Generational Theory Forum: The Fourth Turning Forum: A message board discussing generations and the Strauss Howe generational theory

(11-05-2018, 01:57 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]

(11-05-2018, 12:45 AM)Galen Wrote: [ -> ]Progressives tend to define everything as a right and has no concept of the difference between positive and negative rights.  It never occurs to you that the progressive tendency to declare everything to be a human right would create a tyranny on par with the Soviet Union.

The problem with positive rights is that you have to apply coercion to get the resources for those things that you consider to be rights.  There is no limit to what progressive consider to be rights which is why progressives tend to be such a nasty bunch of totalitarians.

Which rights are you opposed to?  That a child has sufficient food to eat?  Free speech?   You are fond of talking about generics, and avoid speaking about how you really want society to work.

I am not opposed to free speech but the liberals and progressive currently are hostile to free speech.  The left these days label anything that someone says that they don't like as hate speech.

It is not the job of the government to take from one group of people and give to another.  It wrong for an individual to do this and it is wrong for a group of people including a group called the government or the state.  Initiating force even to do something good is still wrong because it is a violation of the non-aggression principle.  This is why libertarians oppose the welfare state.  Just because the theft occurs at the hands of the state does not make theft any less wrong.

(11-05-2018, 02:53 AM)Galen Wrote: [ -> ]I am not opposed to free speech but the liberals and progressive currently are hostile to free speech.  The left these days label anything that someone says that they don't like as hate speech.

Rights have never guaranteed an ability to harm others.  What some libertarians call the right of free speech violates this principle.  They must want to harm others, which makes many reject their approach.  Government providing enforcement of rights is accepted.

(11-05-2018, 02:53 AM)Galen Wrote: [ -> ]It is not the job of the government to take from one group of people and give to another.  It wrong for an individual to do this and it is wrong for a group of people including a group called the government or the state.  Initiating force even to do something good is still wrong because it is a violation of the non-aggression principle.  This is why libertarians oppose the welfare state.  Just because the theft occurs at the hands of the state does not make theft any less wrong.

It is correct to acquire services through taxation given the bulk of the  people are willing to pay and everyone is represented.  Proverbially, taxes along with death are considered inevitable.  Many people are fine with this, which is why libertarians struggle.

We keep coming back to these same points, the eagerness to harm others, and the unwillingness to pay for the community.  These days, it is possible with computer networks to correct the latter, to pay taxes only for services sought and approved of.  If you would care to seek that, it could be done, but you don't seem eager to take that path.  

If you are just hostile and greedy, there is little more to be said.  You will remain in a tiny fringe minority.

(11-05-2018, 12:45 AM)Galen Wrote: [ -> ]

(11-04-2018, 10:28 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]

(11-04-2018, 06:08 AM)Galen Wrote: [ -> ]The Jim Crow agenda was an unfortunate consequence, one of many, from the compromise of allowing slavery to continue after the American Revolution.  I am not a big fan as you might imagine since involuntary servitude is not something libertarians are in favor of.  This forms the basis of the libertarian view of taxation as theft.

The Founding Fathers on the whole, Alexander Hamilton is an exception, could be considered in modern terms to be Minarchist Libertarians.  Murray Rothbard's Conceived In Libery covers this evolution toward individual liberty from Colonial Times to the early Federalist period.  Their agenda was to create a government that was limited in power which was an unheard of idea in the eighteenth century.

Modern liberals and progressives are not and never have been in favor of individual liberty.  The battle always has and always be between liberty and tyranny.

But as I see it, liberty should not get in the way of human rights.  Robber Barrons thus should not get in the way of food, shelter, health care, retirement and other basic rights supposedly guaranteed in the UN Declaration of Human Rights.  Thus, so long as the absurd division of wealth exists side by side with a denial of rights, this progressive for one can scream.

Progressives tend to define everything as a right and has no concept of the difference between positive and negative rights.  It never occurs to you that the progressive tendency to declare everything to be a human right would create a tyranny on par with the Soviet Union.

The problem with positive rights is that you have to apply coercion to get the resources for those things that you consider to be rights.  There is no limit to what progressive consider to be rights which is why progressives tend to be such a nasty bunch of totalitarians.

The distinction is not so clear as you would like us to believe. It is worth remembering that the feudal economy was far more complex in assigning rights and duties than is the modern world. It may be the simplification of the feudal world that made free-market capitalism possible, as feudal rights and obligations could be hereditary. At the extreme, slavery is a hereditary duty to a master who can sell those duties as a right to another master. Slavery evolved from medieval serfdom in becoming more overtly commercial and with tighter control of a slave.

The arguments to abolish slavery did not come from libertarians; indeed, the more effective ones came from Christianity. If as Harriet Beecher Stowe said in Uncle Tom's Cabin, it is offensive that a Sultan keeps Christians as slaves in a harem, it is similarly offensive that nominally-Christian planters keep Christians (and by then, the slaves in America were Christians) as slaves. Uncle Tom's Cabin is very much a novel of Christian heroism as an ideal.

Let me discuss a right that most people have in theory that many do not get in practice: marriage. Yes, there are singles who like life without the encumbrance of a spouse because such implies fewer compromises when things go somewhat adequately. Marriage comes with reasonable duties. I can ignore for now people who have been  denied the right to marry because they are incapable of loving people of the other gender but now have same-sex marriage as an option.

Nobody has a right to a spouse even if one wants one. In my case I have Asperger's, which can make me seem creepy.  I would be difficult even if I am not violent or abusive, I am not an addict or alcoholic, and I don't have expensive bad habits.  I need not go into all the details. Any child that I would sire has a high likelihood of ending up institutionalized. I am somewhere between  (if you want to talk about movie characters). I can hurt people without physical force or intention. I see myself as Charles Foster Kane (Citizen Kane) without the wealth, power, and influence. It is probably best for the world that I not have wealth, power, and influence. I am not a fun person to be around.

Libertarians cannot in principle resolve many of the conflicts of rights and freedom. In all advanced societies, education is a right. How much differs depending upon the community and the time. Not long ago, a college education could be relatively cheap -- about as costly as a hobby. In two very different places that I lived as a teenager I could tell who was going to college and who wasn't based on what they did (if boys) if they were smart enough. In both places, people heavily involved with cars -- tooling around with them, racing them, or modifying them -- were not going to college. Today, college (like much else) has had so many costs loaded onto it that one typically graduates deeply in debt, at least in America. If I had a bright kid I would get him to a country where education beyond the secondary level is free or cheap, especially as the economic rewards for a liberal education are so slight for the cost in America. The American economy wants people trained -- not educated -- to fill the economic roles, and increasingly, Americans are nothing more than their economic roles.

But I hope that that is the end of my venting.

Positive rights imply the duty to pay taxes if one has an income. But even the right to work is a suspect commodity. Some people are best suited for jobs in which they pretend to work, and their employers pretend to pay them. Surely you know the political order under which that joke applied. Law and order? That implies a police force, ideally one paid well enough so that it does not have to take bribes from organized criminals just to keep up appearances. Without law and order, civil rights are meaningless. Justice? Closely connected. Education? You might notice that if you have ever examined a pattern of people executed for murder in recent times, a disproportionate share are high-school dropouts. An educated populace is a civilized populace. Public health? That implies infrastructure that precludes open sewers.

