McCain refutes Dartagnan/Droopy etc. with one word:

[_Analytics]

2) B.O. has pretty much defined the kind of Socialism he believes in through his associations with Marxist professors, hate preachers, and statements. "Spread the wealth" is the same thing as the Marxist tenet of "Redistribution of wealth."

First, it's ridiculous to presume that you define your ideas by who you associate yourself with. I have lots of associations with die-hard Republicans that are stronger than Obama's associations with alleged "Marxist professors and hate preachers." Those associations don't define me as a Republican.

Second, "Redistribution of wealth" isn't even a Marxist tenet. Rather than calling for "spreading wealth", it calls for workers unite and collectively negotiate for what their labor is actually worth. More than anything, Marxism is a paradigm for analyzing the economy. The paradigm looks at the dynamics between classes of people and how the gains from economic activity are distributed.

The kind of socialism Obama believes in is the kind of socialism that Warren Buffet believes in. This is because unlike the associations you focus on, Buffet does in fact advise Obama on these issues. This type of "socialism", if you really insist on calling it that, is the type of socialism where the government promotes opportunity for everybody, and people who make a lot of money pay a little more in taxes since they are the ones who both can and are benefiting most from society.

[_Brackite]

Well, Senator Barack Obama may not be clearly a Socialist, But Barack Obama is indeed clearly a Fiscal Liberal.

[_Droopy]

the board McCarthyites are wrong.

Interesting that with some 15 years having elapsed since the availability of a substantial body of Soviet archival material and the Venona decrypts, the leftist fantasy epic regarding McCarthy still persists (which gives the lie to any claim that the mainstream media isn't liberal. If it was anything approaching intellectually honest or objective, this hoary shibboleth would have been long ago publically discredited with most of the adult citizenry of this country).

McCarthy was an intemperate and eccentric individual, far overstepped his bounds in certain cases, and his censure and delegitimization were deserved.

Its also now quite clear, however, that most of those he suspected, accused, and brought to testify in his hearings were guilty pretty much as he charged them; they were communists, prior communists, fellow travelers and "useful idiots" working for or in behalf of a hostile foreign power and ideology, the ultimate aim of which was the overthrow of the political and economic system of the United States.

We now know that each of the Hollywood Ten were, indeed, traitors and subversives working in behalf of a monstrous ideology and venomously hostile foreign power seeking the destruction of their own society. Yet the mythology persists in Hollywood as well, just as it does in Tarski's mind, formed and flecked by a lifetime of CNN, CBS, and 60 Minutes.

What's even more interesting given what we now know is that McCarthy, for his part, actually substantially underestimated the actual penetration of the U.S. government by indigenous subversives loyal to Moscow and by Soviet agents.

The reason the modern Left so hates McCarthy, despite his very real personal defects and his very real overreaching, was that he exposed their progenitors for what they were, and for that crime against the poor, the oppressed, the disenfranchised, and the workers of the world who have not yet lost their chains, he can never be forgiven.

[_antishock8]

1) There is no set definition for Socialism as an ideology that everyone would or could agree on. It is not a static system that is easily defined.

Not easily defined? OK,...
And yet you shout in absolute terms that Obama is a socialist.
BCSpace compares him to Stalin (WTF?).

Well, Socialism isn't easily defined, but Socialist is. B.O. is, indeed, a Socialist. You seem to not like that label. Does Socialist have the same distasteful ring to it as Liberal or Marxist or Communist? Because they're all pretty much in the vein...

Or is B.O. just a Keynesian economist? *rolling eyes* Tarski, I think it's wonderful that you can do math well. Great. But you severely overestimate your grasp on reality. I recommend you take a crash course in Russell, Sartre, Kafka, Nitzche and Beauvoir... crap, throw in some Rand, too in order to understand being, and the impetus of individualism. Your idealism is simply your inability to accept that you're not responsible for other peoples' failures and shortcomings, and in fact, you yourself become culpable in the sustained misery of the human condition by infantalizing them with state assistance that you can't afford, and we debt-finance and pass on to our children. That kind of absolution for your emotional duress is pointless, but expensive.

No thanks.

[_Tarski]

Tarski, I think it's wonderful that you can do math well. .

You forgot physics. What do you do well?

Look, I am familiar with the thinking of Russell, Sartre, Kafka, and Nietzsche not to mention Heidegger, Gadamer, and Merleau Ponty, as well as American thinkers such as James, Quine, Rorty, Dennett.

How silly of you to think that you have better opinions because you have read a little of what just about everyone one else has also read.

Oh and I believe it is Nietzsche rather than "Nitzche".

[_Droopy]

Your idealism is simply your inability to accept that you're not responsible for other peoples' failures and shortcomings, and in fact, you yourself become culpable in the sustained misery of the human condition by infantalizing them with state assistance that you can't afford, and we debt-finance and pass on to our children. That kind of absolution for your emotional duress is pointless, but expensive.

Well said.

[_Tarski]

Tarski, I think it's wonderful that you can do math well. .

You forgot physics. What do you do well?

Great. But you severely overestimate your grasp on reality. I recommend you take a crash course in Russell, Sartre, Kafka, Nitzche and Beauvoir... s***, throw in some Rand, too in order to understand being, and the impetus of individualism. Your idealism is simply your inability to accept that you're not responsible for other peoples' failures and shortcomings, and in fact, you yourself become culpable in the sustained misery of the human condition by infantalizing them with state assistance that you can't afford, and we debt-finance and pass on to our children. That kind of absolution for your emotional duress is pointless, but expensive.

No thanks

Absolution for emotional duress? I think you are projecting. LOL Why would you suppose that I think I am responsible for others failures? I don't need to feel responsible to offer help.

Look, I am familiar with the thinking of Russell, Sartre, Kafka, and Nietzsche not to mention Heidegger, Gadamer, and Merleau Ponty, as well as American thinkers such as James, Quine, Rorty, Dennett.

How silly of you to think that you have better opinions because you have read a little of what just about everyone one else has also read.

Oh and I believe it is Nietzsche rather than "Nitzche".