It’s the Personal Liberty, Stupid
After the Republicans’ 2008 election wipeout, some conservative pundits and elected Republicans argued that there was no constituency for limited government. Republicans, we were told, had to give up on the notion that the public was averse to an ever larger and more intrusive government. That was then.
Now, as Matt Welch of Reason magazine points out, fear of big government is all the rage — and is cause for rage. He writes:
This isn’t about liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican. A majority oppose Obama’s policies because they fly in the face of this country’s bedrock values of personal liberty and limited government. Robbing Peter to pay Goldman Sachs does violence to that fundamentally American ethos.
And increasingly, Obama administration policy does violence to European values, as well. The continent has for the last two decades been systematically disengaging national governments from domestic industries. Top officials from Sweden, of all places, complained about Washington’s auto bailout, tersely announcing that “the Swedish state is not prepared to own car factories.”
And while conservatives find it hard to believe that voters didn’t see this coming from the most liberal man in the U.S. Senate, Welch correctly concludes, “Americans didn’t vote for big government last November. They voted for a guy who looked like he could keep his cool in the heat of battle. If Obama wants to regain that cool, he needs to rein in the power-grabbers in Washington.”
But that goes for Republicans as well. The pressure to find some middle ground on cap and trade, ObamaCare, financial regulation, and an uber-consumer protection agency will become intense. But the Republicans would be foolish to provide cover for and assist Democrats in pursuit of a goal — more government — which is at odds with the wishes of a majority of Americans, including those critical independent voters. And oh yes, it’s never a good idea to vote in ways contrary to your party’s stated core message.
In some sense Obama has been invaluable to libertarians and conservatives. It is one thing to rail against excessive discretionary spending but it is quite another to have the public see how ominous a force (not to mention how expensive) government can be when it seeks to regulate and control the most intimate decisions about one’s family finances and personal health. Who would have thought Obama would have created such a consensus in favor of keeping government’s mitts off private insurance companies, doctor-patient interactions, and end-of-life care?
If people were honest, smart and responsible they wouldn’t need governments.
When our ancestors realized what a mess people were, they tried to control them by inventing religion. This has not worked at all.
So they invented kings and queens. That didn’t work after a while.
Governments, which had invested so much in irrigation and flood control, now were called upon to maintain military and police forces to defend what had been created.
That’s when we lost our collective freedom. There is no place on Earth without a government, for good or for bad.
As a society we have agreed to lose some freedoms in exchange for many personal freedoms. The trick is in finding a balanced tradeoff.
Jennifer,
That’s a pretty big IF. The party screwed it up big time the last go round. I guess we will see whether or not they have learned from their mistakes. I have my doubts…..but obviously the alternative is hideous.
Apologists for near-totalitarian statists have nothing to add on this site.
The whole point of our constitutional republic is to PLACE LIMITS on what a government may do and explicitly may NOT do.
“It’s only a matter of degrees” spout those who would open the flood gates to socialism in America.
True.
And we know just right about where that line must be drawn to keep the morons (like you know who) at bay.
Vivo, as usual, gets it wrong. Religion wasn’t “invented”, it developed as a way to explain a puzzling and terrifying universe.
Royalty wasn’t invented, either. Leaders in battle were assumed to know something about making things work, so people thought they might be good for managing other aspects of communal life.
In both cases, someone usually arrogated more power to him/herself, particularly in government, and things quickly got out of hand.
This is Jennifer’s point and the one vivo (surprise!!!) misses. Simply because government is almost everywhere (there are a few tribes that don’t have it yet(lucky them)), that doesn’t mean it has to rule everyone’s lives. History is replete with bad examples of dictatorship and oligarchy.
Unfortunately, vivo’s knowledge of history seems confined to Walter Duranty. He assumes individual liberty must be sacrificed totally on the altar of government. Obama and most of the Demos seem to feel the same way.
Jennifer, AMEN, they darn well better start listening.
Vivo, you goof, the government is made up of the same (and probably worse) people that you consider dishonest, stupid, and irresponsible.
“And while conservatives find it hard to believe that voters didn’t see this coming from the most liberal man in the U.S. Senate”
Not quite accurate. I long cynically realized that most people do not pay a lot of attention to politics. This easily allows them to be manipulated by the MSM and the overall dominant left-wing culture. Sadly, it was therefore not surprising that the con job was pulled off. The middle-of-the-road voters did not explicitly vote for an ultra-liberal. They though Obama was minimally a moderate, if not even a center-right politician.
The “moderate” Republicans are pro big government. It is difficult to raise money from the mom and pops. Keeping the large corporations happy is usually far more lucrative. This is especially true if a Republican legislator wants to find a great paying job after their term in office ends. Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, has loads of money to offer those who support “green technology” and government control of health care. The family that owns “Pete’s Beer and Wine” simply cannot compete.
Not quite accurate. I long cynically realized that most people do not pay a lot of attention to politics. This easily allows them to be manipulated by the MSM and the overall dominant left-wing culture. Sadly, it was therefore not surprising that the con job was pulled off. The middle-of-the-road voters did not explicitly vote for an ultra-liberal. They though Obama was minimally a moderate, if not even a center-right politician.
The “moderate” Republicans are pro big government. It is difficult to raise money from the mom and pops. Keeping the large corporations happy is usually far more lucrative. This is especially true if a Republican legislator wants to find a great paying job after their term in office ends. Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, has loads of money to offer those who support “green technology” and government control of health care. The family that owns “Pete’s Beer and Wine” simply cannot compete.
I have an idea: Since the liberals/leftists want to have a socialized, universal health care system, why don’t they organize a giant trust with which needy people can get insurance for themselves free of charge? Donations to the trust could be made and those donations would be tax deductible. Folks needing insurance could apply and demonstrate their financial neediness to get help. It would keep government out of the whole healthcare issue. They could name this new, private entity “Socialized Health Insurance Trust”, or “SHIT” for short. With a little help from “SHIT” people with preexisting conditions such as irresponsibility, laziness, stupidity, or drug addiction could be given all the healthcare they need. And it wouldn’t be a huge additional burden on the deficit. All it would take is the do-gooders putting their money where their mouths are.
But we all know that the leftists wouldn’t donate nearly enough to the trust to support the lazy and shiftless. I suppose, in that instance, that people who applied for the free help would be “SHIT out of luck.”
regards
Liberty (personal and economic freedom) and limited government (inseparable issues) are the ONLY core issues I really care about. Everything else is secondary although often related.
I don’t want to be cared for or coddled by a national bureaucracy. I don’t want to pay for other people’s bad choices. I don’t need a politician to tell me how to live, what to drive, or when to die.
HonestJon @ #8:
“Socialized Health Insurance Trust”
I love it!
As usual, these guys misinterpreted and twisted the meaning of my statements. Very creative types.
4. formwiz:
“Religion wasn’t “invented”, it developed as a way to explain a puzzling and terrifying universe. ”
I agree with the concept, but to me developing & inventing are about the same; but nooo, it has to be ‘develop’.
With this in mind the platform for Republicans struggling to avoid the tag of “do-nothingism” practically writes itself.
I’m happy when politicians “do nothing”. It leaves me with more of my own money to “do something”, i.e. whatever I want to do. As William Blake said, “I must create a system of my own, or be enslaved by another man’s”. I don’t need politicians creating systems for me.
