Comment on "Why Social Democracies Don't Work" by Daniel M. Harrison

Dear Daniel,

Have you even been following what has happened in America that has led to a military invasion and the deaths of American service men and women based on fixed intelligence? The United States government has not, is not and will not engage in the kind of diplomacy necessary to end this conflict. The military can only do so much. The U.S. Armed forces have never been configured to maintain indefinite control of an occupied territory for one simple reason, we, as the "beacon of freedom," were never meant to be an imperial power. Our armed force's mission has been one of stopping aggression not quelling unrest. Not even during the civil war did the U.S. Army occupy the South in any numbers like what is going on in Iraq.

As for your claim that the violence is not worse now in Iraq than before the invasion, it is a convenient argument considering the fact that the U.S. military has no desire to investigate the death toll its campaign has created and any civilian authorities wanting to do so are taking their lives in their own hands due to the VIOLENCE. However, the British medical journal "the Lancet" did conduct a study on death rates and causes both before and after the invasion. Although most conservatives, being impervious to facts that disprove their arguments, try to poo-poo this study, the fact remains that the mortality rate in Iraq has increased nearly 100% when compared to pre-invasion Iraq. The major cause of death in pre-invasion Iraq was myocardial infarction, post-war it was, you guessed it, violence, more specifically U.S. air strikes. "Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: cluster sample survey", The Lancet, Volume 364, Number 9448, 20 November 2004

In recent weeks, Iraqi dead are being found in the streets of Baghdad in groups of 20 or more. These people didn't form suicide pacts, they were killed execution style by roving "death squads" in, let me say it again, BAGHDAD!

A number of your claims regarding liberal societies are also, not surprisingly, completely wrong.

I'm not familiar with the revolutions in Columbia and Zimbabwe, (although having some idea of the history of European colonialism in Africa, I doubt the story is much different), but the story of the Castro's rise to power in Cuba was not written in a vacuum. The story of Cuba is one not only of Castro and Che Guevara, but of the United Fruit Company and U.S. gambling and tourism industries. Before you start screaming that I am a Castro worshipper let me tell you that is nto the case. The Cuban people traded an economic dictator for a political one, neither of which is a good deal for anyone. FDR said, "a neccessitous man is not a free one." (from Cass Sundstein's book "The Second Bill of Rights" FDR's Unfinished Revolution") The Cuban people, like most of the Latin world today worked long hours for little pay while the bosses, both Cuban and American, and the American tourists lived like kings on the profits and products that their work produced. Into this situation stepped Castro, who used the people's needy condition to create a revolution that, liek I said replaced one form of dictator for another."

I love this statement, "Both countries (Israel and the U.S.) were after all built by nothing other than the hands of their settling immigrants, out of the pockets of their settling immigrants, and subsequently both constitute enormous and previously unprecedented rapid economic expansion. This is a triumph of the human spirit, of the collective power of the human mind, surely, not a bastardisation of it. It is most certainly a triumph of economic potential." This is true if, "by nothing", you mean nothing other than slave labor, be it African slaves propping up the Southern economy, exploited Chinese immigrants building the railroads, Mexican immigrants picking agricultural products, Irish and German immigrants toiling away in the coal mines and steel plants of the Midwest, or women and children working their fingers to the bone in the textile mills and dressmaking plants of the Northeast. The myth of the bootstrapper making his way in the world without any help from anyone is exactly that a myth. After a certain point, it becomes necessary to make your money off someone else's back to do more than just survive.

As for Israel, let's set aside the Bible for a minute, since in addition to the Quran, the texts of the Buddha's teachings, the Bible is just another holy text and really not a justification for public policy, despite the fact that I consider myself a Christian. Like the Native Americans, there were people that lived on the land that we now call Israel, or did you think that all those Arabs got tired of cris-crossing the desert in their camel caravans and decided that they wanted to live in tent cities in the West Bank? Despite the Torah's claims that the Jews are "God's Chosen People," all religions claim to espouse the virtues of charity and understanding. Not to necessarily condone the response, but what is understanding about what was done to the Palestinian people?

You say, "In trying to better the majority, they create a powerful few at the very top, rich from the assets of the state and deprive the many who built those assets with their bare hands." Are you serious? In the U.S., your shining model of capitalist society, over 90% of the nation's wealth is concentrated in the hands of the top 2%, and they've done it by massaging the mechanisms of government, not by the sweat of their brow or their hard work.

Farm subsidies meant to help the small farmer retain their family farms arenow gobbled up by ag giants like ADM and Tyson foods. Energy companies get to participate in secret energy policy meetings and write the rules and regulations that allow Exxon Mobil to post record profits while simultaneously claiming economic poverty to justify jacking up gas prices. Right and left companies reneg on their pension obligations throwing loyal workers with decades of service into poverty while simultaneously lobbying against universal health care and social security programs.

You also say, "The very reason science exists at the level it does today is because of capitalist market forces - the combined environmental forces of competition and capital have led us, over the past two hundred (plus) years, to more scientific discoveries than we have experinced in millenia before." In the United States, the majority of scientific research is carried on at the university level, supported by government education funds and ever increasing student tuition, (pushing the possibility of lower income youth getting a college education further out of the realm of possibility). It is only after a viable technology is discovered in the university lab that your vaunted capitalist forces swoop in and through the recruitment of the professor or grad student and the aggressive patenting of the process that the technology enters the business world. Meanwhile, the capitalists reap all the rewards and government and the students bear all the risk. For an example. look at the rise of genetics and biotechnology research and patenting in the late 80's and early 90's.

The simple fact is that the attempt at "unrestrained" capitalism as practiced by the current Bush administration has been shown to be an abject failure. An economic surplus has been transformed into a three trillion dollar debt that will be visited upon our great grandchildren unless the disastrous Bush tax cuts are repealed. At this current moment, 46 million people are without health insurance, the vast majority of which work full-time jobs and still can't afford it, and that number is growing rapidly. An entire city, arguably the cultural jewel of the South, was destroyed by a natural disaster and heading into the next hurricane season insurance companies, claiming poverty are cancelling hurricane policies left and right. And. most enjoyably, the Republican party is tearing itself apart as the unapologetically xenophobic wing fights with the rabidly pro-business wing over the issue of illegal immigrants.

It is time to give up the myth of the bootstrapper and relegate the notion that each and every one of us may someday become as rich as Bill Gates to the dustbin and deal with the realities that face us in this new century. We need a base level of education including a college education for each and every child in the world so that they can compete in a new global economy. We need to ensure a minimum level of health care for every citizen so that a single stay in a hospital won't automatically lead to destitution and indentured servitude. There are certain ideals that we should all be able to agree upon whether we are liberal or conservative and stop quibbling over these ignorant and outdated labels that serve only to divide us. Unfortunately, for conservatives, that means coming to the realization that there are some things that require a social democratic solution, because the market doesn't always provide what we as citizens require.