ANDERSON has it on good authority that both McCain and Obama are plotting to tax rich Americans and redistribute that money to poorer Americans, such as soldiers, civil-service workers, and Social Security beneficiaries.

So "Bushy"

And what about the children of the poorest of our citizens? With no health care? Are they not, too, the weakest of our members?

Yes that's why you lib's have already given them heath care it's called planned parenthood, but some how I don't think murdering them by the millions is gonna make us be better at being judged by this,

Palin said something along the line of "You can always judge a society by how it treats its weakest members."

so while you can insinuate about the log in your opponents eye it looks kind of silly with a global Eco-structure stuck in the jackass you use sometime use for a mouth.

Socialism is where the state has ownership of the means of production.

Well, the McCain camp is making a lot of noise about Obama being a socialist, but as far as I know he has no plans to seize the means of production.

Red Herring, anyone?

This is a bit off topic, but I was struck by Palin's comments about the need to take care of special needs kids (a subject I can relate to, I have 2 close relatives who are disabled, I know all to well what families face). I agree with Palin.

I don't have a major problem with this.

Palin said something along the line of "You can always judge a society by how it treats its weakest members."

I guess alot hinges on what you call a "weak member" and what one means by how they are treated. Treating them fairly, ensuring they have the same rights everyone else does, and have opportunities to get ahead, no problems. A free ride? I have a problem.

But is she not proposing socialism?

Socialism is where the state has ownership of the means of production. So no, and neither are you, at least in what you've written here.

Palin said something along the line of "You can always judge a society by how it treats its weakest members."

I agree with her here too.

But is she not proposing socialism? All families will be forced to subsidized those with special needs kids?

And what about the children of the poorest of our citizens? With no health care? Are they not, too, the weakest of our members?

What about my relatives? I don't know what we would do without government assistance. My wife and I are already putting out enough money to help take care of them that our retirement is jeopardized. Is help for them some of the evil socialism that McCain/Palin want to abolish?

I wish that Palin's compassion for special needs kids extended to all of the weakest members of our society. The strong do indeed have a responsibility to protect the weak.

Our tax system constantly takes money from one group of people and gives it to different groups of people.

As I argued in a previous thread, the system is already distributionist in this sense: the wealthy enjoy high tax savings (relative to income) because the rest of us disenjoy low tax savings (relative to income). That's an income distribution in one direction. If their tax rate goes up, and our's goes down, that's distributionist in the other direction. I prefer the latter, as I'm sure the wealthy enjoy the former. On either construal, there is some income distribution. Only the ideological would characterize higher taxes on the wealthy and lower on the not-wealthy as "redistribution."

Our tax system constantly takes money from one group of people and gives it to different groups of people.

I think that's a feature of, uh, probably every tax system that's ever been devised, don't you think?