3
I don’t know if you’ve seen this article, but it addresses the topic of limits, how they’ve been corroded and why they will make a comeback (it’s not hard to guess on that last one; we’re out of money!)
http://www.american.com/archive/2009/april-2009/the-coming-of-the-fourth-american-republic
The author calls what we have now “The Third Republic” and “The Special Interest State”:
“This Third Republic has had a good run. It was wobbling in the late 1970s, but got bailed out by a run of good luck—Reagan; the fall of the USSR; the computer and information revolution; the rise of the Asian Tigers and the “BRICs”; the basic dynamism and talent of the American people—that kept the bicycle moving and thus upright.
It could continue. It is characteristic of political arrangements that they go on long after an observer from Mars might think that surely their defects are so patent that they have exhausted their capacity for survival. Besides, as the Declaration of Independence counsels, “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” The culture, the people, are astonishingly creative and productive, and may demonstrate a capacity to keep the bicycle moving faster than the demands of the Special Interest State can throw sand in the gears.
But it is more likely that the Special Interest State has reached a limit.
This may seem a dubious statement, at a time when the ideology of total government is at an acme, but it is not unusual for decadent political arrangements to blaze brightly before their end. Indeed, the total victory of the old arrangements may be crucial to bringing into being the forces that will overthrow it. In some ways, the grip of the aristocracy on 18th-century France tightened in the decades leading up to 1789, and the alliance-of-states idea could have lasted a while longer had the Confederacy not precipitated the crisis. So the utter triumph of the Special Interest State over the past 15 years, and particularly in the recent election, looks like the beginning of its end.”
I say, good riddance to bad political trash. The image of lobbyists and “political activists” sitting under highway overpasses with “Will Lobby For Food” or “Will Rabble-rouse For Food” signs makes me giddy.
My question is, how do we *shrink* government?
I mean get rid of the Dept. of Education, HUD, Fannie & Freddie, and no doubt hundreds of bureaucracies that do nothing but waste taxpayer money.
I think a plurality of Americans would like to see this done, if they were made to see how needless so many of these bloated programs and departments are. For example, most Americans got their educations without a Department of Education; it wasn’t created out of need but because of politics.
Ideas?
vivo: “If people were honest, smart and responsible they wouldn’t need governments.”
Idiot! Get an education! Government is constituted to take care of the COMMONS. Period.
Sharing power with monopolies and creating more monopolies is a down-spiral certitude tried in the 30s, again by the Brits in the 40s. Even Sweden backed off in the 80s. Get a brain.
The Democrat Party is a criminal enterprise.
No Vivo (at 1), monarchy came first, at a small scale. It is entirely predictable that a certain percentage of monarchs will decide to claim divinity, thus promoting monotheism, which would also have been a reasonable scientific theory at the time and for many thousands of years ending, oh, maybe 500 years ago. Modern leftism is simply a strategic reform variant of monotheism, relocating god from the sky to government in an effort to stave off monotheism’s inevitable millennial-scale decline.
10. Peter the Bubblehead: Thanks, Peter. I thought of that myself (pats self on back). It could be expanded to: “Organizing for Humanity: Socialized Health Insurance Trust”, or OHSHIT for short. Gotta love those suggestive acronyms!
regards
JR Dogman: I wish I knew. A revolution that ends with a new republic and a clean slate is the only thing I can think of.
Amendments to the Constitution are a possibility but are almost impossible to pass – not that members of Congress read the Constitution anyhow.
Civics 101:
“But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature. If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In forming a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” –James Madison, The Federalist No. 51
@JR Dogman — it will take a TRUE Conservative president who is willing to tell congress upfront that he will veto any budget bill that funds anything beyond the minimums required by law (SocSec, Medicare, etc) with the exception of National Defense. This courageous president will also have to be willing to refuse to appoint Cabinet members to Dept of Ed, HHW, etc.
This will also require a fair number of conservatives in congress to prevent overrides.
More than anything it will require a lot of political courage that simply isn’t visible anywhere right now.
If enough good people can be elected to Congress, bills could be passed which reiterated the 10th amendment. Any agency whose function is not permitted by the Constitution to the federal government should be eliminated. Education, Health & Human Services, EPS, OSHA, etc, should just go away. Any state wishing to take over these functions could hire the now unemployed bureaucrats. With the massive savings from no longer funding these parastical agencies, the national debt could be paid off in short order, and then massive tax cuts made.
Of course the real problem with any scenario like this is that there are just too many Marxists entrenched in the K-16 educational system who will go right on indoctrinating our children. So in addition to real ‘change’ in the federal government, the power to govern schools needs to be returned to local boards, not state agencies.
It will be a long and difficult fight, but it can be done.
I meant “EPA”.
#17 Wobble&Gyrate
Might I add in your attempt to untwist that lads thinking the the “invented” kings were not a result of any form of due process. The kings and monarchs probably went to the guy with the best sword arm and most dominating disposition. Later, still with the same force of arm, divine rights of voodoo, and genetic titles, the powers to rule became the property of the sneakiest bastards. Well, things haven’t changed much except for the American constitution.
When “In God We Trust” is removed for “In Government We Trust”, then the old ways of slavery to the elite can not be far away. We who love freedom need not bother to understand why there are those who prefer subservience and cradle to grave security by whomever would invent themselves as masters.
vivo: “If people were honest, smart and responsible they wouldn’t need governments.”
“Public choice” theory turns this on its head and says “If people were honest, smart and responsible, it wouldn’t matter how big government gets”. They aren’t and it does. If a king is not worthy of ruling over an ordinary man, what right does a bureaucrat have to claim that power? That he passed some civil service exam?
Please start with your campaign to end Medicare. Dumbass.
““Americans didn’t vote for big government last November. They voted for a guy who looked like he could keep his cool in the heat of battle. If Obama wants to regain that cool, he needs to rein in the power-grabbers in Washington.”
OK, but for that to happen, won’t someone need to rein him in first? He seems to be the biggest power-grabber of them all at the moment.
“My question is, how do we *shrink* government?”
Term limits, term limits, term limits–for legislator and bureaucrat alike. Nobody feeds at the government trough for more than ten years of his/her career. If you want to make it even better, you could prohibit entry-level jobs in the bureaucracy; anyone working there would be *required* to have a job in the public sector first, so as to gain a demonstrable skill in the productive class. Then they would have a talent to share with the government for a *limited* time and return to the productive class after that.
“If people were honest, smart and responsible, it wouldn’t matter how big government gets”. They aren’t and it does.
God, you’re ignorant. The idea that people are inherently smart and responsible is the very seed of little to no government free market ideology–your ideology. Without that, there is no point in a free market, logically, because people aren’t fit to make the decisions to produce a stable economy. I actually believe most people aren’t as dumb as you and yours–but, in essence, you are right that there’s enough of you to make classical liberal ideas about small government a pipe dream.
DNFTT
Jennifer,
Are you now prepared to publicly disavow your big-government, national-greatness conservative friends at Commentary? Are you now prepared to publicly condemn David Brooks and Bill Kristol?
If you’re not, then we’ll know your op-ed was just another example of neocon dissimulation (i.e., the say anything/do anything to form permanent governing majority logic promoted by Irving Kristol).
