Me - Republican or Democrat?

The question has come up in my mind whether I am a Republican or a Democrat.  I have now decided that I am an independent.  Traditionally I believe in the values of the Republican Party and that is based off of my strong views supporting capitalism.  I have seen a widening in the values of the two parties over the years and that concerns me.  I do believe in checks and balances, but I feel the differences in our two parties at this point in my life have become too great and there is a great need to bridge a little closer together for the continued success of our country, our countries economy and other countries and economies around the globe.  I strongly feel that socialism will destroy our country in the long run, but I also feel that true capitalism and the republicans are helping this along by allowing larger corporations to continually buy out the smaller guys and force the others out of business by using their power to influence market prices.  This country was built on capitalism, noone can deny that and our vastness of our country in size is like no other democratic society in the word.  Capitalism made us who we are by encouraging the American Dream and our businesses multiplied all over the country and our people had families that had children who had children and we grew and as we grew, our ancestors encouraged and grew the economies in the socialist European countries.  In my opinion, if we'd started out with socialism in our democracy, our country would have not progressed and thrived like it has.  If you don't believe me, look at what socialized healthcare, socialized welfare and socialized education did for Communist Russia.

The difference between Capitalism and Socialism can be summarized very simply; Socialism encourages stagmentation and complacency and Capitalism encourages growth and competition.

I'll work more on this later.... but I do subscribe to protecting our environment (more democratic) and modifying the capitalists (republican) views of mega corporations and monopolies.  I believe in welfare, but I believe in major welfare overhauls with things in place to work people off of welfare, but I also believe in not allowing corporations to get to large where they can damage our economy and the worlds economy at the same time when they fail.

More to come...