I'm [mildly] curious, exactly what sort of America (or by extrapolation, any civilised nation) would you think is ... right. How [and where] would you draw a line between personal and societal responsibilty. How do you feel those who [for no fault of their own] are dealt a losing hand should be helped to function effectively in a society [with no safety net].
how were they doing it before the failed idea of the Great Society?
how/why does it become a governmental issue? just because Karl Marx says it should be? because the British intellectual elite so admired the emergent Soviet Union (a failed idea) that they instituted their particular brand of socialist welfare?
Isn't a fair, honest and just society measured as much by how it exemplifies and leverages its strongest, as by how it defends and supports its weakest? I'm sure you'd probably say that's socialist, liberal sentimentalism ... but if that's the best argument you have and past evidence suggests it is ... well, it ain't much.
I would agree with the anthropologist, Marvin Harris, that ruling elites, to enjoy their positions, have to compel obeisance to the particular ideology they concoct to create and sustain their positions of privilege
that's why the American Revolution was so ground-breaking -- it made the people the sovereign -- which meant that everyone had to carry their weight, and citizenry had to be cultivated along those demands
within the terms of the fascism developing under Roosevelt, and since, the welfare programs in place are only Bismarckian (prime example, is Social Security -- age requirement for claiming benefits of sixty-five, when few ever attained that age), as Bertram Gross pointed out, to ensure no interference with the accumulation of power and wealth at the governmental and corporate top
I ask because all you [and your ilk] ever do is whine about the evil of 'socialist values', about how intrinsically un American they are, about how [Obama although it would be any president - you just need a figurehead for your hatred] is at once a closet 'Socialist (read Communist)' and a closet 'Fascist'.
You grumble about how the US is turning into Singapore and (this one I liked) about how the ACLU are 'Fascists'. That's before we get into the race thing you have going on ...
indeed -- the fascism we are seeing is developing within the terms of the Singaporean corporate State ... as in that polity, administrative and other positions are filled to ensure "equal representation" of the different ethnic categories that comprise that polity, again so as not to inflame, or cause discord, so that the elite can enjoy their privilege without dissent ... much like a corporation filling federally mandated quotas ... much like he made his Supreme Court Justice appointee selection?
Yet, I rarely (if ever) see you actually offer suggestions or posit solutions. To draw from your commentary, if socialised medicine is so bad,suggest an alternative - because what the US has now is broken, perhaps irreprably.
you might want to re-read my references to Jefferson and Emerson
That's entirely aside from it being what I (personally) consider morally dubious - IMO medicine shouldn't be an industry based around profiting from an individual's suffering.
However, if it worked I'd perhaps be a little more inclined to parse your bigoted, ill informed and repetitive nonsense about the flaws inherent in socialised systems - of which there are plenty, in search of cogent observations.
again, why is the solution governmental?
This is largely rhetorical, I believe I know why you don't - but I thought I'd ask the question anyway.
The 'quotes' are to indicate your constant misuse of the terms.