We must keep the responsibilities limited and the rights worthy. That is a tough call. That is why we need democracy, and not plutocracy as Donald Trump wants.

(11-10-2018, 07:53 PM)kiki Wrote: [ -> ]Some Americans may have thought that tyranny would never come to the US because the rich, celebrities, media, politicians, and American people would resist.

The rich? Big rural landowners have been the earliest backers of reactionary and fascist regimes. Big urban landowners (as landlords) are among the most reactionary interests in America, their ideal being a captive market for over-priced housing and low taxes on real estate. Think of Donald Trump as an example. The rich often have a vested interest in turning inherited assets into sources of easy money, with captive markets becoming cash cows for rich profits. Add to this the exploiter class analogous to the old Soviet nomenklatura, a bureaucratic clique that ended up with aristocratic incomes without having to invest in business like genuine capitalists and whose succession often became from father to offspring. Our executives are paid inordinately well to treat workers badly.

Quote:Who would have thought that the rich would loot the country by getting bailouts and subsidies while being the ones conspiring and building the police state by paying actors, singers, and athletes to distract Americans with bread and circuses, using reporters to push propaganda, real crises, and false flags, and buying off and corrupting politicians with campaign donations and cushy job promises to start wars, import refugees that weaken and divide the US, drive up the debt, make laws that enslave Americans, and throw crumbs to pacify the 99% in the form of food stamps, Obamacare, Obamaphones, and public housing?

Just look elsewhere in time and place.

I will admit that entertainers are paid well, but only at the apex of achievement. First-rate film and TV stars, major-league athletes, and best-selling popular musicians are doing extremely well. Fall short of the apex, and the pay drops off precipitously. People need bread, of course, and if the food supply ever stopped the system would collapse quickly. Circuses? Human nature has changed little since Roman times, except that we moderns have abolished slavery and no longer feed dissidents and heretics to bears and big cats. If we were as amoral as the Romans we would have costly aquariums in which the damned of our society would be cast to crocodiles or sharks as entertainment. Instead of chariot races we have stock car races, which are safer than those races depicted in Ben Hur.

Food aid is a poor substitute for a solid income, and I get it as the result of a disability; Obamacare may have saved my life in a rough time. The infamous Obama phone is intended to help people get jobs.
 

Quote:The destruction of the USA is nearly complete.

I respectfully disagree. Social rot becomes severe in a depraved 3T, and a Crisis Era usually corrects the rot in a healthy society with a healthy political system. Obama was a fine President (just look at the historical assessment that puts him just short of the top, in the league with Truman, Eisenhower, and Reagan), and Trump is just simply awful. The most despised emperors of Rome were Nero, Caligula, and Commodus (that has been a consistent assessment for several centuries), vile leaders better at entertaining gullible masses than in doing any tangible good. A President of the United States has powers similar to those of a Roman emperor except for lacking the prerogative to murder rivals and opponents. Trump is more like a bad Roman Emperor than is any earlier President, partially fitting the pattern, but he is not as evil and nowhere nearly close to Nero, Caligula, or Commodus.

The Roman Empire, according to such a historian as Arnold Toynbee, was a rotten social order from its establishment, and it took nearly 500 years before its western section (including what is now England, Wales, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Spain, Portugal, the non-desert parts of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, the German Rhineland, western Hungary, and all but the southernmost part of Italy) fell to the barbarians. Ancient Rome had far fewer resources on which to fall back even in its heyday than does the United States. To be sure, Donald Trump has imposed much institutional rot upon America, and he is not alone. He does the bidding of parasitic elites, and I can attribute much rot to a depraved culture as perverse as that shown in Cabaret.

This said, we may find our rescue in the achievements of model minorities (the black, Hispanic, and Asian bourgeoisie) who respect learning, take care of their own poor, and start new businesses -- the latter in position to out-compete the bureaucratic monstrosities doing too little for too much. Maybe we could use a 1930s-style depression to bring down some of the bloated behemoths that have exempted themselves from competition. It may be ironic, but the Great Depression was a great time in which to start a business. Just because most people were broke, there was little opportunity for material indulgence. One might as well have built sweat equity into a small business. Labor was cheap, regulations were lax, and taxes were difficult to collect. Start-up businesses rarely have income worthy of taxation -- unlike the case with the corporate giants that collapsed between 1929 and 1932. Customers were precious, so small businesspeople had to cultivate them with service and astute management. Small businesses are more flexible than bureaucratic monstrosities. Above all, small business owners lack the funds for buying politicians and hiring lobbyists. The American political system has worked best without ab overpowering nexus between wealth and political power -- as if such is not so almost everywhere else in under almost all other times

Obama took the proper course of bailing out the banks so that the economy could still flow. He did so at a price -- not of deficits (which would have been similar in volume, but with lower GDP, which is really-bad government finance) had he not done so -- but because the businesses that he rescued funded reactionary politics. For nearly the last two years we have had Donald Trump, Republican majorities in both Houses of Congress, and a majority of Republican governors of states. We have had in effect two years of political lockstep as if in a single-party dictatorship.

We may be one Lincoln or FDR away from solving many of our problems. Obama came close for two years when he had House and Senate majorities, when he was truly a great President. For the next six years he was mediocre. But that as much reflects the impatience of Americans as it does Obama. We have yet to have a leader as honest-to-Satan awful as Nero, Caligula, or Commodus. 5the Romans had three such bad emperors, and after the third it was all decay in the Latin part of the Roman Empire.  (The Greek part was able to redefine and reform itself, and lasted nearly a millennium longer after AD 476).

Trump gives one much cause for pessimism, but 240 other years of American history gives one cause for optimism. Trump is an anomaly who will last but one term as President. Americans have little tolerance for corruption, cruelty, or craziness in a President.

(11-10-2018, 10:43 PM)kiki Wrote: [ -> ]Americans used to believe in freedom.

http://www.naplesnews.com/story/opinion/...427082001/

Now Americans would need to be mentally ill to think tyranny won’t get worse.

Who would have thought in 1980 that the USA would soon have curfews, gun bans, NSA wiretapping, checkpoints, forfeiture, the end to the right to silence, free speech bans, torture, kill lists, no fly lists, searches without warrants, private prisons, mandatory minimums, 3 strikes laws, DNA databases, CISPA, SOPA, NDAA, IMBRA, FBAR, FATCA, TSA groping, secret FISA courts, and Jade Helm?

Government is no better than a combination of voters, elected officials, government employees, and the special interests who fund campaigns and hire lobbyists. It cannot work in response to some algorithm that optimizes everything; after all, the person who sets up the algorithm would be as powerful as a dictator.

Churchill put it best -- democracy is the worst system of government possible until one considers the alternatives.

Quote:During the Wild West in the US, everyone could carry guns, businesses were not licensed, no one had Social Security numbers, there were no sales, income, or property taxes, and drugs, alcohol, smoking, gambling, and prostitution were legal.

There was little government, yet people lived and had freedom.

