To all the kids

To All the Kids Who Survived the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and 1970s:

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing and tuna from a can and didn't get tested for diabetes.

Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention the risks we took hitchhiking.

As infants and children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, booster seats, seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pick-up on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink with four friends from one bottle, and no one died from this.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank Kool-Aid made with sugar, but we weren't overweight, because we were always outside playing.We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day. And we were OK.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We did not have PlayStations, Nintendos or Xboxes.No video games at all, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVDs, no surround-sound or CDs, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or chat rooms. We had friends. And we went outside and found them. We fell out of trees, got cut and broke bones and teeth, and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them! Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that. The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law.

These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever. The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all! If you are one of them.

Congratulations.

n

Why isn't socialism dead? I owe this title to writer Lee Harris. Last month Harris posed this headliner question in a piece he wrote for Tech Central Station's Web site, TCSDaily. Harris is right to ask; socialism's track record is abysmal.

The milder forms of it have yielded economic stagnation where and whenever tried: England in the 1970s; France today.

The more impatient strains -- "socialism in a hurry," as Lenin reputedly called communism -- did nothing but plunder economies and destroy lives.

Their fine leaders ordered the deaths of more than 100 million people -- Lenin and Stalin (40 million), Mao (60 million) and Pol Pot (2 million), not to mention that syphilitic dictator of the German National Socialist Party, Adolf Hitler (11 million directly, another 35 million through the war he started).

By all rights socialism should be dead, sealed in a steel vault and buried in Hell. Yet the disease lives. You might even say it's spreading when you look at the ascent of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Ken Livingstone in London and the "progressive" American Net-based left (which says Hillary Rodham Clinton is too far right).

What accounts for socialism's reappearance? To discover the answer, we must ask another question. Why do so many people around the world hate its opposite -- free-market capitalism?

-- Rich Karlgaard, publisher, Forbes magazine