Republicans & Conservatives: Archives

Eric, excellent article.

I just finished “The End of Oil” by Paul Roberts. He makes a pretty good case that energy poverty - the inability of citizens in poor countries to afford electricity, gas, etc. (2.5 billion people still use dried animal dung for heating) - is also a huge impediment to prosperity.

I suspect that solving the capitalized assets problem in poorer countries would go a long way toward solving their energy problems.

Excellent article, Eric. I am pleased to see that you said “the governments of the third world are almost always run by an elite who follow the worst sort of governmental doctrines, often cloaked in socialist rhetoric” instead of ‘embedded in socialist doctrine’.

It is true enough that dictatorships in many third world countries use socialist rhetoric in defense of their regimes. But, they do not apply socialist doctrine, which would grant title and ownership to the people in return for their labor.

Government which provides anything for the general welfare, as I have come to see it, is by definition socialist. In order for government to function, it must have funding. In order to acquire that funding, it must levy taxes. In order to provide for a national defense, it must spend those tax revenues on salary, equipment, and leadership to man and manage that military. Hence, by definition, any government that provides for the general welfare is by definition socialist at its onset.

Then, as you correctly point out, the success or failure and quality of life of the people under that government depends upon a myriad of variables like enforceable laws regarding property ownership, anti monopoloistic laws that keep entrepreneurship alive and hopeful, and a host of other variables, not the least of which is a national promotion and support base for capital formation and cyclical distribution of national currency which stimulates consumer demand on the one hand and supports production and profitable demand fulfillment on the other.

At the heart, however, of a successful government by today’s standards, is I believe, a Constitutional government which the people have faith, trust, and even love for. Without that, there is no central principle upon which the public will organize to defend against the host of negative influences and corrupt influences that would undermine the government for monetary advantage.

And not just any Constitutional format will work. To have staying power, a nation’s constitution must at once, protect freedom and liberty to pursue personal endeavor, while at the same time, protect individual and collective interests against predatory behavior like, bribery, blackmail, and threat of violence. This is very, very complicated business. Weighing and protecting individual and collective freedom while smashing and constantly battling against corruption and activities that would undermine social stability is no easy constitution to draft, administer, and perpetuate.

Different nations have different collective psychological profiles, influenced by religious, historical, and cultural values as well as contemporary comparisons of itself to other nations. Even between Britain and the U.S. where enormous commonalities exist, the differences in history and culture have produced two quite different Constitutional democracies in a few fundamental ways. One size does not, and cannot, fit all when it comes to democractic government which through socialist construction and capitalistic freedom attempts to balance optimal benefit for the whole of its citizens as well as each of its citizens.

Too many dicatorships, as you point out, fail to see that the growth of a middle class can actually increase the dictator’s wealth as investor and capital owner. Henry Ford’s great wisdom of paying workers more than competitors in order to insure his workers could afford to stimulate his sales through the purchase of the product the workers made, is not in third world dictator’s reportoire of experience and knowledge. But then, if one is a dictator, one would see no need for such knowledge would they?

Eric-

Problem in Haiti is that the laws and the building codes do not keep the structures strong and have them built away from areas that flood. Also, the drainage in the areas don’t tend to be that good.

Regardless, the death toll here is not the direct work of human hands. Nobody pulled the trigger and sent Jeanne over Haiti. Nobody could have chosen the path of the hurricane.

What you don’t realize is that really, this is about people trying to cheat our system, going out there, searching out cheap labor, and sometimes using the power of governments or military force in order to support those business interests.

I’m no marxist. I think capitalism, properly applied can work for the benefit of the countries that engage in it. But when capitalism isn’t capitalism, when wages are kept artificially low, economies made beholden to the great powers when once they could sustain themselves, thats’ where you get problems like Haiti. Colonialism, even ours, had that kind of impact. Hell, how many times did we go to Nicaragua to defend the United Fruit Company, of all things?

Right now, there are people actually tryin to have us stay in Iraq for the next twenty years, so we can control the oil and the water there. Right now, we have American companies doing the work that could have been fielded to Iraqi companies, creating jobs, and putting fewer overpaid workers out there that Uncle Sam has to pay and waste soldiers to protect.

Really, it illustrates this point- There’s a difference between exploiting an economy by force, and “exploiting” it in the typical sense of creating a new market that can pay for the goods we make. The more we pressure other governments to bring work standards up to ours, the less competition we will have simply on the matter of wages. Helping workers worldwide is the capitalist thing to do in the long run.

