I just watched about 2 minutes of the O’Reilly factor (the most I could take) and saw that Billy-boy was complaining that a recent Gallup Poll didn’t define socialism. He claimed that this lack of a definition resulted in people “falsely” believing that our government wasn’t moving toward his hated socialism.
So I looked it up for him. Here’s the correct definition of socialism care of good ol’ Webster’s Dictionary:
1 : any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
2 a : a system of society or group living in which there is no private property b : a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state
3 : a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done
Now I have to ask, provided these proper definitions, are we moving toward socialism?
The government doesn’t own any businesses involved in production that I can think of. (Well, Congress might, but I don’t think hot air is in all that much demand.) The only goods the government distributes are…well…nothing. So definition one; nope.
We still have private property, so 2a; nope. Definition 2b, see my paragraph above.
Now definition 3 might have some merit. There is an unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done. By that I mean that people who actually do the most work get paid the least and can’t buy any goods and people who work the least get the most pay and can buy whatever the hell they want.
So, yeah, maybe Bill is right…and maybe monkeys might fly out my butt.
