She is not a socialist. Nor is she does she a take laissez-faire approach. She is the quintessential Third Way politician (even more than her husband).
Saying that a policy is unwise doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily socialist.
Unless socialist means “tax policy I don’t like”. Which it doesn’t.
Seriously now. IRL, who believes that?
Everyone but anarchists and advocates of strict direct democracy.
So how does HC, or anyone for that matter, get away with saying they want to take away wealth from one group for the good of the community and/or themselves? If that isn’t socialism, or one of it’s “broad array of ideologies” then what is it?
Taxation. Are you saying that every form of taxation is socialist?
If so, then which socialist do you think will win the Republican nomination? Comrade McCain? Comrade Huckabee? Comrade Romney? They *all *propose taking away money from the citizens and using it for various social functions.
No I am not saying that every form of taxation is socialist. What I see though are certain ideas of taxation that move more toward true socialism. The very idea that HC thinks she can say the Government knows what’s best for me is BS and sounds socialist to me…
Please fight my honest ignorance, and if you think this question belongs in either a) its own thread or b) in GQ, please tell me:
Why is being labeled a socialist a negative? I’m clearly a political neophyte, as I don’t get the loaded qualities of this term. 
Every form of government thinks they know what’s best. Even the forms that say “it’s best we let individuals make that decision” think they know what’s best for you. Even anarchists, with “it’s best we let individuals make *all *decisions” are still making a judgment on your behalf, by deciding that government programs won’t be available for you. That’s the point of government, to create the most orderly and just society possible.
Every politician is out to make decisions on what’s best for you (well, society in general, which you are a part of). Almost all of them want to pay for their decisions from money they take from their citizens. Everyone agrees on all that, which is the essence of what those quotes mean. What we fight over is how to do that, and what precisely we mean by “just”, “orderly”, and “possible”.
Only in the US could a debate like this happen. Under socialism the state owns the means of production. This was a real live political view for a good chunk of the last century in many parts of the world. These days the position is nearly always scaled back state ownership of only a few key industries, as socialism hasn’t fared particularly well in most of its instantiations, but to the extent that socialist parties have moved in this direction they are really socialist in name only.
The idea that any mainstream politician in the US is socialist in any significant sense is every bit as laughable as the idea that some mainstream politicians are fascist. Even the universal health care plans touted by a few of the candidates fall well short of socialism, as none of them to my knowledge propose nationalizing the health care industry.
Advocating a graduated tax scheme and welfare means you’re not a laissez-faire capitalist, but it by no means makes you a socialist.
All government is based on the assumption that government knows what’s best for you. That does not mean the political sphere is absolutely divided between socialists and anarchists.
ManiacMan Socialism is government ownership of industry, not trying to shift more of a tax burden to the wealthy who pay a far lower proportion of their income than the poor and middle-class. If you can show anywhere the HRC advocates nationalizing private corporations, please do so. If you cannot, then you have no evidence that she is a socialist. Taxes have to come from somewhere, and it’s not as though rich people made their money in a bubble. They did so because they were able to manipulate markets to their benefit. We as a society like to reward them for their plucky cleverness, but they do not have some sort of sanctified virtue that makes them better people who deserve to pay a lower proportion of taxes than I do. If I have to work for them and they can lay me off to drive up their stock prices, or cut my pensions to drive up stock prices, why shouldn’t they have to pay for my safety net when they do so?
It’s little things like that, that keep me from blowing up their means of production with nitrate IEDs. That’s why we have a government that imposes taxes in order to provide services. Those people get to own a disproportionate amount of the wealth of the nation, I get a pittance if they lay me off so that they can take home a $ 100,000 bonus at the end of the year. Everyone’s happy, no one’s blown up because someone else’s children were starving.
Also, note that in 1942, the US Government did not trust its citizens to make the correct judgement as to whether Germany and Japan constituted a sufficient threat to warrant risking their own lives. That’s where Selective Service came from.
As Gorsnak and mswas pointed out, Socialism involves government ownership, not redistributive taxation.
Sigh indeed. Nothing could be further from socialism than liberalism. Are Europeans the only people who study Latin anymore?
Latin is a language as dead as dead can be. It killed the ancient Romans and now it’s killing me. 
It is mainly because:
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“Actually existing socialism” as created by Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist Communist governments has such a dismal track record.
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There is a long tradition in Western and especially American political culture holding socialism of any form evil even if it could work.
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Unlike every other industrial democracy in the world, the U.S. has never had any politically important socialist, social-democratic or labor-based party or movement to keep the leftist POV in the public eye. This is for reasons analyzed by Seymour Martin Lipset and Gary Marks in It Didn’t Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States. See this thread for review/discussion.
:rolleyes: Give it up. You’re in America and it’s 2008. Liberal != libertarian.
Even strict direct democracy involves government, equated with the whole citizen body, making decisions that are binding even on dissident individuals.
There is a necessary tradeoff between individual freedom and collective welfare.
Some people – like me – feel that the role of government is to secure the freedom of its citizens and to minimize taking away those freedoms in the name of the “public good”. Especially when there is no evidence that taking those freedoms (including property and money) away helps out my fellow man in any way.
Anyway, there tends to be a backlash when people are told the government knows better than them how they should act or what to do with their money and property.
I’m curious about the high school that you went to. Did they forgo any sort of civics education?
We elect people to form our government. Some of them vote on legislation. Others make decisions about how to execute, or carry out, efforts to meet our needs, including important decisions about who will be part of the judiciary branch. The judiciary branch makes important decisions about whether or not the way we are doing things is consistent with our Constitution.
What in the world did you think our government did, if not make decisions on our behalf? I’m honestly very curious to get a sense of how you comprehend the world around you.