Sounds great. I'm sure we'll experience net emigration from the U.S. to Nepal instead of vice versa for the first time in history as progressive Americans leave their horribly backwards, racist homeland for this new paradise of social justice and civil liberty.

Not like any society gets great overnight, but so long as the Maoists (that the Marxist-Leninists allied with other parties to force out of the coalition) don't go nuclear again, Nepal will be able to stabilize and focus on a humanity-focused development

My point is that a human and democratic face is being put on Socialism there, and similar models can apply elsewhere. More strongly focused on development than the European states, yet not devolving into Bolshevism and their tactics

Doesn't seem like much of a worry. Maoists are known for their good sense and moderation, after all.

The people could not succesfully rebel against the American army as it stands. You're kidding yourself if you think that's a realistic possibility. Gun control just lowers the rate of gun crime/gun suicides.

Also unlike Communism which has never been succesfully implemented (and probably never will) socialism has been implemented to some degree in several of the most democratic, progressive and developed nations in the world. Also some of the nations with the highest free speech rankings.

LMAO socialism would completely destroy the US. 

Wow why are people so upset by this?

He's talking about imprisoning suspected terrorists here. If a little racial profiling can save innocent lives then I'm all for it. 

I'm not sure it would be necessary to rebel against the U.S. army. I reckon that in the event of an Egypt like situation, the U.S. army has an even better chance of siding with the people than the Egyptian army did. I do think there is something to be said for the leadership of a country having a healthy fear of the citizenry, though.

I've seen a lot of studies and stats on gun control and what it does and doesn't do, but with all the cherrypicking that goes on by both the pros and antis, I'm not really sure what to make of it. There is one aspect of gun control that I really don't like, though, and that's the infantilization of the citizenry. When doctors groups start lobbying for knives to be banned and saying patronizing shit like, "No one really NEEDS a sharp knife, you can make do with a dull one," it just drives me up a fucking wall.

As far as free speech goes, I'd argue that while most European countries have obviously been relatively free, speech codes - especially laws against hate speech and blasphemy - have long been around and will only be used more and more as demographics continue to change and the experiment with multiculturalism continues to fail miserably. While restricting speech may not be a tenet of socialism per se, it is my experience that socialists are quite eager to do it if it's construed as being necessary to maintain domestic tranquility, crack down on spooky racists, or some other such nonsense.

I was using the freedom house rankings which put a couple of social democratic states - notably the Scandinavian ones - above America.

I'm not arguing for the complete banning of guns (or knives, though some types of knives such as switch blades and butterfly knives are clearly more dangerous than others) but America's controls seem horridly relaxed. Guns should be viewed as dangerous and a license needed to own one in my opinion - along with some basic psychological exam to make sure that the gun owner isn't a psychopath. Also some guns such as automatic weapons should have very very strict controls - they have no use for sport or hunting and only really exist to kill humans.

But you're right about America's army. Which means once again that there isn't really any need for an armed citizenry.

And who tells you those "suspected terrorists" are real terrorists and not a mere tool for the government to justify actions? What if it were you the one being imprisoned without reason and without the chance of a fair trial? This is setting a precedent where anyone could be a "suspected terrorist" and therefore indefinitely imprisoned. They are taking away fundamental civil rights and yet people celebrate?

Justice system exists for a reason. Everyone deserves a fair trial, unless of course he/she was caught during the act.

This is a lot different that racial profiling ...

Profiling (racial or otherwise) is, essentially, using an understanding of who is most likely to commit a crime and being careful to pay additional attention to these people. The primary problem with profiling is that someone being more likely to commit a particular crime doesn’t mean that they will commit that crime, or that someone who doesn’t fall into that categorization may commit the crime; so you have to be careful that enhanced focus on a particular group does not translate into a reduction of rights for those individuals, and you also have to be vigilant not to suffer from tunnel vision.

What Obama is arguing here is (in my opinion) significantly worse than Bush’s position. Bush’s position is essentially that these enemy combatants are not citizens of the United States and did not commit their crimes on US soil so they are not bound by the protections within the constitution; Obama’s position is that, even though these individuals are protected by the constitution, there is no reason why someone who has arbitrarily been determined is a danger to society can be imprisoned indefinitely without due-process.