Obama doesn't have all of his positions set in stone yet and he thinks that YOU know what's best for the country. Recall JFK's quote: "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country" I have to admit that if Barack Obama told me that he thinks that I know what's best for the country, it would be hard to keep from laughing in his face. I don't know what's best for 300 million people. Nobody does, not individually and not in a group. It's hard enough for each of us to figure out what's best for ourselves. So I'll offer you a deal: I won't trample your garden if you won't trample mine.
I don't know where you're posting from, but in the US, there's no such thing as "police protection". According to the Supreme Court, the police have no duty to protect a person from harm, even if the person in question has a restraining order against an abusive ex. It's probably the same in other countries as well. Protect yourself; the police don't give a damn about you. Don't expect a law enforcement officer to protect you.
As for roads, I'd have to think about it. As I understand it, road construction and maintenance would be a natural monopoly. It probably isn't practical for two competing companies to maintain the roads in a given geographical area. However, I see no reason to trust road construction to the government, which has no incentive to squeeze as much value as possible from every dollar of revenue.
I agree with techpawn. I'm not an engineer of any sort. I'm a programmer, a sysadmin, a database administrator, a network technician. I don't design anything; somebody else comes up with the spec, gives it to me on the back of a McDonalds napkin, and I do the best I can to implement it. Once I've done that, I test it. Then I pass it to QA for more testing. Then one of my eight different bosses decides to change the spec and gives me the changes written on the back of a Ninja Burger napkin.
I'm not an engineer. I'm a programmer working one thankless job after another. If your kid tells you he wants to code for a living, hit him upside the head and tell him that janitors get more respect. Not only that, but at least the janitor doesn't have to deal with having the goalposts moved every five minutes.
I do question, however, the calculation by which you concluded that $21 (and that's assuming you make a whole lot more than most americans) a paycheck is worth more than well-funded and organized hospitals or social stability.
You're not getting it. I don't give a damn how small a chunk it is out of my check: if it is taken from me without my consent (in other words, via taxation) then I will object. If I could sign a form to explicitly consent to having a small sum deducted from my pay and donated to ensure that everybody has health care, I would consider it. However, advocates of a European-style health care system don't want to allow the individual that sort of choice. They would rather use the machinery of government and its power to tax, to take from all and give no one a say in the matter.
Frankly, I resent this. I resent being pushed around, I resent being ordered around, and I resent having decisions made for me. I resent not being given a chance to choose to do the right thing. Instead, every tax levied upon me to pay for some social program is a slap in my face that says, "We don't trust you to do right by your neighbors, so we're not going to give you a choice."
I don't think you're heartless, I think you're shortsighted. As as a matter of fact, I am both heartless and nearsighted. Why do you think I wear glasses?
Or Frank Herbert: "Power attracts the corruptible. Suspect all who seek it. We should grant power over our affairs only to those who are reluctant to wield it, and only then under conditions that increase the reluctance." I like that, but I don't remember reading it in Dune. Was that line in one of Herbert's other novels?
Are you that greedy and obsessed with amassing your little cash pile that you'd miss such a paltry sum?
As a matter of fact, I am. First off, it wouldn't be fifty bucks a month in the US. Second, what part of "it's my money" don't you understand? I worked for it, I earned it, therefore it is my property. What gives you or anybody else the right to dispose of my property in my name?
Guess what: you don't have the right. You might outvote me, and the government might outgun me, but that doesn't give you the right to take my property and throw it away chasing after some illusory "common good". If you want to claim that the government has the right because most of the people want it to do so, then take your "might makes right" approach to ethics and go back to kindergarten.
My biggest problem with Huckabee is the tax reform system he favors, called "Fair Tax," which issues a flat tax for all consumers with a rebate to the poor. While that may sound good, the reality is it shifts the tax burden from the rich to the middle class. The middle class already bear the brunt of the tax burden. The rich can afford to exploit the loopholes in the tax code to keep most of their money. Most of the middle class can't afford that kind of financial advice. Also, payroll taxes are capped at about $95,000 dollars. Fuel taxes? The middle class gets hit hardest by those. Same with liquor and tobacco taxes. Same with municipal property taxes. And let's not forget inflation, with deprives the middle class of purchasing power by destroying the value of what little money they manage to save after paying taxes and paying all the assorted costs of keeping up with the Joneses.
