Quote Originally Posted by JakeMartinez
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of happiness do not add up to just capitalism. That is a ludicrous assumption that stems from the anti-communist, anti-socialist propaganda that defined the Cold War.
"life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" has nothing to do with capitalism. it is nothing more than a statement of intent, emphasizing the importance of the individual over the needs of government or the so-called best interests of the people as a whole. it stems from the simple belief that no man or organization has the right to infringe upon the freedoms of any individual. this includes all freedoms, even those that might be labeled as greed or callousness.

though capitalism is never prescribed in any of our founding documents, it is the natural choice for a nation whose creed is the protection of the individuality of all its citizens. with centralized socialist controls the individual is placed secondary to the will of the government and personal success is subject to the whims of a group with the power of life and death over the population. it is a small step to the totalitarian measures that this country was founded to escape from.

with the freedom to prosper must come the freedom to fail, only a fool or a politician could ever believe otherwise. the equality that that declaration spoke of was not the tawdry materialism of a roof over your head and shoes on your feet, but the much more fundamental equality of each man's right to exist without the fear of unwarranted persecution and the opportunity to freely make a better life for himself.

Socialism allows for just as much liberty and happiness as free market society.
what capitalism offers that socialism can never equal is the opportunity to thrive beyond the constraints of a self-serving government. socialism's downfall is and always has been the naive belief that governments can be trusted. government already has control of military force and the power of the judicial and legislative systems. to allow them to totally dominate the labor and materials of commerce leaves the people at the mercy of an uncaring bureaucracy, with no power of their own.

the failures of both systems are the failures of the people themselves. avarice and an unquenchable thirst for power are the faults of humanity, not of economic ideologies. in an enlightened population any economic system could be made to work, but we are far from such goals. the free markets of capitalism avoid the problems of the consolidation of all the different forms of power that socialism can only aggravate.

Americans, in general, tend to have a "Fuck you, we're the best on the planet" attitude, which not only keeps us from even giving other systems a good look, but is eating away at the foundations of our nation.
such generalizations may seem cool and they may even get you laid, but they are as disingenuous as any such statements are bound to be. the abuses you rail against are not the sole domain of this country, rabid nationalism rears its ugly head in every corner of the world. the real cancers eating away at the soul of this country are the total lack of personal responsibility that is engendered by our growing cult of entitlement and the petty envies of those who fear the power of the individual.

None of the founding fathers would be proud of a race of ignorant, selfish, entitled assholes who think that economically dominating the world is the best way to spread equality and freedom, or would go to war just because a country disagrees with our way of thinking.
i don't doubt that our founders would be appalled at the current state of the experiment they began. our species began as creatures of the herd, huddled together for safety. this country would seem to be an attempt to move past this existence of apathetic bovine meanderings and cease our dependence on the mediocrity of the mob. instead of following their lead and embracing the concept of the superiority of the individual, we have merely lapsed back into the primitive habits of our ancestors and created ever larger herds to graze over the dwindling countryside.