[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;562361]The 1965 Voting Rights Act is an example of a federal law regulating the way states run elections.) [/QUOTE]

What remains of the Voting Rights Act will likely be tossed out by SCOTUS before the end of 2021. [URL="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/25/shelby-county-anniversary-voting-rights-act-consequences"]This decision[/URL] gutted most of it in 2013 and is the main reason for the significant increase in voter suppression and voter intimidation.

[QUOTE=rogue;562416]What remains of the Voting Rights Act will likely be tossed out by SCOTUS before the end of 2021. [URL="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/25/shelby-county-anniversary-voting-rights-act-consequences"]This decision[/URL] gutted most of it in 2013 and is the main reason for the significant increase in voter suppression and voter intimidation.[/QUOTE]
No argument there. :sad:

So a golden fiddle might be changing hands soon....

Trump should have lost in a landslide. The fact that he didn’t speaks volumes -Nathan Robinson
 

[URL]https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/05/trump-should-have-lost-in-a-landslide-the-fact-that-he-didnt-speaks-volumes[/URL]
[QUOTE]To many on the left, then, Biden’s lackluster performance is no surprise. Yes, Trump could have been resoundingly defeated. But 2016 proved once and for all that the Democratic establishment simply doesn’t have a message that can effectively counter Trump. The party leadership ignored the lessons that should have been learned four years ago. Instead, Democratic strategy is the very definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

We know how Democrats can win again. Thomas Frank, in his vital book, Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?, explains that Democrats need to get back to being a party that offers something meaningful to working people. We know that voting Republican is no indication that voters actually want the agenda the Republican party will pursue in office. [U]Fox News polling indicates voters want universal healthcare, abortion rights and a pathway to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants.[/U] Florida voters, even as they selected Donald Trump, also opted to increase the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour. The Democrats do not need to propose insipid half-measures when the data indicates that the public are fully on board with a progressive agenda.[/QUOTE][QUOTE]Already, there is talk that they need to embrace tax cuts and run away from the “socialism” label. In other words, double down on what they were already doing. Those who think that is the lesson may simply be “unteachable” – a word George Orwell used to describe the old British cavalry generals who still insisted on using horses long after the invention of automatic weapons, and could not be persuaded that a horse is not useful against a machine gun. Today’s Democratic leaders are like those generals. If 2016 couldn’t persuade them that they were wrong, this won’t either. Nothing ever will.[/QUOTE]

I have never understood the attachment of so many in the U.S. to what they call "Socialism." How soon they forget: "The Union of Soviet [U]Socialists[/U] Republics." It is the same word, but they cannot see a linkage. An old school buddy of mine likes this word. When I made a comparison to "communism" I received an electronic brow-beating. I never touched on the subject with him again. Perhaps people here use it because it sounds better to them than some sort of alternate. I only know what I was taught at home. This appeared to be a taboo subject when I was in school, 1-12. There was no "K" back then. There are many other things which were skipped over during my school years. Those are, of course, off topic here.

Words like that are difficult because they mean different things to different people. especially in an international context.
Here in the Netherlands, we choose to pay higher taxes than, say in the US, in return for less inequality and a better social safety net.
No-one here legally gets bankrupted by an unexpected medical bill or starves because they lost their job.

[QUOTE=storm5510;562449]I have never understood the attachment of so many in the U.S. to what they call "Socialism." How soon they forget: "The Union of Soviet [U]Socialists[/U] Republics."[/QUOTE]By that logic people should worry about any [U]Union[/U] like the European Union. Or any Republic. A nation can call itself what ever it wants. But, does it walk and quack like a duck? The USSR has been called Communism. But it was autocratic rule. The rulers lived like princes and kings, the working class like serfs.

[QUOTE=Nick;562450]Words like that are difficult because they mean different things to different people. especially in an international context.
Here in the Netherlands, we choose to pay higher taxes than, say in the US, in return for less inequality and a better social safety net.
No-one here legally gets bankrupted by an unexpected medical bill or starves because they lost their job.[/QUOTE]
That's the same in France and likely in most countries of the European Union. And I'd be proud to be called socialist for thinking it's the better way.


BTW not trying to gain a Godwin point, but do I need to remind what Nazi means?

[QUOTE=storm5510;562449]I have never understood the attachment of so many in the U.S. to what they call "Socialism."
...[/QUOTE]I have never understood the ignorance of the meaning of socialism or communism by so many. The USSR was not socialist, not communist and amongst the first actions of its "Communist party" was the suppression of the free soviets to replace them by the party. Read Lenin : he wanted state capitalism. In "communist" China there are private companies beside the state companies ... one of the founding stones of communism is the absence of private ownership of the means of production (not of all private ownership.)

Dictatorship of the proletariat is in reality the dictatorship of a party, and more specially dictatorship by the head of the party. The USSR was not communist. Stalin did all he could to suppress communism in Spain at the time of Franco's coup. But I must agree that those parties claimed to be communist. You have a lot of people claiming to be something or another. For instance you have people claiming to be Christian, but who only remember "thou shall not kill" if it concerns foetuses and for whom the words "Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword." don't apply to automatic weapons.

Jacob

National Socialism (NAZI) had very little (it at all) to do with socialism but more with nationalism.

I had to do some googling:

[QUOTE][B]Autocracy[/B] is a system of government in which supreme political power to direct all the activities of the state is concentrated in the hands of one person, whose decisions are subject to neither external legal restraints nor regularized mechanisms of popular control.[/QUOTE]
They, the USSR, had their own variation of Caesar, it would seem. Thank you all for your clarifications. :smile:

Trump and Fox News have taken up the mantle that anything to the left "politically" of Trump is socialist to them. I know because most conservatives I talk to believe that. Building a better social safety net than what we have is not "socialism".

Addressing institutional racism is not socialism either. Institutional racism takes wealth and income opportunities away from groups that experience the most discrimination. Unfortunately much of the institutional racism in this country is driven by religion. Religious zealots do not want anyone to take away their ability to discriminate. I struggle to understand how these people can justify their behaviors towards others considering Jesus's second commandment of "love thy neighbor as thyself".

IMO, if this country actually focused on eliminating institutional racism, it would benefit this country far more than the economic policies of the Republicans.