1 vivo; I have noticed that you can hardly say anything without a side attack on religion; the first religion came straight from outside of the garden of Eden. Cain tried to prove himself worthy with a sacrifice that was not acceptable to God, when God rejected Cains religion; in a jealous rage he slew his brother Abel. Religion is not true faith, God told man how he wanted him to live, religion has always tried to change the rules God set. The early Christians tried to distance themselves by being true to Jesus’ teachings. Man being the sinful creature he is took Christs teachings and turned them into thousands of contrary religions and look at the mess that has been made of God’s earth. That’s ok though, more and more of what was prophesied for the end times is coming true and soon enough man will once again be under Gods rule then and only then will this earth be the utopia evil man thinks he can turn it into. I have no religious affiliation for this reason, and I just try to follow Christ, and have to admit that I do poorly at it. The only true freedom is freedom from sin through the atonement of Jesus’ death as the lamb of God the only sacrifice that God accepts as worthy.
Yeah I agree religion is man made, but faith comes from God through the Bible, and I don’t need no teacher or preacher to get it.
How do the majority of Republicans feel about a candidate that is strong in the areas of national defense, limited government, and fiscal repsonsibility, but is not all that concerned with keeping “marriage” between a man and woman, and has an “unclear” position on abortion?
I’m just curious to know.
18. HonestJon wrote:
“Organizing for Humanity: Socialized Health Insurance Trust”, or OHSHIT for short. Gotta love those suggestive acronyms!
Peter writes: With your expertise in acronyms, you must have been in the military at some point.
Calvin Ball: Translation–>He makes us look like idiots.
27. Kev wrote:
Term limits, term limits, term limits–for legislator and bureaucrat alike.
Peter adds: Another suggestion for your list. No ‘public servant’ (and I use the term loosely) should be able to retain their current position if they decide to run for a higher office. If a Governor or Senator decides he wants to run for President, let him resign his Senate seat of the Governor’s mansion first. If a Congressman wants to be a Senator, fine with me, but resign your seat in Congress before you announce your candidacy. Local rep wants to be a Federal Rep? Great! But turn your local seat over to someone willing to do the job first. No expecting me (as a taxpayer) to pay your salary while you refuse to do your job for a year or two trying to claw your way into a better job.
If your constituents believe you are the best man for the job, hey, they’ll vote you in to the higher position. But if not, good riddence to bad rubbish!
32. Curious asked:
How do the majority of Republicans feel about a candidate that is strong in the areas of national defense, limited government, and fiscal repsonsibility, but is not all that concerned with keeping “marriage” between a man and woman, and has an “unclear” position on abortion?
Peter writes: I can’t speak for the ‘majority of Republicans’, only for myself, but I would vote for such a person.
Likewise, if a candidate calling themselves Republican ran on a platform of opposing gay rights and killing Roe Vs Wade, but had no clear opinions on national defense, limited government, or fiscal responsibility (especially the National Defense part), I would not vote for them if they were the ONLY candidate running.
You want an argument to make, Jennifer? Here it is. Since I was a kid in the 50s till today, government, the one non-productive sector of our economy, has grown the most, four-fold. Employment in the non-military govt at all levels has risen from just over 5 percent of all workers to 19 percent.
Doesn’t seem so bad… but think about it. That means that one person in five now works for the govt, not counting military personnel. Fifty years ago, it was one in twenty. A government worker’s salary and taxes are paid out of tax revenue, that is, by the other four productive workers. In other words, it takes more than half of us in the productive sector to pay for all the government workers we now have… before we fill one pothole, buy Congress a single Gulfstream or fund one representative’s junket to Paris. Yes, corporate taxes can contribute, but we citizens pay those too thru higher prices (and lowered competitiveness).
The upshot of all that is that we have hit the wall. There is no way to grow government any further without beggaring us all and piling on debt. Why has it made sense to grow our one-nonproductive sector at the expense of all others? It hasn’t. There’s just no effective way for citizen to halt it. Government has grown through Democratic administrations and Republican (at least Reagan lamented the growth on his watch).
If we were to start massively converting govt programs to private, letting them sink or swim on their own, all those non-productive workers would become productive. If we could get back toward govt workers being one out of twenty instead of one out of five, just look at how much more economically free we could be!
Limited government? That would be one of Sarah Palin’s areas of expertise. She even has a record to prove it. Another reason she causes the National Socialists and the Beltway GOP to wee wee all over themselves.
“Vivo” needs to read THE STATE by Franz Oppenheimer, on how governments originated. “The Social Contract” scenario wherein our ancestors gathered around a bonfire or sacred oak and said, “Hey, let’s have a government!” seems to be a myth. Oppenheimer (whose work influenced Nock) believes the State originated when some conquering horde decided, rather than to loot a place completely and kill everyone, it would be better to leave some people alive to produce new assets to plunder, and exact “protection money” on a regular basis. I think it may have originated when Og, the biggest caveman with the biggest club, told the other cave-dwellers, “You know have to give me half your mastodon hides, or I’ll bash your heads in.” And some cave-dwelling equivalent of Paul Krugman was probably there saying, “Yes, let’s all submit to Og! It’s for the common good!”
HonestJon,
Just wait until the gov forces us to be injected with _____[fill in the blank]_____ to develop antibodies for future vaccines all in the name of the “greater good” of mankind. They can call it, ‘Deliberately Engineered Advanced Diseases’. The acronym speaks for itself.
The idea that people are inherently smart and responsible is the very seed of little to no government free market ideology–your ideology.
No, the idea that the market rewards these behaviors and punishes other behaviors, thus incentivizing individuals to act contrary to their short-term interests (hint, if we followed our short-term interests, society would look very much like the society we see amongst apes) and in their long-term interests, is the very seed of the reality.
If you were half as intelligent as you think you are, you’d realize that nowhere in Adam Smith or the classical liberal economists is intelligence or responsibility taken as a given. It is imposed by market discipline.
Again, I say, let’s split the United States into two separate countries and see which country ends up doing better in the long-run. Your bureaucratic nightmare or a classically-liberal, Constitutional “nightwatchman” state.
I’m not interested in theoretical debates anymore, I want to see you have a chance to implement your ideas and suffer the consequences. Oh, how I’d love to see you suffer them. The only problem is that I’d be on the other side of that “Berlin Wall”, so I’d never get to see your anguish up close and personal, maggot.
Calvin Ball: Translation–>He makes us look like idiots.
Keep believing that, chump.
The ultimate test of ideas is war in the streets. As Cypress Hill said, “When the sh*t goes down, ya better be ready”.
Please start with your campaign to end Medicare. Dumbass.
It’s going to end itself in bankruptcy and broken promises. Dumbf*ck.
Moho, you stupid moron, I know math is hard, but here’s the math on Medicare. God, you are a f*cking retard.
http://www.scrivener.net/2008/05/how-much-will-income-taxes-have-to-go.html
Medicare cost is projected to grow by 3.2 points of GDP by 2030, to 5.9 from 2.7 in 2007. “Split the difference” thus would require reducing its cost then by 1.6 points of GDP to 4.3 points. But since 5.9 points is projected as needed to continue providing the current level of benefits, “split the difference” requires reducing Medicare benefits provided to individuals by more than 25% from today’s levels (how are seniors going to like that?) while also increasing income taxes by 27% across the board (including on seniors, of course — their pensions, IRA distributions, investments, and so on). And 2030 is just the start of the process.
This not pretty. And it does not consider other very significant unfunded costs coming due at the same time (federal employee/military pensions and benefits, state and local government pensions and retiree health benefits, etc.), which make the situation even worse.
Moho, the problem is that while most human beings are capable of running their own lives, they can’t be trusted to run other people’s. Central planning is a fool’s errand.
