Hmmm...

I can't find anything in what you wrote to argue with... they are all valid and well-laid out thoughts and ideas.

I will take a moment to note one thing that came to mind while I was reading your post, though...

The "guilt" factor may be over-stated. Here in the US, we have the national shame of slavery and segregation for nearly the entire first 200 years of our history. We have the genocide promoted by the Federal government on the native peoples of the current 50 states for the first 150 years of our history.

Now, as real and tangible as these crimes are... do they explain our drive to "fix" society's failings? Canada is far more socialist then we are... and they never suffered slavery, or segregation, and they defined Indian rights to their wayward neighbors to the south from the very beginning. No nation has a greater shame on it's collective conscience than South Africa... and they are NOT trending to socialism, even when compared to the US. Then you have Germany (the only nation to rival South Africa in its historic injustice) actually setting the bar for continental socialistic development.

I still tend to think that the nations that ACCEPT socialism have a societal history of strong governmental control... UK, Germany, Italy, France, Russia, Austria, Scandinavia (all of them). Nations that are trending towards socialistic government (like the US, Canada, Australia, Mexico) NOW are those where "liberal" parties are working to consolidate power in one place.

Nations trending AWAY from socialism (South Africa, India, Japan, and yes... perhaps even CHINA!) are the ones developing the fastest growing, most dynamic economies on the planet. These are the economies that we will be competing with the MOST in the net 100 years, NOT the EU, or Russia, or South America... it will be a dynamic, individualist India, China and Africa.