The Killing and Reviving of the American Dream

[Cold Highway]

It is not enough to cut back or even end the welfare state; the imperial warfare state must also be dismantled. That means taking apart the national security apparatus as surely as we end the economic intervention in domestic life. To oppose one while supporting the other – and this is the very essence of the Republican Pledge to America – is self-defeating if not deliberately deceitful. We know the results of this kind of intellectual incoherence because we've seen it so many times before.

The first type is corporate socialism that puts large banks and corporations in the driver’s seat of public policy, leading to bailouts for the most well-heeled firms out there. In an effort to keep home values from falling and to keep American automotive companies from going belly-up, the whole of the American mortgage market is socialized and American car manufacturing put on the public dole.

A second type of American socialism comes in the form of a gargantuan military industrial complex that plows through more than a trillion taxpayer dollars each year to sustain the American empire around the world, and be enriched, of course.

Yet a third type is that which provides social security and medical benefits for older Americans, people who believe that because they have paid into these systems their entire lives, they are entitled to receive back as much as possible.

These three systems of socialism are a main cause of the American bankruptcy. They are absolutely unsustainable. A consistent application of the principle of liberty must take aim at these programs, across the board,with no exceptions.

In order to bring any fiscal sanity back to this country. All three pieces of American Socialism must be destroyed with extreme hatred.

The Killing and Reviving of the American Dream by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

 

[Jetboogieman]

What does the American Dream have to do with Fiscal Responsibility or Socialism?

I thought it was all about Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness?

 

[Slartibartfast]

What does the American Dream have to do with Fiscal Responsibility or Socialism?

I thought it was all about Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness?

The American dream has been a lot of things to a lot of people.

Its been...
Freedom to worship as one conscience dictates.
Economic Freedom
Prosperity (not the same thing as freedom)
Racial Equality
Social Equality
Democracy
Rule of law vs rule of people
Manifest Destiny
Independence from England
probably some other stuff

 

[Deuce]

The American dream has been a lot of things to a lot of people.

Its been...
Freedom to worship as one conscience dictates.
Economic Freedom
Prosperity (not the same thing as freedom)
Racial Equality
Social Equality
Democracy
Rule of law vs rule of people
Manifest Destiny
Independence from England
probably some other stuff

The American Dream is "whatever I can try to accuse my opponents of destroying," in this context.

I really have to hand it to the GOP. They're masters of the political gamesmanship. They managed to call funneling taxpayer dollars into private insurance companies "socialism" and make it stick. They've managed to convince people that having social safety nets is communism. They've managed to convince their voters that wealth will "trickle down" when it has most definitively done just the opposite thanks to Republican policies. They've managed to tell people that the 2% of small businesses that Obama is going to "harm" with "raising taxes" generate 50% of small business revenue, and nobody called them out on the fact that they're calling businesses with $500million in revenue "small."

They even managed to get the Democrats to enact Republican bills (Obamacare) while being called socialists for doing it. They touted Cap and Trade as a free market solution to a serious issue and then turned around and called it the end of our way of life once the Democrats tried to get it done. And nobody calls them on their ****.

Or maybe their voters are just more gullible.