USFREEDOM911
MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN
You would know how much stress it causes, HUH Howey!!
When you take your lunch to work, do you pack fudge in with it?
A Bigger Libertarian Tent
- Thread starter Paul Siraisi
- Start date
You would know how much stress it causes, HUH Howey!!
When you take your lunch to work, do you pack fudge in with it?
Again, the silly childish attempt to work around the rule failed. I don't care how you attempt to justify it, it isn't going to happen here. You will stop it.
Mott the Hoople
Sweet Jane
What can we say. You're looking for neverland.
Mott the Hoople
Sweet Jane
I would like to do something near impossible for our nation. Educating southern rednecks.
Paul Siraisi
Verified User
If you have a whole region, and a whole accompanying religion, busily churning out one huge war chant, then doing nothing is probably an extremely dangerous option. 'Doing something' in this context involves some form of quite intensive intervention. It doesn’t have to involve killing people (but sure doesn’t have to exclude it), but it does at a minimum involve putting our noses deep in other peoples' business. Is that aggression?
On "skeptical regress," kindly don’t confuse that with thinking. And was that skeptical regress?
Paul Siraisi
Verified User
The Tea Party reflects a real thing in the population that should be accounted for. Occupy Wall Street was the same damned thing. Why does no one see this?
We are not running our own country, is what that is. Our government isn't OURS.
Paul Siraisi
Verified User
I can find worse here in the city, and I bet you can too.
Read hazlnut's comment again which you quoted.
The Tea party may have started as a grass roots moverment or not, but either way was almost immediately co-opted by huge monied interests whose concerns (I assure you) were/are entirely different from yours.
Interestingly, the very co-opters of the TP are the same that you complain of in your next sentence. Yes we have an enemy, and it is not each other.
PostmodernProphet
fully immersed in faith..
Mott can find worse in his mirror......
Liberty
Libertarian Minded
That's my views on union northerners. But I think most of them are pretty brain dead.
Paul Siraisi
Verified User
It has escaped you that the concerns of politicians making hay from forced public charity in various disguises are also (I assure you) entirely different from yours.
And the fact that these mass twitches are viewed as fodder has nothing to do with the underlying popular disatisfaction with our country on both sides that I am pointing at.
What makes you think it has escaped me?
Paul Siraisi
Verified User
Ah, well then we're on the same page. Time for a new party.
Paul Siraisi
Verified User
What I’ve seen in the United States and the world is a problem that everyone is aware of in their own way, and one that is easily captured in the idea of liberty, but which yet remains poorly articulated as a phenomenon of its own. This is the problem of excessive power.
The problem is there when people call for small government—except that huge corporations are there calling for the same thing. It’s there when people complain about corporate power—except that huge government is there complaining about the same thing. It’s there when popular revolutions result in mob tyranny, and when dictators replace mobs. It’s there when cultures are infested by rote ideologies, religious and otherwise. It’s there on both sides of the abortion issue.
Clumsy mass twitches like both the Tea Party and Occupy reflect an underlying popular disatisfaction with our country among both liberals and conservatives—a feeling that we are not running our own country, that our government isn’t ours. Regrettably, entrenched political parties—another form of excessive power—merely exploit our vague feelings to produce jingoistic rants against each other.
Moderation in all things, right? This is what opposes excessive power. But that doesn’t mean a flaccid averaging of all positions. Anything but, in a world where screaming marchers have staked out totalitarian claims on all points. This is all-out war! But above all it means being smart about everything. No more of this blind following. You . Must. Think. ‘Where is the excessive power in this situation?’ It will have a different shape every time, or it may not be a problem at all. And also, we can’t forget that all this is for one goal: human happiness, both long and short term. The one thing we can’t do is talk about excessive human happiness. We’re maximizing on that one.
So there’s the core position of some party that only has a default name of NonLibertarian right now, because it looks too Libertarian not to be Libertarian, which it certainly isn’t—pisses them off.
As for me:
I was raised a Democrat, but generally dislike Democrats, and bible thumpers, for similar reasons. I believe there are inadequate checks on corporate influence over our laws. There are also inadequate checks on politicians making hay from forced public charity in various disguises. I supported the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, voted for Obama in 2006 because he was black and for Romney in 2012 because he was a Mormon. I'll also vote for the first woman who comes along except, possibly, for Hillary Clinton, whom I don't hate (hell, I’d vote for Sarah Palin), but who I think might be an obstacle to getting rid of ObamaCare.