Obama has the kind of experience we need in a leader, Clinton does not. Obama deeply understands the needs of poor and working-class America because he spent an awful lot of his life organizing them. We need leaders who understand what it's like in the real world. Nothing that Clinton says convinces me she has a clue. No, Clinton doesn't know what's like for people who have to earn a living, and I don't think she gives a shit.
Obama talks about hope because once you start getting into the community organizing world and see how incredibly powerful it can be, you have no choice but to have hope. If community organization and grassroots efforts are so powerful, then why doesn't Obama continue in that vein? By becoming a senator, and now running for President, Obama has abandoned bottom-up work in favor of attempting to impose change from the top down. What exactly does he hope to accomplish?
So what, we should just give up and go home, and let come whatever may? Even if you are right, being apathetic and cynical about it isn't going to change anything.
No, I said nothing about giving up. I said that none of the candidates are acceptable. If I were the voting sort (it's rather silly for an anarchist to vote, don't you think?), I'd suggest doing a write-in ballot and writing "NONE OF THE ABOVE" instead of settling for the lesser evil.
I think it's a little too cynical to say everyone that ever ran for President or wanted to be President did so for nefarious reasons. I'm sure plenty of them just wanted the fame and power, but I think at least a few wanted to try and do something good for the country.
I'm sure that George W. Bush wanted to try to do something good for the country. I'll accept that he had good intentions. Instead of worrying about his intentions, look at the results. The government has become more powerful and more meddlesome under Bush. You cannot fly without being searched. The country is fighting yet another war that has not been declared by Congress as the Constitution requires. On top of that, the economy is in the shitter because the Federal Reserve flooded the market with easy money yet again.
Remember that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Maybe he will, but that doesn't mean that he, or any other Presidential candidate, won't do anything good while in office. Even if Obama, or whoever becomes President, upholds the Presidential Oath of Office to the letter and refrains from all abuses of power, he still has a Congress that wipes its ass on the Constitution to contend with. You'll have to pardon my cynicism, but I doubt that any President has the backbone to stand up to a Congress that doesn't recognize any limits to its authority until the Supreme Court hears a challenge to the law and strikes it down as unconstitutional.
By the same token, why should you trust anyone, ever? Politicians are just people capable of violating trust on a grander scale. What makes you think I trust anybody but my wife and my friends?
Maybe she didn't divorce him because she loved him and could forgive him? On the other side, perhaps it was political. Maybe it was a mixture of both. Either way, I can't respect Hillary because she forgave Bill; as far as I'm concerned, it's a sign of weakness on her part. I would not expect my wife to forgive infidelity on my part, and I certainly wouldn't forgive her if she cheated on me.
If you can come up with a better way for voters to hold the President to the promises made during the campaign, then you might be onto something. The only promise I expect a President to keep is the one he makes after the campaign. If he actually honors his Oath of Office, I'll be satisfied. However, I can't think of a single President that consistently honored that oath. I can think of a way to enforce it, but we'd have to amend the Constitution's definition of "treason".
Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan tells people he'd like to propose a Constitutional Amendment, stating that "anyone willing to do the ridiculous things necessary to become President is hereby banned from that office". I could get behind that, after the 16th and 17th amendments have been repealed.
Oh wait, this is Hillary we're talking about. Yeah, it's Hillary. I don't think she gives a shit about the Constitution, and I don't think she actually plans to uphold it. If we're lucky, she'll pay lip service. That's all.
So do you have any reason to believe Obama would be any better or worse than anybody else? No. I think he'll be as poor a President as the other candidates, but that's not his fault. Like Lord Acton wrote in 1881: "The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern." Obama, for all his talk of hope, won't be a better President than Clinton, Huckabee, McCain, Paul, et al. He's only human, and thus unfit to govern anybody but himself.