People also had far less education, so their opportunities were more limited. The opportunities that people could have taken advantage of back then were ignored by many because they were too ignorant or dependent to take them. I would certainly rather be a black person living in Mississippi today than in Mississippi about 130 years ago after the Klan took away all rights. (I'm not black, but fairness in government is worth some inefficiency). As far as that goes, I would rather be an industrial worker today than 120 years ago; a forty-hour workweek and a seventy-year lifespan is far better than a forty-year lifespan and a seventy-hour workweek that was normal back in those alleged "good old days".

Don't fool yourself: the government granted land to railroads as an incentive to build  them in the 'Wild West, and established and enforced property rights. Government hanged people for robbing trains (not that I think that wrong for the time).

If you want to know what is at fault for greater levels of regulation, then look to the technologies  and business practices that we now have. Automobiles. Broadcasting. Recorded music and films (more enforcement of copyright laws). Medical equipment and pharmaceuticals. More complicated financial products. Add a larger population. If your dog poops in a ditch by a corn field, nobody cares. If your dog poops on a heavily-used sidewalk, everyone seems to care. Higher population densities require people to behave differently on other things.

We have Social Security because we wanted to take the unproductive, accident-prone elderly out of the workforce. The elderly trade a market-based pittance for a similar pittance, and younger workers got jobs that they needed.

Quote:The government today is regulating every area of everyone’s life.

The government wants to tell us what to do, what to think, where to live, how to live, what to wear, and what to eat. Saying you live in a free country with a straight face is difficult when everything is illegal.

Big Business does that just as much with dress codes and rules against political activity on the job. Say "union" at Wal*Mart and you had better be  talking about "class reunion" or a place named "Union City".

Quote:How can anyone take the moral high ground on anything when we are all criminals?

We have no equivalent of the infamous Section 58 of the old Soviet criminal code that made any errant behavior potentially criminal.

Quote:In the US, your body is not your body, your property is not your property, and your kid is not your kid.

Protection of vulnerable children is a responsibility of the government. Formal education is necdessary for getting along in America.

Quote:Government is not the solution to problems. Government IS the problem.

Alcohol prohibition failed. The Soviet Union failed.

Bad government fails, as when it demands too much of people or when it prevents them from doing something not all that bad (like having a glass of wine. Government must be used sparingly, but it is necessary. We must make it our servant and not our master.

Quote:Anyone who supports the police state is just a tool for the elites.

I reported a drunk driver to the local police, and I reported a highway with a plethora of dangerous speeding to the state troopers. If you were caught by Michigan State police on a nearly-straight, flat blacktop rural highway that goes about that eighty feet from where I live, and that I cross often with my pet dog because it loves to greet the horses across the road -- tough luck!

Quote:Too bad Americans are surrendering liberty so easily.

Do you mean the liberty to deal meth, indulge in child porn, send 419 scams, or do insider trading? Tough luck!

Quote:Why did the USA fight for freedom against the British, Hitler, and Saddam if America just ended up as a police state? All those American soldiers died in vain.

It's up to us to vote out people who abuse power. Again, we have a meaningful vote -- over 100 million people voted in an election of a kind that rarely gets that level of participation.

Quote:The elites are trying to weaken and divide Americans by race, gender, handicap, penalizing hard work, encouraging welfare use, and pushing immorality while using fear, terrorism, drugs, false flags, discrimination, hate speech, Russian propaganda, and fake news laws, and wars on cash to make Americans give up their free speech rights, religious freedom, guns, right to silence, privacy, property, right to trials, freedom from torture, and the freedom from extrajudicial assassination.

I have a handicap and I want more participation in the consumer society than I now have -- which means that I want a suitable job for my talents and my weaknesses.

Quote:Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

George Santayana, I believe -- according to a book that I read in a public library and was able to read ad was aware was worth reading because of public education in government-built and government-supplied schools with teachers as government employees.

Ignorance is not freedom, fellow; ignorance is subjection.

libertarian troll is back

We seem tp have two people who want and are pushing for different things.  To some extent, they speak for the many, and they represent the demonization, the speaking past each other.

Many on both the libertarian and red fronts will speak of freedom.  As much as possible, the government should do as little as possible to not limit the freedom of the people.  Freedom can easily be treated as a virtue.  To a good extent freedom is something to be sought, something that many seek.

Freedom does not guarantee the ability to harm others.  Freedom ends as soon as you might hurt another.  In Pbower's road example, no one is proposing an end to the right to travel.  Some will advocate an to attempt to travel safely.  The federal, state and local governments that have built and maintained roads have also attempted to police them.  They try to prevent among other things speeding, the running of traffic lights, and driving under the influence.  In general, they correctly limit the freedom of travel to prevent folks from driving irresponsibly, from doing harm to others.

In general, I can advocate both things in spite of the apparent conflict.  Freedom is good.  It is right to limit the ability of the government to restrict or to harm anybody.  If government restricts, raise a red flag.  I would lower the flag however when you can see possible harm to others.  It is correct for government to attempt to limit harm to its people.

It is also possible to work for the general welfare.  They are supposed to be doing just that.

And I would attempt to do this while minimizing demonization.  I would not paint someone advocating either freedom or the prevention of harm with a harsh brush.  It is possible to recognize the noble intent of what other extremists are trying to advocate.

Yet, we are in the habit of demonizing.  In the Industrial Age, violence was generally necessary to resolve conflicts.  This may no longer be the case, but here we are painting those who disagree as the enemy.  We are doing nigh on as much as we can to treat them as the enemy, to justify the use of murder against them.  We are seeing too much violence.  We should stop.

(11-11-2018, 01:43 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]We seem tp have two people who want and are pushing for different things.  To some extent, they speak for the many, and they represent the demonization, the speaking past each other.

Many on both the libertarian and red fronts will speak of freedom.  As much as possible, the government should do as little as possible to not limit the freedom of the people.  Freedom can easily be treated as a virtue.  To a good extent freedom is something to be sought, something that many seek.

If anything, government at its best facilitates freedom, including prudent risk-taking. If I fear being hit by a car, then I might not cross the street. Ability to cross the street may allow me (in some places) an opportunity in which to transact business.

Quote:Freedom does not guarantee the ability to harm others.  Freedom ends as soon as you might hurt another.  In Pbower's road example, no one is proposing an end to the right to travel.  Some will advocate an to attempt to travel safely.  The federal, state and local governments that have built and maintained roads have also attempted to police them.  The try to prevent among other things speeding, the running of traffic lights, and driving under the influence.  In general, they correctly limit the freedom of travel to prevent folks from driving irresponsibly, from doing harm to others.

Indeed. Even in medieval times, governments sought, arrested, and executed the highwayman who robbed the merchants of the time. Governments established laws that prohibited people from selling stolen goods and had courts to determine ownership of property from goods in transit to land. It is worth remembering that even the institution of property that is essential to libertarian theory is itself a creation of government. Even such environmental laws are protection of the property of others. I obviously have no right to dump mercury, arsenic, cyanide, or dioxin into a stream that is someone else's water supply because others have a right to use that stream as a water supply. I also have no right to vent a large quantity of hydrogen sulfide (a highly-toxic gas) into someone else's airspace.