CalvinBall,
I know what you’re saying. These guys have nothing but rhetorical devices to sustain them. Frankly, I can’t believe that they aren’t being paid. I prefer the Hot Air system, where you need to register and then can be banned at the moderator’s discretion. These chumps add nothing to the discussion, for the most part. Come on, PJM, get some stricter registration rules set up and get rid of these cockroaches.
#24 JED, I agree that the details of why some prefer subservience and cradle to grave security are of tangential interest, but the general outline seems clear: humanity developed from a long history of the subhuman, and the subhuman will always bubble up here and there. But most neo-monotheists (Leftists), I think, arrive at it from the power/control side, not the subservience side, i.e. “I’m smart enough to organize just about everything, much better than free individuals would through free association, and Obama is almost as smart and will do almost as good a job of it as I could.” This attitude is very much human (albeit juvenile), will always be widespread, and must be confronted by those determined to order their own lives but disinterested in ordering others’ lives.
I think we’re transitioning into a new era of domestic politics which will be dominated by two issues in addition to Islamofascist attacks: electoral fraud by the left(well underway) and state level secession and revolt by the right (smell it cooking??).
“If Obama wants to regain that cool, he needs to rein in the power-grabbers in Washington.”
I don’t suppose it has escaped you that he might be one of the power grabbers? His record prior to the election, scant and carefully sanitized as it was, left no doubt that he was a classic leftist. As such, he’d never countenance any effort to minimize government.
How about this one: “Organizing for Humanity: Socialized Health Insurance Trust For Underpriveleged Children & Kids.”
You can work out the acronym for yourself.
All joking and dirty acronyms aside, it’s not such a bad idea: Leftists can just insure the uninsured themselves with their own money instead of making (with a government mandate) everyone else pay for the losers. Nah. They want to force everybody to pay for their ignorant ideas. Oh well. It was just a thought.
33. Peter the Bubblehead: Nope. Never was in military. I wish I had joined, though! I’m just a cynic with a dirty mind and a bad sense of humor!
40. Anonymous: Nice one!
regards
Let’s divide the country into
Liberals: socialists/welfare/commies/progressives/big brother/nanny/uber taxation/unions
Conservatives: capitalists/free-market/less government/conservatism/self-reliance/HARD WORK/charity/invention
. . .and see who wins in the end game.
All joking and dirty acronyms aside, it’s not such a bad idea: Leftists can just insure the uninsured themselves with their own money instead of making (with a government mandate) everyone else pay for the losers. Nah. They want to force everybody to pay for their ignorant ideas. Oh well. It was just a thought.
If they did that, I’d even contribute a few bucks. For the tax-deduction and to keep them shut-up. The older I get, the more I understand this C.S. Lewis quote:
“Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
“And while conservatives find it hard to believe that voters didn’t see this coming from the most liberal man in the U.S. Senate”
And this is complicated by the fact that Republicans had spent the last several years voting for bigger and bigger government themselves. A slogan of “Vote for me, the other guy’s an even bigger crook” is not going to be very effective.
Like the C.S. Lewis quote, v.v.v. Reminds me of one from Thoreau, which seems appropos to the discussion of “Il Dufe” and his healthcare scheme. I forget how it goes exactly, but it’s something like: “If someone is approaching you telling you he is going to do you good, run for your life.”
Also appropos of the discussion, considering how it is common among the Staat-shtuppers who have been posting about this issue on pro-freedom blogs to justify expansion of State power in the health care field by citing previous (and purportedly necessary) expansions of State power, Mencken’s reaction to people telling him, “Well, surely you will admit sometimes government action is necessary!” To wit:
So is a doctor. But suppose the dear fellow claimed the
right, every time he was called in to prescribe for a
bellyache or a ringing in the ears, to raid the family
silver, use the family tooth-brushes, and execute the
droit de seigneur upon the housemaid?
I think that while the desire to take back Congress is there, the GOP does not have the means to do it. It would require all the encumbants, and all the ‘right people’ to go out and buy some Hayek, Bastiat and Friedman, read them, comprehend them and accept (if not agree with) their message.
These ‘machine’ Republicans’ only aim (with a few notable exceptions) is power; their interest in reducing the size of government is necessarily going to be tactical, and I’m not sure libertarians should be selling their ideology so cheaply to a bunch of people who will stab us in the back as soon as a special interest group takes them to Aruba for a weekend.
Our country is founded upon the notion of limiting govt intrusion into the lives of the citizenry…allowing for said intrustion only to the extent that is necessary in order to protect citizens from having those rights abused by others. It is predicated upon trusting that human beings can handle the responsibility of freedom.
This is why the Left hates it so. Because, historically, the Left has no more faith in the average human being than the monarchs of old. Leftist ideology has always been elitist and dismissive.
Everything…and I mean everything…that you see spewing forth from the Leftists in control of our govt and information mediums (i.e. news media, entertainment, and education) has a precedent in the Left’s history. None of it is new. None of it is surprising. But unfortunately, there are millions upon millions of vivos out there…historically ignorant “useful idiots” who are only all-too-willing to stick their necks into a yoke of their own making.
46. venividivici
Whether paid or not, the MO is always the same – take the thread OT. That’s my problem with trolls. That and the utter banality of the sophomoric talking points. If they could stay on the topic, and argue with something better than “Haliburton”, they wouldn’t be trolls. By definition.
@14 JR Dogman.
You ask for ideas about shrinking government. Good question! How do you work against a law of nature, or perhaps more precisely, a law of human nature?
In Chinese writing, the symbol for “government offical” represents a fat man sitting under a roof, so the problem of uncontrollable government prosperity was recognized several millenia ago. Again, in Chinese, the symbol for “tax” shows a freshly havested bundle of rice next to an ominous characters with just two legs, a big mouth, and two horns!
Government fucntion provides shelter for the lazy precisely because the irresponsible can be lulled into believing that the governement will do something for them. The American founding documents are historically unprecedented, by specifically limiting the reach of governement, but the exercise of these limitations can only come from an alert citizenry.
I hope and pray that today’s civic protests are the manifestation of such an awakening. Derailing the take-over madness is the emergency of our time. The government unionized workers cannot conceive of an economic catastrophe deep enough to put them out of work, but hard reality can overcome illusions, just as healthy dreams can overcome reality when the positive energy is released.
At ViVo.
I am a free man in the Anglo-Saxon tradition. I have a weapon to defend myself. I have a profession to support myself. My property will be defended to the death. My religion is my own business. My rights have been repeatedly stated in the magnacarta, declaration of independence, bill of rights exc.
The only government I need are the men in uniform and the courts. All the powers of society rest with me, unless I delegate them they rest with me. I am the power.
Obama is just a reincarnation of the old enemy of freemen everyware. Power hungry elites. Feudalism had aristocratic elites, Marxism has leftist elites and Fascism racist elites. They want my submission, but they are not going to get it.
Live Free or Die
venividivici (#51), re that C.S. Lewis quote, another reason the tyranny of moral busybodies is worse than that of simple strongmen is that only the former features the incessant abuse of language/literacy. The aim of supporting/buttressing this abuse of language is what turned our universities into centers of ignorance, dragging legitimate academic science along behind them like a horse trailer.
Reminds me of one from Thoreau, which seems appropos to the discussion of “Il Dufe” and his healthcare scheme. I forget how it goes exactly, but it’s something like: “If someone is approaching you telling you he is going to do you good, run for your life.”
