So spending the 500 billion on arms research, creating jobs, is fiscal responsibility but spending it on medical research, creating jobs, is socialism ?
So I gather. I'm of course being ironic, but I do find it odd that people with deep moral objections to government providing jobs for the poor will still justify $.5 trillion in military spending by saying that it creates jobs. They're okay with people becoming millionaires at the public trough, but if a single mother of two is the one who benefits, then that's overstepping the purpose of government, and Stalinism is just around the corner. I don't actually want the government to start makework jobs to employ anyone, but as someone who finds most defense spending to be pork-barrel politics, I think the objections to government largess should at least be consistent. If you only object when government largesse puts money in the pockets of poor people, that isn't conservatism. I'm not sure what to call it, other than wrong-headed.
There are applications for a small distro. DSL + VMWare + Truecrypt is an interesting setup. All you'd have unencrypted on your HD would be the DSL install, and you could run your "real" OS from a VMWare Virtual Machine stored in an encrypted container, even in a hidden container. I haven't actually tried this, but I've seen posts by people using Puppy Linux (or was it Feather? can't remember) for just this setup.
Now if only Truecrypt and VMWare could be automagically installed via apt-get or Synaptic. I can even learn to use the command-line version of Truecrypt, if I could just get it installed in less than an hour. I haven't even tried on DSL yet.
Which is a toothless argument, because almost any field we spend $500 Billion on can generate domestic jobs.
Yes, but to spend $500 billion on the military and thus create jobs is sound fiscal policy. To spend $500 billion on any other programs of any kind and thus create an equal number of jobs is to perpetuate the welfare state, which is socialism.
Similarly, to rebuild the infrastructure of Iraq is an appropriate use of US tax money. However, to rebuild any infrastructure in the US would be socialism.
Similarly, we have a responsibility to free the Iraqis from Saddam Hussein's tyranny because those people deserve human rights and we have a leadership role when it comes to human rights in the world. However, we can inprison them indefinitely without trial, and interrogate them with what would be considered torture in the US, because they are not Americans, and it's not the responsibility of the US government to secure human rights for non-Americans.
Keep going over those basic arguments until you've memorized them. It might help to print them out and carry them around with you, in case you don't have 24/7 access to Fox News.
Plus we're a more mobile society. When you spend your whole life in a village where everyone, I mean everyone, knows you and your entire family, then no one forgets anything. If you stole a piece of candy or said a bad word when you were three, someone remembers. But when people move around every few years, change jobs, change homes, and you don't really know anyone, social censure isn't nearly as formidable of a problem. Now you can be the adulterer, or have a DUI, and most people just won't know about it. I don't think this made people irresponsible, only allowed us to indulge our latent irresponsibility. Falstaff's character was written 400 years ago, and he probably resembed somene Shakespeare had met.
Plus, it's not as if the prominent members of society, of any political persuasion, are wracked by guilt for things they've done. Morality is much more forgiving now, as well--Ronald Reagan was a divorcee, which used to be considered a sign of bad character. Now it's normal. We're all about "putting things behind us," even if the "things" happened last month and are still under grand jury investigation.
Honestly, it is getting to the point where I ask, when are people going to take responsibility for their actions - that is the cornerstone of being an adult, making your choices and accepting the consequences of those choices.
I'd say roughly never. I doubt there has ever been a time when people were really that anxious to claim responsibility for the consequences of their actions. We as a species seem only willing to take responsibility for what we meant to do, not for what we did. Military personnel take credit for defeating the enemy, but it gets kind of quiet if you imply that they might be responsible for the non-combatants they killed--that isn't their fault, just collateral damage. Is that because of the welfare state, too?
There are other aspects of our culture that dilute personal responsibility. Corporations, by design, insulate managers and shareholders from actions they benefit from personally. We're okay with that, though. No problems there. But if an INDIVIDUAL avoids responsibility, suddenly western civiliazation is in dire trouble. If a corporation files bankruptcy so the shareholders don't have to ante up to pay the debt for the entity they own, we don't bat an eyelash, but if Joe Sixpack declares Chapter 11 then we get all concerned about the state of humanity.
