Yes, there are lots of examples of "socialist" policies in the US that most conservatives support. It's just fun for them to pretend that they like small government, fiscal conservatism and that any new or revised "socialist" proposals would take us a step closer to communism. Socialism =/= communism. Pretty much every developed society has many elements of socialism.

If your definition of socialism is the federal government paying for or subsidizing or managing a program for the good of the citizens, then these are some existing examples:

- Medicare and Medicaid
- Food stamps
- Free public schools K-12
- Social security
- Other publicly funded programs (police, fire service, parks, military...)
- Farm and transportation subsidies
- Roads and highways
- State lotteries

Oh, and the NFL's draft and salary cap policies are more communist than capitalist.

I mean everyone hates Social Security. Why exactly is it called "Social" security?

Thanks for your thoughtful answer. I have seen and heard that the USA is under the threat of imminent socialism and how terrible/end of the world this is. Example - I have a aquintance that recently added to his Facebook profile page the following: I am old and that is okay. I can see that America is changing to socialism and that really upsets me. I have a hard time understanding this kind of thinking. I wonder, what does this person want to have happen? If we don’t have government, what are we suppose to have? I wonder what the prolific conservative STers want to have happen OR what are they afraid might happen?

These are the rules:

Things I like: Not socialism

Things I don't like: socialism

That is how it works. There is no deeper logic or politcal beliefs in what is and what is not socialism. When you have a leader of a political party calling Puerto Rico statehood (that technically is still part of his own parties platform) "full-bore socialism", there is no other explanation than what I provided up top.

Socialism inhibits people from getting super rich, therefore super rich people work really hard at scaring people with the socialism boogeyman. Their base loves being scared of boogeymen.

Having said that, I would not want to live in a 100% socialist system, as does almost no one in the western world.

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
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I won't keep asking, but I just don't get it. If we already have some socialism (at least in some respects) in United States, why in the last few years have some people suddenly become so vocal about the fear of United states " becoming socialistic". What makes some people so sure that United States is drastically changing or going to change? Name some specific things that the left/democrats/Biden/Harris are going to do that are so bad for the country or the world?

There is a frustration in modern Western countries. We are told we are to be individuals with autonomy but that very thing is driving an ever increasing state with increasing power and demands. It is not so much that people object to the things gov't does but rather they feel alienated and powerless about gov't. It isn't so much socialism that people object to but rather statism. But they don't seem to understand it as such.

An example would be schools. Having publicly funded schools K-12 is a good thing. However there is no reason that gov't has to run the schools. Schools are not particularly complicated things for the most part parents could run schools if they were interested enough. It is interesting that in America gov't basically runs schools but not healthcare. Healthcare is much more complicated and requires larger pools of enrollees it would make more sense for gov't to run healthcare and not schools. Gov't could fund most schools and have local communities run them. To a certain degree they do through local school boards but to most citizens school boards seem as distant and unresponsive as Washington. Not only that a multitude of mandates from higher levels of gov't effectively preclude local management of schools.

There has been a slow erosion of intermediary institutions between the individual and the state. Community associations, religious associations, even the family are less prominent in the lives of people. How many people on this forum even talk about their alienation from their originating families. How many would say they would turn to their family or expect family members to turn to them in a time of need? Wouldn't it be better if gov't could take care of that?

This tendency was described by Tocqueville quite eloquently more than a hundred years ago.

So...no man is obligated to put his powers at the disposal of another, and not one has any claim of right to individual support from his fellow man, each is both independent and weak. These two conditions, which must be neither seen quite separately nor confused give the citizens of a democracy contradictory instincts. He is full of confidence and pride in his independence among his equals, but from time to time his weakness makes him feel the need for some outside help which he cannot expect from any of his fellows, for they are both impotent and cold. In this extremity he naturally turns his eyes towards that huge entity (the state) which alone stands out above the universal level of abasement. His needs, even more his longings, continually put him in mind of that entity, and he ends by regarding it as the sole and necessary support of his individual weakness.

So it is both the right nor the left that has caused our state of affairs. The right and left albeit through different methods contribute to both the ever increasing state and our ever increasing individualistic tendencies.