Quote:In general, I can advocate both things in spite of the apparent conflict.  Freedom is good.  It is right to limit the ability of the government to restrict the freedom of anybody.  If government restricts, raise a red flag.  I would lower it however when you can see the possible harm to others.  It is correct for government to attempt to limit harm to its people.

It is also possible to work for the general welfare.  They are supposed to be doing just that.

But back to the enhancement of liberty through the government: ignorance, hunger, mental illness, gross exploitation, criminal victimization, and debilitating disease do not constitute freedom. Weak government typical of the feudal era could do little about such except to leave the clergy to tell people that all of those were the Will of God. Government that fails to relieve people of such things is either ineffective or perverse.

Quote:And I would attempt to do this while minimizing demonization.  I would not paint someone advocating either freedom or the prevention of harm with a harsh brush.  It is possible to recognize noble intent of what other extremists are trying to advocate.

The line between positive rights and negative rights is thin, of course.

Quote:Yet, we are in the habit of demonizing.  In the Industrial Age, violence was generally necessary to resolve conflicts.  This may no longer be the case, but here we are painting those who disagree as the enemy.  We are doing nigh on as much as we can to treat them as the enemy, to justify the use of murder against them.  We are seeing too much violence.  We should stop.

I have no desire to be an Inquisitor. We need remember that democracy implies the right to debate economic realities, but not the right to a result. To say as libertarians seem to, that people have all sorts of personal rights except to challenge some economic ideal is to compromise democracy without good reason. Governments must levy taxes so that they can do what governments decide.

(11-11-2018, 02:38 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: [ -> ]

(11-11-2018, 01:43 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]And I would attempt to do this while minimizing demonization.  I would not paint someone advocating either freedom or the prevention of harm with a harsh brush.  It is possible to recognize noble intent of what other extremists are trying to advocate.

The line between positive rights and negative rights is thin, of course.

Demonization is one way of doing harm.  You are increasing the chance that some nut will do murder.  One can make one's point without demonizing if one wanted to, but it is oh so human to paint someone else as other.

This is key, not only to preserve lives, but if we are to learn to get better without resorting to violence.  Violence has always been a last resort.  In the new age, in cultures that have accented a better alternative to violence, it seems proper to advocate using them.

(11-11-2018, 03:28 AM)kiki Wrote: [ -> ]No victim. No crime.

Likely very true.

But one should realize that the right to practice and promote freedom does not imply a right to practice and promote any harming of others.

(11-11-2018, 01:56 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]

(11-11-2018, 02:38 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: [ -> ]

(11-11-2018, 01:43 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]And I would attempt to do this while minimizing demonization.  I would not paint someone advocating either freedom or the prevention of harm with a harsh brush.  It is possible to recognize noble intent of what other extremists are trying to advocate.

The line between positive rights and negative rights is thin, of course.

Demonization is one way of doing harm.  You are increasing the chance that some nut will do murder.  One can make one's point without demonizing if one wanted to, but it is oh so human to paint someone else as other.

This is key, not only to preserve lives, but if we are to learn to get better without resorting to violence.  Violence has always been a last resort.  In the new age, in cultures that have accented a better alternative to violence, it seems proper to advocate using them.

Some people are demons.

When someone demonizes a truly horrible person like Saddam Hussein, one simply exposes how bad he is. Whole groups? That is the first step toward genocide. Thus the Armenian genocide and later similar horrors.

(11-05-2018, 05:12 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]

(11-05-2018, 02:53 AM)Galen Wrote: [ -> ]I am not opposed to free speech but the liberals and progressive currently are hostile to free speech.  The left these days label anything that someone says that they don't like as hate speech.

Rights have never guaranteed an ability to harm others.  What some libertarians call the right of free speech violates this principle.  They must want to harm others, which makes many reject their approach.  Government providing enforcement of rights is accepted.

(11-05-2018, 02:53 AM)Galen Wrote: [ -> ]It is not the job of the government to take from one group of people and give to another.  It wrong for an individual to do this and it is wrong for a group of people including a group called the government or the state.  Initiating force even to do something good is still wrong because it is a violation of the non-aggression principle.  This is why libertarians oppose the welfare state.  Just because the theft occurs at the hands of the state does not make theft any less wrong.

It is correct to acquire services through taxation given the bulk of the  people are willing to pay and everyone is represented.  Proverbially, taxes along with death are considered inevitable.  Many people are fine with this, which is why libertarians struggle.

We keep coming back to these same points, the eagerness to harm others, and the unwillingness to pay for the community.  These days, it is possible with computer networks to correct the latter, to pay taxes only for services sought and approved of.  If you would care to seek that, it could be done, but you don't seem eager to take that path.  

If you are just hostile and greedy, there is little more to be said.  You will remain in a tiny fringe minority.

There is a difference between funding roads, police forces, fire departments, the military and so forth and the funding of people primarily associated with the Democrats. Right now, the vast majority still views, still speaks and still acts as if government funding is associated with money that grows on trees or a debt that we won't have to answer and are so how or another immune to financially. In a decade or so, the American view of government funding is going to begin to drastically change whether we want it too, whether we'd like it too, whether we are able to comprehend and accept it or not.

I'm not worried about the Libertarians, the Libertarians are pretty much able to survive on their own. I'm not concerned about the Reds, the Reds are pretty resilient and more able to make do with whatever they have to work with and whatever's available to them and they're a very staunch group when it comes to protecting the things that they value the most and so forth. Right now, I don't see the Democratic party surviving the government crisis that's coming considering all the Democratic interests that will be at stake and understanding the obvious divide that exists between traditional Democratic voters and the liberal/blue voters.

(11-12-2018, 08:18 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: [ -> ]

(11-05-2018, 05:12 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]

(11-05-2018, 02:53 AM)Galen Wrote: [ -> ]I am not opposed to free speech but the liberals and progressive currently are hostile to free speech.  The left these days label anything that someone says that they don't like as hate speech.

Rights have never guaranteed an ability to harm others.  What some libertarians call the right of free speech violates this principle.  They must want to harm others, which makes many reject their approach.  Government providing enforcement of rights is accepted.

(11-05-2018, 02:53 AM)Galen Wrote: [ -> ]It is not the job of the government to take from one group of people and give to another.  It wrong for an individual to do this and it is wrong for a group of people including a group called the government or the state.  Initiating force even to do something good is still wrong because it is a violation of the non-aggression principle.  This is why libertarians oppose the welfare state.  Just because the theft occurs at the hands of the state does not make theft any less wrong.

It is correct to acquire services through taxation given the bulk of the  people are willing to pay and everyone is represented.  Proverbially, taxes along with death are considered inevitable.  Many people are fine with this, which is why libertarians struggle.

We keep coming back to these same points, the eagerness to harm others, and the unwillingness to pay for the community.  These days, it is possible with computer networks to correct the latter, to pay taxes only for services sought and approved of.  If you would care to seek that, it could be done, but you don't seem eager to take that path.  

If you are just hostile and greedy, there is little more to be said.  You will remain in a tiny fringe minority.

(to Butler) -- freedom of speech does not imply the right to an audience, especially if the expression is unpleasant, offensive, or unsettling. One is free to pen an offensive tome that describes a part of Humanity as less than human. One has no right to expect people that one depicts as less than human as such has any duty to listen to or read such.

