As a Senior in high school, I had a Civics class that was taught by your run of the mill public school tenured, Vietnam Flashbacking psycho son of a bitch weirdo who combo'd as a metal hucking ( I still have the scar)welding teacher. I liked Dave Smith, and I still do to this day, and I love calling him Dave now---not Mr. Smith.
So in this class, we were broken up into three groups to represent the three staple government systems-Communism, Socialism, and Capitalism: Each group was supposed to present the best case that each was the way to go. This was 12th grade non prep Civics. Most in the class had to leave early to pick up their kids, or go to English as a second language tutoring - so as not to provide an unrealistic backdrop for the following story. Which is that I was so convincing in my presentation to the class that Socialism, on paper, is the best economic system of the three for the following reasons. 1.) Private property rights exist, therefore capitalism exists. 2.) Medical benefits, good education yada, yada. 3.) Drinking age is non existent. BOOM! Come time to vote, Socialism won in a landslide.!! It drove Dave absolutely insane that I convinced the class for Socialism. I remember the day fondly.
Fear of something that we kinda are right before our feet - Socialist I mean(think public school, libraries, National Parks, National Forest, Postal Service, Medi-care, Social Security, roads, bridges, etc, etc.) is the flavor to pitch from the right now. Hannity will never conced that Capitalists need control, of themselves- period. But even with all his Obama Socialism bashing, 99.79 percent of America's corporations are not owned by the U.S. government. No matter what that douche bag Glenn Beck says, its not true, we are not going to be a nation of complete state controlled industry. This includes all this B.S. going on with GM. If you think that then you think small. Bottom line is we are not giving up on our constitutional clause of the "right to prosper." What we want is to live as good a life as we can within our priorities I think. Which brings me to Solvang.
Solvang, to me, is the epitome of Socialism. Denmark was not socialist at the time of their settlement in the Santa Ynez valley. But socialist theory was a large movement underground, and most likely, they just got the hell outta Dodge, chuck all the war mongering, and to build themselves a better life -- like all immigrants do. They bring with them one crucial element, which is their highly clarified sense of community. They know what that really is. Similar minded through heritage and probably religion, they now rule both sides of the corner of the monopoly board colored yellow and green. I could never imagine a group of new age settlers, say in Palmdale, or something, do anything like it again. Developers would have to provide that cheesy American home dream/ strip mall feel for them. Not these Danes---they want something, they all go out together, work their asses off during the day, get drunk at night, so on and so forth until the task is done. They build, they bank, they feed, and they party. Not afraid to argue,serious people with the hardest heads, almost mulelike stubborn, but overall surging toward the common goal which was to build a town the way they wanted to see it. And today, it is one of the most traveled to destinations in California. That's socialism to me. They personally made well for themselves AND they made well for their entire community with this formation of a Danish Village in the middle of Spanish, American territory. Amazing.
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