The Top 40

Socialism discussed in 1848 (with references to French Socialist Revolutionary François-Noël Babeuf - check him out later...).

Holy crap was Toqueville brilliant (Sink me... and a Frenchie, no less...)!

Wonderful link, Gerard. What Toqueville was discussing is (foundationally) the same things we are discussing today. The scary part of this is that Socialism continues to steamroll through history regardless of how wrong it is.

Are we to have the same fate as previous failed generations and be ineffectual against this unholy scourge? :(

"The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of 'liberalism,' they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program,
until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened."
- Norman Thomas (US Socialist Presidential Candidate)

"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government.

"A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.

"From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury,
with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."
Alexander Fraser Tytler

"I am of the opinion that, in the democratic ages which are opening upon us....that centralization will be the natural government. The pleasure it procures them of interfering with everyone and holding everything in their hands atones to them for its dangers.
Not only is a democratic people led by its own taste to centralize its government, but the passions of all the men by whom it is governed constantly urge it in the same direction. It may easily be foreseen that almost all the able and ambitious members of a democratic community will labor unceasingly to extend the powers of government, because they all hope at some time or other to wield those powers themselves. It would be a waste of time to attempt to prove to them that extreme centralization may be injurious to the state, since they are centralizing it for their own benefit. Among the public men of democracies, there are hardly any but men of great disinterestedness or extreme mediocrity who seek to oppose the centralization of government; the former are scarce, the latter powerless."

"The problem with socialism is that eventually it runs out of other people's money."
--mt

When the USG gets that dreaded "Denial of Service" notice from the *bank* only then will the gravy train be stopped, all the children pretending to be adults will have to grow up or die, and the rest of us can get on with the business of running our lives as we see fit, as it should have been all along. And the cycle will start all over again.....