It is possible to organize one's life so that one lives in a community that pays for services that one might use and does not pay for services that one can never use. Kentucky spends heavily on medical care for people with ailments relating to the use of cancerweed products, and Utah doesn't. Utah spends money on other things. The distinction between private benefit and public benefit is not always clear. Literacy is a prime example: I do not want to get sick just because some illiterate fellow confused a cleaning powder with flour and mixed cleaning powder into the bread that I eat.

Quote:There is a difference between funding roads, police forces, fire departments, the military and so forth and the funding of people primarily associated with the Democrats. Right now, the vast majority still views, still speaks and still acts as if government funding is associated with money that grows on trees or a debt that we won't have to answer and are so how or another immune to financially. In a decade or so, the American view of government funding is going to begin to drastically change whether we want it too, whether we'd like it too, whether we are able to comprehend and accept it or not.

Education. People appropriately educated decisively rejected Donald Trump in 2016 and did so again in 2018. One of the old objectives of the liberal-arts school was to improve the youth who entered it by giving him some exposure to a high culture that could give him access to a richer life and to compel him to contemplate the complexities of truth, morality, and justice.  People incapable of such or contemptuous of such can live debased lives and can inflict the consequences of such on others.  They are also amenable to demagogues whether Hugo Chavez or Donald Trump. One is on the Left and the other is on the Right, and they are both calamities for their countries. What seems necessary for functioning in an increasingly-complex world both in technology and organization seems to have risen greatly in about 100 years. An eight-grade education used to be adequate for competent adults to get a start in a world in which subsistence farming and early industry dominated life.

People of limited education are particularly well suited to authoritarian styles of management that hold that most people are lazy, unmotivated shirkers who would never do anything except under threat of hunger or brutal punishment. You will notice that the vilest totalitarian regimes were at their worst when the normal level of education is bare literacy -- enough to read instruction manuals and crude expression of propaganda. Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China, North Korea, the situation for blacks under Apartheid in South Africa, Libya under Qaddafi, and Iraq under Satan Hussein exemplify such. It is worth remembering that the system of terror that underpinned Stalinism weakened as the system had to educate people to do complex tasks.

The word intelligent seems to come from Latin inter (between) and legere (to read) It does not take a particularly smart person to achieve bare literacy. To be able to judge what one reads (or hears) takes a more sophisticated mind. If more formal learning makes one less likely to believe some dogma, then there probably is something wrong with the dogma. Remember that Donald Trump said "I love low-information voters" at a rally. For someone like me such is an insult. The low-information voter that so heavily voted for him does not realize that he has been insulted. Contrary to myth, ignorance is not innocence.

Quote:I'm not worried about the Libertarians, the Libertarians are pretty much able to survive on their own. I'm not concerned about the Reds, the Reds are pretty resilient and more able to make do with whatever they have to work with and whatever's available to them and they're a very staunch group when it comes to protecting the things that they value the most and so forth. Right now, I don't see the Democratic party surviving the government crisis that's coming considering all the Democratic interests that will be at stake and understanding the obvious divide that exists between traditional Democratic voters and the liberal/blue voters.

We Democrats are the ones who can bring communities of people very different in religious heritage and ethnic origin.  Such is necessary for keeping a diverse nation from becoming bands out to destroy each other in tribal warfare. Think of the horrific attack by a neo-Nazi (I cannot find an insult, even an indecent one. adequate for him) who mowed down Jewish worshipers in a synagogue. Muslims, who might have been hostile to Israel in the Middle East, showed solidarity with people who share a respect for the same God, value life, have mostly the same prophets, and much the same morals. They probably voted for the same political causes (Muslims and Jews both vote heavily Democratic in America).

Note also that the black bourgeoisie votes in solidarity with poor blacks. The black bourgeoisie is smart and well-educated, and it typically holds professional occupations or owns businesses. It will survive unless America gets a Nazi-like government that chooses to do to blacks what Nazis did to Jews. American has a fast-growing Hispanic middle class that can assimilate non-Hispanics into its culture. It is obviously doing far better than poor whites, especially in Appalachia and the Ozarks. Asian-Americans? Need I say more?

I recognize that people with advanced education may be less likely to start businesses that are not professional practices or that do not depend upon some technological or creative miracle. It is easier and less risky to hold a job in a corporate or government bureaucracy than to start a restaurant, convenience store, or specialized boutique. But if we should ever have another Great Depression, people will take the low-yield, high-touch, sweat-equity course of starting a business that must cultivate customers and pinch pennies just to survive -- and that one cannot simply sell easily to some other sucker. I cannot see one ideology doing better at that than another ideology.

Maybe it will take another Great Depression to bring down arrogant oppressors such as people paid very well for treating other people badly (our executive nomenklatura) and to greatly reduce the value of easy money. Or perhaps it will take a war that devastates the century and a half of American investment, makes money that is the lifeblood of commerce worthless, makes profit impossible, and basically puts industrial America back to a level of development characteristic of the pre-Civil War Era while we pick up the pieces. Such will smash the arrogance of elites who did not so much build the wealth as either inherit it or charm their way into it.

That is a bad crisis, and we are insulated from the worst possible crisis unless we choose to accept the worst possible leaders, as did the Germans in the last completed Crisis Era.






We can choose our leaders wisely or we can get results like this in a city near you. That is if there is no nuclear exchange.

(11-12-2018, 08:18 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: [ -> ]

(11-05-2018, 05:12 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]

(11-05-2018, 02:53 AM)Galen Wrote: [ -> ]I am not opposed to free speech but the liberals and progressive currently are hostile to free speech.  The left these days label anything that someone says that they don't like as hate speech.

Rights have never guaranteed an ability to harm others.  What some libertarians call the right of free speech violates this principle.  They must want to harm others, which makes many reject their approach.  Government providing enforcement of rights is accepted.

(11-05-2018, 02:53 AM)Galen Wrote: [ -> ]It is not the job of the government to take from one group of people and give to another.  It wrong for an individual to do this and it is wrong for a group of people including a group called the government or the state.  Initiating force even to do something good is still wrong because it is a violation of the non-aggression principle.  This is why libertarians oppose the welfare state.  Just because the theft occurs at the hands of the state does not make theft any less wrong.

It is correct to acquire services through taxation given the bulk of the  people are willing to pay and everyone is represented.  Proverbially, taxes along with death are considered inevitable.  Many people are fine with this, which is why libertarians struggle.

We keep coming back to these same points, the eagerness to harm others, and the unwillingness to pay for the community.  These days, it is possible with computer networks to correct the latter, to pay taxes only for services sought and approved of.  If you would care to seek that, it could be done, but you don't seem eager to take that path.  

If you are just hostile and greedy, there is little more to be said.  You will remain in a tiny fringe minority.

There is a difference between funding roads, police forces, fire departments, the military and so forth and the funding of people primarily associated with the Democrats. Right now, the vast majority still views, still speaks and still acts as if government funding is associated with money that grows on trees or a debt that we won't have to answer and are so how or another immune to financially. In a decade or so, the American view of government funding is going to begin to drastically change whether we want it too, whether we'd like it too, whether we are able to comprehend and accept it or not.

