Hal I'm afraid you are "beating a dead horse." They actually do not understand. Perhaps they are new here and just don't understand why this country was so successful in the first place. They don't understand how bad Government Policies can take away a person's desire to work and better themselves. There are generations of people out there who have never held down a job for more than a few weeks. It's not totally their fault. They have fallen into the slavery trap of our screwed up welfare system. When you can make more money not working than you can working, it is human nature to sit on your butt. At least it is for some people. These same groups of people are often heavily into drugs and alcohol (because they are bored) and this leads to crime. I see it every week, when I handle my criminal case load. It is depressing to see people in their 40's who have never held down a job and even more depressing when you read their family background and find that their mothers and fathers (who often weren't married to each other) didn't work either. These people have been failed by The System. Why does this continue? Because these folks are a guaranteed vote for a "special" group of people. The Founding Fathers knew this could become a problem and even wrote about it.

Are you aware that some of our earliest colonies actually tried a form of Communism? The experiments failed rather badly and that is why we haven't tried it since. You can find this information in the Library of Congress. It now appears some people in this country want to try Socialism or Communism again, even though it has failed everywhere it has been tried. Look at the USSR, Europe, Asia. Even the Communist rulers in China have had to embrace a form of Capitalism to survive. The funny thing is that these are the people who call the "rest of us" stupid, uninformed, brain dead, etc, when they are the ones who can't read and understand a damn history book.