When you go to a store and like taking advantage of a sale "buy one get one fee", does that make you a socialist? The motives of a collectivist are much deeper than "free stuff".

Please excuse that unforgivable oversight. She certainly deserves to have been listed.

Dear Eyecu2...you forgot my favorite...Maxine Waters...she is the 'leader of the pack'!

I have thought trump could only slow down the decline of America for 4 years. After the mid terms I am sticking to that. The tide has turned to a real majority of the Democrats and trump will lose in 2020 to Either a real socialist or a bear-socialist

Actually I agree with you. I think the time required for our society to collapse is much too long for me to enjoy any rebirth. Plus the time it takes for people here to re educate themselves is probably measured in generations

I get that.

But would like to know nonetheless how do you categorize the "not everyone who likes to get something for free"? You say they are not collectivists and not socialists.

Then what are they?

That looter crowd is socialist. Not everyone who likes getting something for free is a collectivist. It takes more than wanting to get something for free to be a socialist demanding it be distributed by government.

I am still perplexed by your distinction when saying those who want more for free are not socialist.

What are they? Have you seen this looter crowd supporting anything else but the socialists, which is of course the ruling party in Germany, France and Spain?

That kind of irrationalism is one of the differences between the socialism and simply wanting something for free.

The Republican Party is intellectually bankrupt, but it isn't the egalitarian nihilism, ethnic tribalism, and 'take no prisoners' frenzied destruction just to be disruptive that is the deliberate uncivilized behavior rising within the Democrats.

"Buying time" has the intended consequence of living to enjoy your own values regardless of what else exists. You don't sacrifice yourself in a fit of nihilism just to see a collectivist go down. The good, not evil, is what is important. If you continue to live as a human being in a way that you otherwise could not, then so what if some zero survives another day. It isn't important.

The full process certainly is longer than any of our lifetimes, but it exists within our lifetimes, and so was the process culminating in the Enlightenment and the founding of this country as a free nation longer than those who slowly crawled out of the abyss of the Dark and Middle Ages as they pursued what they thought was the good along with their own values.

There are no shortcuts to spreading the right ideas and no "short term solutions" -- other than some specific political battles that are still possible to win -- beyond whatever progress we may make that can make life better or not as bad as it otherwise would be. Isn't that worth it? Both that and knowing that you are fighting for a rational goal proper to humanity are reasons to keep fighting.

It does not mean to sacrifice your life to an unattainable goal you'll never see, outside your life and therefore outside your standard of value. If you can find a better place to live, then do it. And it doesn't mean to sacrifice a chosen career to 'saving the world'. But whatever you do, 'buying time' means both time to fight for better ideas and the time span and values of your own life and those you care about.

Scientists routinely struggle for ideas they may never see in final form, let alone the technological results. But they pursue their own goals for understanding and for what is right without sacrificing themselves to a future in which they won't exist to enjoy, and we are grateful that they have. What would have happened if Newton had quit because he wouldn't live to see the space station, or those who risked everything for the American Revolution had instead holed up on "strike" or supported the wildest British tyrant in a nihilistic fit to "get it over with"? They didn't live to experience the best consequences of their work, but they also benefited enormously from how they lived.

In "Don't Let It Go" written in 1971 on behalf of the American sense of life, Ayn Rand concluded,

"Can this country achieve a peaceful rebirth in the foreseeable future?

"By all precedents, it is not likely. But America is an unprecedented phenomenon. In the past, American perseverance became, on occasion, too long-bearing a patience. But when Americans turned, they turned. What may happen to the Welfare State is what happened to the Prohibition Amendment.

"Is there enough of the American sense of life left in people—under the constant pressure of the cultural-political efforts to obliterate it? It is impossible to tell. But those of us who hold it, must fight for it. We have no alternative: we cannot surrender this country to a zero—to men whose battle cry is mindlessness.

"We cannot fight against collectivism, unless we fight against its moral base: altruism. We cannot fight against altruism, unless we fight against its epistemological base: irrationalism. We cannot fight against anything, unless we fight for something—and what we must fight for is the supremacy of reason, and a view of man as a rational being.

"These are philosophical issues. The philosophy we need is a conceptual equivalent of America's sense of life. To propagate it, would require the hardest intellectual battle. But isn't that a magnificent goal to fight for?"

As she lay on her death bed over 10 years later, she still asked Leonard Peikoff to do the best he could for Objectivism. She knew what she had achieved and she still cared that it live. In fighting for it, like scientists struggling to understand, she experienced the meaning of what she once described as "those who fight of the future live in it today" -- which does not mean a mystical living in a time in which you don't exist, and does not mean sacrificing the joy of pursuing, attaining and experiencing values in one's own lifetime.