Great read there Eric! Just goes to show how much of a failure democracies and socialism really are. When the people are enslaved and dependent on a govt. run by the elite, they always find themselves at the bottom, especially in the worst of times.

Controlling oil and water in Iraq will defeat the purpose.
Just how many foreigners are working in the oil industry in Saudi Arabia vs. Saudis themselves? Nobody invaded their country (by force).
I agree that Iraqi’s should be getting the jobs. That will not change by bringing in more nations, their companies, and their workers to help with the reconstruction.

What are the solutions for helping the Third World Countries ? The things that are being done now are not really helping.

Pressuring governments to bring up working standards and telling them to stop treating their people badly is not working.

We (the wealthy nations) cannot go around the world removing all of these governments.

Has anyone actually asked them what they want and how we can help? or are we just going in and telling them they are doing it wrong and they should do it our way?

These governments have to be convinced of why they, themselves, would be better off if their people could become independent and prosperous. At the same time they have to be convinced of why they will not lose power and control if they help their people to help themselves.

Maybe a ‘big brother/sister’ type program would work. Ask these governments - ‘If you could be like one of the prosperous countries in the world and still maintain your government, which one would it be?’

It doesn’t have to be a democracy where they could be voted out of office.

If the government is good to the people … the people will be good to their government.

Back to Iraq …
The divide in this country is not setting a very good example for the rest of the world.
Everyone can pretty much agree that the people of Iraq needed help to get Hussein out of power.
Even Kerry may have made the decision to go to war in Iraq based on what our government knew at the time.
Telling me that he would have done everything different and listened to his military advisors just doesn’t impress me AFTER the fact.

Back to Iraq …
The divide in this country is not setting a very good example for the rest of the world.

Everyone can pretty much agree that the people of Iraq needed help to get Hussein out of power.
Even Kerry may have made the decision to go to war in Iraq based on what our government knew at the time.
Telling me that he would have done everything different and listened to his military advisors just doesn’t impress me AFTER the fact.

Kerry was at a disadvantage when it came to information and formulating policy. Bush was not. Bush was the responsible party on both ends, One end in getting good information and making sure congress knew the facts, and on the other end in formulating good policy and reformulating it when the inevitable surprises and errors came to pass.

Kerry should not be held responsible for Bush’s errors, Bush should be.

Look, I don’t think that just because it would be good to do a thing that all methods of doing so would be good things themselves. Saddam is evil, Saddam belongs out of power, but leaving chaos and further hatred of the US behind is not good for anybody’s interests, least of all the Iraqis. I’m sick and tired of being told that opposing what I see as incompetence, misjudgment and outright corruption is making us look bad. Even if we had good cause for this war, I would support somebody’s fundamental right to argue against it. If the war is right, they won’t be be the people to win the argument.

I really wasn’t trying to pick a fight about Kerry. I was stating my opinion about some of the things he and the DNC have said.
I was not holding Kerry responsible.
You say Kerry was at a disadvantage. Why? Are you telling me that he was not allowed to check into the reports he was given? Maybe he didn’t have the time.
What is that committee he is on? The one where he doesn’t bother to show up for the meetings? Just what is he doing instead of going to the meetings? If he was there he could contribute to the conversations.

Kerry himself said he would have gone to war in Iraq given the information Bush had at the time. I don’t think Bush had a gun to his head when he said that.
Bush did go to the UN - just when are the diplomatic attempts supposed to end and the consequences actually be enforced? When every nation agrees on everything? That is not likely to happen - concerning Iraq and most of the other issues before the UN.

I was trying to make a point about how we are not setting a good example to the rest of the world. We are divided and fighting with each other. Both Parties can share the responsibility for that.
We as a country are pre-occupied with getting a Democrat or Republican into office - period. If I were another country watching our election process and what it does to us - I wouldn’t want to be like us.

Just exactly who hates us and why?
It is not the people who want to live in free societies without the fear of being killed for talking - or thinking for that matter.
It is not the people who are ‘kept down’ by their own governments and there religious leaders and just want to live better.
People are being told to hate us by those who want control over them.

Some of those people that are recruited by terrorist groups do it because they get paid (or taken care of) and they don’t see or have any other way to do it.

Some of the people are just plain brainwashed. They are told how they will see Allah if they blow themselves up and that their family will be given money after they do it.

Maybe Iraq was ‘the wrong war at the wrong time’. It will be a long time before we know if that is true.