Government habitually hides behind secrecy to avoid responsibility. Where is the hue and cry? Why is it only the morons on Jenny Jones who get our contumely?
If you, on the other hand, make it so that both members of the married couple have to work long and hard just to scrape by, how can you possibly be surprised that the stress of daily life will have a detrimental toll on their marriage?
This is only tangential to your post, but I don't think most couples, at least in the US, are really in this predicament. "Scraping by," or even getting by reasonably well, could probably be done with one breadwinner. But we have so many toys now, and everyone wants the new, bigger house, and a flashy car, etc, that eventually you do need two incomes to support the lifestyle. A liveable house and food on the table, lights, air-conditioning, the basics, are affordable in most areas. I'm not saying that the decisions are wrong, only that they are decisions. I know many people who are living paycheck-to-paycheck, barely scraping by, and none of them lack a PS2, DVD player, $50 shoes, etc. The only exceptions are the ones who have a lot of kids they can't afford--now THEY are broke. Can't imagine why that might be. Again, I'm not saying that their decisions are wrong, only that they are decisions.
I had no idea Churchill said it first, so I wasn't making an allusion to his quote. I just felt, and have for some time, that capitalism (and democracy) have the virtues of being less horrible than the alternatives. I didn't deliberately plagiarize.
Liberarians believe in small government. That's what I mean by conservative. Prefixing the word "conservative" with "social" doesn't reverse the polarity of the word, does it? When someone says "I'm a conservative" I always think that means "I believe in small government," but I guess I have to grudgingly admit that it's come to mean "I believe in huge, sprawling, intrusive government that remakes the world however I want it, as long as we pass on the expense to future generations, because taxes are immoral." It's unfortunate that statists have successfully co-opted both "liberal" and "conservative" for their own use.
Now is the best time to jump ship. Gates will always be fabulously wealthy, but if he leaves now he can leave before the company really falls apart, leaving the impression that his "vision," rather than historical accident, was what lead to their market dominance. Their high market share can't last. Linux, BSD, Openoffice, OSS, free software, etc, will continue to eat into their revenue base, and how the heck do you fight against all of these enemies? All of these executives can see that Opendocument and FSF in general is going to make Microsoft, if not irrelevant, at least optional. Companies like Microsoft don't thrive on being one option among others--they only have the market share they have because competitors were kept out of the picture altogether. Everyone wants to leave now so it isn't their fault when the company becomes a weak shadow of its former self. That way they can say, "Well, when I was there, our market share was 97%... now look what these morons have done to it!"
I'm about sick of the "Microsoft is evil" rant. Get some perspective, for God's sake. Watch the documentary The Corporation and notice the staggering number of corporate logos streaming by, all of which represent a corporation guilty of one type of crime or another. Microsoft is not evil, but psychopathic, just like all the other corporations out there. Psychopaths will do good when it suits them, and bad when it suits them, but they are not "evil." They are amoral. The list of corporations fined or rebuked for illegal and/or unethical and/or underhanded practices woud probably constitute a sizeable percentage of the Fortune 500, and would be reflected in most, if not all, mutual funds. Predatory business practices are normal in capitalism, because in the real world you make more money by destroying competition than by making a better mousetrap. It doesn't take a very smart businessperson to realize that you'll make more money if customers never get the chance to buy the other company's product. It's just obvious, and companies will always try as much as they can get away with.
Am I anti-capitalist? Not a chance--I'm a libertarian, which means I'm so conservative that I make conservatives seem like socialists. I do happen to think that capitalism sucks, but like democracy, the only thing worse is everything else.
You just misunderstand the actual objective. They make the voters feel more moral. It's sort of like the "truthiness" you keep hearing about. The voters feel that they live in a more moral community, a few people are made examples of, the police are given more power to harass and lean on people, corruption goes up, but by God, we've "sent a message." It's just like the fight over the Ten Commandments in the courthouse. It doesn't make anyone actually act more morally, but dammit, it makes the supporters feel better. See also: gay marriage amendment, prostitution laws, war on drugs, anti-pornography legislation, video game legislation, etc.
