Obama's "prolonged detention" proposal... Minority Report redux

[Mr Khan]

badgenome said:

Mr Khan said:

badgenome said:

HappySqurriel said:

All that would happen if the United States moved more towards socialism is the corrupt friends of those who are in power would be able to funnel off more under the guise of "helping the poor".

And then we'd have to endure a bunch of squawking about how it only failed because "it wasn't real socialism", just like how communists still insist the Soviet Union wasn't "real communism". Utopian ideologues and their complete inability understand human nature would be a lot more amusing if only they weren't so goddamn destructive.

You have to keep trying, after all. But in this case i meant a more European-style Social Democratic party, something with the actual testicular fortitude to stand behind things like high taxes and gay marriage

And the fortitude to take away people's guns so that they will never, ever, ever have any recourse if they're sick to the teeth of the government stealing their money and lavishing it on favored constituencies? That would be swell. Oh, and maybe some nice, broad speech codes so that net contributors to society will be afraid to even speak out! Yay, socialism!

 Ultimately a balance could be struck with the right emphasis on both civil rights and economic entitlements (the former having sadly never been an element of any applied Communist doctrines either in the Leninist or Maoist vein), as a society without free-range guns would ultimately have no need to worry about dissidents (all you'd have to worry about is the army defecting, but the army defects at the end of a bankrupt regime at any level of oppression), and so could allow the forward-thinking, backwards-thinking, and sideways-thinking elements of speech to survive without worry.

What's going on in Nepal now is a good example. Control of the Marxist-Leninist party in a multiparty system that was, according to international observers, freely and fairly elected. Free speech is essential for social growth, but the role of the state is non-debatable.