

So to all of you who are scared of socialism, what exactly are you so afraid of? Does five weeks of paid vacation per year terrify you? Would a 30 hour workweek with full time pay give you nightmares? Honestly, I don't get it, somebody explain to me why it's so scary.

[IslandCrow]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', 'I')n fact the framers of the American constitution were rather radical....

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', 'G')od I'm so sick of this "socialist" BS.

...
Socialism means living wages, union protection, workers' rights -- a whole bunch of things that would benefit 95% of everyone in this country.

So to all of you who are scared of socialism, what exactly are you so afraid of? Does five weeks of paid vacation per year terrify you? Would a 30 hour workweek with full time pay give you nightmares? Honestly, I don't get it, somebody explain to me why it's so scary.

[americandream]

The Constitution was quite radical for its time. A documented liberalism for the people and by the people. Whilst any good lawyer would quite quickly determine its contours going by its history, context and language, a confluence of events acted to blunt the core principle of this fine document unfortunately, detracting from its centrality in American life and the resultant withering away of what was to be an active republican ideal. However, America's robust republican foundation remains that central element and to the extent that any group can be seen to be acting in such a way as to compromise that ideal, instead usurping it with that which is anathema to this founding ideal, I would say that such an act would arguably be unconstitutional. Of course, there are those who may seek to add their own interpretation of what being republican means. Personally, I don't think that one can reconcile latter day vested interests with what the framers intended. It would stand the whole exercise on its head and be an absurdity.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('IslandCrow', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', 'I')n fact the framers of the American constitution were rather radical....

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Outcast_Searcher', '
')So, my answer is that if we could clean up the systemic corruption in private enterprise

[Lore]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Outcast_Searcher', '
')You know Six, before the big wave of corporate corruption emerged with the post Y2K recession, and seemed to grow exponentially, the answer, IMO, would have been obvious. (It used to be that most corporations actually dealt honestly with their customers, so private enterprise was great).

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('IslandCrow', 'W')hat is puzzling me, is given the near divine status that the American constitution is being given (with all the appeals to go back to it), how do people square that with the fact that they also clearly accept that it was flawed and that it has needed lots of ''Amendments" which in turn they blindly believe in as the new divine truth.

[Cog]

I am utterly fascinated and also amused by doomers who preach localism as the key to long term survival of the human race, but at the same time want more and more government control and spending from Washington. As a doomer I find this approach both self-defeating and contradictory.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', ' ')Socialism means things like affordable education without a lifetime of bankster debt slavery. Socialism means universal healthcare and not getting dumped in the gutter by a corporate hospital because your Mastercard declined. Socialism means living wages, union protection, workers' rights -- a whole bunch of things that would benefit 95% of everyone in this country.

[Expatriot]

I don't want to get into a debate about the Constitution - I've only met a handful of Americans who understand Constitutional law, and, with only one or two exceptions, they were all lawyers.

I'm guessing nobody posting on this thread is a lawyer, I'm guessing that nobody posting on this thread has read the 200 or so critical Supreme Court cases in their entirety, and so on.

So here it is in a nutshell.

Something is "unconstitutional" IF and ONLY IF 5 bozos on the Supreme Court say it is. Simple as that.

Of course, for minor matters, issues usually don't get to the Supreme Court, so whether those minor matters are unconstitutional will be decided regionally by 2 bozos on a Federal Circuit Court.

It was settled long ago that the original meaning of the Constitution is irrelevant to the discussion, so don't bother attempting to argue with people what Madison thought the 2nd amendment meant.

It's very simple. 5 bozos decide what's Constitutional and what isn't, and they can decide that based on whatever they want - prior cases, their dog's opinion, and so on. If you don't like it? Tough s--t. They're in for life.

Everyone got that?

So whether "socialism" is "unconstitutional" is really a silly question. It is or it isn't based on what 5 bozos say it is.

If you want to academically discuss what the founders would have said about "socialism," I'm fairly certain they'd say that the Constitution is silent on the matter. If Congress wanted to pass a law that nationalized all industry, piled up all income, doled out income according to need, etcetera, that would be fine.

[Expatriot]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', ' ')the founders knew what they were doing, and they gave the courts the power to interpret what the document says.

[efarmer]

America does not have a national plan overall. This has left us to default to having a strong defense and offense militarily to protect the resource exploit of the day or decade on a continuous ad hoc basis. We don't need no stinking plans, in other words. Plans are for the other people we will have to fight and kill, once we get desperate enough and dick around for enough decades of ad hoc wandering.

Socialistic nations do have central planning and central control. So whenever the subject of America having a comprehensive plan nationally to be implemented by whatever methods and means we would chose for ourselves as a nation, it is attacked by those who don't want a plan by being called socialistic or communistic or fascist because they have plans as part of their form of governance. And we simply get to skip having a common sense plan for our future as a nation and having to figure out how to do one and keep our form of government intact or improved upon.