Americans do seem disproportionately good at making money. Strangely, most of the things I find most irritating about my culture are the very things that make it the most financially profitable. Everything in our country revolves around money. Even religion is commercialized, down to lawsuits over "What Would Jesus Do?" bracelets. It's hard to find a college/university that isn't basically a trade school. It's hard to find someone who doesn't consider education to be just job training. It's hard to find anyoe with any intellectual curiosity. In the USA, you don't just happen to run into someone with a passion for Schopenhaeur or Botticelli. But much to the irritation of intellectuals, including myself, being a philistine doesn't prevent one from getting an MBA and making a million a year. It's frustrating living in a country where you'd have such serious trouble explaining to people why you'd want to major in philosophy or classical studies. But Americans are fantastic at making money. Granted, it reduces everything to the bottom line, and sort of kills any other value in the world, but you can't avoid the bare fact that the mentality is good for business.
And the other half of the population has a double standard when it comes to the Republicans. Get a grip. No one really wants small government--they're just lying about it whenever the opposition is in power. The Republicans don't really believe in small government, and the Democrats don't really believe in freedom. The only real conservatives are the libertarians, and they couldn't elect someone as dog catcher, because no one really wants small government. Everyone wants a big government that does what they want. The "small government" or "freedom" rhetoric is just a weapon of opportunity to use against a politician from the other party. People who actually believe in small government vote libertarian. At last count, that made about 27 people nationwide.
Neither side, Republicans nor Democrats, can give up their fantasy of a powerful, efficient government that remakes the world the way they want it without any costs or danger to freedom. They differ in what they want the government to do, but that's about it. So in short, they're lying, or at best delusional. Get your mind around that, and it won't frustrate you as much. That is, unless your only point was to discredit democrats because you're a republican, in which case your outrage is only tactical. So it goes.
Here's an interesting side-note to the Quaker issue. I'm currently reading Witness, by Whittaker Chambers. The book is outrageously popular among conservatives, and Chambers, after he left the Communist Party, was a straight-ticket Republican until he died. But he was also a Quaker.
The book is very well-written, by the way. Not that anyone will ever ever read this comment, but if anyone does, I do recommend the book.
Some would argue that power doesn't corrupt, it only attracts those who are already corrupted
I couldn't disagree more. I think there is something about power, something about the opportunity to work our will on others without their being able to defend themselves or hurt us in return, that brings something out that is already latent in our nature. Read about the Zimbardo prison experiments, the Milgram "Obedience to Authority" experiments, etc. Read Bloom's The Lucifer Principle, and Browning's Ordinary Men. Power often does something even to those who are good, idealistic people. I'm not saying that everyone turns into Caligula, but it brings out the idea that we are different from those over whom we have power. And the more insulated we get from oversight and accountability, the worse it gets.
It also gets worse if there in authority structure tacitly approving of the abuses, or even worse, if ideology or patriotism gets involved to condone and encourage what we're doing. There develops a positive feedback loop, and ordinary, decent people can do horrible things that they never would have done in another context. That's how the Nazi concentration camps happened, Stalin's purges, and even Abu Ghraib. The difference is only one of scale, not of kind. Every person is capable of evil.
To go further, I think that the idea that there are inherently evil people "out there" somewhere, different from you and me, puts us at further risk. Everyone needs to realize their own capacity for wrongdoing, even if they don't understand it. It may be true that those who most eagerly seek out power and authority are the very ones in whom these qualities are strongest, but ultimately they are present in everyone. Call it original sin, the fall of man, whatever you want, but it all comes back to the idea that none of us are above the fray.
McCarthy didn't just "disagree" with the President. I'm not suggesting that a random person off the street should be jailed for preferring chocolate though the President likes vanilla. McCarthy said that the President was aiding the Communist party. He also claimed the right to leak any information he wanted, refuged to divulge a leak within the State Department, etc. And McCarthy wasn't a private citizen--he was a Senator, and so bore a public trust. My point was that he attacked his own President, without foundation, and for his own political gain.
My tone was a little over the top, because I was trying to show that, per the standards held by so-called conservatives today, McCarthy was a traitor. Today, to question the President, question the war, question why our natinal debt is so large, anything, is to expose yourself to accusations of "aiding the terrorists." Well, McCarthy qualifies. The attempt to find Soviet agents was made more difficult because of the stigma of McCarthyism.
