It is possible for the USA to recover our freedoms or, with so many Americans supporting socialism; will we become more like North Korea?

[KelleyNice]

I had a long talk with my great-grandfather about the freedoms that existed when he was a child that no longer exist. Every boy in school had a pocket knife. Switch blades over a certain length were not permitted. He could buy ammunition, guns fireworks, or chemicals.

There was no busing. He walked or rode his bicycle to grade and Junior High. For a nickel or 7 cents, he would ride a bus to and from high school and the buses ran every 15 minutes. Sales tax was 2% and the Zoo was free. Now sales tax is 10% and the Zoo cost $18. Even at age 6, he could go anywhere alone and would often go the playground a few blocks away.

The government wasn’t into everything especially medical so doctors and hospitals were far cheaper. In the early to mid 1960s, he cut his head and the stitches at the hospital were $35. He had a car accident and was in the hospital for 5 days. The bill was $500, $12 a day for room plus the doctor and other expenses. The ambulance was $10 but it was a hearse. He had insurance that paid 80% and they didn’t dictate what medical and doctor services they would pay for. He submitted the receipts and they paid.

Yeonmi Park said we need to protect our freedom because it only took 3 generation for North Korea to become a 1984 socialist hellhole. Freedoms Americans have such as buying blue jeans, choosing your job, or choosing a hair style doesn’t exist in North Korea. Nevertheless, in one of her videos she listed ways in that America is turning into North Korea. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiSmr-pOIt8

[Aerissa_Jade]

So many people want the government to do for them what they won't do for themselves.

They have the right to anything they want, want healthcare... buy insurance, they already have that right to do that. Even before the ACA, anyone could literally go buy it.

If you do not make enough, that isn't the governments fault or your employer its your fault for working at a dead end job that doesn't offer benefits or paying enough, go find a better job.

The more people want the government to do for them what they refuse to do themselves the more freedom people give up.

I'm not sure, we can recover now though... but rural America where I am, is very different from the big cities. Even if freedoms are lost in the cities doesn't mean the country people will give up their rights and good freaking luck trying to enforce laws here. Make prohibition look like a walk in the park.

[Adaeva]

I watch Yeonmi Park's video that you posted. That is what is happening. Her video plus the freedoms your father had that no longer exist proves that is the direction we are headed. It may take two or three more generations but the USA will become much like North Korea. And, the fools that claim otherwise and tens of millions like them are the problem.

[Robbey]

There is less than zero possibility of the US becoming socialist in the sense of North Korea or any other authoritarian regime. Extreme differences in both culture and material conditions guarantee that. Also, absolutely no-one in the US has any interest whatsoever in the US becoming like North Korea.

It’s possible, although unlikely, that the US might incorporate some social democratic reforms such as are found in Western Europe, Israel, and some Commonwealth countries.

More likely, California goes on its own. And the Pacific Northwest, New England, and a couple other spots approach Canada to be incorporated. The consequences of which would be, at the very least, for what’s left of the US (especially the south) would be economically catastrophic as the “blue” states control a very disproportionate amount of American wealth.

Honestly, if you’re worried about authoritarianism in the US, the far-right is far more problematic. In the US, the far-left is very, very marginal. The center-left is small, but not especially powerful. Liberals have a great deal of power in the US. However, most liberals in the US, like liberals everywhere, happily exist in the center-to-center right and are hardly a threat to the status quo. Then there are conservatives, who are mostly center-right to right, and like liberals have a great deal of power in the US and are hardly a threat to the status quo.

[Cubus]

If most people are conservatives than why Democrats won popular vote in all but one presidental election in last 30 years?

[Robbey]

@Cubus I never claimed most people were conservatives.

[Cubus]

"far-left is very, very marginal. "
"The center-left is small, but not especially powerful"
"most liberals in the US, like liberals everywhere, happily exist in the center-to-center right and are hardly a threat to the status quo"

[Robbey]

@Cubus How is that claiming most people are conservatives?

[Cubus]

Who do you have left?

[Robbey]

@Cubus if you read what I wrote, I only quantified the far-left and the center-left (marginal and small, respectively). I did not quantify either liberals or conservatives. For both of those, I mentioned that they have power, where they fall on the political spectrum, and that they do not threaten the status quo.

[Cubus]

Liberals in USA are also small. It just takes to look at last presidential elections.

These elections also tells you that Demo crats won popular vote in last 7 out of eight presidential elections. So your statement that far-left and center-left in USA are small doesn't match the real life.

[Robbey]

@Cubus That only makes sense if you’re under the impression that the Democrats are center-left to far-left.

[Cubus]

Most are center-left, except for people like Joe Manchin who are a minority.

[jhl_x]

I think the only way for the US to get back into their feet is to split into several different smaller countries and start minding their own business. In its current state, the federation seems like it has no standard regarding what should be up for the states or DC to decide, so it's one side of unsustainable. My country, Brazil, is in the other side of unsustainable, where our DC decides everything and some states hate each other since they're basically forced to finance each other through taxes unfairly collected and redistributed.

