Quote:
Originally Posted by Flint
. . . and they're socialists, and they're communists, and those things are bad. Because that's what they told me in third grade.
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Flint, darling -- have you since third grade seen any
good things come out of socialism and communism? I doubt you have, since third grade or any other grade.
I also doubt you've ever been past the borders of the United States. I have. This allowed me to see what's out there; to put boots on the ground on the soil of despotic countries.
Cuba, for instance, has the most Potėmkin healthcare system pesos can buy. Sufficient to hoodwink the likes of Michael Moore -- I'm too wise to view his movies, and I seek understanding elsewhere. Fact is, there
isn't a nationalized healthcare system that's worth a damn -- it always turns to rationing of both care and death. Overreach much? You can lower taxes honestly by not overreaching at all. That is anathema to those with an appetite to rule. (Otherwise, they'd have to make do with HOA's.)
People spend their last bolivars for a bus ticket to the borders of Venezuela -- then get off the bus and hike across the border afoot, destitute -- into another third world country. They have some notion they could make a new start.
People defect away from socialism; those socialist countries are not as popular to break into as the capitalist, freemarket United States. I mind me of a guy I just randomly met in a quiet Paris café years before the Berlin Wall came down -- the waiter might have thought it was good to seat the foreigners together, or perhaps figured he could have just one table to clear when we were done with lunch. We got to chatting, in French. Turns out this guy was from East Germany and had slipped across some border or other into the Free World, without the blessing of law. So he broke out, not in. Which point he didn't mind mentioning in public in 1980s Paris.
It's not exactly an abstraction when you've discussed it with a living example.