OK, I think I can die now, because, someone just called the military a socialistic culture, which is something I thought I'd never hear. This is even better than my friend, who was educated at University of Pennsylvania and Harvard, believing that the salient attribute of Nazi Germany was its socialism.
The opposite of crude, narcissistic individualism is not socialism. I suggest you consult a dictionary.
(I don't have a rooster in this cock fight—my politics are a muddle of compassion and get-off-my-lawn-ism and faith in human ingenuity[ism?] and I tend to roll my eyes at anyone either espousing or accusing people of practicing socialism.)
I grew up in a Marine Corps household, at the height of the Cold War. My father often observed that the military is much more socialist, in the literal sense, than the culture at large: for example, housing, medicine and clothing are not provided by the market. My dad loved the Marine Corps, and loved America's capitalist, individualist culture; however, there is an inherent irony that the military's system is very different from the American system.
And so is your company. And your internal family dynamics.
No points for noticing that different levels of organization are structured differently.
The important thing about America is, there exists a level where you may move about freely and make your own choices. Which choices are usually about exactly what structure you want to join.
"No points for noticing that different levels of organization are structured differently."
You may want to reconsider this. I've seen it seriously put forth as a criticism of capitalism that within corporations and organizations they aren't run capitalistically, therefore it's obviously a failure. I consider the freedom capitalism offers to experiment with different organizations within its overarching framework to be one of the key reasons it is so much more successful than the organizations that include as part of their memeplex that they are the one true organization scheme for all purposes. I suspect most people in general have not thought about it enough to realize this as an obvious truth not worthy of "points".
Considering Nazism stands for National Socialism your friend was not that far off the mark. Not only is socialism != communism != Marxism, there is more than one strand of socialism.
I was going to mention the etymology of "Nazi" as a protective measure against comments like yours, but I figured that it was unnecessary. Apparently not. "Socialism" is an infinitely malleable and borderline meaningless term that does nothing to shed light on any topic unless qualified with some clarifying adjectives.
If you think my friend, who uses the term "socialism" to connect Obama with Hitler, is "not that far off the mark," as you wrote, please by all means let us all know.
No, asshole, I was using it in the dictionary definition sense. I even took the time to look it up before I wrote my comment, because I didn't want to be accused of precisely what you're accusing me of.
(And before you accuse me of conducting an ad hominem attack on you, please note that my insult, which I mean whole-heartedly, has no bearing on my point, which is that I was not, in fact, using the term sloppily.)
That's an interesting point: a republic is by definition "by the people," so saying that it's the people's republic would constitute redundant piling-on. But since it's a lie, Mao or whoever named the country should be awarded the Goebbels Medal for Excellence in Propaganda.
The opposite of crude, narcissistic individualism is not socialism. I suggest you consult a dictionary.
(I don't have a rooster in this cock fight—my politics are a muddle of compassion and get-off-my-lawn-ism and faith in human ingenuity[ism?] and I tend to roll my eyes at anyone either espousing or accusing people of practicing socialism.)