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Originally Posted by Neal Stevens
And since I'm not a college kid or dreamy radicalist, I feel I have the obligation to oppose socialism, too.
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Neal, that's not really a nice generalization. I'm sure that wasn't pointed at anyone in particular, but still - that's not exactly what socialism comes from. Sure, the intelligentsia brought plenty of ideas, good and bad, and has equally made good points and screwed up when it came to social issues. Still, I personally resent that, having lived among poor working people who fought tooth and nail to get anywhere in life, not for personal gain but for the good of others. It's a matter of perspective - from mine, I could likewise suggest that libertarians are by and large rich, selfish people whose fortune arises from an advantageous social position rather than hard work - but that's not really true either.
I personally strongly disagree with economic incentive as the be-all, end-all in human progress. It works to a point, but when unmoderated it paves a path straight to hell by the way of greed and exploitation. The society, in my view, has a broken view of wealth and gain - I've been rather poor most of my life (heck, I spent my early years in living arrangements with an average of 3.5 people / room), but I've lived within my means and I honestly never really saw the virtues of getting greedy beyond a certain point. And people really need to consider the real cost of things - because if they don't pay the price, someone else generally does. I'm not at all happy with a very common present-day arrangement where the system works largely through exploiting low costs permitted by the exploitation of the poor - at home or abroad. Having grown up around people exploited in this fashion, I take offence at the idea that being poor is necessarily a condition resulting from being lazy. That's simply not true.
There's a systemic failure at work here, and I don't think any reasonable socialist today (besides the usual radicals) would suggest that the whole point now is to break the system - no, but unless fixes are brought in, I'm afraid quite a lot of Americans will wind up in position to be exploited without a way to fight back, owing to a nasty social imbalance which I see gradually creeping up. The right to own guns isn't going to help much there, either.