Thanks Hector. Your post was really enlightening. I didn't read the entire set of definitions,
socialism A leftist political ideology that emphasizes the principle of equality and usually
prescribes a large role for government to intervene in society and the economy via taxation, regulation, redistribution, and public ownership.
I think its funny how your definition paints such a pretty picture of socialism.
To me, the Nazi party used a system such as this as a catalyst for coming to power in 1933, later to become the fascist Nazi party that we all know and love.
...The party grew out of smaller political groups with a nationalist orientation that formed in the last years of World War I. In the early months of 1918, a party called the Freier Ausschuss für einen deutschen Arbeiterfrieden ("Free Committee for a German Workers' Peace") was created in Bremen, Germany. Anton Drexler, an avid German nationalist, formed a branch of this league on 7 March 1918, in Munich. Drexler was a local locksmith in Munich who had been a member of the militarist Fatherland Party during World War I, and was bitterly opposed to the armistice of November 1918 and to the revolutionary upheavals that followed in its wake. Drexler followed the typical views of militant nationalists of time, such as opposing the Treaty of Versailles, having anti-Semitic, anti-monarchist, and anti-Marxist views, and believing in the superiority of Germans who nationalists claimed to be part of the Aryan "master race" (Herrenvolk), but he also accused international capitalism of being a Jewish-dominated movement and denounced capitalists for war profiteering in World War I. Drexler saw the situation of political violence and instability in Germany as the result of the new Weimar Republic being out-of-touch with the masses, especially the lower classes. Drexler emphasized the need for a synthesis of völkisch nationalism, a strong central government movement, with economic socialism to create a popular, centerist nationalist-oriented workers movement that could challenge the rise of communism, as well as the internationalist left and right in general.
On 5 January 1919, Drexler, together with Gottfried Feder, Dietrich Eckart and Karl Harrer, and twenty workers from Munich's railway shops and some others met to discuss the creation of a new political party based on the political principles which Drexler endorsed. Drexler proposed that the party be named the German-Socialist Workers Party, but Harrer objected to using the term "socialist" in the name, the issue was settled by removing the term from the name, and it was agreed that the party was named the German Workers' Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, DAP). In the wake of World War I, monarchy in Middle Europe had collapsed. For centuries the monarch had been the raison d'être uniting the nation. To ease concerns among potential middle-class nationalist supporters, Drexler made clear that unlike Marxists, the party supported middle-class citizens, and that the party's socialist policy was meant to give social welfare to German citizens deemed part of the Aryan race. They became one of many völkisch movements that existed in Germany at the time. Like other völkisch groups, the DAP advocated the belief that Germany should become a unified "national community" (Volksgemeinschaft) rather than a society divided along class and party lines. This ideology was explicitly anti-Semitic as it declared that the "national community" must be judenfrei ("free of Jews")...
...The Party believed that Social Welfare was the business of the State. Before the Nazi movement, the churches administered charity. The government enforced a collection of a 10% tithe which was paid directly to the churches. This charitable bureaucracy was shifted to the State..
Here, we see that Germans were clearly miffed about losing the first world war, and angry at Jews as they seemed to be the worlds economic leaders, keeping them poor. Using socialism as a means to gain political power in post wwI Germany, the Nazi movement ascended to such an authoritarian state that all it took was for one mad man to come in and sweep the party and the country into WWII and some of the most despicable human behavior ever seen on the face of the planet.
Why do I hate Socialism?
Why do I think it Sucks so much as a political system? It shifts power and responsibility from the individual to the state. To me, that creates two things, a state that controls you, and a you that is okay with being controlled.
With the new corporate welfare that is being implemented in our country, it is clear to be that government (people) no longer have confidence in themselves. It is clear to me that we are implementing protectionism to keep everyone feeling safe and secure when what we need to be doing is rolling up our sleeves, brainstorming our best ideas to get out of this mess that bloated government has created, and bring about a positive change in this country that gets people inspired to do the work that they love to do.
But instead, we are sitting around bleakly crying to ourselves "I can't do it, I am incapable."
That may be you skittles, but its not me and its not he country that I want to live in. I do not think that, with the way that unemployment is about to skyrocket (the big three are something like 3 million strong) the people that are actually left employed are going to be able to stomach the incredibly high taxes that are going to be levied to provide for the masses of unemployed when they could just as easily give up their jobs and live off the Government.
