Gotta get it off my chest...

You know, its late at night, and I don't want to get into a Big Thing, but it seems to me that people don't fully understand what Socialism really is. "They" seem to think that Socialism simply means that government provides more services to the people. They don't see any correlation between socialist policies, and the big government, authoritarian failures around the world in the last century... For the record, let's take a look at the definition of Socialism:

Socialism: an economic system based on state ownership of capital

State Ownership of Capital. How does that sit with you? Personally, I like owning my own capital. Its an old maxim - there are two things in the world that corrupt. Do you know what they are? You got it - money and power... Lemme ask you this now. How do you feel about the overall honesty of our politicians now? Are you confident in their ethics, generally (Blagovich, Bush, Cheney, Clinton...)? Me neither. So why in the world would you WILLINGLY hand more money and more power to these people, coupled with oversight over the world's most dangerous military power, the world's most influential money supply, etc??? It makes no sense. Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating a "no government" policy, but let's be reasonable here. Government's function, in a democracy, is to protect the people of its nation, provide basic services, and general oversight of industry. NOTHING ELSE. NOTHING.

Another misconception out there I encounter rather frequently is that "the U.S. has a captialist government." People, capitalism is not a style of government, it is a type of economic structure.

Governments: Democracy, Dictatorship, Monarchy, Fascism
Economies: Capitalism, Socialism, Communism

One needs to work w/ the other... For example, try to picture a Capitalist Dictatorship? How would that work? How could one man (the dictator) maintain that power if free market capitalism allows his peoples to control their own economy? It makes no sense, right? Now, try to imagine a Communist Democracy? A communal society dictates that the state's wealth is evenly distributed amongst the people, right? This is not a trick question now - who decides how that wealth is "evenly distributed?" A democratically elected politician, who, virtually by definition, needs to promise added benefits to his supportors (thus completed erasing the even distribution of wealth, and guaranteeing corruption)? Not likely. So we come to the inevitable conclusion that you cannot have democracy (commonly referred to as "freedom"), along with Big government Communism.

In an earlier post, I mentioned that the notion that the political spectrum is linear is a myth, and I'd like to take a moment to explain what I meant there. The common conception is that all the way to the left, you have big government (communism), and all the way to the right, you have small government (capitalism). But these two definitions don't extend to the extremes of each idealogy. Further to the left of Communism (but not too much further) is a dictatorship. In communism, you have already given "your" government control of the means of production, waived your right to private ownership, and more than likely, fair elections. Why, with all this "money and power" would these politicians honor any civil rights that you feel are a given? They have all the money. They have all the power. I'm assuming they have already enacted strict gun control as one of their first moves to "provide safety to the people" (here, you should be thinking of such visionary gun-control advocates as Adolf Hitler and Stalin, but I'll leave that up to you). How much further do you have to step to establish a dictatorship?

If you go further to the right of capitalism, however, you remove more and more of government's authority and presence in society. When there is no more established authority amongst the people, you have anarchy. But think for a moment about Somalia, which hasn't had a consistent government in decades, and can accurately be defined as an anarchist "society." Is there no rule at all, where, because there is no rule, all are equal? Not at all. On the contrary, you have authoritarian rule by those who control the weapons and brute strength (barbarism). You commonly find mass genocides occuring in these regions (Darfur).

So I propose that the political spectrum is circular. To far the the left, and you have big government, totalitarian rule. To far to the right, and you have no government rule by whoever seizes the weapons. Regardless. You have no rights, and no freedom. The idea is the find the safe medium, where government serves only basic, protectorate functions, and leaves the majority of the power to its people.. Allows the market to decide how much things should cost, and honors a written, uninterpretable document that prevents abuse of powers. Where there is transparency when appropriate (do you really want to know about every single threat this country sees on a daily basis???). Effective, but not oppressive regulations are in place to ensure that too much power does not flow to any one person.

The one flaw of Capitalism... It only works with minimal government intervention....