If a Democratic senator, say Senator Clinton, stood up today and said "I have here a list of 213 card-carrying members of Al Queida working from within the U.S. State Department and U.S. Department of Defense, and I have proof that President Bush has been working to futher the hold of Al Queida on the U.S. government..." and so on, yet refused to actually hand over any information, refused to divulge where this alleged information came from, and so on, there is no way in bloody hell any conservative, or any liberal, or anyone else, would call this Senator an American hero. They would be vilified, and rightly so.
Yet because the government is so large, it's highly likely that somewhere there are a few people, here and there, who are sympathetic to what Al Queida is doing. Would we then say "well, the Senator was right, after all..."? No, we wouldn't. McCarthy is not someone to be admired, regardless of your political persuasion.
I would love to have the immigration situation actually "resolved." Americans are in some heavy denial about how dependent the economy is on illegal, cheap immigrant labor. The Texas economy in particular would fall over, die, and burst into flame if all the illegal immigrants vanished. Restaurants? Hotels? Ranches? Farms? If all these demonized immigrants just vanished the people would realize in short order why nothing was ever done about it before, despite all the big talk. Racism sells, but money is what matters.
Wait till people are paying $8 for a head of lettuce, and the light just may go on. If ranchers and restaurants actually paid ALL of their employees a legal wage, complete with all the taxes, insurance, etc, prices have to go up. I'm all for the immigrants--the poor bastards have been exploited for too long. I hope, for their own sake, that the problem is "fixed" long enough for people to realize how much we depend on their existence. If the immigtants just stopped coming, the entire US economy would have to undergo some serious readjustment.
I'm not saying it would crash, but a steady supply of cheap, exploitable, never-talk-back labor has been taken for granted probably for as long as the US has been a nation.
Actually, McCarthy did nothing productive. He threw out unsubstantiated accusations, leaked classified information, and accused the President of the United States of being a Communist sympathizer. This was during the Korean War, meaning he undermined the authority and efficacy of the President when the troops were in harm's way. He should have been impeached and jailed for it. He openly repudiated the authority of the President of his nation during a war with the very Communism he was ostensibly attacking. He weakened his nation. There were Communists in the government, but he didn't know who they were, and nothing ever came of his accusations other than damaged careers. If anything, the anti-communist investigations were hampered by being associated with such an ignorant and arrogant demagogue.
Just because Anne Coulter says something controversial doesn't make it true. Watch the "Point of Order" documentary to see, in his own words, how contemptuous he was of his own President. McCarthy was no patriot, and any self-respecting conservative would cringe at being associated with him.
At least you had one sentence that wasn't asinine. It is simple, really. An administration that has already proven that it does not feel bound by warrants and due process wants private citizens to keep a lot of information on other private citizens, and at their own expense, in case the govt wants to look at it later. It is simple--they don't want to fund this, don't want it covered by pesky due process or oversight by the judiciary or legislature, and don't want any accountability when abuses occur. Simple as can be. Now, the other stuff you said was just stupid.
"Don't prey on children and don't plan terrorist acts and you'll be fine."
The administration has already put antiwar groups (such as the Quakers, known terrorists all) under surveillance. So your point is simply wrong. Are you just ignorant, or are you lying from political motives? What is it about a Republican presidency that makes people forget that governments will abuse the power they have? Do you get special Kool-aid that makes you forget the obvious? No government in history has really been trustworthy, and all government is hostile to freedom. Has a fairy godmother come down from heaven and blessed this one so it's immune to the human fallibility, arrogance, and secretiveness that has plagued all the other governments in history? What is it about George Bush that makes conservatives want to give him authority unchecked by due process, separation of power, and public scrutiny? Has that whole "power corrupts" idea been rescinded? I didn't see that memo. Did I miss something?
I don't care if you're a liberal. I'm a conservative. What's you're
point? Are you trying to prove that you're unbiased?
You mention Muslim men being humiliated, while leaving out the ones who
were beaten to death. Some of the victims had electrical
burns on them. You left all of those out--why? The Pentagon's
own reports use the word torture. You leave that out as well--
why? The things being done, including the things you mention, are
explicitly forbidden by the anti-torture treaties we have signed.