I'd sooner try to juggle grenades than try to shut my spouses mouth. You're not running for President, and neither am I. As far as I'm concerned, if Hillary can't keep Bill in line, what does that say for her administration should she become President?
I'm kind of hoping Americans have learned their lesson and will vote more wisely and that includes not voting for a president whose name is perilously close to hick - I can imagine more than one or two people slipping up and calling him president Hickabee. I call him "Schmuckabee", and I suspect that he'll win the primary and get a respectable chunk of the popular vote as long as he keeps up the God talk and doesn't get caught soliciting gay sex in a public crapper. Unfortunately, too many Americans are willing to vote for anybody who claims to be a Christian and hasn't gotten caught having extramarital sex.
I don't trust any of them. They all want the job, which should be enough in itself to disqualify them. Obama talks a good game, but why should I trust his intentions? Why should I believe that he won't be warped and corrupted by the power of the President's office? Clinton has no principles, she panders to any voting bloc she thinks can help her, and not only did she not divorce her adulterous asshole of a husband, but she can't keep his mouth shut during her campaign.
So, in order for humans to make anarchy a workable system, humans must cease to exist. If that's what it takes to get you poor fucking humans to stop acting like chimpanzees, so be it.
No, we will not get fooled again, the next generation will. (Unless you mean "You", as in, society.) Really all we can do is try. Try to set a good example for the next generation. Bending over with no lube for Real ID and other national identification cards is not a good example.
I mean "you" as in the human race. Humans have been more-or-less "civilized" for at least 6000 years, and the answer to abuses of power is still to overthrow the government and put in a new government, which in turn will become corrupt. Humans don't seem to understand that government itself is the problem. As long as people believe that some people have the right to order the rest around, there are going to be abuses of power. If there are too many people for the rulers to manage without ID, then the rulers will find some way to force the ruled to carry identification of some sort. As long as people accept that "government" is necessary, there will be abuses of power and oppression.
The only answer, the only way to break the cycle between revolution and tyranny, is to abandon the idea that some people have either the right or the ability to rule over others. However, for anarchy to work, people have to learn to interact using reason, not force.
I agree with you concerning the Framers' reasons for including the Second Amendment. However, I have to ask you why you think that simply overthrowing an oppressive government and replacing it will do any long-term good? Do you think that leading Congress to the guillotine will work in a country where most people, thanks to public education, think that consistent respect for individual rights means leaving poor people to starve to death in the streets?
The American revolution was as successful as it was because of the people behind it, and I'm not just talking about the heroes you read about in school. Just about everybody in the colonies had at least a nodding acquaintance with the ideas of thinkers like John Locke and Thomas Paine.
An armed rebellion today would fail miserably, because most of the people are beholden to the government. They either get money directly from the government, or they work in industries that receive government subsidies. Do you think, for example, that public school teachers will do anything but teach the children in their ever-so-tender care that the rebels are anything but villains?
Before you can have a revolution, you need a people on fire with the lust for liberty. We don't have that, for the most part. Most people, if you were to tell them that it was possible to have a government that did not rob Peter in order to provide Paul with a welfare check, would laugh at you. Suggest repealing the income tax, and the first thing you'll hear is "how will the government replace those 'lost revenues', as if the government was ever morally entitled to that money in the first place.
A revolution won't work right now. The people are not ready; they do not burn with a passionate need for freedom.
The American revolution may have bought a few decades, but can you say the same for the Russian Revolution that overthrew Tsar Nicholas II and was hijacked by Lenin and his Bolsheviks? How much time did the guillotining of Louis XVI and his noblemen buy for the French before Robespierre took over and imposed his Terror? I stand by my opinion that overthrowing a government and replacing it with a new one only sows the seeds of tyranny anew. The seeds germinate and grow faster in some countries than they do in others, that's all.