We want freedom, but we don't want to plan for it. This leaves us in the default of having to continually fight for freedom by using military force to overcome the failures we deal ourselves in large part by not having a national plan agreed upon and implemented.

Our lack of a plan nationally was only possible in an era of our having overwhelming resources and it is drawing to a close at this point in time.

We either develop a consensus national plan or we should plan on not having a nation in the long term.
America is convinced that Laissez-faire behavior that allowed us to thrive when resources were plentiful to solve allocation issues if applied like a salve in the present era, will magically overcome resource limits by our adopting our venerable mindset left over from resource abundance again.
What did we do when faced with resource limits in the 1970's?, Ooga Booga witch doctor stuff.
We went with faith healer national leadership who preached salvation but doctored the masses with the opium of deficit spending and cheap credit. The Reagan Revolution began the pipe dream of talking rich and acting rich in order to stay rich. We are still a sucker for it, although now we have the new wrinkle of penance thrown in, the notion that atonement for deficits restores resource abundance.
It does not, it simply makes living as a sustainable peasant manifest instead becoming starving peasants.

I think we are afraid that if we have to plan, our faith in infinite resources will be lost, and that the miracle of infinite resources will then be denied us by whatever strange gods we conjure when we need something to manifest and save us from our greed and ignorance.

We are in the revival tent for Peak Exploit and the cold rain of Peak Resources is falling outside.

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Expatriot', 'T')his is complete Horses--t and, if you're an American, you should be embarrassed for writing it. It's this kind of lie that perpetuates SCOTUS dictation of law.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', '
')If we the People don't like that, we can elect presidents who will nominate strict constructionist justices. It's also within our power to elect congresscritters who can impeach the sitting SCOTUS.

Those are the checks and balances, and it's all constitutional.

[Serial_Worrier]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'A')t least that seems to be the consensus among Tea Party, even here in Texas where we have so many socialist cooperatives.

Can someone enlighten me about how socialism is unconstitutional?

Thanks!

[Serial_Worrier]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('efarmer', 'A')merica does not have a national plan overall.

Socialistic nations do have central planning and central control.

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Expatriot', 'S')omething is "unconstitutional" IF and ONLY IF 5 bozos on the Supreme Court say it is. Simple as that.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Serial_Worrier', '
')Voluntary socialism is constitutional, aka communes. What isn't constitutional is to force the entire nation into it....

[efarmer]

My point was not to advocate for central planning nor socialism Serial_Worrier. It is that in our system with 50 states and a federal government (even an austere federal shell as our Constitution defined) there are issues and priorities that require an overall plan to point the entire nation in a desired direction (such as energy or trade and commerce, especially international) that are not served with piecemeal federal legislation efforts that end up making ad hoc national plans instead of actually following a consensus national strategy toward a desired outcome.

Conservative Americans reject the centrally planned tenets of socialism and communism, and rightly so, but we have not responded with the American equivalent of a networked system of states that end up with their own version of long range national planning instead. Furthermore, the ability of national political entities to be influenced by external power and money has allowed our federal system to become essentially captured to pursue national policies that are in fact at odds with our national purposes as well as the aspirations of our individual states.

For me the Eisenhower warning on the military industrial complex was so spot on because we had spread the defense industry out to almost every state and it was equipped to influence Washington in such a manner as to by default capture a bulk of state representative politicians, and yet not intrinsically serve the overall needs and aspirations of the nations people beyond insuring that they had an adequate national defense at minimum, plus every possible additional expansion and feature that could be arbitrarily appended to that defense due to the influence and breadth of the defense spending and enterprise. We never formed a national plan to dominate the defense of every major area on the planet earth and to provide umbrella defense as a deal sweetener to every major trading partner or strategically located nation that we encountered either. We have however, taxed and spent trillions of dollars over many decades of doing just that task.

Our network of states needs to be able to set consensus national priorities for it's people that weren't as pressing in their need to exist when we enjoyed a period of energy independence, lower national trade competition, and resource availability.

In my mind this would make America stronger and avoid the easier but unpalatable default of central planning in a socialistic centralized government.

We need to be able to administrate the American Network of states, not be hijacked or dictated to in the absence by special interests or the plain default because we simply do not make or follow national plans. The age of simply applying overwhelming resources to any major problem we encounter instead of planning is being brought to an end by underwhelming resources.

The rejection of Communism and Socialism as national endeavors is going to have to be met by solutions that enable the American system to have national plans by centralized arbitration instead.
We wish to go back and read the Constitution as a total manifest instead of the guide for us to synthesize a uniquely American solution. To date we have responded to challenge by borrowing money, applying military force in haste and often error, and calling each other soul satisfying names.
It has been lucrative for corporations and people who blather into microphones, but not so much for us or the Americans who will follow us in the future. It is not a feature that America does not have a real national plan or strategy, and so far as I can tell, neither do her individual 50 states. It is a tragedy.

[Expatriot]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Expatriot', 'T')his is complete Horses--t and, if you're an American, you should be embarrassed for writing it. It's this kind of lie that perpetuates SCOTUS dictation of law.