I am really "new" to politics and really never studied or paid attention to it that much unitil this past election. My question is to the guys that are more familar with the history of politics is, have you ever seen this nation this close to a socialist society? It is really starting to scare me!!!
Side note: I saw on the front page in the Birmingham News this morning that the state is considering giving free cell phones to poor. Possibly over a half a million in alabama! Brings back up the AUT question- How do you get people that are given everything they need to start working to earn eveything they need?
The short answer to your question is no, not in my lifetime but we've been slouching towards socialism for a long time really.
It probably goes back to the War Between the States in my opinion. Lincoln's republican (note small "r") ideology led him to the conclusion that the States were (are) subservient to the Federal government, that is; that the States exist for the Federal government rather than the opposite view which was held by most Southerners at the time (I should note that this was always a fundamental difference in the role of government going back to Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson; which is why our republic has a two-party system today. Hamilton believed in a very strong Federal government whereas Jefferson believed governance should be closer to the people...classical federalism versus classical democracy, but I digress.)
Lincoln was successful in redefining classical American republicanism in terms of making it less democratic and more federalized and centralized; in other words supplanting political power from the people and placing it in the authority of a centralized federal government and himself I might add. He gave himself powers (along with the Federal government) that the Founding Fathers had not intended for the presidency...unprecedented power to suspend civil rights (specifically of Southerners), suspend habeas corpus, spend without Congressional approval, blockade part of what he defined as his own country (the South), imprison without trial, and implement an income tax (the first).
And because the United States won the war it further validated his radical ideology; it was the beginning of Socialism in America. He basically redefined republicanism (note small "r" again) along the lines of a centralized government overseeing the people in which the true political power should reside as our Founder's wanted it.
I should point out that at that time in this nation's history the Democrat party was much more classically democrat along the lines of Jefferson's ideology. Whereas the radical, new "Republican" Party was much more leftist than the one we are familiar with today. A gradual evolution of the two parties occurred which later made the two parties basically switch ideologies to the familiar one's that we know today. But that change really was not complete until Reagan ran on the grass roots ideology of Jeffersonian democratic ideas (that is political authority resides more with the people and the States).
Anyway, socialism reared it's ugly head again during the 1930's and the Great Depression. That horrible time in this nation's history gave the Democrats and FDR a chance to make some radical changes and introduce the Federal government as the entity to save us all in the form of his New Deal programs. There has been tons written on the effects of these programs both pro and con but the bottom line these programs ingrained in the public psyche the idea that the Federal government is the answer to every problem...social, economic, and otherwise.
Now we find ourselves in another bad situation and, not surprisingly, the public have turned to an individual, party (who now all but control the government), and Federal government to save us all. It's as if no one learned anything from what Reagan tried to teach us. And the current Republican leadership has lost it's way. So we just blindly follow this "Pied Piper", demi-god called The ONE with no regards towards the effect he and his philosophical allies will have on our freedoms.
God help us.
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