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Lori, you lack...subtlety. You came from a military family; I knew both your parents very well. They thought in black and white. You think in black and white. No
shades of grey whatsoever...and diplomacy is all shades of grey. - Star Trek: The Lost Years

In the past few years there has been a big push in the teaching of history to move beyond the old white male political narrative and include women and minorities who were as important but for different areas. The real problem is scope and amount of information.

Sure Jefferson gets his 3 paragraphs in the vague and very general high school history books. Is that enough on Jefferson, the walking Enigma in pants? Not a bit.
The question is who do we leave out...Harriet Tubman? Fredrick Douglass? or any number of people who derserve their 3 paragraphs too?

Obviously one can point to any number of books on Jefferson, Douglass or Edison that are available to read outside of the high school text...but since history is given such limited treatment in general, that may be the only real option for the student for whom Jefferson excites the imagination.

As for the rest...argue amongst yourselves...

Again American ignorance seems to be ruining this discussion. To be blunt, your American political spectrum is do goddamn boring that its no wonder you have trouble comprehending basic political ideology.

I get the distinct impression Socialism is automatically equated to Communism by many of you here. But as Tahna has outlined, it is far more than that. Socialism is as different to communism as conservatism is to fascism. If you want to call communism a branch or sub-ideology of socialism (as some political scientists do), feel free to, but then Hitler and Pinochet becomes conservatives.

Anyway, it would be wrong to look at the failure of Communism/Marxism as a failure of socialism. Indeed, socialism has flourished pretty much everywhere outside of the United States (even in Canada, before certain Messrs Clark, Harcourt & Rae wrecked it). Have a look at this listing of the member parties of the Socialist International an lo and behold, you might just see governing parties... like the governments of two of the three biggest economies in Europe, perhaps?

I'm not a socialist, personally. The do, admittedly, often suffer from a distinct lack of common sense. But it can't be written off as an ideology because communists as evil.

And before I shut up, I came across the fable of Mouseland by Canadian socialist legend Tommy Douglas when looking for socialist info. It's worth a read, actually, even if you're so conservative that you think Stalin and Blair's platforms are interchangable.

The furthest right on this scale is no government whatsoever. With basic human nature, this means anarchy. Obviously undesirable. Communism also fits under this heading, since it requires that there be no government. 'Course, since that means that there'd be no one to protect citizens from criminals or to settle disputes, it'd deteriorate into, you guessed it, anarchy. That's why a truely communist society has never lasted.

Then you get to the other end of the scale, in which you have a pretty much all-powerful government. The archetype would be the Borg, or the 1984 civilization, where the government controls EVERY LITTLE THING. But as far as realism is concerned, this inludes socialism (which supposedly has the same goal as communism, being equality, but with an all-powerful government instead of none at all, which ruins the whole idea), fascism (which I gather to be a government which is basically reactionary, ie. does whatever is "nesecary" at the time), etc.

Now I have no problem with true communists. They're not evil, they just need to realize that their system is impossible to implement. DT admitted that, once. But, to use that as an example, he said the next best thing is socialism. I never got a chance to point out that they have very little in common, except for stated goals and the fact that neither can possibly accomplish them.

Communists are misguided, but essentially harmless (short of being violent, which I believe defeats teh basic philosophy). There's nothing they can do to try to implement their beliefs. Socialists are far more dangerous, especially the ones that believe that, as above, the only reason socialism hasn't worked is that the right people haven't been in charge. They can actually TRY, and doing so screws pretty much everyone. So I guess everyone DOES end up equal. Equally miserable.

And I give Canada until 2020 to either figure out that socialism doesn't work, or fall apart. No socialist democracy can last long.

And I'm under the impression that your medical system is screwed up already, thanks to socialism. Rah.

*reads back*

OK, I just realized that this is pretty off-topic. But I spent twenty minutes writing it, so I'm going to post it anyway. So there.

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"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."
- George Bernard Shaw

Though I get the impression that actual, you know, facts, probably aren't welcome in this little argument.

And now a brief quote by a guy named "Sarge" in another thread from a discussion board far, far away...

"First of Two, (do you mind if I call you 1 of 2?), I have a theory about why the PC crowd is so often the same as the gun control crowd. The PCs and gun controls both want the government to protect us from all the bad things out there. I wonder if they've forgotten that we are a government for, by, and of the people. We should be doing everything we can by ourselves, then looking to the government if we need a little more help, rather than trying to get the government to do all the work for us. JFK had the right idea when he said, "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country."
More government and more laws are not the answer to our problems, they are the source of many of our problems."

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"Nobody knows this, but I'm scared all the time... of what I might do, if I ever let go." -- Michael Garibaldi

[This message has been edited by First of Two (edited August 03, 2000).]

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Lori, you lack...subtlety. You came from a military family; I knew both your parents very well. They thought in black and white. You think in black and white. No
shades of grey whatsoever...and diplomacy is all shades of grey. - Star Trek: The Lost Years

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"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."
- George Bernard Shaw

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

And I'll have you know that I live in a rather nice house, thank you very much.

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"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."
- George Bernard Shaw

I have no problem with income tax, in principle. But we didn't need one, we didn't want one, it's illegal here, and he tried to pass it anyway. He actually threatened to arrest the entire legislature.

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"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."
- George Bernard Shaw

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"Why do you want to spend time with a deer? They're so stupid, they get hypnotized by headlights!" - Guido Anchovy

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"Nobody knows this, but I'm scared all the time... of what I might do, if I ever let go." -- Michael Garibaldi