Road the Serfdom
http://www.amazon.com/Road-Serfdom-F.../dp/0226320618
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Road the Serfdom
http://www.amazon.com/Road-Serfdom-F.../dp/0226320618
A balanced amount of centralised control and regulations are necessary for the establishment of society.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rockie Cantais
If you would allow me some quotes here (all taken from "Beyond Greed: A traditional conservative confronts neoconservative excess", by Hugh Segal):
Page 3:
"(1) Tories, Mainline Republicans (the Old Right)
Small "c" conservatives who believe in the importance of a balance between freedom and responsability. While for a limited government, this group does not denigrate the importance of government and other institutions like religion, the military, or the business sector in the larger cause of equality of opportunity and some measure of fairness. This group favors a broad pluralism in society, eschews liberal naiveté about big government, and in its interest in law and stability has no illusions about the need to control the worst aspects of human nature.
(2) Neoconservatives, Reformers, Nativists (the New Right).
Taking their inspiration from the excessive classical exaltation of the "individual" in nineteenth-century liberalism, this group values freedom as the core value - far more than responsability to each other or to the common good. Their approach is to diminish the apparent efficacity of any expression of common interest that emerges through the user of democratically elected government. They prefer policies and decisions that significantly favor individual freedom in all areas except when in conflict with their moral code. And in that regard, they view too much pluralism in terms of lifestyle and values as a threat to a moral code they are prepared to use the state and laws to impose. The enemies they try to create are usually foreign or subversive rather than systemic and local. "
Page 16:
"If the economic purposes of civil society are established only by international money markets and the social purposes defined by the religious right in both Canada and the United States, there would in fact be little need for substained, broadly embraced, and meaningful political debate. Inoxerable universal laws would render politics obsolete. And those on the extreme left and right would celebrate as their ultimate victory the death of politics. There would be no need for dissent, compromise, common ground, tolerance, or for putting water in one's wine.
One of the problems in the evaporation of civil debate has been the approach of moral annihilation taken by the far right. One's opponents are not simply of a different view, but somehow are not up to the accepted standards - set, of course, by the far right itself."
Page 17:
"Such a politics, or non-politics, substains the self-righteous nature of narrowly held extreme views. Republicans in the United States and Conservatives in Canada are, especially when in opposition, attracted to the clarity and simplicity of one-dimensional, simple answers to complex problems. They mouth the ritual incantations of lower debt, no deficit, less government, higher profits, greater productivity as if mere repetition will bring happiness and deliverance for all people. This is not conservatism.
Conservatism is about the organic nature of society - the linkage between family, freedom, tolerance, civility, economic pursuit, law, order, tradition and opportunity. It is about seeing any society as a living, breathing body with different needs, opportunities and relationships. It embraces values about human nature and the need for structure that restrain the worst and liberate the best in people across the social spectrum. It embraces the core view that duty, responsability, and order are the non-negotiable foundations upon which genuine freedom and opportunity are built."
Page 22:
"They could have focused on the ongoing challenges of the race issue, growing levels of poverty and illiteracy. Instead, and not surprisingly, their muscular rethoric, previously aimed at Soviet adventurism and third world fellow travelers, was trained on the new enemy - American moderation.
All the evils of contemporary American reality - crime, debt, social program waste, or dysfunction - became the fault of moderates among both Democrats and Republicans. The attack on moderation became synonymous with neoconservative rhetoric.
And so, as if for lack of an external enemy, neoconservatives turned their rhetoric on the moderate policies of coalition politics. This was aided and encouraged by middle class and boomer angst, by media fragmentation that produced purely political and evangelical specialty channels, and by the scourge of the Political Action Committees and right-wing foundations that engaged in tax deductible advocacy activities well beyond the meaning of philanthropy."
In more simple terms, Rockie, I think the author is telling you that you're helping to screw up your country by trying to apply overly simplistic, generic solutions to a wide variety of complex issues.
I think he got a fair point and you should be paying more attention to various complex social dilemmas by making your own mind about them, on a case-by-case basis rather than falling back on well reharshed rethorics or on party lines.
You are making assumptions about me based on a limited window of my postings. The simplest answers are most of the times the best solution. Society is only complex because we make it so and when we simplify it, wow it runs better. Party Lines? thats a laugh!! I think the party here wishes my ilk would go away. You can't always put people in neat categories that make you feel like you are in control. Life itself is very chaotic and rebels against the idea of order. Control Chaos is the best we can hope for. Society must be allowed to relish the chaos and yet maintain a certain order as a society, Limited Government.Quote:
Originally Posted by Magn
You know your not all that of a leftest! I can agree with that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Magn
Quote:
Originally Posted by Magn
Tories are for Big Government over 200 years ago, this is funny.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Magn
You know thats not half bad! LOL. I would rewrite it a bit and clean it up must have been written for the upper crust. The Law of the land must be maintain even if it conflicts with the morals of the individual. Why we have elections and the ability to change things. Still he is trying to put people in neat boxes and you can't do that. People and life in general is to chaotic.Quote:
Originally Posted by Magn
Opinion!Quote:
Originally Posted by Magn
Try the 5,000 Year Leap.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0880801484/...l_73uztgl6h9_e
Back to the American elections.