One of the first adult books I read as a kid was “Walden”. I’ve been to Walden Pond many times and love it there. Of course, the highway running right by it detracts a bit from the Thoreauxian solitude, but that’s OK. Time marches on.
rvastar:
Have you read “Leftism Revisited”? You might find some of it repetitive to what you already know, but it’s a very sweeping history of the Left. You’re right that they’ve been banging on, as the Brits say, about the same stuff for centuries.
Where religion and government came from…
The original religion is worship of the Creator. Humans have a decided tendency to add stuff, and its of note that there is a similarity between some of the names in the Table of Nations and the patriarchical ‘gods’ of certain ancient nations. In other words, its likely that Dad told his seven thousand great-great-great grandkids “I’m a god”.
This is probably where paganism was born and Occam’s razor blunted as they were multiplying causes.
Of course, later the Creator intervened to try to straigten out things. One of these interventions was the Global Flood after which governments were given God’s backing. I’m assuming that the pre-Flood world had a lot of anarchy.
And anarchy is worse than tyranny which is not to say that tyranny is great, but sometimes you work with what you have.
History rolls on, and eventually we get a leadership group (the Founding Fathers) who had a profound respect for Christianity and a deep distrust of humanity. They created their government with the aim of using evil to thwart evil. Ambition would be set against ambition, and yet they still knew that without true religion, they were toast.
Right now, we have those trying to revive true relgion, and encourage the rebirth of freedom. They’re mostly the same people.
Which is why I wouldn’t vote for a squishy on social issues, but strong on other issues Republican. Because they largely don’t exist. You have people like Schwarnanegger who’s going to be weak on social, and strong on fiscal, and he ends up just being weak. That is the typical ‘fiscon’.
Freedom and Christ go together. And those who separate the two need to ask themselves which they hate worse…Christ or slavery.
32. Curious asked:
How do the majority of Republicans feel about a candidate that is strong in the areas of national defense, limited government, and fiscal repsonsibility, but is not all that concerned with keeping “marriage” between a man and woman, and has an “unclear” position on abortion?
I’m just curious to know.
As long as this person also was in favor of ending the failed nanny-state social-engineering project known as the ‘War on Drugs’, they’d have my vote.
There are no exceptions to the 4th Amendment. The inalienable right to pursue happiness also entails the right to fail.
>>> Republicans must listen to the voters and finally give them what they demand: less government in their lives
Sh’yeah, right. Good luck with that. I gave up believing the Republican bullsh!t a long time ago.
Moho
The bitter, whiny choice for true troll connoisseur.
59
The aim of supporting/buttressing this abuse of language is what turned our universities into centers of ignorance, dragging legitimate academic science along behind them like a horse trailer.
I briefly considered doing an English major in undergrad, but studied Classics instead. At least there you can’t BS your way through knowing Latin and Greek. That and I realized that basically Aristotle had the answer to almost everything.
32. Curious
Brief addendum to my post at #63: This purported candidate also would have to be a staunch supporter of gun rights and 2nd Amendment liberties. This is the deal-breaker for yours truly.
No, I haven’t but thanks for the recommendation. I will definitely give it read.
And if you haven’t done so, I would recommend reading “A Conservative History of the American Left”. Anyone who had done so prior to last year’s election would have instantly known just how little “change” Obama represented.
HA! One of the strangest aspects of the 2008 presidential elections was the fact that Obama at least sounded more conservative than McCain on the issues of taxes and illegal immigration. The recent gains by Republicans in generic ballot polls is due more to rebellion against Democrat incompetence and over-reach than any actual GOP proposals. The Republican Party is still firmly in the grip of Big Tent/Big Spending/Big Government/Big Deficit “moderates”.
Both McCain and Obama are described as “centrists” by the media, which means that in any competition between the two it’s hard to determine who would have had the more disastrous Presidency. The only real difference that I can see is that a President McCain would have spent most of his time fighting off impeachment efforts by vengeful Democrats rather than actually carrying out the leftist agenda he ran on. That might have keep government mischief-making to a minimum, at least for a few more years. No such luck with President Obama.
One glistening irony – libertarians had more allies for a reduced government role among so-called right-wing “Christianist” conservative Republicans.
68
Looks interesting. Hopefully, the author will be able to add another chapter on the failures of the Left after Obama is gone. Perhaps the chapter will begin, “Despite the best efforts of his army of internet trolls, Obama was unable to pass his signature legislation…”. Sweeet.
Calvin Ball–>”If they could stay on the topic, and argue with something better than “Haliburton”, they wouldn’t be trolls. By definition.”
Come on. We both know that a troll in your mind is anybody who presents you with an argument you can’t counter. Cry about it all you want, I’ve seen it time and time again. The regulars are too stupid or scared to notice, but I’m pretty sure many of the lurkers understand it perfectly. That’s why in the middle of your movements crest, you get fewer and fewer posts on this site. You’d better thank god for the trolls. Without them, there’d be no comments at all.
Veni. You’re a master artisan at painting yourself into a corner. If medicare is the big problem, then why aren’t you leading your movement with a call to do away with it? Your party and leaders, are actually going the other way….
First, we need to protect Medicare and not cut it in the name of “health-insurance reform.” As the president frequently, and correctly, points out, Medicare will go deep into the red in less than a decade. But he and congressional Democrats are planning to raid, not aid, Medicare by cutting $500 billion from the program to fund his health-care experiment. The president also plans to cut hospital payments and Medicare Advantage, all of which will mean fewer treatment options for seniors. These types of “reforms” don’t make sense for the future of an already troubled federal program or for the services it provides that millions of Americans count on.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/23/AR2009082302036.html
This should have engendered a flurry of Pajamas Media fussing. But nary a peep. This big government libural wants to keep Obama from cutting money from Medicare. He wants you to know that Medicare is sacred to conservatives. Veni, Vidi. Fail.
Ed Wallis:
Apologists for near-totalitarian statists have nothing to add on this site.
Funny, they were welcome 9 months ago.
“Republicans must listen to the voters and finally give them what they demand: less government in their lives.”
Yes, so the Madoffs of the world will be free to roam at will.
Re the collectivist trolls: you have to wonder about someone who actually WANTS to be a serf. (Maybe they read Hayek’s ROAD TO SERFDOM and decided, “Hey, this sounds pretty good to me! Let’s do that! Shackles, here I come!”)
Freedom is anathema to those in goverment. The more we have, the less we need them. The more we have, the less the lobbyists have. The more we have, the less the activists have. we are going into hock at a level unheard of in history and the response from the government: More, More!!! We have heard that there are two america’s and its true. There are those who mind their own business and those who mind everyone elses.
Here’s more great moments in the Republican party. Michael Steele just three years ago, boasting of how we would have cut medicare then if it were up to him…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7gMqpgRMXE&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Ftpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com%2F2009%2F08%2Fthe-gops-long-history-of-medicare-skepticism.php&feature=player_embedded
If medicare is the big problem, then why aren’t you leading your movement with a call to do away with it?
BTW, wouldn’t YOUR precious time be better spent trying to persuade the Blue Dogs of the wisdom of ObamaCare, rather than preaching to the scum of the earth here?
Anyway, as I always say regarding politics and anything “mass”-oriented:
“Men lose their reason in groups and regain it one by one.”
When enough people regain their reason, I’ll be there waiting, asking “What took you so long?”.