[CountessSarah]

Tell me you don't know what socialism is without telling me you don't know what socialism is.

Statians use 'socialism' as a scary buzzword without any understanding of its meaning. Socialism is good for a country. Unless you want the wealthy endlessly squireling away money while the poor get poorer, people dying because they can't afford medical care they need from a system that values money over life, and people becoming homeless because they were out of work for a few weeks...

Don't listen to right wing fear mongering. They are not your friends. They oppose socialism and try to turn it into a bogeyman because they want a stranglehold on your country. Don't be so easily mislead.
The right wing convinces you that the left wing is 'turning your country into North Korea' all while it's the right wing doing that, not the left.

[RolandCuthbert]

I don't know if you are 13 years old or not. But nothing you posted resembles rational thinking. Did your great-great grandfather tell you that;

1. Women could not apply for credit cards without their husband's consent.

2. American Indians could not legally speak their own language until the 1970s.

3. Many non-"Whites" like Vincent Chin, Emmitt Till, etc. were basically tortured to death or lynched with their murderers set free.

4. The right to vote was not guaranteed for many groups.

5. Many states restricted women's access to contraception.

6. Housing discrimination was rampant.

If you truly are a little girl, I am sorry to hear that your family has misinformed you. But you are talking about access to knives and guns, even as those rights have never been taken away. And my list isn't even a tenth of the rights won since your elders were born.

[KelleyNice]

You just make up stuff and certainly misrepresent. There was not such laws. Lenders don't lend to unemployed unless they have a cosigner. Navajo was used in WWII as an unbroken code. You so called housing discrimination means now we must pay more to rent and adults must put up with children that cause problems. Children cost landlords more so they charged more.

[RolandCuthbert]

Again, nothing you posted is rational or logical.

"There was not such laws"? You have access to google. You can look up the murders of Vincent Chin and Emmitt Till yourself. American Indian children were being taken from their families long after your elders were born. You have been lied to. But you appear to like the lie.



imprintnews.org/.../32431

The Nation’s First Family Separation Policy
Forty years ago, three in 10 Indian children were taken from their families.

[Surely]

I certainly hope that things change direction. Especially for younger people like yourself.
People have become lazy over the years and will give up their freedom, without them realizing it. With the promise of the government taking care of them. Which doesn’t happen like in the fairy tales.

One thing for you to remember is, back in your grandparents day. The minimum wage was around a dollar.
I worked on a farm for $1.25 per hour. While gasoline was less than 35 cents a gallon.

In 1975, gasoline was 49 cents per gallon and eggs could be had for around 35 cent a dozen at the farm.

Higher wages doesn’t always mean better life because prices follow wages!

[notwoke]

very wise, unlikely to be written by a 13 yr old. The more low IQ people we allow in the country, the more our country will look like the place they were trying to get away from. And yes, I carried a pocket knife to school starting in about 4th grade and has a shotgun in the gun rack of my pick up truck that I parked in the school parking lot and never gave it a thought. I cut myself at school with my pocket knife more than once and went to the nurses office and got a band aid and possibly never bothered to mention it to my mom or dad because getting a band aid wasn't an international event.

[MikeInHawaii]

I grew up mainly in the South. Friends said, in the ‘60’s, during deer season, there would be dozens of pickup trucks in high school parking lots with shotguns in the gun racks. An elderly neighbor, who was born in the twenties, had a shotgun he got for his eleventh birthday. A gun was once seen as a tool, like a hammer or screwdriver, no better or worse than the person who uses it.

[qwert1234]

USA will not become like DPRK - not on our lifetime and probably not on our children's lifetimes.

Heck, China, which has "less freedom" than the US is still far from becoming DPRK.

Stop fearmongering.

Start by actually electing people who can create laws to correct your healthcare and housing issues.

[MikeInHawaii]

The free market could handle my healthcare and housing issues. In Honolulu, it takes a over a year to get a building permit on a single family home. Contractors were protesting at city hall a few years ago. They were laying people off during a booming economy with a housing shortage. The contractors were ready, willing and able to build houses for people who were ready, willing and able to buy them. The hold up was, to paraphrase Ayn Rand, the people who produce were waiting to get permission to produce, from people who produce nothing.

There are doctors in this country who’ve successfully treated thousands of COVID-1984 patients, without losing a single one, who’ve been threatened with loss of their medical licenses. They used Hydroxychloroquim, Ivermectin or other unapproved treatments. A pandemic can run its course in a fraction of the time it takes to get a drug approved.

Do I really want government to solve the problems it creates?

[KelleyNice]

@MikeInHawaii You are an exception but mostly I get discouraged when I read posts on GAG. Either, they appear to know less than I knew at age 10 or else they believe government is the cure for every problem.