67 House seat won by the Rep.
7 Senate seats won by the Rep.
650+ Seats won by various State Congress Rep.
10 Governorships won by the Rep.
Largest Victory in modern times! Note, some of the elections are still undecided yet.
What are the Dem's doing? Going hard left again and I expect the President will do the same. 2 years is a long time just have to wait and see what happens next.
Standard response from people who aren't capable or can't be bothered to actually discuss.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rockie Cantais
From the original constitution:
[N]o religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.
Then the 1st amendment deals with preventing any national religion or treating a single religion differently. But the spirit of that has obviously been completely ignored, seeing as how USA is currently one of the most prominent Christian nations in the world. "One nation under God" "In God we trust" etc. shows how Christianity has become more involved in politics that it ever was supposed to.
Googling around I could only find a single person who is an athetist and actually made it to congress. And he only recently admitted to not being a Christian. Benjamin Franklin & Thomas Jefferson were both vocal about their dislike for organized religion, so I can only guess that they would not have had any power if they were alive today. George Bush doesn't even consider Atheists real people: "Bush: No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God." For a nation that considers itself so progressive and a world leader, such statements are truly scary. Being unable to separate the church from the state is massive fail, fully on par with the middle east.
Do you deny that atheists and non-christians are seen as untrustworthy and will have an incredibly hard time getting to any position of power in the US unless they actually pretend to be Christian?
Examples of debates that are infested by religious beliefs: stem cell research, abortion & teaching creationism as a legit "science" in schools.
Well yes, what you write (or say) says something about your views if you were being honest.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rockie Cantais
Depends for what. When social interaction goes, rarely. Humans are complex and the social framework under which they operate needs to handle that complexity.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rockie Cantais
If you want simple solutions:
When you have 2 ethnicities that clash in a country, genocide is a very simple, straightforward solution. Is it the best solution?
When you have things like school shootings, forbidding people to have firearms is a very simple solution. Is it the best solution (well, in a place like the US anyways)?
When dealing with high crimes rates and high jail costs, limiting personal rights while maximising the police's and doing away with jails by always executing the convicted are very simple solutions. Are they the best?
When arguing politics, bashing any policies based on the exact same argumentation that people should always have less government and should veer as far away from communism as possible without looking at the context or anything else for that matter is a really simple idea.
Based on the above type of argumentation (which you provided so far when arguing about Obama's reforms), things like law enforcement, schools and taxes should be slashed also.
As Einstein said, (something alongs the line of "Make everything as simple as possible and not simpler"), the reality under which we operate has an underlying complexity that needs to be tackled. Denying that complexity is living outside of reality.
People are entitled to their opinions.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rockie Cantais
Clearly, if you were running for elections in here, you would not get elected by a large margin.
Maybe you should take that as a cue to either moderate your views or being doomed to want something that is fundamentally incompatible with what the mainstream wants (well, until the next successful terrorist attack anyways, better pray it comes soon).
Thats right and you can't put the system under which people operate in a neat category like "always less government, always fewer regulations" either.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rockie Cantais
Its funny that you acknowledge that people are complex, yet operate under the assumption that a system that truly works (as in, maximizes prosperity and happiness) with all that complexity should be really simple.
Since when did a system successfully dealing with a really complex thing was really simple?
Good, then grab a sword and hewn your way to power (or in more modern times, grab a gun and shoot your way to power).Quote:
Originally Posted by Rockie Cantais
Roll the dices to determine who will eat and who will grow hungry. Do the same to determine who will be treated for sickness and who will die.
Thats the type of chaos that any human civilisation worth its salt has struggled to contain since its inception.
Is a certain mesure of unpredictibility good? Certainly.
However, not all unpredictibility is good. That my friend, would be a really simple idea.
I'd be more tempted to say: Society must be allowed to relish in the marvels of human creativity while containing the worst aspects of human nature.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rockie Cantais
That I found the most interesting! No, I am not running for office and you are correct I would would lose in this forum. Good thing this isn't the real world then.Quote:
Originally Posted by Magn
Creativity comes from necessity because of the chaos that life is. We must always deal with the worst aspect of human nature and control it, that we can agree on.Quote:
Originally Posted by Magn
State Capitalism!
What a interesting term we have here. I hope everyone understands that America has not had a pure Capitalist economy in over 100 years! We have had a sort of Capitalist/Social economy while the Progressives try to take us to a more Socialist one. What ever happened to the Communist? Did they all change their name to something else? I don't think they were all killed off or is it that they are now Democrat Socialist? With all these labels its confusing who is who at any given time.
