"US is pretty darn close to pure capitalism, although it keeps straying away"

Ok, really this just isn't true, and I'm glad its not. I don't like big government, but, as has been mentioned before, pure captitalism is an extreme and flawed end at which we do not want to find ourselves. I don't want to wax religious on you (although, with the way this thread is going, I wouldn't be suprised if we put it all into the mix), but any system of government, economics, etc. designed by mankind is going to be flawed. That is truly the brilliance of the U.S constitution: these guys knew they couldn't create the perfect government because there is none, so they gave us something flexable that could bend without breaking. There are plenty of examples of the framers of our gorvenmnet setting up ways to dilute pure systems that could end up being destructive. This is one of the reasons we have a three branch system of government.

We are far from socialism, but we are not, nor were we ever intended to be, pure capitalists.

-Jeff