You could easily tell, why countries move to the left.
Why did Marx come up with his ideas?
They were an answer to Manchester capitalism, and some of those ideas had to be used by the European gouvernments to prevent a major uproar or revolution.
(a nice, but old read on this with Germany as an excample http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=950DE4DD123FE433A25756C2A96E9C946696D6CF )

Why didn't this apply to the USA?
Less people in a bigger country, the basic for capitalism aka. growth was there all the time with more people coming in and still land etc. available for them.

The major questions are now: How long does this work and if the growth stops or slows down (if it hasn't already), how do you make sure to keep up the national security within the country.

I know, that this is somewhat simplified, but I hope it gives you some new views on this topic^^

I think you're badly misreading a correlation as causation here.

There is no implication that a slide towards socialism causes hideous evil dictatorships, it seems far more to me that hideous evil dictatorships like to use the pretext of socialism to have the state claim control of the national economy.
If you look at almost all of these nations that you cite you will realise that they have been taken over by a revolution and made a massive leap into socialism, not the gradual slide that you imply is happening around the world.

This also invalidates your claim that the government system prevents things like Hitler from happening, it doesn't. Germany was quite far right along that line when Hitler came to power (and in actual fact Hitler never moved it left along the line - I completely disagree that Nazi Germany was socialist), Russia was quite far right along the line when the communists came to power.

Put Ghandi, Mandela, Fidel and Che on the left and it suddenly doesn't seem so evil.

The only country to ever drop a nuke onto another, is a capitalist country.

In a socialist country, the government can fuck you over.

In a capitalist country, corparations do fuck you over.

The only good society is a moneyless society.

http://www.killercoke.org/

Wouldn't happen in a society not concerned about profit.

I dunno Mafoo, your starting to see the left as this huge evil monster while in reality, your analogy is off. Stalin, Hitler, Pot... all of them had both liberal and socialist ideas, making them middle ground. Their ideas of equality amongst people was far left, while their view on human values was extremely right making them center-placed. The problem here is that none of the current middle-placed countries like Europe hold no extreme rightist views on human values.
(Coincidentaly I believe Italia has the most extreme ideas on human values, immigration, etc. and they have a very rightist government.) Perhaps I can better map it out on your scale...

Nazi/Communist/guerilla forces:

Left ideas Right ideas
--------|--------------------------------------------------------------------|-------
Economical equality                                                        Human values

Placement

---------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------


Western Europe/Current America (in that order)

Left Ideas                  EUR      US                        Eur     US                 Right Ideas

------------------------------|-------|----------------------|-------|-------------------------

Economical Equality Human Values

Placement
Left                                                   EUR               US                               Right
------------------------------------------------|---------------|-------------------------------

It's a rough sketch but I hope you get my point. Your grossly overstating on variables that have absolutely no place in our current style of government.

I think you need a history lesson ...

The Weimar Republic borrowed money from the United States to buy goods from the United States and printed money like crazy to stimulate their economy, and there were several restrictions on people's rights for the "greater good" (including restrictions on freedom of speech to protect the Jewish population). When their economic house of cards collapsed a crisis was formed and used by evil people to gain power through the divisive politics, and when these people gained power they used the limitations in people's freedoms to crush opposition.

Beyond that, the communists took power in Russia from the Monarchy; and unlike the constitutional monarchy in England, the Russian monarchy could hardly be called capatalist let alone right wing due to their lack of property rights or modern contract law.

Well, our president is from the socialist party and our country is doing fine, I say I prefer her over Bush any day of the week.

Seems like some guys are kinda paranoid with socialism.

Anyway, saying that having a person in the goverment who belongs to a more moderated area is moving to socialism is pretty dumb, considering Obama is closer to right wing than left wing anyways.

If your constitution is good and your institutions too you shouldnt have a problem, since bad things happen whe your constitution has things that can be used by a crazy goverment to make stupid things with it, but it seems this isnt the case, so now we should just move out of the cold war thinking.

@Happy. Since when was a restriction of freedom of speech part of socialism? That is on a completely different scale of libertarianism and authoritarianism. Also I actually don't know that much about the Russian Empire, do they actually fit the modern terms at all for either socialism or capitalism?

I never said that all left countries are evil, I said all evil countries are left.

If you don't want government to have the power to be evil, don't give them the power. All left countries are countries where government has a lot of power. All right governments have far less power.

As for the Nuke. We nuked a country that attacked us. We stopped Germany from Nuking the world (we as in the allies).

And very few corporations can fuck me over. First, I have to pay them. In government, someone else has to elect them.

And I hope there is never a country where effort is meaningless (moneyless).

TheRealMafoo said "And I hope there is never a country where effort is meaningless (moneyless)"

how do you measure effort?
do you honestly think that the system works like that now?