I'm puzzled...what's not "free-thinking" about being left wing? I'm left wing (sort of), and I don't know anyone more free-thinking than myself. It's my impression that freedom can function equally well with or without socialism, if that's the issue...but can social responsibility do so?

What good is freedom on an island of cutthroats and gangsters?

What I mean by that is...a socialist structure undertakes an action in order to seek a specific result rather than to seek a profit. If the intention is to educate people on an equal basis, for example, socialism sets up structures that will achieve that, regardless of whether the people are rich or poor. We have that kind of socialism in both the USA and Canada (universal education)...and Cuba has it as well. Mexico doesn't to nearly as great an extent, as far as I know. Of those countries literacy (and equality) is the highest in Cuba and the lowest (by far) in Mexico. Poverty is worst in Mexico. Is it good for people to be free to starve and live in utter degradation under the heel of a few rich families and foreign businesses? Do you call it "freedom"?

If you have a society with no socialized education system, then only the children of the rich get an education at all. This is a handy way of keeping the poor uneducated and powerless forever, as in pre-revolutionary France. It's not freedom. It's autocracy.

In a society with no socialized police force or court system you get only what protection you can afford to hire. The rule of the gun, in other words, not the rule of law.

We have a socialized police force and court system in Canada and the USA.

If money is the final arbiter of all decisions then where does that lead? In my opinion it leads not to freedom but to oppression, corruption, absolute rule and catastrophe. This can be seen happening in many places throughout the world right now.

Socialism attempts to equalize people's basic opportunities and ensure their basic civil rights. Unrestrained large scale capitalism attempts to live off them like a bloodsucking, ravening parasite. I have no objection to small scale local capitalism whatsoever, as long as it obeys normal civil law (which is another collective socialist structure which we cannot do without...unless we wish to return to barbarism).

Socialism has gone seriously wrong whenever it identified itself with a single political party and attempted to socialize everything and subordinate everything to that one party, but that is not what I am suggesting should be done.

One party rule is a disaster under either capitalism or socialism...it leads to a self-perpetuating dictatorship. Democracy can function best when it combines both systems, and has either more than one party or, better yet, no political parties at all (in which case you vote not for a party representative but for non-partisan candidates from your community).

Tom Paine had a number of socialist beliefs precisely because he was a democrat (small "d"), and those beliefs integrated very well with his desire for liberty and justice for all.

You cannot have liberty in the absence of collective responsibility. You could if people were all saints, but they are not.

- LH