I was addressing the issue that assisting the collectivists in the USA by supporting the economy that they benefit from and control simply makes the collectivist regime last longer. I feel like a slave in many ways today and more so every day. If u were on welfare I would be even more of a slave. It’s not getting better; it’s getting worse and our tax money is contributing to that

"collectivism provides the impeteus for change."
People have been doing collectivism for a long time, along with other things like slavery. The bad philosophies preceded respect for property, but preceding a thing is not causing a thing. Increasing slavery is not a way to reduce slavery. Slavery and not respecting property rights are actually getting better. We need to extend that, not go backward.

"get this madness over with"
The story of the world becoming decadent causing the gods to destroy the world, except for a righteous few, paving the way for a new pure world crops up everywhere. It's in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the old story know. My guess is it's not because the story was passed from one culture to another but because we're adapted to have this urge. Maybe it had a selective advantage in causing us to keep clean. I'm just guessing.

I am categorically against giving into this flood myth urge. It is especially unreasonable when respect for human rights is increasing along the long arc of human history.

Like junk food, she provides empty calories for people to pat themselves on the back about they would never abide socialism.

I'm reminded of 'Bambi, Amber, and Dawn. All cheerleaders. Hi! my name is Bambi! I am gorgeous but I don't have a brain in my head! Oh, well, is that okay????

Of course they don't feel gratitude. The left told them it is a right to demand free things.

It has gone so far as to the migrant crowd approaching our Southern border is suing the administration for attempting to prevent their entering, on the basis that it is their right to come to the US.

We are getting close to the insanity of the Europeans who openly embrace migrants who are better than their own citizens, they say. They are entitled to the same benefits as the citizenry.

A lot of people like to get something for free, but that desire does not by itself account for either emotionally or explicitly embracing a collectivist political system with its demands for sacrifice as an ethics -- with or without a formal understanding of Marx and the rest of that ilk.

That doesn't mean that the Democrat ethnic hordes don't want us to provide them with what they want for "free", but there is a lot more to the mentality than just wanting free gifts. In fact they tend not to think of it as gifts for free at all, but an impersonal entitlement to be taken care of without regard to the source -- the last thought to enter their minds is to feel gratitude let alone say "thank you". Personal considerations of who is providing the wealth enters only in their resentment, envy, and hatred of the demons they call "rich". That kind of personal demonization doesn't account for the rest of what they embrace. (Murdering the czar was only one example.)

I wonder if anyone ran an analysis on how many of those who want free stuff voted for the left, aka socialists on the way to communists?

Want to bet that not many would be found in the R camp?

Would you care to elaborate what do you mean by "socialist being much more serious and much deeper"?

I grant you that probably only a small percentage of the free stuff crowd heard about Marx or Engels. But even in the Bolshevik revolution in 1919 not many understood what they were fighting about, other than all hated the czar and the first thing they did when won to kill him and his family.

In socialism there is an elite just like in any other "-ism" based society. They need the crowd to rule. The last thing they want if for the crowd to think. Government was doing the thinking, at least that is what the crowd is being told and all they need to do in exchange is being obedient and keep the elites in power.

If a group can get enough individuals to accept their pure ideology and unification of thoughts, they can smash through any political road block by any means necessary. Big Brother knows this. The Nazi knew this. And so does the Democratic Party.

Yes, you are right.

I should not have asked "what were they thinking" since we know with certainty that emotions are the largest component in voting for many people.

What else would be the driving force when you know there were calls for Oprah to be president, as an example. And she is not even the worst choice.

Are you serious about this? You must be.

Unless it is sarcasm.

I agree they wont knowingly commit suicide.
The two parties are marketing organizations each wanting to compete with the other. I dont think either of them really care what their platform is, so long as they "win". Its like Pepsi vs Coke. Each has a base and they are trying to entice the fringe independents to go their way.

The millenians are socialists, as are the hispanics, gays, a lot of blacks, a portion of jews, and probably others. This is why the big push to get central americans to move here and vote.

Buying time of course has the unintended consequence of extending the appeal of collectivism and supporting its power over us all. Look at the effect of the oil revenue on Venezuela. When the people who knew how to get the oil out of the ground left, the socialist regime started to fail. If the oil fields blew up now, maduro would be eliminated right away when he couldnt pay the masses their stipends. Would they magically adopt objectivist solutions- NO. I agree it takes education for that to happen, but the collapse of collectivism provides the impeteus for change.