MY TURN: Democrat and Republican differences

I’m disgusted at the Republican individuals who constantly demonstrate their inability to distinguish between the word “ALL” and "SOME," or the word “FREE” and “INEXPENSIVE.” Time and again some Republican will say the Democrats will give us socialism, take away all our guns, repeal the Second Amendment, expect free everything, raise taxes of the middle class and poor, put regulations on every living activity in which our country is involved and kill millions of babies through unlimited abortion. In short, make life not worth living.

To clarify these differences, Democrats believe in: “some” social services for the lower income and higher income folks such as farmers. They believe in “some” regulations on guns, “some” inexpensive or free services or products for those in need, “inexpensive” education and other services, “some” higher taxes on higher incomes, “some” pro-choices for women. On the subject of regulations, Republicans seem to prefer NO rather than SOME regulations, except in the matter of women’s rights, where they want TOTAL REGULATION of women’s reproductive rights. 

Pure socialism, such as the Scandinavian countries have, suffers some problems, although the people seem to be somewhat satisfied with the high taxes it necessitates. I would say it makes more sense to have partial socialism such as the U.S. has evolved over the years, along with the capitalistic investment type economy with some regulations by the elected legislative and executive branches of our government. The chief problems we have are those caused by the two political parties being unable to blend black and white into gray, red and blue into lavender or all into some, no taxes into some taxes, in short to collaborate and negotiate rather than compete and vindicate.

It would go a long way to solve our problems if we would elect senators and representatives who actually are educated enough to know the difference between communism and socialism, fascism and democracy. Too many think we fought World Wars to counter socialism and communism, when the enemy was fascism, malicious and evil. Our allies in World War II were communism and socialism via Russia and ScandInavia. Even the Muslim countries were allies in fighting the fascism of Germans and Japanese. We have succeeded in ending a Cold War against communism and it’s hopeful that peaceful coexistence among nations will avoid warfare which is the bane of civilization. These differences are what our government should be working with, along with whether folks with more money than they know what to do with should pay taxes, or whether all our citizens should be able to afford living quarters, or higher education, and freedom from serious contagions affecting the country’s health, and other benefits for the “general welfare” stressed in the Constitution.

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Ron Boothe is a Kingston resident.