I’ve taken some heat for my recent seemingly racist, sexist and religion-ist approach to voting for presidents, but my point is to break those boundaries as soon as possible to clear out our cluttered national consciousness so we can focus on real problems. A mormon president would have been an educative kick in the groin to the religious right. And Obama has taken away some black excuses. I think we put too much stock in the presidency as an office containing some kind of intellectual genius who will lead us into the light with h/h ideas (not that this is impossible—especially if we were to re-instate the Electoral College in its original function). The president is largely a symbol around or against which other much greater forces rally. S/he first and foremost presides, and is today elected according to popular criteria that are no better than a Miss America contest. We the People are much more powerful than that, and it’s high time we took some responsibility for ourselves.
Health care:
Wanting to get rid of ObamaCare is not the same as thinking our health care system doesn’t need drastic restructuring. In fact ObamaCare isn’t drastic enough.
There is a proposal out there for single payer catastrophic insurance only. The problem with the health care system is the use of "payers" who are not you and me for routine care. Who ever heard of using a risk-based system that way in any other field? This drives costs up by hiding costs from us--except when it comes time to pay premiums, which is why there are so many 'uninsured'. They are not 'uninsured' they are 'NO DEMAND AT THAT PRICE'. We are stuck trying to figure out how to pay ridiculously high costs for ridiculously ineffective procedures, rather than trying to figure out why costs are so high.
Social Security: Preserve it, with an opt-out feature.
Size of government: The federal government needs to be far smaller and more efficient than it currently is. Lower taxes, less spending, less debt. Above all, efficiency.
Unions: Are necessary in the face of corporate power. But unions are a more dangerous thing than corporate power, and need to be strictly regulated.
Education: We need a national curriculum. We need to break teachers' unions and eliminate tenure.
Drugs: The NonLibertarian party has no problem with legalizing drugs if states want to go that way. But pot is bad for you. I stopped years ago after noticing it was detroying my memory.
Taxes: People who call not increasing taxes "cuts" are not to be trusted. People should listen more carefully to the Business argument: We must grow our way out of our economic problems. There is no other way. Not that we don't need some taxes.
Abortion: The right to life can be agreed by non-magical thinkers to correspond to sentience of the foetus, i.e. probably around week 23, or roughly in keeping with the current federal standard of 22 weeks. If states want to enact laws starting at 22 weeks, let them. If Christians want to make up stories about the soul, screw them.
Guns: Own responsibly. But maybe America is too sick for that.
Foreign policy: Hitler - Holocaust - Israel. Let’s not forget how it went, and what concerns us. Nazism, Japanese imperialism, Communism and Islamism have been/are world phenomena. Nasty Nations with Nukes are among us. They have touched us and had/have the ability and the desire to make the world an unpleasant place for us. Today a whole region, and a whole accompanying religion, are busily churning out one huge war chant. Doing nothing is probably an extremely dangerous option. 'Doing something' in this context involves some form of quite intensive intervention. It doesn’t have to involve killing people (but sure doesn’t have to exclude it), but it does at a minimum involve putting our noses deep in other peoples' business.
Finally, for those strutting around claiming that Liberals are the only people in favor of:
Civil Rights
Women’s sufferage
Social Security
National Parks
Clean Air
Clean Water
Minimum Wage
Worker Saftey
Consumer Protection.
There were Republicans who voted for all these things. I’ll vote for all those things (within reason). I’m no Liberal.
The problem is there when people call for small government—except that huge corporations are there calling for the same thing. It’s there when people complain about corporate power—except that huge government is there complaining about the same thing. It’s there when popular revolutions result in mob tyranny, and when dictators replace mobs. It’s there when cultures are infested by rote ideologies, religious and otherwise. It’s there on both sides of the abortion issue.
Clumsy mass twitches like both the Tea Party and Occupy reflect an underlying popular disatisfaction with our country among both liberals and conservatives—a feeling that we are not running our own country, that our government isn’t ours. Regrettably, entrenched political parties—another form of excessive power—merely exploit our vague feelings to produce jingoistic rants against each other.