The stockpiles of WMD were not there - So what - it does not take 5 years to make a liter of mustard gas. It has been said that Saddam had the capabilities to make the WMD’s. Given that these WMD’s can be made in a few days and the capabilities were there … David Kay was on TV a couple weeks ago saying there were mini labs found all over Baghdad after the invasion. Why do people believe it had to be a massive complex with barrels and barrels of WMD’s? I know - we were told ‘stockpiles’ - were they destroyed, moved or just not there? Saddam did have the opportunity to destro them while everyone was trying to be so Diplomatic.
No one has proven that Saddam and UBL were working together - holding meetings - planning -
Just how does that prove that the Al Queda and Saddam didn’t have ties? It doesn’t.

I won’t deny that mistakes have been made after the invasion - who really thought everything would be perfect?
Allawi was not picked by Bush but there are people saying that.
Some of the decisions that have ‘gone wrong’ were made with the opinions and desires of the temporary government of Iraq.

Calling the President an idiot and a liar will never solve anything - it could have been done more ‘diplomatically’.
Saying that he misled us after saying you would have gone to war knowing what the President knew is not a good arguement.

Eric,
Great article, thank you! Enjoyed De Soto’s interview. Haiti is a subject of great interest to me, I’ve been working on a science fiction novel tentatively titled “New Haiti” for some time. For their sake, I wish a solution for the Haitians involved nothing more than the implementation of an economic theory. Sadly, the situation there is desparate, and can be blamed on any one of a half-dozen causes; slavery, colonialism, geography, culture, land reform after the initial revolution, lack of land reform since, the Duvaliers, and so on. I seriously doubt De Soto’s prescription will work there without a number of changes in other fields.
However, that’s the first time I’ve heard of De Soto’s theories, and I can vouch for their application in one instance. This spring I vacationed in Fiji. It is, by the way, a beautiful place, really wonderful, with some of the friendliest people I’ve ever met. Can’t say enough good things about them! Despite being on vacation, my deep-seated geek gene led me notice that much of the poverty (not misery, but poverty) was traceable to an identifiable root cause. I was struck by their difficulties with capital formation & investment. It’s actually noticeable! Fortunately, Fiji is in much better shape than Haiti, much better shape, and if their one newspaper is any indication, the Fijians realize the need for reform in this area.
Again, thanks for your article & the links!

Dawn-
Just who hates us and why? Good question. People can hate America without being unreasonable. It’s not that I’d like them to, or that in my opinion they should. I love this country. But it is possible, for various reasons, for people to come to the conclusion that America and Americans deserve their hate.

Some may be brainwashed, ill-informed, but others may take their view out of a more educated perspective.

But those in Iraq? They’ll have a wonderful reason, in the tribal traditions of the Arab world: revenge.

Iraq was no war against terror. It was a war against a regime that had weapons, and supposedly had al-Qaeda in its pocket, or at least at its side What makes these things so important in a catalog of cruelties and crimes? Immediacy. Historically, there was a lot of reason to take out Saddam, but that’s history, that’s yesterday. The key question of why we should go way the hell out of our way to Iraq, spend the time, the soldiers, and the money to do this rested on two questions. Was this part of our all-important war on the terrorist that struck us, and was there an immediate threat from Saddam Hussein that demanded we waste no time in hunting his regime down? So important were these questions that they were encoded into the very authorization of this war.

I mean, forget how much of a bad man Saddam was for a moment, and remember that a certain terrorist group just killed almost three thousand of our citizens. Saddam had been neutralized as such a threat for some time now, and without the charges of continued weapons possession and collaboration with terrorists, there was no immediacy that said that a war in 2003 was needed in response.

Proof of the collaboration was very necessary to proving immediacy. It was written into the authorization, as a matter of fact.

We can imagine far more than what is real. Given the right motivations we can believe the wildest things, we can believe in spite of all kinds of evidence. And we can make serious errors because of the distance between what is and what we act on.

We needed positive evidence, so we wouldn’t be acting on false premises. Acting on false premises means one more thing: if luck isn’t with you and you’re right anyways, then there will be a supreme thud when you land without the facts in whatever trouble you end up in.

This war, whether it took a turn for the bloody or not, would have been a much easier fight, if we were vindicate in our cause for war. We could have shamed our allies into helping us and Iraq, we would have a far more unified nation, we wouldn’t have soldiers having to justify fighting a war with failed premises,and problems with recruitment.

