Outside of his views on abortion and gay marriage, which of his economic proposals violate Church teaching?I have no idea where you got that from my post about Sander’s proposals being at odds with Church teaching.
Abortion and gay marriage is not enough?
No, but abortion and gay marriage are independent of socialism. You can be a pure capitalist and be in favor of abortion and gay marriage. My guess is you would find a lot of support for both abortion and gay marriage in the economics department at the University of Chicago.
Well, a candidate who runs as a true socialist will be guaranteed to not get many votes in America. Perhaps Sanders is toning down his beliefs for that reason. Do you know the name of a socialist candidate for president in 2012? I couldn’t think of one, although there definitely were socialist candidates. Nut fudge fringe.
It would seem to start when the government starts owning the means of production. We certainly are nowhere close to that point.
Republicans and Democrats.
Well, its a little more complicated than that, stinkcat. One party overwhelmingly voted for Obamacare, the other voted against it. Obamacare is often thought to be a precursor to socialized medicine (i.e. it fails, then the government has no choice but to install a single payer system). 1/6 of the economy in control of the government, its obvious that one party supports it (or supports the road toward it) and one party does not.
Of course, the problem is, we already have socialized medicine in this country in the form of Medicare. Something that enjoys widespread bipartisan support. So you cannot claim that the democrats are the socialists and the republicans are against socialism. If the government running health insurance is socialism is a debatable question, but we know that government run health insurance occurs in many places and it has never been condemned by the Church. We can argue about its prudence, but there is nothing to suggest a national health insurance scheme violates Church teaching against socialism.
But which party is more about going down the socialist road - the party which voted 100% for Obamacare (precursor to socialized medicine), or the party which voted 100% to not go down the road to socialized medicine ?
They are both exceeding the speed limit down the road to socialism. Government does not shrink when either one of them is in control.
Both democrats and republicans expanded the federal governments role in healthcare. After all, it was under George Bush that we had the socialistic expansion of medicare. It is not clear how badly the democrats want single payer. They couldn’t even enact single payer in Vermont and that is about as liberal of a state as you can get.
But Republicans have done things about abortion.
Part of the problem is that because of how bad the democrats are on abortion republicans really don’t have to do much and they will still get most of the pro-life vote.
You must not be following the news. There has been great strides in limiting abortions as a result of legislation passed by Republicans over the almost unanimous opposition of Democrats . We had a couple dozen abortion clinics forced to close in Texas alone.
There is a difference between a party which acknowledges that to even suggest reforms to medicare or SS is political suicide at this point, and a party which enthusiastically embraces the expansion of those programs. I am not sure of the wisdom of continuing a discussion with someone who cannot recognize that distinction.
tomarin, the Republican legislatures across the country have passed pro-life measures, and of course they have the support of many women who are pro-life. Of course the most important thing would be to overturn Roe V Wade, but that won’t happen as long as Catholic Democrats keep voting for presidents like Obama who choose pro-abortion justices.
So you are saying that the government will shrink if a republican is elected in 2016? Is that what has happened historically when we have had republican presidents, the governmment gets smaller? Of course, that is not what happens. Republican governments spend just as much as democrat governments. Republicans do like to cut taxes, but then again they don’t like to pay for them with lowered spending. Neither side has a history of being fiscally responsible. The one exception is when there is divided government. When nobody can agree the growth of spending slows.
You ignored my points, and then attributed a point to me that I wasn’t making. I don’t really see the point in continuing, stinkcat. Good luck, though.
The point is both parties are big government, liberal parties.
Hope it happens soon. Per Huffington Post, perhaps next year.