We Are All Socialists Now?

Through buying vast blocks of stock in the nation's largest banks, our government has come close to nationalizing this industry. If we don't sell this stock when these troubles are through, then we will have taken a significant steps towards socialism.

It has taken us generations to get to this European Style nanny-state, and it may take generations to reverse this trend. Reversal is important because as a (European) socialist country; the inevitable poor economy will cost us our leadership of the free world, and force us to become a client state of a more successful country like China or India.

In addition if we continue to educate citizens to be dependent on government for every need, we will lose the pioneering spirit and the inventiveness that has carried us through the last few decades.

We Are All Socialists Now | Newsweek Business | Newsweek.com: "The interview was nearly over. on the Fox News Channel last Wednesday evening, Sean Hannity was coming to the end of a segment with Indiana Congressman Mike Pence, the chair of the House Republican Conference and a vociferous foe of President Obama's nearly $1 trillion stimulus bill. How, Pence had asked rhetorically, was $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts going to put people back to work in Indiana? How would $20 million for 'fish passage barriers' (a provision to pay for the removal of barriers in rivers and streams so that fish could migrate freely) help create jobs? Hannity could not have agreed more. 'It is … the European Socialist Act of 2009,' the host said, signing off. 'We're counting on you to stop it. Thank you, congressman.'

. . . Whether we want to admit it or not—and many, especially Congressman Pence and Hannity, do not—the America of 2009 is moving toward a modern European state.

We remain a center-right nation in many ways—particularly culturally, and our instinct, once the crisis passes, will be to try to revert to a more free-market style of capitalism—but it was, again, under a conservative GOP administration that we enacted the largest expansion of the welfare state in 30 years: prescription drugs for the elderly. People on the right and the left want government to invest in alternative energies in order to break our addiction to foreign oil. And it is unlikely that even the reddest of states will decline federal money for infrastructural improvements.

. . .
Bush brought the Age of Reagan to a close; now Obama has gone further, reversing Bill Clinton's end of big government. The story, as always, is complicated. Polls show that Americans don't trust government and still don't want big government. They do, however, want what government delivers, like health care and national defense and, now, protections from banking and housing failure. During the roughly three decades since Reagan made big government the enemy and "liberal" an epithet, government did not shrink. It grew. But the economy grew just as fast, so government as a percentage of GDP remained about the same."

Baby boomers need to consider whether retiring in the soft lap of the Nanny-State is worth the cost to future generations. The current economic stimulus legislation effectively borrows tax dollars from our grand-children (and their children) - a cost they may find difficult to bear.