Red Kitteh asks: I can has Socialism nows?

(Bob Cesca)
I wonder if Glenn Beck and the other far-right Neo-McCarthyites are willing to give up "socialist" government-run services like:

-Public schools
-Police departments
-Postal service
-Fire departments
-Roads
-Social Security
-Medicare
-The military
-Homeland Security
-The CIA
-The FBI
-The NSA
-The Alaskan Pipeline
-National Parks
-National Historic Sites

Any other pinko services the Republicans would gladly hand over to the finely honed talents of private industries like Blackwater and KBR?

(Newsweek)
We Are All Socialists Now

The U.S. government has already—under a conservative Republican administration—effectively nationalized the banking and mortgage industries. That seems a stronger sign of socialism than $50 million for art. Whether we want to admit it or not—and many, especially Congressman Pence and Hannity, do not—the America of 2009 is moving toward a modern European state.

We remain a center-right nation in many ways—particularly culturally, and our instinct, once the crisis passes, will be to try to revert to a more free-market style of capitalism—but it was, again, under a conservative GOP administration that we enacted the largest expansion of the welfare state in 30 years: prescription drugs for the elderly. People on the right and the left want government to invest in alternative energies in order to break our addiction to foreign oil. And it is unlikely that even the reddest of states will decline federal money for infrastructural improvements.

If we fail to acknowledge the reality of the growing role of government in the economy, insisting instead on fighting 21st-century wars with 20th-century terms and tactics, then we are doomed to a fractious and unedifying debate. The sooner we understand where we truly stand, the sooner we can think more clearly about how to use government in today's world.