You ask "where do we draw the line?" I'll tell you--if it was done to
you or your children in Kansas City or Seattle, would it be called
torture? That makes it torture. The definition of the word does not
magically change when a) it isn't us, and b) we're the ones doing it.
This is a question of human goddammned decency, not one of semantics.
What kind of human being are you?
Then you say -- "We exist in a land of hyperbole. Everyone swears
the world is ending. Every civil right is gone. These are the darkest
days."
Only I didn't say that. I said these were the darkest times since Jim
Crow, which ended in 1964 or so. So you are engaging in the
very hyperbole you're pretending to scorn. You are attributing to me
arguments I didn't make to make me seem like an extremist I'm not.
And then you depart into truly uncharted realms if surreal ignorance.
But let me ask you, what damage to our civil rights
actually occurred over the past few years? Do you know, or are you
regurgitating media hype?
Did you read the first paragraph of my post? You don't consider
a complete contempt for habeus corpus a concerning development in the
realm of civil liberties? Would you like to give every cop in
America the blanket authority to lock up anyone, for any length of
time, without charge, at a secret location, with no due process or
judicial oversight of any kind? With the full authority to torture
people without fear of accountability, even in cases of death? If
not, why not? If that's a perfectly acceptable extension of government
power to fight terrorism, why not extend that to all crime,
which kills many many more people and causes more economic harm? Or is
the definition of torture different when it's Americans, and it's
happening right in our backyard? How can the definition of torture
magically change from Baghdad to Dallas?
The difference between you and me is that you trust the government.
Maybe you only trust the government if a Republican is in the White
House--I can't really be sure on that one. But I just don't trust the
government. The difference here is that I recognized that Ruby Ridge
and Waco were examples of a federal government running out of control,
and I also have the integrity and balls to make the same
assessments about the Patriot Act, Joseph Padilla, and the other
shenanigans of this administration. You bring up Clinton as if it's a "gotcha!" You must be under the delusion that I'm motivated by political ideology, that I'm just trying to slime the Repubs for campaign season, etc. The problem for you is that I'm a conservative, not the liberal you assumed I was. I have a distrust of large government, especially one that insulates itself from accountability and transparency.
That my government is engaging in, endorsing, and facilitating torture, is horribly shameful to me. That we lock up people indefinitely, without trial, is shameful to me. That we have secret prisons where people just disappear, with no accountability, and deliberate concealment from human rights agencies and the Red Cross, is shameful to me. If you think that this is just politics, then you should be ashamed of yourself.
I agree completely. This is one of the darkest periods of American history, probably the darkest since Jim Crow. We have the President waffling on the definition of torture, claiming the authority to imprison an American citizen indefinitely without charges, claiming the authority to nullify any law he wants, repudiating the separation of powers/checks and balances system, etc. We have secret US-run prisons scattered around the world, into which people are "disappeared" off the street, tortured, and even if they are released later, no raparations are made of any kind. We have the declaration of permanent war (but without the declaration of war demanded by the Constitution), the suspension of the rule of law, and once again, a government (and largely a population) that is condoning what would obviously be called torture if we weren't the ones doing it. We won't just "bounce back" from this like we might repair the economy, and even that is looking doubtful with the skyrocketing national debt. This is pretty damned horrible.
And no, I'm not blaming Bush exclusively--he's just one man. The Americans as a whole let this crap happen because they're too freaking stupid to realize that an omnipotent government isn't a safe thing to have. They're too caught up in the fist-pumping "kick-ass!" feeling they get from watching Fox news that they're just pouring our hard-won freedom down the drain. I don't think what drove them to this was 100% fear--people weren't scared so much as pissed off that anyone would have the nerve to do this to us. Considering we have the attention span of gnats and the analytic ability of same, I'm not surprised that we attacked the wrong freaking country and got ourselves eyeballs-deep into this. We're making MORE terrorists, not fewer. Christ!
Even aside from gutting civil liberties, abandoning the rule of law, the balkanization of public discourse, sanctioning and practice of torture, a skyrocketing national debt, we're making the terrorism situation worse! It's making sense why Iran endorsed President Bush in his re-election campaign. By destabilizing the entire region he has helped the Islamicists. Taliban for everyone! Wonderful. I'm so proud.