Yes, I know it's bleak. Unfortunately, humanity's survival for most of its history has depended upon the willingness of individuals to obey what they perceive to be a legitimate authority. Most people, if they believe that you have the right and the ability to command them, will follow your orders. Stanley Milgram proved this in the 1960s using experiments that would be considered unethical by current standards.
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I don't know where you're posting from, but in the US, there's no such thing as "police protection". According to the Supreme Court, the police have no duty to protect a person from harm, even if the person in question has a restraining order against an abusive ex. It's probably the same in other countries as well. Protect yourself; the police don't give a damn about you. Don't expect a law enforcement officer to protect you.
As for roads, I'd have to think about it. As I understand it, road construction and maintenance would be a natural monopoly. It probably isn't practical for two competing companies to maintain the roads in a given geographical area. However, I see no reason to trust road construction to the government, which has no incentive to squeeze as much value as possible from every dollar of revenue.
I agree with techpawn. I'm not an engineer of any sort. I'm a programmer, a sysadmin, a database administrator, a network technician. I don't design anything; somebody else comes up with the spec, gives it to me on the back of a McDonalds napkin, and I do the best I can to implement it. Once I've done that, I test it. Then I pass it to QA for more testing. Then one of my eight different bosses decides to change the spec and gives me the changes written on the back of a Ninja Burger napkin.
I'm not an engineer. I'm a programmer working one thankless job after another. If your kid tells you he wants to code for a living, hit him upside the head and tell him that janitors get more respect. Not only that, but at least the janitor doesn't have to deal with having the goalposts moved every five minutes.
You're not getting it. I don't give a damn how small a chunk it is out of my check: if it is taken from me without my consent (in other words, via taxation) then I will object. If I could sign a form to explicitly consent to having a small sum deducted from my pay and donated to ensure that everybody has health care, I would consider it. However, advocates of a European-style health care system don't want to allow the individual that sort of choice. They would rather use the machinery of government and its power to tax, to take from all and give no one a say in the matter.
Frankly, I resent this. I resent being pushed around, I resent being ordered around, and I resent having decisions made for me. I resent not being given a chance to choose to do the right thing. Instead, every tax levied upon me to pay for some social program is a slap in my face that says, "We don't trust you to do right by your neighbors, so we're not going to give you a choice."
I don't think you're heartless, I think you're shortsighted. As as a matter of fact, I am both heartless and nearsighted. Why do you think I wear glasses?As a matter of fact, I am. First off, it wouldn't be fifty bucks a month in the US. Second, what part of "it's my money" don't you understand? I worked for it, I earned it, therefore it is my property. What gives you or anybody else the right to dispose of my property in my name?
Guess what: you don't have the right. You might outvote me, and the government might outgun me, but that doesn't give you the right to take my property and throw it away chasing after some illusory "common good". If you want to claim that the government has the right because most of the people want it to do so, then take your "might makes right" approach to ethics and go back to kindergarten.
No, I said nothing about giving up. I said that none of the candidates are acceptable. If I were the voting sort (it's rather silly for an anarchist to vote, don't you think?), I'd suggest doing a write-in ballot and writing "NONE OF THE ABOVE" instead of settling for the lesser evil.
I think it's a little too cynical to say everyone that ever ran for President or wanted to be President did so for nefarious reasons. I'm sure plenty of them just wanted the fame and power, but I think at least a few wanted to try and do something good for the country.I'm sure that George W. Bush wanted to try to do something good for the country. I'll accept that he had good intentions. Instead of worrying about his intentions, look at the results. The government has become more powerful and more meddlesome under Bush. You cannot fly without being searched. The country is fighting yet another war that has not been declared by Congress as the Constitution requires. On top of that, the economy is in the shitter because the Federal Reserve flooded the market with easy money yet again.