If they don’t regain their reason in time, that’s OK, too. You see this:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=tza
If and when the time comes, I will put my money into there and ride the wave of US fiscal failure all the way down. I’ll deposit 50% of my winnings on the way out the door as my “exit fee”, wipe my feet and move on to greener pastures and live off the capital gains for the next ten years to avoid paying any income tax as a “tax refugee”. There’s always a backup plan, ass. I don’t need politicians to make my life better. That’s what the market is for. As stupid as I know you and those who think like you are, I’m aware of the fact that I’m not going to change your mind on anything. Nietzsche taught me that retards and mediocrities like you always get the upper hand eventually. All I can do is try to profit from the misery you create. Which I will.
After reading the 70 posts to date, I am struck by a simple fact. Only 1 posting touched the real solution…personal, locally communicated, uncompromising faith. Every other post talked gov’t in one way or another. 2000 years ago 1 human brought down Rome and some 500 years later another brought down most of the rest. We should quit complaining, vote our conscience and personally practice our version of the “good news” even when no one is watching. Maybe one of us can quietly create the change which we so desperately need. Most of us are waiting (note I said waiting not acting and I regretably include myself) for the voice to follow. What we are currently seeing threatens to destroy the last best hope for humanity…the constitutional republic. God is love practice it and the rest will follow.
Heh. Troll went splat.
veni…I’ve said it before, I don’t support Obama’s health care plan. I also doubt it will be anything worth writing home about. I’m attacking your stupidity, not defending Obama. It seems a hard nut for you to crack, but I suppose most of your bandwidth is occupied with the dissonance of supporting Republicans who want to cut medicare as they try to save medicare. There’s probably not much cognitive amps left to think about much of anything else. Ride your little logic loop all the way down, little Veni.
I don’t want the Republicans to give anyone cover, but at the same time there might be some blue dogs out there who would walk away from Obamacare if they had an alternative. And I am not talking about giving people the public option or anything like that. The GOP has an interesting plan of their own, if they could incorporate those ideas in a bill that would not increase the size of government it might help stop Obamacare. The truth is the Democrats have the votes to pass this thing and they probably will do it if the leadership can put enough pressure on the blue dogs. The only way to stop it might be to have an alternative. But who knows? People are making a lot of noise, maybe the Democrats will chicken out.
If I may play the devil’s advocate…
The Republicans had 14 years of the white house and 6 years of controlling everything since Reagan first started talking about market-based alternatives. They didn’t do squat. That’s why we’re facing this now. The Republicans handed this issue to the donkeys on a silver platter.
I’m all for the reforms that various Republicans and Libertarians have been talking about since Reagan, but it’s not enough to talk about them. They have to DO them. If O-care goes down, it’ll come back to life again, and again, until the side who represents the private sector deals with this seven-peckered billygoat of a kinda-sorta system that we have now.
I won’t go into the details. It’s out there, for anyone who has followed this issue for more than a month. But the way we do insurance now, and the tax and other perverse incentives that drive it, are not sustainable. If we keep pretending that they are, we’re going to fighting this battle over, and over, and over, and over, and over.
This is one of the many things that the R’s should have dealt with when they had the chance, but didn’t, because they’re more interested in going along to get along with the beltway power structure. And for that, I’ll never forgive or forget.
Moho,
You can attack my stupidity until you keel over. It doesn’t matter to me. I know I’m not stupid. The paycheck I get and the numbers printed on it prove I’m not stupid, as do the diplomas framed and hanging on my walls, from universities 99% of the population will never see except in brochures. Either that or I’m the luckiest guy in the history of the planet, to be so stupid and make the money I make and have the schooling I have. In which case, I’ll quote the old saw, “I’d rather be lucky than good”. I’m not “arguing from authority”, I’m saying, my ticket’s already been stamped by society, saying, “Yes, you are intelligent enough to utilize this resource which others would also like to use”. You calling me stupid a hundred or a thousand times a day won’t change that fact. Maybe if you were talking to some twenty-something kid who was amenable to peer pressure and feeling insecure about his place in the world, your schtick would work, but I’m nearly 40 and don’t have an insecure bone in my body, so how could anything you say about me have any impact? That you can’t see that is one of your many blind spots.
I’ve said before, I am not a member of any political party. If anything, libertarianism at home and strong defense abroad is the sort of politics that fits my own views best. Basically, the way the Roman Republic was run.
As for Medicare, oftentimes an individual can be right and have no one pay attention. That’s the whole basis of the Cassandra story. I know I’m right about Medicare going bankrupt and I agree with the author of that linked article that fixing it is going to cause major political upheaval. Just because it’s a Ponzi scheme on a multi-generational scale and not the typical small scale we see with Ponzi schemes, doesn’t make it any less of a Ponzi scheme. If politicians want to play politics with that fact, let them. James Dale Davidson, founder of the National Taxpayers Union, eventually gave up on fixing the political system and dedicated all his time to his venture capital projects. When I saw that, I knew that it meant the system was going to keep on going the way it was going, regardless of how self-destructive it is.
I refuse to be a victim of others’ stupidity, no matter how wise they think they are in that stupidity. That is the only thing that matters to me in life. Everything else is just noise. Nietzsche also said that socialism was a bunch of zeros banding together and pretending they add up to something. Perfect description of you and your pals.
Well, it may not be Nietzsche, but my father once told me something that pretty much sums it up when it comes to arguing with the Left:
“Don’t waste your time arguing with ignorant people.”
Seriously though…I feel like I’m watching a killer whale bat around a seal on the Discovery Channel.
Here’s a little more piss in their “reality-based” soup.
A certain someone claims Americans are too stupid to not have big government in control of their lives. In some ways this has become true as American’s education has been feeding bad history for decades.
The absolute refutation of that idea is that those in big government are smart enough to rule the plebes to a better life. That is absurd on the face of it. The rulers are drawn from the plebes and their traits that differentiate them are hubris, love of power and greed. They have all the bad characteristics combined with even worse.
The government must be limited because it is not better at running people’s lives than those people themselves. We don’t need a new aristocracy. Yet.
85
The raw numbers on demographics tell one part of the story, but there’s also an ethnic component. As the US becomes more and more populated by Hispanics and the retired cohort is dominated by whites, it will be “interesting” to see the level of tolerance for higher Social Security taxes among the younger, more Hispanic population to support the retirement lifestyles of white Boomers.
That doesn’t even take into account that the Boomers, for all their flaws, were a very well-educated (taking that “education” with a grain of salt) generation. There was that famous report on Gen X’s educational attainments that said we’d never reach the same levels as our parents, in part because of the changing demographics. That means a population that is less able to compete globally, which means stagnant wages, which means lower payments into the Social Security Trust Fund.
So, you’ll have political resistance based at least in part on the ethnic differences in the composition of each generation, combined with the lower wage growth of the less-competitive generation. Yeah, that’s not a volatile mix at all. I can just see moho in the future, “Jose, you idiot. You are so stupid. Of course you should pay 15% of your income into Social Security and Medicare so I don’t die in the streets!”, to which Jose’s reply will probably be along the lines of “Screw you, gringo”.
The Romans had the same issue when they let the barbarians get Roman citizenship. Those who don’t learn from history and all that.
You can attack my stupidity until you keel over.
I applaud you for finally taking ownership of it.
JS Christmas, Veni! Me thinks she doth protest too much!
#75: “Re the collectivist trolls:” Stop bothering us a-holes!