[MikeInHawaii]

I think I had Libertarian leanings from about that age, or slightly older. I did support Jimmy Carter for president at the age of 12 in 1976. Keep in mind, he was criticizing Gerald Ford for deficit spending. At 16, I supported Reagan and voted for him at 20.

Just look at anything done by government and similar tasks when done by the private sector. If you get student loans, you need to apply by the end of January to get your loan by fall semester. When I buy a new car, it takes a couple of hours.

When a new Walmart gets built, acres of parking will get paved practically over night. If the city needs to widen an intersection, it takes months. I’ll send you a picture of the entrance to Pearl Harbor’s Valor in the Pacific Park. They’ve been replacing the curbs at the entrance for a year or two at Hawaii’s busiest tourist destination. It looks like it should have been a weekend job. I drive a tour bus in and out of there and it clears the barricades by inches.

We spend more on education per student than any nation on Earth and have kids who can’t make change in their heads. Catholic parochial schools get better results with half the budget and homeschooled students, like you, test, on average, in the 85th percentile. (I was reading on only a first grade level in third grade because my teacher in first and second grade thought I was retarded and treated me accordingly. My kindergarten teacher said I was retarded and suggested I be tested. My father took me to a child psychologist at NC State who said my IQ was in excess of 150. My teachers were boring me.)

And let’s look at the primary functions of government, protecting our borders at the federal level and maintaining law and order at the state and local level. They do such an abysmal job at that, why give government more power and authority?

[Sixgunsound]

@MikeInHawaii if the government literally stopped doing anything, we would be better off than anything it has ever done. They would still get their legalized graft and theft, but we would get them out of our lives. I mean after all, all were really paying them for is not to send their thugs to rough us up or shoot us, so how is that any different than say Somalia? If they could just be honest about how they’re running a protection racket where they steal from us all pay their friends and family and make sure the big guy gets his 10%, but stop telling us what to do that would be an improvement. I’m actually watched issuing correction; they bribe the non-productive classes that they’ve followed the teachers union’s plan to mis or fail to educate into being able to do any kind of useful work, and they brutally suppress anyone who has anything to lose.

[MikeInHawaii]

@Sixgunsound As is the case with private thieves, the damage politicians do far exceeds the amount they steal. I knew a guy in the ‘80’s who owned a pool hall. He’s had thrives do $5,000 worth of damage to his pool tables to steal $200 in quarters. It’s the same with government.

Former Atlanta mayor, Bill Campbell, took an illegal $140,000 campaign contribution and awarded a $350 million, no-bid construction contract to the company owned by the man who made the contribution. Even if we overpaid only 1% (questionable low) the taxpayers still lost 25 times as much money as they would have if he had just stolen the $140,000 from us!

And, all the red tape they add can do more damage than the taxes and fees. Laying people off and shutting down businesses due to months long delays is issuing permits is far worse than having Vinny and Quido take a little protection money.

[Guy13]

We are becoming like the Brits of 1980s-2000s. Obamacare (government healthcare) was the first evident step in that direction.

[purplepoppy]

And back in my grandfather's day he could go to the pub drink 8 pints and drive home. Times change, new laws are brought in and old ones dropped. That's life not socialism.

[joeldalton]

It takes constant fighting to keep our freedoms. I foresee we’ll have to eventually kick the blue states out. The Democrat party (with rare exception) is too far gone.

[slatyb]

It’s the right that is authoritarian and wants to destroy freedom — freedom of religion, freedom to protest, freedom to marry, even freedom to obtain contraception.

[ibodi]

It did not conflict in my view but I dont know why they mix it.

I start to push repealing inheritance tax.

[Cubus]

If you ever had socialism you would never support it.

[DWornock]

The USA is too far gone for the people to ever regain their freedoms. If it is possible for a few states to secede, those states might obtain freedom.

[BillyBalls]

The USA will become a 3rd world country within the next 50 years or sooner!!

[Agagagagaga]

I go to the grocery store and they are out of coffee. Coffee! Like the shelves are mostly empty and the selection is much reduced.

“Oh they don’t have my brand... huh. Never had that problem before. And even the Folgers and Maxwell House is down to just very few cans. Maybe I’ll try another grocery store. Holy shit! It’s the same here too!”

Thanks Joe. You really know how to stick it in and break it off, don’t you?

[peedy]

Il think their is a lot more Americans that what to. be free and the number of people that support commuizum is a lot lower than they say, they already manipulate the numbers

[msc545]

Yes, America will become a "Socialist Hellhole" unless we elect more authoritarian monsters like Trump and make sure all the money goes to them.

[Anonymous]

You won't become like the DPRK, you are too degenerate for that.

[Papabubbles]

Honestly what freedoms where taken away?

[spartan55]

I can't think of any. To say we are heading toward being similar to North Korea is laughable.