Remember that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Maybe he will, but that doesn't mean that he, or any other Presidential candidate, won't do anything good while in office. Even if Obama, or whoever becomes President, upholds the Presidential Oath of Office to the letter and refrains from all abuses of power, he still has a Congress that wipes its ass on the Constitution to contend with. You'll have to pardon my cynicism, but I doubt that any President has the backbone to stand up to a Congress that doesn't recognize any limits to its authority until the Supreme Court hears a challenge to the law and strikes it down as unconstitutional. By the same token, why should you trust anyone, ever? Politicians are just people capable of violating trust on a grander scale. What makes you think I trust anybody but my wife and my friends? Maybe she didn't divorce him because she loved him and could forgive him? On the other side, perhaps it was political. Maybe it was a mixture of both. Either way, I can't respect Hillary because she forgave Bill; as far as I'm concerned, it's a sign of weakness on her part. I would not expect my wife to forgive infidelity on my part, and I certainly wouldn't forgive her if she cheated on me.Why not? We fill our jury pools with random conscripts, so why not the Oval Office, as well? While we're at it, let's do the same for Congress.
Huckabee makes me nervous; he sounds like a dominionist.
I don't trust any of them. They all want the job, which should be enough in itself to disqualify them. Obama talks a good game, but why should I trust his intentions? Why should I believe that he won't be warped and corrupted by the power of the President's office? Clinton has no principles, she panders to any voting bloc she thinks can help her, and not only did she not divorce her adulterous asshole of a husband, but she can't keep his mouth shut during her campaign.
Ask me again in ten thousand years. Either humanity will have evolved, or they'll have destroyed themselves.
I mean "you" as in the human race. Humans have been more-or-less "civilized" for at least 6000 years, and the answer to abuses of power is still to overthrow the government and put in a new government, which in turn will become corrupt. Humans don't seem to understand that government itself is the problem. As long as people believe that some people have the right to order the rest around, there are going to be abuses of power. If there are too many people for the rulers to manage without ID, then the rulers will find some way to force the ruled to carry identification of some sort. As long as people accept that "government" is necessary, there will be abuses of power and oppression.
The only answer, the only way to break the cycle between revolution and tyranny, is to abandon the idea that some people have either the right or the ability to rule over others. However, for anarchy to work, people have to learn to interact using reason, not force.
I agree with you concerning the Framers' reasons for including the Second Amendment. However, I have to ask you why you think that simply overthrowing an oppressive government and replacing it will do any long-term good? Do you think that leading Congress to the guillotine will work in a country where most people, thanks to public education, think that consistent respect for individual rights means leaving poor people to starve to death in the streets?
The American revolution was as successful as it was because of the people behind it, and I'm not just talking about the heroes you read about in school. Just about everybody in the colonies had at least a nodding acquaintance with the ideas of thinkers like John Locke and Thomas Paine.
An armed rebellion today would fail miserably, because most of the people are beholden to the government. They either get money directly from the government, or they work in industries that receive government subsidies. Do you think, for example, that public school teachers will do anything but teach the children in their ever-so-tender care that the rebels are anything but villains?
Before you can have a revolution, you need a people on fire with the lust for liberty. We don't have that, for the most part. Most people, if you were to tell them that it was possible to have a government that did not rob Peter in order to provide Paul with a welfare check, would laugh at you. Suggest repealing the income tax, and the first thing you'll hear is "how will the government replace those 'lost revenues', as if the government was ever morally entitled to that money in the first place.
A revolution won't work right now. The people are not ready; they do not burn with a passionate need for freedom.
The American revolution may have bought a few decades, but can you say the same for the Russian Revolution that overthrew Tsar Nicholas II and was hijacked by Lenin and his Bolsheviks? How much time did the guillotining of Louis XVI and his noblemen buy for the French before Robespierre took over and imposed his Terror? I stand by my opinion that overthrowing a government and replacing it with a new one only sows the seeds of tyranny anew. The seeds germinate and grow faster in some countries than they do in others, that's all.
Yes, I know it's bleak. Unfortunately, humanity's survival for most of its history has depended upon the willingness of individuals to obey what they perceive to be a legitimate authority. Most people, if they believe that you have the right and the ability to command them, will follow your orders. Stanley Milgram proved this in the 1960s using experiments that would be considered unethical by current standards.