Socialized medicine, pensions, and the like are fine things. I'm a teacher; The public school system is probably the biggest socialist institution in America. But these are not the same a a communist (or socialist for that matter) government. Orthodox communism is no better or worse than Carnegie-style capitalism. If you want to see what an orthodox communist government does to a country or a culture, go visit Russia and large parts of Poland today (stay out of the cities in Poland, they have changed). Talk with people who lived under Stalinist and Krushchev and Brezhnev regimes. Look up that picture of the man standing in front of the tank on Tianenman Square in Peking just a few years ago. Communism cannot exist without despotic power, and that leads directly to hell, every time. An enlightened culture (which I dearly hope to live long enough to see somewhere) would take the best ideas from many sources and make them their own.

Left wing and wiser than ever, Chet W.