More on socialism

US Senator and self proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders on the Colbert Report April 21.

http://www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/videos.jhtml?videoId=166722

I don't agree with this guy altogether, but I think it's valuable to show Americans that socialists exist in this country, that they are patriots, and that their values are quite mainstream.

It's a tad surprising to me that I agree that we need some redistribution of wealth moreso than I agree that it's a "right" or that everyone "deserves" "free" health care and college. It's surprising only because I usually don't put the two socialist principles into connected thoughts. Frankly, it's up to society to decide what rights we have and what is due to all of us collectively and individually. Human rights are defined by the value systems of the most abundant or most powerful people, not by nature or gods. So, I think it's a bit silly or maybe just (perhaps necessarily) simplistic to say we have a right to or deserve health care or education or ... food. I personally do not believe every American has a right to food just because they were born in this country. Clearly, looking around the globe there are plenty of countries where neither nature nor gods saw fit to provide food for the people, so when we say one of those folks deserves at least a bowl of rice, it's our value system we're expressing. If rice were limited (may not be a hypothetical for long) so that there simply wasn't an extra bowl of rice to send to Sudan, we would be expressing a very different idea of who deserved what. The domestic agricultural engineer would be much more deserving of an extra bowl of rice than the starving family, for example.

The redistribution of wealth idea is something different. It seems to me like a lot of working class folk are more protective of the wealth of the wealthy than the wealthy are themselves. And, it seems to me that this arises out of the fantasy of the common man that one day he might be wealthy and when that happens he doesn't want the government taking disproportionate advantage of him. He is allying himself with, identifying with, emulating insofar as he can the wealthy and successful and thereby elevating himself (in his own mind). I respect the creativity, drive, and ingenuity of the economically successful, but I still want some of their money. More correctly, I want it back. Ninety dollars per month for cable. (Actually, it's almost a hundred per month now. They jack the price up with every new bill. They won't begin to consider pay per channel. They won't provide just internet for just half the price. They gouge every chance they get.) Go in for an auto inspection and have them extort you by saying you need an entire brake rebuild and won't pass you until you get it. Pay twenty bucks for a CD that costs fifteen cents to make. Corporate bailouts. Enron. Yadda yadda. The wealthy got wealthy by taking money from all of us rightly or wrongly. The wealthy, or rather anyone making 200K per year or more have no worries. So, tax them. It's not exploiting their wealth; it's taking money they made off the masses and giving a little bit of it back, in the form of a higher quality of life (meaning health care or education, shelter or food), to the people they took the money from in the first place. When the government fails to redistribute wealth from the rich and ultrarich they fail to live up to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence (Excerpt below). there is a limited amount of wealth in the world and that means for one man to be rich another must be poor. Policies that protect and cultivate the wealth of the ultrarich do so at the expense of the many many people. And, those many many people have the right and the duty to correct the situation for the health and happiness of us all. And, then we have the Fifth Amendment...just joking.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."