What must be learned is not just that it’s pointless to argue with irrational people; it’s that these people don’t actually believe what they’re saying.
The trolls who monitor this site for an article and respond with a gainsaying or inflammatory post don’t have actual beliefs. They’re reactionaries who have been indoctrinated. This is quite handily proven by the fact that they can’t debate. They enthusiastically proffer theories that have been proven false time and again – such as the ‘managed state’ or ‘corporate liberalism’ and so on – not because they arrived at these ideas through rational thought or dialectic, but because they sounded cool when they heard it from some other equally uninformed person, or because Che has a ‘cool beard’, or other juvenile nonsense.
The only logical course for any person who truly believes in liberty and prosperity is to embrace Conservatism and small-government principles. You cannot gain liberty by surrendering it. You cannot ensure prosperity by thwarting it. These simple facts stamp ‘false’ on every statist fantasy. The sad thing is that we have known their fantasies to be false for almost 100 years now. And they keep pushing them, and pushing them, immune to their deleterious effects on the real world and denying the truth – because of a heady, corruptive mix of willful ignorance and blinding ideology.
Which is why you just have to let them act like the children they are, and hope that someday they grow up. Most do, eventually – this is why we remain a primarily Conservative nation.
Ms. Rubin:
Yet another appeal to the Republican heavens. Do you not see that the Republicans are ossified beyond all hope?
Their de-facto election slogan in 2010 and 2012 will be the same as it was in 2008 with McCain:
“Vote Republican: Better Than a Sharp Stick In The Eye.”
You might as well appeal to a granite statue of George Washington to come down off its plinth, lead our Army aross the Delaware River in the dead of Winter, and attack the Hessians at Trenton to reverse the fortunes of the Republic.
Hope lies with the American People, not the Republican Party.
In principle,you are right about what’s needed, though you probably would go nowhere near as far as I would:
Term Limits; Balanced Budget Amendment; Two-Party System Reform; Repeal the Income Tax; Reaffirm the 10th Amendment (by Amendment); Institute an Office of Citizen Advocacy (Ombudsman, Inspector General, Civil Rights)to represent any American Citizen in any transaction with federal bureaucracy.
To appeal to the Republican Party for a return of some of our lost rights (why not all?)is futile. It shows you are beginning to “get” Tea Parties, though. I heard Senator Orrin Hatch booed at the one I attended. People are FED UP (no pun intended).
All the Republican wise men are standing around in knots, whispering and nodding, trying to “figure out” the Tea Party movement and what empty slogans might harness its energy for Republicans this cycle, and what “package” to offer voters as the the minimum required to get Republican candidates elected in sufficient number to satisfy their average projection of gains.
The core of their strategy will be to stand under the Democrat apple tree holding a basket and looking up hopefully to see what might be ripe enough to fall in without any risk on their part.
In 2012, as J.R. Dunn put it exactly, they will grab an empty suit (It’s Romney’s turn, I think) and run around waving it in people’s faces yelling “Here is the Man!”
Go get yourself a pedicure and a dish of ice cream, Ms. Rubin.
It’s a more productive use of your time than offering
advice to the Republican Party.
JS Christmas, Veni! Me thinks she doth protest too much!
You and “thinking”, now there’s an incongruous pairing.
I applaud you for finally taking ownership of it.
Wow, a Commie like you letting someone own something. Quick, call the Stasi! We’ve got a mindcriminal in our midst!
91
What must be learned is not just that it’s pointless to argue with irrational people; it’s that these people don’t actually believe what they’re saying.
I’ve been trying to get some direct answer of why they slum it here with us cretins and I got a nice laugh when one of them said they posted that he did it for the benefit of the lurkers. You know, the ones who’ve never come out of hiding to say to one of the trolls, “Boy, that post really made me think and now I realize that statist Leftism is the way to go. Thanks.” I’m surprised the troll didn’t say he was doing it “for the children”. Would have been about as sincere a reason as the one he gave.
“Boy, that post really made me think and now I realize that statist Leftism is the way to go.”
No, its more like, “god, the people who read and write the stuff at Pwnage Media are total idiots.” And i’m sure it happens often. I don’t want or need them to come to my way of thinking, only to realize that you people don’t think at all!
By the way, if it makes you feel better to paint me as a socialist or communist, do so. I’ve never had to actually talk about my ideology to show that the things you write here are baseless.
Ken Langone (founder of Home Depot) summed it up nicely in an interview yesterday.
CAVUTO: You think this idea of a bigger, more involved government is a mistake?
LANGONE: Look, look — I think the minute we deprive people of the satisfaction of doing for themselves what they can do, we take away the will to win…And I think, the minute we take away that (the opportunity to do well), that is what drove America. That is what made America great.
It’s true, you know it is
“The larger point is this: You want policies that will enable you to choose your future. Obama backs policies that would let centralized authorities choose much of your future for you. Is this the hope and change you want?”
No, no and no.
Since the statists are, by and large, egomaniacal, self-serving idiots, I certainly don’t want them making choices for me.
And, good God Maud, what are all these trillions while Barack Obama yaks about reining in spending ?
Did you know how long it would take you to spend 1 Trillion dollars, spending one Million dollars/day ?
A million days, or about 2,740 years !
And last Friday, Timmy Geithner (aka the tax cheat) got the debt ceiling raised from 7 to 9 trillion !
And the (allegedly impartial) Congressional Budget Office says government healthcare will implode financially, while the Prezzydent’s spokespeople say it’s “debt neutral”.
And we’re spozed to have a healthy debate, haha, how ’bout this healthy debate, the thinking of the commander in chief is “polluted by class war ideologies”, he’s not the least bit interested in the details of any of this legislation, the point is to destroy the US economy !
VDH nails Obama and the Left down in this National Review article.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZWQ2NWJkN2M3ZmJjYWQwMDZlMWQyM2FjNWI4ZWJkNGI=
If this socialist goal is achieved I guarantee there will be civil war. I for one will not become a slave to the federal government or its client voters.
“But that goes for Republicans as well. The pressure to find some middle ground on cap and trade, ObamaCare, financial regulation, and an uber-consumer protection agency will become intense.”
Actually, not at all. Finding a “middle-ground” for unsound policy is falacious. There is no reason to compromise on something that is fundamentally wrong.
John “reach across the aisle” McCain found that out in the last election. Liberals and socialists know that the battle is not won by giant leaps, but by small steps. Those that would tear down the fabric of our Republic are very patient, and insidious. Compromise, with regard to our Constitution and Bill of Rights, is suicide.
The more you compromise, the more personal control and freedom you surrender. Frankly, the vocation “Lawmaker” is at odds to the principals and freedoms our Forefathers envisioned for our Republic.
The rejection of this attempt to intrude into our personal lives is not enough. As long as we continue to flirt with statism by supporting entitlement schemes with our votes and our taxes, it will remain a threat.
I think Americans need a new declaration of independence, not for our “colonies” but for ourselves. We should reject the concept that any of us has a right to get anything we haven’t worked for, particularly if the reason is because we made decisions like dropping out of school, failing to learn any skills, becoming pregnant out of wedlock, and so forth.
Freedom in and of itself doesn’t make anyone prosperous. Otherwise, the hippies and the homeless would all be wealthy. There are civic virtues that accompany freedom that contribute to independence. Without a re-dedication to those virtues, we’re doomed to repeated efforts like the current one to bring us into the enfolding arms of the state, and it is rare that people emerge from there without some catastrophe.
