Red State vs Blue State -- drawing battlelines?

Just for clarity as much as anything else, it's worth pointing out that very few liberals argue for socialism. At the heart of socialist philosophy, is the vital concept of the control of the means of production by the state. (Complete control - not just taxing profits or passing safety laws or giving workers rights). Socialism (or its close cousin, communism) are easy words to use to vilify the liberal side of things - in the same way that we vilify the right as being fascists from time to time.It's rarely accurate though - the majority of liberals in my experience are more than content with a form of capitalism which seeks simply to curb obscene greed and obscene levels of wealth, and to create systems whereby we institutionalise fairness, support and general decency towards our fellow man.I know that you do espouse principles of decency towards our fellow man Faith - I just don't believe it will happen widely enough if we leave it to individuals to do themselves. A liberal democracy does a massively better job of it. And for me, that's something we should aspire to.

Not really, no. This from Socialism - Wikipedia This is pretty much my point - the term "socialism" is used to attack people with decent, human, liberal values of the sort you list (often where a number of those values are to some extent shared by the people supporting the right wing). The intention is to demonise people on the left with reference to the failed attempts at socialism/communism in Russia, China et al. In other words, if you're on the left, you must be socialist and want to steal everyone's property and appropriate it to the state.Of course, that's what hardly anyone on the liberal left wants - but our calls for decent values of the sort you mention get drowned out by the outraged cries of the right wing commentators that we're socialists and want to have the state control everything.I think that a calm, attentive conversation with people on the other side, is essential to progressing. Both sides need to really understand each other, and see that there are in fact areas of common ground and compromise. And part of understanding is looking to avoid incorrect labels like socialist and fascist - very few on the left are socialist, and I believe very few voting for those on the right are fascist.Edited by vimesey, : Typo