'roll eyes'Quote:
Originally Posted by Luc
Cool.Quote:
Originally Posted by Luc
The founders were Christian so its not hard to understand why it happened.Quote:
Originally Posted by Luc
The Separation of Church and State is not in the Constitution its only implied and taught now. It was never the intention in my opinion.Quote:
Originally Posted by Luc
Seems to be the truth.Quote:
Originally Posted by Luc
Creationism is not taught in public schools in America, lol. It should be right alone with the other theories. You have the right to think what you want about faith. To have faith or not to have faith its a choice. 80% of all Americans believe in God, that can be broken down into the different faiths but regardless of what Mr. Obama said America is a mostly Christian Nation.Quote:
Originally Posted by Luc
Wanted to come back to this one.Quote:
Originally Posted by Luc
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
First Amendment to the USA Constitution the first 10 are the Bill of Rights. Yes, its a collection of negative rights for the government to limit government! There is no separation of church and state here. Its implied by the progressive who understand that to gain power one must separate the people from their faith. It does keep the government from creating a Religion! why? it would infringe on the rights of people to believe how they wanted too in any faith.
Politics should not be there to entertain you. That is not their function.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rockie Cantais
It is the real world.
This is a sample of what you may encounter internationally (granted, heavily biased torward the male gender, a somewhat younger age group, a gamer mentality and wealthier nations).
Unless you are one of those with dillusions that the US should/will rule the world or otherwise have no interest whatsoever in debating politics outside your borders, you might want to take it into account.
Regardless of whether you care about it or not, the politicians you elect certainly will.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_CapitalismQuote:
State Capitalism!
What a interesting term we have here..
A term that was appropriated by Communists, Facists, liberals, laissez-faire capitalist thinkers...
It does seem to be a very flexible term.
You ackowledge that and yet in practice, you argue against anything that goes against the tenets of pure capitalism by claiming it will make things more "socialist".Quote:
I hope everyone understands that America has not had a pure Capitalist economy in over 100 years!
Consistency please.
If you are refering to the 'original' communists from the Bolchevik revolution, they are probably all dead from old age at this point.Quote:
What ever happened to the Communist? Did they all change their name to something else? I don't think they were all killed off or is it that they are now Democrat Socialist? With all these labels its confusing who is who at any given time.
Let them rest in peace.
Wrong, they were not all Christian. Some of the more prominent founders were not Christians, but rather Freemasons (which was frowned upon by the church) or against organized religion (even though they might still have believed in God). And what is Christian anyway? There are various forms of Christianity that do not necessarily agree with each other in a lot of ways. People only group them together when they want to look more powerful.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rockie Cantais
That the US was founded upon Christianity is a myth, and that so many people believe it today is because of the idiot right wing Christians who want nothing more than to go back to how things were in medieval times, when the church had all the power.
Very much implied, since both Jefferson and Madison explicitly talked about the wall between religion and state. It makes no sense to call the nation Christian if you're allowed to have any religious belief you want and guaranteed by the constitution that religion should not matter if you want to run for office. It just so happened that the Christians took control of the seat of power early on, and it's not because the constitution said they should be there.Quote:
The Separation of Church and State is not in the Constitution its only implied and taught now. It was never the intention in my opinion.
Lots of people want it to be taught in science class. Science has nothing to do with faith, so clearly it's a joke to propose to teach creationism in science class, seeing as how it's based on no observable evidence whatsoever.Quote:
Creationism is not taught in public schools in America, lol. It should be right alone with the other theories. You have the right to think what you want about faith. To have faith or not to have faith its a choice. 80% of all Americans believe in God, that can be broken down into the different faiths but regardless of what Mr. Obama said America is a mostly Christian Nation.
Also, a Christian nation isn't the same thing as many of the citizens being Christian. And of course, the broad title of "Christian" means little more than believing in the same God these days.
Either way, it's sad that the US is officially almost as religious as the Arab countries. Most rich countries have moved away from religion, and managed better at separating it from the state. You should be happy about Jefferson and the others and their attitude toward the separation between church and state, because I doubt the US would be doing very well today if the religious nuts had ran things from the beginning.
So if the government is not allowed to support any special religion, how can you call the country Christian? If the nation was truly founded upon Christianity, it would be the religion of the state, although it could still be "ok" to not follow that religion if you don't want to. I'm pretty sure Jefferson and the others were smart enough to understand that as soon as you let people use religion to get power, they will. No doubt they wanted the best people to run the country, based on their skill and dedication, and not on their religion. Sadly that's gone to **** today, because non-Christians are second rate citizens that are merely "tolerated", but will never get anywhere close to real power, regardless of how good they are.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rockie Cantais
Also, try to take a step back and stop buying all the Communist propaganda media has been spewing out in your country for ages. Communism never worked, and it's gone in all rational parts of the world. Socialism is not the same as communism, and has in the last decades gone ever further away from it. Most successful countries today understand that the trick is finding a balance between socialism and capitalism, because neither one is a good solution on its own. Everybody's evolved toward that, so to have the viewpoint that one of the extremes is actually better is to be painfully ignorant and incapable of learning from history.
Left and right as Big Gov't vs Limited Gov't is a fallacious idea taught by conservative pundits. Left vs right is closer to:
Left= Individual over the state, (the state works for the people in terms of aid etc.) and Right= State over the individual, (the individual works for the State, especially in terms of social conservatism where "social fabric" is a key term)
If you go any further it doesnt make any sense. Bakuninism vs libertarian anarchists both believe in one gov't but they just have different ideas of how their "utopia" will play out.
Its confusing, because you have to realize democracy is a liberal ideology, so our country started out at its founding as a radical leftist nation.