Don't forget full participatory democracy is a relatively new thing. The full flowering of the powers and reach of the state are a relatively new thing.

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They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

https://twitter.com/...135945310564354?s=21

Here it is in a nutshell.

Ever hear the phrase, "liberals fall in love, conservatives fall in line?"

Conservatives, in general, don't follow ideals. They follow leaders. A leader to them is John Wayne.

John Wayne is a bad ass. He's a tough guy. His military is strong. His drives a pickup and doesn't care how much gas it guzzles ,as long as it can pull a house. He says "fuck your feelings" and shoots the mule that's blocking his tanks from crossing the bridge. He doesn't want foreigners ruining our traditions, and he sure as hell doesn't need some geeks telling him to be scared of the weather and some invisible virus. More importantly, he sides with the most powerful force in the universe, God!

And the rich make sure to get that guy elected, and when he's in power, they say, "make sure you slip in there that socialism is the boogeyman."


These are the same people who think Jesus is coming back to take them all to heaven, give money to televangelists, believe that pro wrestling is real, believe that Biden stole the election because Rudy Guliani told them so in a speech in front of a landscaping company, and think that Donald Trump cares about them.

So what's more likely:

A) That they have carefully researched the costs and benefits of socialized medicine and are the only ones in the entire industrialized world to have figured out that our shitty healthcare system is actually better?

B) John Wayne told them that socialized medicine is for sissies, therefore they don't like it?

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485

A lot of people are also counting on getting another $1200 check (signed by Trump) from the government.

More free stuff!

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"Human existence is based upon two pillars: Compassion and knowledge. Compassion without knowledge is ineffective; Knowledge without compassion is inhuman." Victor Weisskopf.

Unfortunately, socialism has become like racism or sexism or any other “ism.” People don’t really understand what it is, and they don’t really care, because it’s an easy label to apply to something you don’t like, and for a certain audience, just the label is enough.

Socialism doesn’t have much meaning in the context of social programs. Govt taking tax money and using it to pay for programs isn’t controversial. The difference between conservatives and liberals is a matter of degree and which programs they like or dislike. Conservative redneck mom and pop sitting on the front porch of their family farm house sure as shit want their social security checks to keep arriving on time each month. That’s a social program. I don’t know that it’s really socialism.

Socialism really seems to only have meaning when contrasted with an opposing concept, like capitalism, as an economic/policy ideology. If we could keep discussion of socialism to govt or private ownership of the production, distribution, and exchange of goods, then it would be easier to start to differentiate between those who could fairly be called socialist, and those who are capitalists albeit with varying opinions on govt’s responsibility to social programs. As another poster said, some of these “socialist” are really just statists.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

Well said

It's a great question.

But what you point out is what is so sad about the "socialism" debate in the US. Anyone who would be willing to take the 30 seconds to understand the most basic definition of what is really "socialist government", e.g. the government ownership of production, distribution and ownership of goods (as you provided) and all of this non-sense about mis-labelling many programs and ideas about what is "Socialist" could stop. But people are so hung up on just unconditionally believing what they already know (or what the John Wayne's are telling them), they aren't willing to spend 30 seconds to understand the text book definition of a word they use so frequently to justify their opposition to things.

The high rate of incarceration of black men. The left produced the great society of the 60s which basically said to black men don't worry about the children you produce the state will take care of them. The left also produced the sexual liberation movement which encouraged people to become more sexually active. Woke people need not confine themselves to square sexual ideas like traditional marriage. Then the right came along with laws that disproportionally penalized crack use and passed laws that incarcerated large numbers of black men. The irony is ideas about personal liberation affect the poor in a negative way disproportionally vs the well off.

And you have a perfect storm huge numbers of young black men without a dad.

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They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

[quote Kay Serrar

Oh, and the NFL's draft and salary cap policies are more communist than capitalist.[/quote]
It's always struck me as somewhat ironic that the Euro sports like soccer and F1 are much more free market than the "socialist" US sports leagues.

Read “People’s History of the United States”.

Best shot you have at understanding this topic. It covers a LOT of stuff related to this.