He Said/She Said: I lob the ball back!

First of all, my friend, these ideas are not "irksome."  I love nothing more than intellectual discourse. 

You claim that we cannot be socialist or have socialist ideas because we are designed to be a capitalist culture.  That is somewhat accurate.  The Founders definitely envisoned a country with a certain level of free enterprise.  However, they also  had a deep sense of the common good. 

What the Founders sought to create was a democratic republic. Not a captialistic republic. Their aim was democracy, not an economic system. That came later. Their focus was on individual liberties and rules of governance, not the marketplace.  In fact, they set up several things to avoid corportist culture.  I'll be damned if I can remember any of them, but I know I heard Thom Hartmann talking about this just recently.  Like the whole concept of corporate personhood (which is complete and total BS) -- there was something the Founders set up to avoid that very idea.  Go search around Thom's site for details. 

In any event, your response doesn't really respond to the original hypothesis that in a capitalist society we all serve our country.  In a capitalist society, we only serve our masters -- ie, those with power over the paycheck.  Captialism as an economic system contains nothing regarding social values or the commonwealth.  It's all about the individual, and therefore, inherently selfish. 

Which is not to say that capitalism is evil.  Or even that pure socialism is the best.  As with most things, the neither extreme is optimal.  When I say socialism, I mean what they have in Europe.  It's a blend of both systems.  It does not eliminate personal/private wealth (like pure Marxism), but neither does it glorify the "free market."  Anyone with the slightest understanding of our current economic structure (and, ahem, crisis) can see that unregulated capitalism is dangerous.  In fact, I'd bet money that unregulated corporatism is exactly opposite to what Jefferson et al had in mind.

There is a myth about America.  It's that we are a nation founded on the ideals of individualism, in relation to economic success.  That if we just work hard enough, we can achieve anything.  That has never been true and never will.  Our individualism is in regards to freedoms -- of religion, of speech, of thought, of belief -- and yes, I suppose the freedom to be a capitalistic asshole.  It's really about freedom from oppression, from King George, from a dictatorial government, from our corporate master. 

The bottom line is: there's no reason we can't have economic success AND social commonwealth.  People just need to get off their "I hate the guvment" barstools and really think for a moment.  I know that will be painful for some.  But you know it's the truth.