Republicans should NOT be the Party of No.
They should be the Party of Hell No!
#14 (How to shrink govt?) We can start by electing representatives committed to de-funding Federal programs. Under our Const., budget authority (and the ability to raise revenue) starts in the House. They can de-fund any program they want: Examples include everything and anything from Ameri-Corp to subsidies, to their own personal govt. salaries, office and travel expenses.
6. David Thomson writes:
“Not quite accurate. I long cynically realized that most people do not pay a lot of attention to politics. This easily allows them to be manipulated by the MSM and the overall dominant left-wing culture. Sadly, it was therefore not surprising that the con job was pulled off. The middle-of-the-road voters did not explicitly vote for an ultra-liberal. They though Obama was minimally a moderate, if not even a center-right politician.”
Not to leap to their defense, David, as I too believe that there’s a huge contingent of mouth-breathers out their that can be described as the “American [Idol] Public”. But a lot of folks have to work, have families to care for, and are otherwise concerned with our lives.
It is the idle, unemployed advocates that show up at a lot of demonstrations and hector for their causes..
..until now. The Pantload-in-Chief and his crowd of over-reaching, unrepentant Democrats have finally intruded into this private life we have and we are angry. Ergo the vociferous and boisterous Town Hall meetings.
As the young lady exclaimed to a bewildered Arlen Sphincter, “You have wakened a sleeping giant!”
Arrrrrgh!
their == there, of course.
Old soldier-”I don’t want to be cared for or coddled by a national bureaucracy.”
Are you not a consumer of veterans health benefits?
“I don’t want to pay for other people’s bad choices.”
If as a young soldier the Gov’t told you to go and fight and die in a conflict you didn’t personally or politically agree with you’d take a pass?
106. spanky wrote:
Old soldier-”I don’t want to be cared for or coddled by a national bureaucracy.”
Are you not a consumer of veterans health benefits?
Peter asks: Why do liberals keep thinking vets benefits are some kiund of give-away program and not something a soldier/sailor/airman/marine has EARNED for their SERVICE?
Could it be because libs know nothing of service to others?
Ha! You think that’s going to be a problem for the US? Wait until you see what happens with the nihilistic Europeans over the next 20-30 years as they come to depend on the ethnically-vague immigrant “youths” that riot through the streets of numerous countries on a weekly basis.
(Shhhhhh…keep that quiet though. It’s disturbing to the Left’s multi-cultural fantasies).
But you’re right about what’s going to happen here in the US, though I don’t think it’s going to make one bit of difference as to the ethnic background of young people who are having 20% of their paycheck confiscated to subsidize their selfish, irresponsible elders’ Social Security and Medicare. In a nutshell: their going to refuse to pay.
Too true. Except that, in the end, I believe that there are still enough non-feminized Americans to avoid that fate. As you said earlier:
“Again, I say, let’s split the United States into two separate countries…”
That, I fear, will eventually be our fate. Because in the end, a thing cannot be two things at once: it must become all one or all the other…or splinter from the tension. There is simply no way to reconcile the views of people like you and I with those of people like our resident Leftist trolls.
The one thing that may help us to avert that fate is the coming collapse of Europe. By 2050, there be 100 million more Americans than today. At the same time, in 2050, there will be 100 million fewer native Europeans, who – combined – currently have a suicidal birth rate of 1.4 children per woman. To be more illustrative: in 1970, there were 4.6 million native Italians under the age of 5. In 2004, there were 2.6 million.
So what are the selfish Europeans doing as they desperately try to shore up their entitlement Ponzi schemes? The exact same thing the Romans did: throwing open the doors to an ancient enemy that loathes them. And it will end the exact same way as it did for the Romans: with the barbarian horde spilling into their streets, unchallenged. Millions will flee to the Anglosphere nations that will represent all that’s left of Western Civilization. The rest will convert…or die on their knees, cowards and fools.
And the shock of seeing that happen might just be enough to remind Westerners that there’s a reason for the phrase “it’s a man’s world”.
To all of you who suppose term limits on politicians is the way to choke Pig Government, look at California. Its Prop 140 was passed almost two decades ago (in 1990) and Utopia still has not yet arrived in the Golden State.
15. Pelaut:
“vivo: “If people were honest, smart and responsible they wouldn’t need governments.”
Idiot! Get an education! Government is constituted to take care of the COMMONS. Period.”
Tnx fr da compliment. Ur statement is correct, but my take was to point out that if people acted smart and helpful, they could avoid gobs and gobs of legislation and bureaucracy.
17. wobble&gyrate:
Tnx, I wasn’t trying to be historically precise.
31. woreoutolddude:
“Yeah I agree religion is man made, but faith comes from God through the Bible, and I don’t need no teacher or preacher to get it.”
I fully agree with you. I really admire the brilliant minds that created religion and the bibles. I respect your Faith in beings that guide you. But much pain and death has come from religious beliefs. I don’t need that.
39. Bilwick:
Again, I wasn’t trying to be precise.
55. rvastar:
“But unfortunately, there are millions upon millions of vivos out there…historically ignorant “useful idiots” who are only all-too-willing to stick their necks into a yoke of their own making.”
Look who’s talking. Read your words again while looking at a mirror. See that yoke?
58. Ruebacca:
“Live Free or Die”
Your choice. But nothing is black or white. Look at all your grays.
My motto: Live free and live happy.
91. AtheistConservative:
“Which is why you just have to let them act like the children they are, and hope that someday they grow up. Most do, eventually”
Children are pure and honest.
I will remain a child!
Rome fell from internal corruption, living large and not paying attention to details. Rome was paying massive amounts from its treasuries to keep borders of its empire intact, financing foreign wars, while revenue fell dramatically.
No Nation can sustain wars from which there is no profit, that is how empires crumble and republics are lost. Rome continued to expand while it could earn profit, so long as it could generate enough revenue to fund expansion and hold on to expansion, it survived.
The USA is finding itself in a predicament, expanding to its present geography took a few hundred years, and it was profitable. But it got corrupt and lazy, is now draining its treasuries to defend borders and financing wars abroad without generating revenue.
Personal liberty is a casualty of this process, when govt restricts its citizens, the writing is on the wall.
#109 Micha Elyi
True, term limits by themselves are not a solution, since the Parties will just plug in some wholly-controlled human asset to do their bidding for one term. The PARTY will thus retain control of the seat, not the individual politician. Back to square one.
That’s why we need other systemic reforms to work with term limits. Like reigning in the parties, reaffirmation of the 10th Amendment, correcting abuses of the power of the purse: ending their freedom to print, borrow, or steal any money they want. Some of these reforms I listed, and some I did not.
There are people in this country, on our side, who are knowledgeable enough to figure out a way to do this safely and effectively.
Professional politicians plot, scheme, reshape, and scam the System–they know it better than we do and they’ve been at it for decades. It will not be an easy fight. There is no single Magic Bullet that will fix this problem, you are right.
The solution will come in the form of a mix of very power measures–like a cocktail of anti-cancer drugs–working together to make it impossible for a professional political class to establish itself and prosper.
Then we’ll have a Citizen Legislature. No guarantees,I’m afraid, but I’d rather have a Tea Party Mom making up the U.S. budget than a land swindler with a no-limit credit card.
To quote a Russian policeman in Moscow in 1990, asked by CNN what the fall of the Soviet Union meant to him: “Nadyezhda yaest”—There is hope.