I'm not worried about the Libertarians, the Libertarians are pretty much able to survive on their own. I'm not concerned about the Reds, the Reds are pretty resilient and more able to make do with whatever they have to work with and whatever's available to them and they're a very staunch group when it comes to protecting the things that they value the most and so forth. Right now, I don't see the Democratic party surviving the government crisis that's coming considering all the Democratic interests that will be at stake and understanding the obvious divide that exists between traditional Democratic voters and the liberal/blue voters.

What Republicans and Libertarians such as yourself always forget, although it is pointed out to you many times, is that funding people primarily associated with Democrats is 1) an insurance policy for everyone and 2) benefits the economy by giving money to people who spend it rather than giving breaks to people who don't (the trickle that doesn't trickle). Also, 3) spending on public education benefits everyone as well; a well-educated public is better informed and more prosperous and useful for businesses and creative of jobs and culture.

And again, in our era it is the Republicans who create the national debt, and Democrats who reduce it.

The insurance and economic spending to people who spend it will be especially needed if the recession comes back in a big way, and it will be provided, as it was in 2009 for a little while.

(11-13-2018, 07:20 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]

(11-12-2018, 08:18 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: [ -> ]

(11-05-2018, 05:12 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]

(11-05-2018, 02:53 AM)Galen Wrote: [ -> ]I am not opposed to free speech but the liberals and progressive currently are hostile to free speech.  The left these days label anything that someone says that they don't like as hate speech.

Rights have never guaranteed an ability to harm others.  What some libertarians call the right of free speech violates this principle.  They must want to harm others, which makes many reject their approach.  Government providing enforcement of rights is accepted.

(11-05-2018, 02:53 AM)Galen Wrote: [ -> ]It is not the job of the government to take from one group of people and give to another.  It wrong for an individual to do this and it is wrong for a group of people including a group called the government or the state.  Initiating force even to do something good is still wrong because it is a violation of the non-aggression principle.  This is why libertarians oppose the welfare state.  Just because the theft occurs at the hands of the state does not make theft any less wrong.

It is correct to acquire services through taxation given the bulk of the  people are willing to pay and everyone is represented.  Proverbially, taxes along with death are considered inevitable.  Many people are fine with this, which is why libertarians struggle.

We keep coming back to these same points, the eagerness to harm others, and the unwillingness to pay for the community.  These days, it is possible with computer networks to correct the latter, to pay taxes only for services sought and approved of.  If you would care to seek that, it could be done, but you don't seem eager to take that path.  

If you are just hostile and greedy, there is little more to be said.  You will remain in a tiny fringe minority.

There is a difference between funding roads, police forces, fire departments, the military and so forth and the funding of people primarily associated with the Democrats. Right now, the vast majority still views, still speaks and still acts as if government funding is associated with money that grows on trees or a debt that we won't have to answer and are so how or another immune to financially. In a decade or so, the American view of government funding is going to begin to drastically change whether we want it too, whether we'd like it too, whether we are able to comprehend and accept it or not.

I'm not worried about the Libertarians, the Libertarians are pretty much able to survive on their own. I'm not concerned about the Reds, the Reds are pretty resilient and more able to make do with whatever they have to work with and whatever's available to them and they're a very staunch group when it comes to protecting the things that they value the most and so forth. Right now, I don't see the Democratic party surviving the government crisis that's coming considering all the Democratic interests that will be at stake and understanding the obvious divide that exists between traditional Democratic voters and the liberal/blue voters.

What Republicans and Libertarians such as yourself always forget, although it is pointed out to you many times, is that funding people primarily associated with Democrats is 1) an insurance policy for everyone and 2) benefits the economy by giving money to people who spend it rather than giving breaks to people who don't (the trickle that doesn't trickle). Also, 3) spending on public education benefits everyone as well; a well-educated public is better informed and more prosperous and useful for businesses and creative of jobs and culture.

And again, in our era it is the Republicans who create the national debt, and Democrats who reduce it.

The insurance and economic spending  to people who spend it will be especially needed if the recession comes back in a big way, and it will be provided, as it was in 2009 for a little while.

No. The Republicans have increased it/ added to it by significantly lowering our taxes while the Democrats continued adding more social programs, adding more costs and increasing our amount of financial obligations to those who live abroad. You're fortunate, you might be dead by the time reality hits and  the Democratic voters find themselves having to make individual decisions based on the Democratic programs that they value the most as individuals.

Red America ain't going to have an illegal immigrant problem or refuge problem causing issues and adding more financial burdens to the issue of funding all the other programs primarily associated with the Democratic party or the funding of roads, police forces and so forth. OK. If you're interested in giving money to people to spend and that's pretty much what you see as being the basis for the bulk of the blue economy that you're associated with today. You should be able to keep it as the nation splits naturally as it's been doing for a while now. The Heartland Dem's gave you a breath of life but they turn out to be no better or no more capable or independent than the Democrats who were replaced by Republicans during the Obama years, you can expect those seats to go back to the Republicans in two years and you can expect to see Republicans who are more devoted to actually lowering the cost of healthcare for everyone who is actually PAYING FOR IT vs continuing providing it for those who are getting it for free. I don't get into playing fools games that liberals seem content with playing which is why I don't get into the Democratic party, don't get into to it's politics and don't even consider voting Democratic these days.

BTW, it's not that we forget, it's that we tend to ignore it because we understand the relationship between the blues and the systems that so many are now reliant upon these days. You see, we don't have and are not entitled to receive the so-called insurance that you often claim to be equally beneficial/ available for all of us.

(11-05-2018, 05:12 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]It is correct to acquire services through taxation given the bulk of the  people are willing to pay and everyone is represented.  Proverbially, taxes along with death are considered inevitable.  Many people are fine with this, which is why libertarians struggle.

We keep coming back to these same points, the eagerness to harm others, and the unwillingness to pay for the community.  These days, it is possible with computer networks to correct the latter, to pay taxes only for services sought and approved of.  If you would care to seek that, it could be done, but you don't seem eager to take that path.  

If you are just hostile and greedy, there is little more to be said.  You will remain in a tiny fringe minority.

What's the point of bringing up a path that ISN'T legally available to us now? Food for thought? I think most people understand that government services aren't free. The only folks who don't seem to understand that services aren't free are those who seem more likely to vote Democratic. Guess what, public education costs money and if the results tend to suck or don't meet our expectations then private education may become the preferred option for our half of the country.

(11-13-2018, 08:52 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: [ -> ]

(11-13-2018, 07:20 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]

(11-12-2018, 08:18 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: [ -> ]

(11-05-2018, 05:12 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]

(11-05-2018, 02:53 AM)Galen Wrote: [ -> ]I am not opposed to free speech but the liberals and progressive currently are hostile to free speech.  The left these days label anything that someone says that they don't like as hate speech.

Rights have never guaranteed an ability to harm others.  What some libertarians call the right of free speech violates this principle.  They must want to harm others, which makes many reject their approach.  Government providing enforcement of rights is accepted.

(11-05-2018, 02:53 AM)Galen Wrote: [ -> ]It is not the job of the government to take from one group of people and give to another.  It wrong for an individual to do this and it is wrong for a group of people including a group called the government or the state.  Initiating force even to do something good is still wrong because it is a violation of the non-aggression principle.  This is why libertarians oppose the welfare state.  Just because the theft occurs at the hands of the state does not make theft any less wrong.