In short, it mattered in every conceiveable way whether we were right.

It mattered whether the labs were of enough size and complexity to do more than just give poisons to agents looking to do individual murders. It mattered whether the chain of evidence could really sustain the notion that the WMDs were somewhere else. so far, there has been no evidence to support that speculation. If Saddam had had the capability, the fact would have been well publicized by now.

I was never looking for a perfect invasion, dawn. I was looking for one that was done right. We could have lost twice the number we have to this point, but if we had found what we were looking for, it would have been a softer blow to us as a nation. What Bush has done now will make it far more difficult to take care of the business of this war on terror elsewhere.

You must understand Dawn, that I think Bush is a fool. I believe his thinking and his sensibilities, if not unintelligent, simply lack in wisdom. I also believe that he has been dishonest with the American people, sometimes even denying the truth of things on the ground outright. Now Bush is a fool, and is a liar, what do we profit by not holding him to account for his foolishness and his dishonesty?

Victims of the storms over Haiti

By Kevin Pina

September 29, 2004

A political storm slammed into northern Haiti long before Tropical Storm Jeanne came along. On March 20th, Interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue flew into Gonaives where a huge and boisterous crowd of thousands welcomed him. During the festivities Latortue embraced gang elements and the former military that helped overthrow the government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide as “freedom fighters.” Since then, Latortue and his government have done little to take control of Haiti’s third largest city and has allowed gang leaders run it like a private fiefdom. This has had serious consequences for the people of Gonaives since Tropical Storm Jeanne arrived to claim her share of Haiti’s misery.

The political storm took many victims as well and left Haiti ill-prepared for the devastation brought about by Tropical Storm Jeanne. One of its first victims was the Civil Protection Office following a rampage led by the “freedom fighters” against suspected Aristide supporters. This politically benign institution had been established in cooperation with the local municipal government by grants provided by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and administered through the Pan American Development Foundation (PADF). PADF’s own website confirms that, “PADF’s emergency response and reconstruction efforts are complemented by community training in disaster preparedness. Mitigation training promotes the development of civil action plans that enable communities to identify priorities and reinforce key infrastructure. Last year, 23 local civil protection committees were formed and over 5,000 people were trained in disaster awareness, leading to safer communities.” Unfortunately, with Washington, Paris and Ottawa ushering in a man-made disaster with the destruction of constitutional authority in Haiti, all of the tax dollars USAID invested in preparing for natural disasters like Tropical Storm Jeanne were wasted as well.

Tropical Storm Jeanne is exactly the type of disaster USAID and PADF’s programs were set up to manage. There were components that monitored incoming tropical storms and provided an advanced warning and preparedness network designed to plan a response BEFORE disaster struck. Plans included advising communities in advance of approaching storms and preparing for them by storing large supplies of drinking water, food, medical supplies and portable tents for those displaced from their homes. When Tropical Storm Jeanne hit, these structures no longer existed and the trained and competent participants in the program had long been driven out of the area, offices were pillaged and burned. Nowhere was this more evident than in Gonaives where many associated with the Aristide government and the Lavalas party were reportedly dragged through the streets and burned alive.

Instead of reasserting control of the State and rebuilding the necessary infrastructure that was destroyed following the coup of February 29th, Latortue followed a policy of benign neglect and accommodation with thugs in the region that has led to needless death and suffering in the wake of Tropical Storm Jeanne. In all fairness, the fault does not lie exclusively with the US-installed government. The Bush administration shoulders much of the blame for the current situation with an ill-conceived regime change that has replaced what they considered a failed state with an even more failed state.

The United Nations also bears a large responsibility for the armed gangs and elements of the former military currently hampering relief efforts in northern Haiti. Like Latortue’s accommodation of the gangs in Gonaives, the UN forces have stood by while the former military has taken over several towns in the north. The official excuse of the UN has been that they do not have enough forces on the ground to challenge the former military from seizing control of the region. It seems that by the time they do have the necessary forces they will wake up to find themselves bunkmates with the very people they claim to want to keep out of power. This does not bode well for the inhabitants of Port au Prince should a natural disaster ever strike the capital to combine with the current political disaster as it has in Gonaives.

In the end, the UN and Latortue are victims of their own failed policies and ultimately the failed policy of the Bush administration in Haiti. The ones who will suffer the most as a result of these failures are the very people they claim to have come to this island nation to help. The disregard for institutions destroyed during the latest regime change and the lack of planning and response for natural disasters is only a symptom of a political storm that is far from over in Haiti- a storm that is being feed by poor political judgement. Sadly, this has resulted in more needless suffering for the people of Haiti during this latest crisis.