Moderation in all things, right? This is what opposes excessive power. But that doesn’t mean a flaccid averaging of all positions. Anything but, in a world where screaming marchers have staked out totalitarian claims on all points. This is all-out war! But above all it means being smart about everything. No more of this blind following. You . Must. Think. ‘Where is the excessive power in this situation?’ It will have a different shape every time, or it may not be a problem at all. And also, we can’t forget that all this is for one goal: human happiness, both long and short term. The one thing we can’t do is talk about excessive human happiness. We’re maximizing on that one.
So there’s the core position of some party that only has a default name of NonLibertarian right now, because it looks too Libertarian not to be Libertarian, which it certainly isn’t—pisses them off.
As for me:
I was raised a Democrat, but generally dislike Democrats, and bible thumpers, for similar reasons. I believe there are inadequate checks on corporate influence over our laws. There are also inadequate checks on politicians making hay from forced public charity in various disguises. I supported the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, voted for Obama in 2006 because he was black and for Romney in 2012 because he was a Mormon. I'll also vote for the first woman who comes along except, possibly, for Hillary Clinton, whom I don't hate (hell, I’d vote for Sarah Palin), but who I think might be an obstacle to getting rid of ObamaCare.
I’ve taken some heat for my recent seemingly racist, sexist and religion-ist approach to voting for presidents, but my point is to break those boundaries as soon as possible to clear out our cluttered national consciousness so we can focus on real problems. A mormon president would have been an educative kick in the groin to the religious right. And Obama has taken away some black excuses. I think we put too much stock in the presidency as an office containing some kind of intellectual genius who will lead us into the light with h/h ideas (not that this is impossible—especially if we were to re-instate the Electoral College in its original function). The president is largely a symbol around or against which other much greater forces rally. S/he first and foremost presides, and is today elected according to popular criteria that are no better than a Miss America contest. We the People are much more powerful than that, and it’s high time we took some responsibility for ourselves.
Health care:
Wanting to get rid of ObamaCare is not the same as thinking our health care system doesn’t need drastic restructuring. In fact ObamaCare isn’t drastic enough.
There is a proposal out there for single payer catastrophic insurance only. The problem with the health care system is the use of "payers" who are not you and me for routine care. Who ever heard of using a risk-based system that way in any other field? This drives costs up by hiding costs from us--except when it comes time to pay premiums, which is why there are so many 'uninsured'. They are not 'uninsured' they are 'NO DEMAND AT THAT PRICE'. We are stuck trying to figure out how to pay ridiculously high costs for ridiculously ineffective procedures, rather than trying to figure out why costs are so high.
Social Security: Preserve it, with an opt-out feature.
Size of government: The federal government needs to be far smaller and more efficient than it currently is. Lower taxes, less spending, less debt. Above all, efficiency.
Unions: Are necessary in the face of corporate power. But unions are a more dangerous thing than corporate power, and need to be strictly regulated.
Education: We need a national curriculum. We need to break teachers' unions and eliminate tenure.
Drugs: The NonLibertarian party has no problem with legalizing drugs if states want to go that way. But pot is bad for you. I stopped years ago after noticing it was detroying my memory.
Taxes: People who call not increasing taxes "cuts" are not to be trusted. People should listen more carefully to the Business argument: We must grow our way out of our economic problems. There is no other way. Not that we don't need some taxes.
Abortion: The right to life can be agreed by non-magical thinkers to correspond to sentience of the foetus, i.e. probably around week 23, or roughly in keeping with the current federal standard of 22 weeks. If states want to enact laws starting at 22 weeks, let them. If Christians want to make up stories about the soul, screw them.
Guns: Own responsibly. But maybe America is too sick for that.
Foreign policy: Hitler - Holocaust - Israel. Let’s not forget how it went, and what concerns us. Nazism, Japanese imperialism, Communism and Islamism have been/are world phenomena. Nasty Nations with Nukes are among us. They have touched us and had/have the ability and the desire to make the world an unpleasant place for us. Today a whole region, and a whole accompanying religion, are busily churning out one huge war chant. Doing nothing is probably an extremely dangerous option. 'Doing something' in this context involves some form of quite intensive intervention. It doesn’t have to involve killing people (but sure doesn’t have to exclude it), but it does at a minimum involve putting our noses deep in other peoples' business.
Finally, for those strutting around claiming that Liberals are the only people in favor of:
Civil Rights
Women’s sufferage
Social Security
National Parks
Clean Air
Clean Water
Minimum Wage
Worker Saftey
Consumer Protection.
There were Republicans who voted for all these things. I’ll vote for all those things (within reason). I’m no Liberal.
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