It is correct to acquire services through taxation given the bulk of the  people are willing to pay and everyone is represented.  Proverbially, taxes along with death are considered inevitable.  Many people are fine with this, which is why libertarians struggle.

We keep coming back to these same points, the eagerness to harm others, and the unwillingness to pay for the community.  These days, it is possible with computer networks to correct the latter, to pay taxes only for services sought and approved of.  If you would care to seek that, it could be done, but you don't seem eager to take that path.  

If you are just hostile and greedy, there is little more to be said.  You will remain in a tiny fringe minority.

There is a difference between funding roads, police forces, fire departments, the military and so forth and the funding of people primarily associated with the Democrats. Right now, the vast majority still views, still speaks and still acts as if government funding is associated with money that grows on trees or a debt that we won't have to answer and are so how or another immune to financially. In a decade or so, the American view of government funding is going to begin to drastically change whether we want it too, whether we'd like it too, whether we are able to comprehend and accept it or not.

I'm not worried about the Libertarians, the Libertarians are pretty much able to survive on their own. I'm not concerned about the Reds, the Reds are pretty resilient and more able to make do with whatever they have to work with and whatever's available to them and they're a very staunch group when it comes to protecting the things that they value the most and so forth. Right now, I don't see the Democratic party surviving the government crisis that's coming considering all the Democratic interests that will be at stake and understanding the obvious divide that exists between traditional Democratic voters and the liberal/blue voters.

What Republicans and Libertarians such as yourself always forget, although it is pointed out to you many times, is that funding people primarily associated with Democrats is 1) an insurance policy for everyone and 2) benefits the economy by giving money to people who spend it rather than giving breaks to people who don't (the trickle that doesn't trickle). Also, 3) spending on public education benefits everyone as well; a well-educated public is better informed and more prosperous and useful for businesses and creative of jobs and culture.

And again, in our era it is the Republicans who create the national debt, and Democrats who reduce it.

The insurance and economic spending  to people who spend it will be especially needed if the recession comes back in a big way, and it will be provided, as it was in 2009 for a little while.

No. The Republicans have increased it/ added to it by significantly lowering our taxes while the Democrats continued adding more social programs, adding more costs and increasing our amount of financial obligations to those who live abroad. You're fortunate, you might be dead by the time reality hits and  the Democratic voters find themselves having to make individual decisions based on the Democratic programs that they value the most as individuals.

Red America ain't going to have an illegal immigrant problem or refuge problem causing issues and adding more financial burdens to the issue of funding all the other programs primarily associated with the Democratic party or the funding of roads, police forces and so forth. OK. If you're interested in giving money to people to spend and that's pretty much what you see as being the basis for the bulk of the blue economy that you're associated with today. You should be able to keep it as the nation splits naturally as it's been doing for a while now. The Heartland Dem's gave you a breath of life but they turn out to be no better or no more capable or independent than the Democrats who were replaced by Republicans during the Obama years, you can expect those seats to go back to the Republicans in two years and you can expect to see Republicans who are more devoted to actually lowering the cost of healthcare for everyone who is actually PAYING FOR IT vs continuing providing it for those who are getting it for free. I don't get into playing fools games that liberals seem content with playing which is why I don't get into the Democratic party, don't get into to it's politics and don't even consider voting Democratic these days.

BTW, it's not that we forget, it's that we tend to ignore it because we understand the relationship between the blues and the systems that so many are now reliant upon these days. You see, we don't have and are not entitled to receive the so-called insurance that you often claim to be equally beneficial/ available for all of us.

It is a plain fact that Democrats lower the deficit while Republicans increase it. Republicans talk about reducing the debt; then explode it with military spending and tax breaks for those who don't need them on the basis of the false trickle-down theory. It is also a fact the Democrats are in favor of raising taxes to pay for social programs, and Republicans want to increase the deficit so that money won't be spent on those social programs.

The insurance is indeed available to all of us, when it's needed. Admittedly there are still problems with the welfare system, as when incentive to work is taken away when benefits are taken away due to finding employment. But welfare has been so greatly reduced since Reagan and Clinton/Gingrich, that it is now just a scapegoat used as a slogan to persuade heartland folks like you to vote Republican.

The Republicans are dedicated to lowering health care costs paid for by the government payment system, and the effect of this in years past has always been for health care costs paid by everyone to raise through the ceiling. That's why reform was finally attempted in 2009. Only a government run payment program and the large pool of patients that it provides can keep costs down for everyone. If Obamacare raised your costs, it's because the reform didn't go far enough because moderate Democrats like those you could support watered down the reforms in 2009.

I don't claim to know for sure whether the seats that flipped Democratic in 2018 will flip back. The majority were in blue and purple states, so there won't be that many which flip back. As gerrymandering is reduced and the people choose their politicians instead of the reverse, Democrats will gain a lot of seats like they did in CA, AZ and PA when this was done. Whether the Democrats win the presidency in 2020 will depend on whether the Democrats can avoid choosing a loser, but which at the moment they seem intent on doing. I have described this a lot here already. Coattail effects could happen in the congressional elections.

(11-13-2018, 03:42 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: [ -> ]Education. People appropriately educated decisively rejected Donald Trump in 2016 and did so again in 2018. One of the old objectives of the liberal-arts school was to improve the youth who entered it by giving him some exposure to a high culture that could give him access to a richer life and to compel him to contemplate the complexities of truth, morality, and justice.  People incapable of such or contemptuous of such can live debased lives and can inflict the consequences of such on others.  They are also amenable to demagogues whether Hugo Chavez or Donald Trump. One is on the Left and the other is on the Right, and they are both calamities for their countries. What seems necessary for functioning in an increasingly-complex world both in technology and organization seems to have risen greatly in about 100 years. An eight-grade education used to be adequate for competent adults to get a start in a world in which subsistence farming and early industry dominated life.

People of limited education are particularly well suited to authoritarian styles of management that hold that most people are lazy, unmotivated shirkers who would never do anything except under threat of hunger or brutal punishment. You will notice that the vilest totalitarian regimes were at their worst when the normal level of education is bare literacy -- enough to read instruction manuals and crude expression of propaganda. Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China, North Korea, the situation for blacks under Apartheid in South Africa, Libya under Qaddafi, and Iraq under Satan Hussein exemplify such. It is worth remembering that the system of terror that underpinned Stalinism weakened as the system had to educate people to do complex tasks.

The word intelligent seems to come from Latin inter (between) and legere (to read) It does not take a particularly smart person to achieve bare literacy. To be able to judge what one reads (or hears) takes a more sophisticated mind. If more formal learning makes one less likely to believe some dogma, then there probably is something wrong with the dogma. Remember that Donald Trump said "I love low-information voters" at a rally. For someone like me such is an insult. The low-information voter that so heavily voted for him does not realize that he has been insulted. Contrary to myth, ignorance is not innocence.

