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Originally posted by: pjstroh
The person DonDiego quoted to start this thread was in favor of a healthcare system that is far more socialist than anything Bernie Sanders advocates...
Thatcher on the government run insurance/provider/doctor/pharmacy system in the UK..“I believed that the NHS was a service of which we could genuinely be proud. It delivered a high quality of care — especially when it came to acute illnesses — and at a reasonably modest unit cost, at least compared with some insurance-based systems.”
Link
Thatcher on the socialist government of the uk taking action to fight climate change.....
As David Frum writes, “Margaret Thatcher, climate pioneer: Educated in chemistry at Oxford University, the late British PM was one of the first world leaders to sound the alarm on climate change. “ And Annie-Rose Strasser reminds us that Thatcher once warned, “The danger of global warming is as yet unseen but real enough for us to make changes and sacrifices so that we do not live at the expense of future generations.”
and the socialist dictator that DonDiego quoted also supported gun control beyond anything Bernie Sanders has proposed..... the British government passed the Firearms Act of 1988 which outlawed semi-automatic weapons, allowed the police to refuse a weapon to anyone they deemed to be unfit and gave the Home Secretary the power to add additional guns to the list of banned weapons as the Secretary saw fit.
and Thatcher's greatest legacy is probably her socialist reform of the UK's education system where she stripped away power from local governments and instituted federally controlled curriculums, testing, and school inspections. Think "common core" on steroids.
Perhaps DonDiego should find someone a little less socialist to present his argument against Socialism. Theres gotta be some good Ayn Rand quotes somewhere, right?
Huh ! Why should DonDiego "find someone else"?
Definition: socialism __any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
Prime Minister Thatcher commented on Socialism: "The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money."
__This declaration is a cogent, succinct, definitive statement addressing the nature of Socialism. The quote sums up nearly perfectly a major defect of Socialism, . . . that taking from the more productive members of a society and "redistributing" to the less productive eventually leads to less production overall as those somewhere in the middle realize they can get something for nothing by being less productive.
It's human nature.
__And the statement is pithy. It is loaded with pith. If there's one thing poor old DonDiego respects it is pith. DonDiego would like to think he is full of pith.
That poor old DonDiego chose to quote Prime Minister Thatcher does not imply that he is in total agreement with everything else she ever spake.
Although she often spake wisely:
[On wealth]
"No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions - he had money too."
[On liberty]
There can be no liberty unless there is economic liberty.
[On Socialism, again]
To cure the British disease with socialism was like trying to cure leukaemia with leeches.
(n.b. "British Disease" refers to the low industrial productivity and frequent labor strifes that plagued Britain in the 1960s and 1970s.)
[On free speech]
"I love argument, I love debate. I don't expect anyone just to sit there and agree with me, that's not their job."
(DonDiego pr'bly doesn't agree with everything Prime Minister Thatcher thought, and that's OK.)
Prime Minister Thatcher's quote on "Socialism" is an excellent argument against it. One need't agree with everything else she said to recognize that.
Of course, Ayn Rand wasn't so bad at describing Socialism either:
"Socialism is the doctrine that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that his life and his work do not belong to him, but belong to society, that the only justification of his existence is his service to society, and that society may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be its own tribal, collective good."
Just a bit too hoity-toity and philosophical for simple poor old DonDiego.
An aside:
The other issues which pjstroh cited, . . . controlling climate change, gun control, and nationalization of control of education, . . . are not directly related to Socialism, the topic of this thread. DonDiego recognizes the speed and effectiveness with which a Socialist State can respond to such issues addressing "control" of society. He does not opine it is always a good thing.