Was it just that I was young and naive and believed in a good country that stuck to its principles?
Yes, because you assumed the principles believed in were the ones they said they did. Americans don't really believe in freedom pe se, not past the freedom to shop at Wal-Mart and watch TV. Well, and go to church and talk about Jesus. Freedom cannot and will not survive in a population that just doesn't care about it. Now, when Clinton was in office, a lot of people were writing pretty good stuff about how a good citizen is supposed to question their government, that we should never be blindly obedient, etc, but 2.4 picoseconds after getting a Republican president, all of those perfectly accurate arguments were shown to be insincere, well, strike that, all-out lies. These same people are, for the most part, the very ones saying that you're a traitor if you disagree with Pres. Bush.
There are still a few, like James Bovard, who are talking about "out of control government" the same way they were under Clinton, but the rest were just using a philosphy they didn't believe in (conservatism) as a weapon against the Democratic party. Anyway, sorry for the digression, but I made the mistake of wandering onto the military.com forums again and have had my fill of accusations of treason, "you hate americuh," etc. Those forums scare the hell out of me, and that tends to color my posts elsewhere.
No one opposes OSS because of the reasons you give. They aren't trying to hold down the proletariat by keeping them ignorant of computing. They distrust it because it isn't based on the greed model, so they can't fathom where it came from, what motivates it, etc. It's just too disorienting to be told that a bunch of hobbyists put all this together because they wanted to, and gave it away. All the rich people like Bill Gates and Ralph Ellison, the very people who govt goes to for "expertise" (because they're rich, they must know what they're talking about, right?) tell them that OSS is comprised of a bunch of wacko communists whose ideas are bad for the nation.
That is where the perceived threat is--government listens first and foremost to the rich people, because of the assumption that is what is good for the rich people is good for the nation. There is no Marxist or Kafkaesque plot to keep the poor away from quality software.
Many Linux distros already work better out of the box than does Windows. The only version of Windows that supports your hardware is the one that came with the computer--install from scratch with a plain Win-whatever disc and you'll be hunting for drivers all day, plus another half-day insstalling enough software to do anything other than surf the web.
If my HD dies right, then I can't just go to the store, buy a new HD, and re-install, because Sony just installed a hidden partition on my HD, and didn't give me restore disks. So I'm hosed for days or weeks until Sony deigns to give me a new disk. Or, I can install Linux, or a pirated copy of Windows. So which is better right out of the box?
Am I saying that Linux is better, by definition? No. But we have to admit that Windows is succeeding in the consumer space because of marketing and convenience, and in the business space because buying Microsoft makes it someone else's fault if the network or database goes off-line. Linux can be more complicated, and does involve learning, and if someone doesn't want to use it, it gives me no grief. But to give this reason--that it doesn't support the hardware like Windows does--is just false. Stick with the "it's too complicated" reasons and I'll leave you in peace.
No, for the story to work, it has to be an open question. The only reason the movie is still interesting is that it makes us ponder what it means to be human, makes us wonder about what constitutes consciousness, and poses other philosophical questions that would be pointless if we get a telegram saying "Deckard is an android," or "Deckard is human." The point of philosophy is to philosophize, not to put the questions to rest, because the questions themselves constitute part of the human condition. Take all of that away, and you just have a dated SF flick with marginal acting.
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Now if only Truecrypt and VMWare could be automagically installed via apt-get or Synaptic. I can even learn to use the command-line version of Truecrypt, if I could just get it installed in less than an hour. I haven't even tried on DSL yet.
Similarly, to rebuild the infrastructure of Iraq is an appropriate use of US tax money. However, to rebuild any infrastructure in the US would be socialism.
Similarly, we have a responsibility to free the Iraqis from Saddam Hussein's tyranny because those people deserve human rights and we have a leadership role when it comes to human rights in the world. However, we can inprison them indefinitely without trial, and interrogate them with what would be considered torture in the US, because they are not Americans, and it's not the responsibility of the US government to secure human rights for non-Americans.
Keep going over those basic arguments until you've memorized them. It might help to print them out and carry them around with you, in case you don't have 24/7 access to Fox News.