Quote:I'm not worried about the Libertarians, the Libertarians are pretty much able to survive on their own. I'm not concerned about the Reds, the Reds are pretty resilient and more able to make do with whatever they have to work with and whatever's available to them and they're a very staunch group when it comes to protecting the things that they value the most and so forth. Right now, I don't see the Democratic party surviving the government crisis that's coming considering all the Democratic interests that will be at stake and understanding the obvious divide that exists between traditional Democratic voters and the liberal/blue voters.

We Democrats are the ones who can bring communities of people very different in religious heritage and ethnic origin.  Such is necessary for keeping a diverse nation from becoming bands out to destroy each other in tribal warfare. Think of the horrific attack by a neo-Nazi (I cannot find an insult, even an indecent one. adequate for him) who mowed down Jewish worshipers in a synagogue. Muslims, who might have been hostile to Israel in the Middle East, showed solidarity with people who share a respect for the same God, value life, have mostly the same prophets, and much the same morals. They probably voted for the same political causes (Muslims and Jews both vote heavily Democratic in America).

Note also that the black bourgeoisie votes in solidarity with poor blacks. The black bourgeoisie is smart and well-educated, and it typically holds professional occupations or owns businesses. It will survive unless America gets a Nazi-like government that chooses to do to blacks what Nazis did to Jews. American has a fast-growing Hispanic middle class that can assimilate non-Hispanics into its culture. It is obviously doing far better than poor whites, especially in Appalachia and the Ozarks. Asian-Americans? Need I say more?

I recognize that people with advanced education may be less likely to start businesses that are not professional practices or that do not depend upon some technological or creative miracle. It is easier and less risky to hold a job in a corporate or government bureaucracy than to start a restaurant, convenience store, or specialized boutique. But if we should ever have another Great Depression, people will take the low-yield, high-touch, sweat-equity course of starting a business that must cultivate customers and pinch pennies just to survive -- and that one cannot simply sell easily to some other sucker. I cannot see one ideology doing better at that than another ideology.

Maybe it will take another Great Depression to bring down arrogant oppressors such as people paid very well for treating other people badly (our executive nomenklatura) and to greatly reduce the value of easy money. Or perhaps it will take a war that devastates the century and a half of American investment, makes money that is the lifeblood of commerce worthless, makes profit impossible, and basically puts industrial America back to a level of development characteristic of the pre-Civil War Era while we pick up the pieces. Such will smash the arrogance of elites who did not so much build the wealth as either inherit it or charm their way into it.

That is a bad crisis, and we are insulated from the worst possible crisis unless we choose to accept the worst possible leaders, as did the Germans in the last completed Crisis Era.






We can choose our leaders wisely or we can get results like this in a city near you. That is if there is no nuclear exchange.

Yes. The higher educated and more wealthier people who weren't financially struggling voted for Hilary and obviously placed their interests above those who voted for Trump. Now, I didn't really give a shit about the working class issues that Democrats didn't have the balls to address . I'm not a working class voter or a working class person. I don't really care if you and what's left of the Bush wing want to continue hollowing out the center of America and hastened the eventual split that's coming down the road. I don't care if dip shits like you end competing with a diverse group of poor people for scraps. I don't if the idiots with college degree's end up paying a hundred dollars for a loaf of bread or paying me a small fortune to install a new furnace or air conditioner. I don't care if liberal women who care more about their abortion rights than anything else end whoring for a living on street corners.

Whatever blue collar factory that employed lots of union Democrats at one time that used to be located around here either packed up and left during the 80's or simply disappeared during the 90's. Hint: Your higher education didn't seem to lift you up as much as my lower level education lifted me. My advice, a college level fool who ain't worth shit shouldn't say anything negative about anyone who probably has more to show for their time on earth and is more likely better of than them. I ain't a meth head or a pot head or an alcoholic. If you came at me or falsely accused me of being associated with them, I'd slap you fucking silly like the adults did to dickheads/dip shits back in the old days which wasn't actually all that long ago.

(11-14-2018, 02:13 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: [ -> ]It is a plain fact that Democrats lower the deficit while Republicans increase it. Republicans talk about reducing the debt; then explode it with military spending and tax breaks for those who don't need them on the basis of the false trickle-down theory. It is also a fact the Democrats are in favor of raising taxes to pay for social programs, and Republicans want to increase the deficit so that money won't be spent on those social programs.

The insurance is indeed available to all of us, when it's needed. Admittedly there are still problems with the welfare system, as when incentive to work is taken away when benefits are taken away due to finding employment. But welfare has been so greatly reduced since Reagan and Clinton/Gingrich, that it is now just a scapegoat used as a slogan to persuade heartland folks like you to vote Republican.

The Republicans are dedicated to lowering health care costs paid for by the government payment system, and the effect of this in years past has always been for health care costs paid by everyone to raise through the ceiling. That's why reform was finally attempted in 2009. Only a government run payment program and the large pool of patients that it provides can keep costs down for everyone. If Obamacare raised your costs, it's because the reform didn't go far enough because moderate Democrats like those you could support watered down the reforms in 2009.

I don't claim to know for sure whether the seats that flipped Democratic in 2018 will flip back. The majority were in blue and purple states, so there won't be that many which flip back. As gerrymandering is reduced and the people choose their politicians instead of the reverse, Democrats will gain a lot of seats like they did in CA, AZ and PA when this was done. Whether the Democrats win the presidency in 2020 will depend on whether the Democrats can avoid choosing a loser, but which at the moment they seem intent on doing. I have described this a lot here already. Coattail effects could happen in the congressional elections.

Were the seats in bluer areas or redder areas? I live in one of those areas that flipped. I can tell you this, the Democrat who represent me has two years to cut a deal with the Republicans or she's gone in 2020. I didn't vote for her or the Republican she defeated. I voted for the Independent to wake up the Republican leadership. As I mentioned before, I didn't view the house as a major priority in this election. I viewed the Senate as the priority in this election. The Republican house needed a boot in the ass for its healthcare debacle. Like I said, Republicans are different than Democrats when it comes to failing to serve our interests. We'll accept a Democrat for a couple of years to get what we want in the long term. Unfortunately, blue voters don't have that luxury.

(11-14-2018, 03:37 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: [ -> ]Were the seats in bluer areas or redder areas? I live in one of those areas that flipped. I can tell you this, the Democrat who represent me has two years to cut a deal with the Republicans or she's gone in 2020. I didn't vote for her or the Republican she defeated. I voted for the Independent to wake up the Republican leadership. As I mentioned before, I didn't view the house as a major priority in this election. I viewed the Senate as the priority in this election. The Republican house needed a boot in the ass for its healthcare debacle. Like I said, Republicans are different than Democrats when it comes to failing to serve our interests. We'll accept a Democrat for a couple of years to get what we want in the long term. Unfortunately, blue voters don't have that luxury.

It seems natural for everybody to expect the country to flow their way, that everyone will see things from their perspective.  I'm as guilty as anyone.  How long before people notice that the economy tanks every time the Republicans apply voodoo economics?  A few more storms have hit the south?  While the Democrats have nominated a black and a woman, and this lost them about the whole deplorable vote, will the Republicans be that lucky forever?  Trump will have two more years in office, which will give him time to amplify the see saw flip?  The voters that made the southern strategy work are aging out of the voter pool?

We'll see.  The Democrats are facing a mighty see saw.