While on the campaign trail this week, Elizabeth Warren, who is running for Senate in Massachusetts, was called a socialist whore because of her statements regarding laying the intellectual foundation for the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. What was most perplexing, the gentleman who called Ms. Warren a socialist whore has been unemployed since February 2010 and may be living off of unemployment benefits or food stamps, which are socialized programs. If he is one of the few lucky folks to have savings to live off of, then he may be unemployed as a result of his job being outsourced, or if he was employed in real estate during the real estate bubble, then he doesn’t have a job due to questionable activity on behalf of Wall Street currently under investigation.
Whatever the case, he has obviously fallen victim to the insidious rhetoric relentlessly assailing the American public through the various media channels.
Calling a Democrat a socialist is as extreme as calling a Republican a fascist. On both allegations, the state maintains ultimate control of business. In a socialist republic, the wealth gets redistributed, and in a fascist state, the wealth stays concentrated within the state. In a balanced democracy, there are social programs that maintain the general welfare of the public, which are run by non-partisan, regulated bureaucratic organizations in order to prevent abuse. There is no question that abuse can occur within government bureaucracies that are run by human beings who are imperfect. In the United States, social programs include the military, the police, fire and rescue as well as social programs that keep people from falling into desperation. It is not in the scope of this piece to explain the national security issues of people who become desperate, but suffice it to say that not only is taking care of the poor the righteous thing to do, it also keeps a nation stable.
No one is looking to redistribute wealth so that free loaders get by on doing nothing and those that work hard get ripped off. This is nothing more than fear mongering by those who are in an extreme power grabbing race. One of the issues that the Occupy Wall Street and overall Occupy Movement is bringing attention to is that Congress has been bought. There are a small group of people, called by the Occupy Movement demonstrators the 1%, who are lobbying hard for power by systematically taking away the protections that keep Americans from being manipulated and abused for the purpose of making money.
Bottom line, for a country to thrive, there has to be a balance between social programs and a free market economy. One makes the other successful and vice versa. If you had a total free market economy, then people run the risk of becoming slaves because there would be no laws or regulations to keep that from happening. If everything were to be privatized, then all people except for the privileged elite owning the private organizations run the risk of being abused. Humans were capable of enslaving other humans in the past; they are capable of doing so now. Why on earth would we put ourselves in a situation like that because of someone’s word who we do not know? Rhetoric is rhetoric and nothing more.