[The One and Only...]

Originally Posted by KevinTheHerbivore

As were the Clintons, as well as past Democratic candidates. Republicans such as Eisenhower even supported expansive Medicare-like coverage for Americans. And our current president, Mr. Bush, plans to expand the already largest healthcare system in cost to the elderly. Nationalized healthcare is a norm in every other industrialized nation, so calling it a staple of international socialist ambition is just stupid on your part, OAO.

Yet, it's only one part. You aren't looking at the whole picture. No doubt Dean plans on billing this to the wealthy, which is all the more socialistic.

Progressive taxation was supported by all sorts, from Adam Smith onward. Even if your assertions of a Dean "New Deal" program were accurate, which they aren't, this would hardly justify calling the man a Socialist, unless viewed through the lense of a fringe free market radical.

You claim you made about Adam Smith seems out of touch. I saw the quote you put up - to me, it simply supported taxation. Taxation in and of itself is progressive since it charges at various rates rather than one. The exception might be sales taxes, but even they can be made progressive.

The sheer extent of what Dean wants to implement appears socialist to me. Like I said, look at the whole picture.

And the point is? He's a socialist because he supports public schools? You need to stop readin lp.org OAO, seriously....

He's a socialist because he wants government programs for the biggest non-entertainment industries.

Yet all of the unions are supporting Gephardt. :/ He must be a Socialist, too. You guys are hysterical....

This is a governor who made fiscal conservatism when balancing the Vermont state budget a key aspect of his time in office. He quickly and privately signed a state gay unions bill, when a full gay marriage proposal was popularly being pushed. He has gone on record as saying that he would not touch defense spending as president, and would maintain funding for the unproven, hocus-pokus "Star Wars" missile shield program. He has flip flopped on the war, first saying it was totally immoral, and then saying it was wrong to go without a UN resolution. He is widely considered by many in Left-Wing Vermont to be a flat out Conservative, and people in Vermont think it's a lark that a guy who gets big money from AOL-TTime Warner and opposes legalizing marijuana for medical purposes has been compared to McGovern, or even more ridiculous, a Socialist.

Yet, you fail to recognize that this is one key stage in initiating the dictatorship of the proletariot. Dean wants business to submit to the workers. If Dean actually had this passed, it would be hell for the free market.

FDR could be called, and has been called a Socialist on similar grounds. Ask a real Commie what they think of FDR, though. During the Great Depression, the North Country of New York State was bursting with talk of Socialist rebellion due to the horrid poverty. Your theory that an activist government implies Marxist leaning is silly, because every level of government intervention seems Socialistic to someone who wants everything privatized, from police to proms.

When someone wants free healthcare, free schooling, high progressive taxation, general extended government subsidies, and to force businesses to "negotiate" with unions, I call him a socialist. That is, by far, delving into the depths of not really capatilist, not really communist. It is the biggest joke to the laissez-faire principles we were founded upon since the New Deal.