Kevin Pina is an independent journalist, filmmaker, is Associate Editor of the Black Commentator, and currently resides in Haiti.

Victims of the storms over Haiti

By Kevin Pina

September 28, 2004

A political storm slammed into northern Haiti long before Tropical Storm Jeanne came along. On March 20th, Interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue flew into Gonaives where a huge and boisterous crowd of thousands welcomed him. During the festivities Latortue embraced gang elements and the former military that helped overthrow the government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide as “freedom fighters.” Since then, Latortue and his government have done little to take control of Haiti’s third largest city and has allowed gang leaders run it like a private fiefdom. This has had serious consequences for the people of Gonaives since Tropical Storm Jeanne arrived to claim her share of Haiti’s misery.

The political storm took many victims as well and left Haiti ill-prepared for the devastation brought about by Tropical Storm Jeanne. One of its first victims was the Civil Protection Office following a rampage led by the “freedom fighters” against suspected Aristide supporters. This politically benign institution had been established in cooperation with the local municipal government by grants provided by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and administered through the Pan American Development Foundation (PADF). PADF’s own website confirms that, “PADF’s emergency response and reconstruction efforts are complemented by community training in disaster preparedness. Mitigation training promotes the development of civil action plans that enable communities to identify priorities and reinforce key infrastructure. Last year, 23 local civil protection committees were formed and over 5,000 people were trained in disaster awareness, leading to safer communities.” Unfortunately, with Washington, Paris and Ottawa ushering in a man-made disaster with the destruction of constitutional authority in Haiti, all of the tax dollars USAID invested in preparing for natural disasters like Tropical Storm Jeanne were wasted as well.

Tropical Storm Jeanne is exactly the type of disaster USAID and PADF’s programs were set up to manage. There were components that monitored incoming tropical storms and provided an advanced warning and preparedness network designed to plan a response BEFORE disaster struck. Plans included advising communities in advance of approaching storms and preparing for them by storing large supplies of drinking water, food, medical supplies and portable tents for those displaced from their homes. When Tropical Storm Jeanne hit, these structures no longer existed and the trained and competent participants in the program had long been driven out of the area, offices were pillaged and burned. Nowhere was this more evident than in Gonaives where many associated with the Aristide government and the Lavalas party were reportedly dragged through the streets and burned alive.

Instead of reasserting control of the State and rebuilding the necessary infrastructure that was destroyed following the coup of February 29th, Latortue followed a policy of benign neglect and accommodation with thugs in the region that has led to needless death and suffering in the wake of Tropical Storm Jeanne. In all fairness, the fault does not lie exclusively with the US-installed government. The Bush administration shoulders much of the blame for the current situation with an ill-conceived regime change that has replaced what they considered a failed state with an even more failed state.

The United Nations also bears a large responsibility for the armed gangs and elements of the former military currently hampering relief efforts in northern Haiti. Like Latortue’s accommodation of the gangs in Gonaives, the UN forces have stood by while the former military has taken over several towns in the north. The official excuse of the UN has been that they do not have enough forces on the ground to challenge the former military from seizing control of the region. It seems that by the time they do have the necessary forces they will wake up to find themselves bunkmates with the very people they claim to want to keep out of power. This does not bode well for the inhabitants of Port au Prince should a natural disaster ever strike the capital to combine with the current political disaster as it has in Gonaives.

In the end, the UN and Latortue are victims of their own failed policies and ultimately the failed policy of the Bush administration in Haiti. The ones who will suffer the most as a result of these failures are the very people they claim to have come to this island nation to help. The disregard for institutions destroyed during the latest regime change and the lack of planning and response for natural disasters is only a symptom of a political storm that is far from over in Haiti- a storm that is being feed by poor political judgement. Sadly, this has resulted in more needless suffering for the people of Haiti during this latest crisis.

Kevin Pina is an independent journalist, filmmaker, is Associate Editor of the Black Commentator, and currently resides in Haiti.