Plus, it's not as if the prominent members of society, of any political persuasion, are wracked by guilt for things they've done. Morality is much more forgiving now, as well--Ronald Reagan was a divorcee, which used to be considered a sign of bad character. Now it's normal. We're all about "putting things behind us," even if the "things" happened last month and are still under grand jury investigation.
There are other aspects of our culture that dilute personal responsibility. Corporations, by design, insulate managers and shareholders from actions they benefit from personally. We're okay with that, though. No problems there. But if an INDIVIDUAL avoids responsibility, suddenly western civiliazation is in dire trouble. If a corporation files bankruptcy so the shareholders don't have to ante up to pay the debt for the entity they own, we don't bat an eyelash, but if Joe Sixpack declares Chapter 11 then we get all concerned about the state of humanity.
Government habitually hides behind secrecy to avoid responsibility. Where is the hue and cry? Why is it only the morons on Jenny Jones who get our contumely?
Liberarians believe in small government. That's what I mean by conservative. Prefixing the word "conservative" with "social" doesn't reverse the polarity of the word, does it? When someone says "I'm a conservative" I always think that means "I believe in small government," but I guess I have to grudgingly admit that it's come to mean "I believe in huge, sprawling, intrusive government that remakes the world however I want it, as long as we pass on the expense to future generations, because taxes are immoral." It's unfortunate that statists have successfully co-opted both "liberal" and "conservative" for their own use.
Now is the best time to jump ship. Gates will always be fabulously wealthy, but if he leaves now he can leave before the company really falls apart, leaving the impression that his "vision," rather than historical accident, was what lead to their market dominance. Their high market share can't last. Linux, BSD, Openoffice, OSS, free software, etc, will continue to eat into their revenue base, and how the heck do you fight against all of these enemies? All of these executives can see that Opendocument and FSF in general is going to make Microsoft, if not irrelevant, at least optional. Companies like Microsoft don't thrive on being one option among others--they only have the market share they have because competitors were kept out of the picture altogether. Everyone wants to leave now so it isn't their fault when the company becomes a weak shadow of its former self. That way they can say, "Well, when I was there, our market share was 97%... now look what these morons have done to it!"
Am I anti-capitalist? Not a chance--I'm a libertarian, which means I'm so conservative that I make conservatives seem like socialists. I do happen to think that capitalism sucks, but like democracy, the only thing worse is everything else.
You just misunderstand the actual objective. They make the voters feel more moral. It's sort of like the "truthiness" you keep hearing about. The voters feel that they live in a more moral community, a few people are made examples of, the police are given more power to harass and lean on people, corruption goes up, but by God, we've "sent a message." It's just like the fight over the Ten Commandments in the courthouse. It doesn't make anyone actually act more morally, but dammit, it makes the supporters feel better. See also: gay marriage amendment, prostitution laws, war on drugs, anti-pornography legislation, video game legislation, etc.
The book is very well-written, by the way. Not that anyone will ever ever read this comment, but if anyone does, I do recommend the book.
Just because Anne Coulter says something controversial doesn't make it true. Watch the "Point of Order" documentary to see, in his own words, how contemptuous he was of his own President. McCarthy was no patriot, and any self-respecting conservative would cringe at being associated with him.
That is where the perceived threat is--government listens first and foremost to the rich people, because of the assumption that is what is good for the rich people is good for the nation. There is no Marxist or Kafkaesque plot to keep the poor away from quality software.
If my HD dies right, then I can't just go to the store, buy a new HD, and re-install, because Sony just installed a hidden partition on my HD, and didn't give me restore disks. So I'm hosed for days or weeks until Sony deigns to give me a new disk. Or, I can install Linux, or a pirated copy of Windows. So which is better right out of the box?
Am I saying that Linux is better, by definition? No. But we have to admit that Windows is succeeding in the consumer space because of marketing and convenience, and in the business space because buying Microsoft makes it someone else's fault if the network or database goes off-line. Linux can be more complicated, and does involve learning, and if someone doesn't want to use it, it gives me no grief. But to give this reason--that it doesn't support the hardware like Windows does--is just false. Stick with the "it's too complicated" reasons and I'll leave you in peace.