Some governments may use “socialism-cloaked” rhetoric to defend haphazard, totalitarian policies, but most are both totalitarian and to some dispositive degree socialist. C.f. Joseph Nyerere’s Tanzania, to start modestly; then move on to Gadhafi’s Wagnerian dalliance with Arab Communism in Libya; finally, consider the Kims’ autarkic, Donald Duck dystopia in North Korea. The orthodox and devout socialists of the Khmer Rouge, who eagerly sampled Marx, Mao, and Third-World Marxist ideologues like Frantz Fanon, would choke themselves scoffing at my esteemed colleague David Remer’s definition of socialism, as well as his attempt to revoke their socialist credentials.

David,

…I am pleased to see that you said “the governments of the third world are almost always run by an elite who follow the worst sort of governmental doctrines, often cloaked in socialist rhetoric” instead of ‘embedded in socialist doctrine’.

It is true enough that dictatorships in many third world countries use socialist rhetoric in defense of their regimes. But, they do not apply socialist doctrine, which would grant title and ownership to the people in return for their labor.

I’m glad you enjoyed my distinguishing it that way. I wouldn’t take that as a defense of socialism however. I think that as an ideology socialism has two components, the theoretical and the practical. I happen to think that most of these governments have adopted socialist rhetoric to make themselves sound benificient to their people even as they plunder them. I have a low opinion of socialism as it has been practiced.

The difference, I think, is that I wouldn’t define socialism as broadly as you have.

Government which provides anything for the general welfare, as I have come to see it, is by definition socialist.

I define socialism as a derivative of Marxism with all the attending class warfare rhetoric and demonizing of the bougiouse. Providing for the ‘general welfare’ doesn’t have to involve income redistribution and envy as a standard.

Surprisingly, I agree with much of everything else you said in this comment!

Constitutional government guaranteeing the rule of law and equality of opportunity, not necessarily of outcome, is essential to freedom, which is a prerequisite for prosperity.

“Socialism” is best conceived as a superset of collectivist ideologies, which, when articulated as actual policy, insist that ownership of the means of production lies with the producers. Marxism is thus located under the rubric of socialism, along with anarchism, syndicalism, and the demonic cotillion of national-socialist worker-warrior aesthetics.

JP said, “”Socialism” is best conceived as a superset of collectivist ideologies,”

Best for whom? Eric rails against socialist policy in America in the form of Social Security and welfare assistance like what Bush is providing in Florida.

“which, when articulated as actual policy, insist that ownership of the means of production lies with the producers.”

Do you make this stuff up as you go along? That is NOT how it articulates itself in actual policy in America, Germany, Canada, Great Britain, etc. etc. etc. —

The Socialism western societies debate and promote today, quite successfully in many cases (97% of Canadians would not trade their health care system for the U.S.’s even if it would mean a drastic reduction in taxes - that was polled just that way). Of course there are those who would deride the populations of such societies for adhering to such principals, but, then, since they are democratic societies such derision would indirectly be of democracy now wouldn’t it?

Catch-22.

John-Paul,

I’m not familiar with the semantics of collectivist categories. I assume there are accepted definitions somewhere. But as with most words different people define them, well, differently.

I have always thought of socialism as part of a continuum of collectivist ideologies. Placement within that continuum apparently differs from source to source. But I like the gradual scale of mixed-economy > socialism > communism. Are there any other major gradations?

David,

Best for everyone. It’s the dictionary definition:

so·cial·ism n.

Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.

[Emphasis mine]

Do you make this stuff up as you go along? That is NOT how it articulates itself in actual policy in America…

Of course not. That’s because it barely articulates itself as policy in America. Yes, there is socialist influence on this, as well as probably all, governments. But that New Deal-style programs are in part a product of socialist thought makes this country no more socialist than calloused skin on my heel makes me dead.

You can conjure a custom definition of socialism. Fine. But then, procedurally, are you not making stuff up as you go along? I, on the other hand, refer to Joshua Muravchik, Richard Pipes, and especially Polish dissident-scholar Leszek Kolakowski, whose seminal Main Currents of Marxism in three volumes (1, 2, 3) would, if anything, help you distinguish between Social Democracy and the socialism that comprises the root of the poison tree.

Eric,

See my most recent comment, but I would also say that a linear scale or continuum is no more adequate for conceiving collectivist ideologies than is the right-left reduction most people use to pigeonhole politics. For instance, it seems that syndicalism and anarchism are at worst parallel phenomena; they also aren’t linearly that different from Marxism in terms of economic policy.

On a linear scale, how does one compare Israel’s kibbutz movement to Chinese Communism? How does one compare Soviet “revisionist” Communism to Leninism? How about Sorelian proto-fascism with Third World Marxism? There are too many iterations that fall into more than one dimension.