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Not to change the subject, but speaking of good pieces, here is a good one describing committed Big Government supporters, such as our friend Levi:
That’s what (real) freedom-loving people are up against.
The Left loves to claim that statists are on the Right, but these days and from what I can tell, the majority of statists inhabit the Left. The concept of limited government (upon which America was founded) is anathema to them; we must have a “living Constitution”, they say, meaning that the traditional limitations on government power will be ignored.
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — November 21, 2012 @ 2:14 pm - November 21, 2012
Oh hey, what do you know, I stopped reading when I got to the word totalitarian. Conservatives just love handing out these broad, hyperbolic appraisals of everybody on the left, which is exactly why conservatives were so shocked to lose the election. You have no idea who you’re arguing against or what you’re arguing about. I’m nothing like the caricature I’m frequently described as around here, and neither are the rest of the country’s liberals.
Comment by Levi — November 21, 2012 @ 2:32 pm - November 21, 2012
No surprise. Fits perfectly with the syndrome the article is talking about.
Sure you are. I can well understand your wanting to deny it, but let’s view some of your quotes again, shall we Levi?
Notably absent from the list of people you ever remember to thank or give credit to: the taxpayer.
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — November 21, 2012 @ 2:41 pm - November 21, 2012
ILC – You seem to be striving for a utopian dream of Anarchy. By using such a broad brush there is no other end game in your fantasy than no governments and no unified human society.
What you call totalitarian is what the majority of humans would call good governance.
Comment by mike — November 21, 2012 @ 5:26 pm - November 21, 2012
Nope. Limited government, the concept that the American Revolution and Constitution were founded on. Big difference.
That’s what a totalitarian would say. But in truth, what I call totalitarian is unlimited government… also known as bad governance. “That government is best, which governs least.” – Thoreau, in _Civil Disobedience_.
No intellectually honest person could argue that the U.S. today, which has a cancerously-bloated (and still-expanding) government, is anything close to well governed.
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — November 21, 2012 @ 5:48 pm - November 21, 2012
Pot, kettle and black: meet mike. In **mike’s** broad-brush fantasy, the only alternative to Big Government is Anarchy. That’s a false choice, overlooking the third possibility, which is the kind of tightly limited government that the U.S. was originally founded on (but no longer has).
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — November 21, 2012 @ 5:51 pm - November 21, 2012
Times change. You’re talking about a pre-Industrial backwater of a few million people and comparing it to the richest, most powerful, heavily populated country in the world. In 2 centuries, technology has improved more than it had for the previous 100,000 years of human existence. Nobody who founded your ‘tightly limited government’ could have ever conceived of the complexity of the global economy, or about problems related to population growth and immigration, or knew anything at all about ecology and pollution. Do you know how many states there were when this country got started? How small they were? How long it took to move between them? You could send a high school student body president back in time and he/she could run the place. Fortunately, the Founders knew that they couldn’t predict the future and gave us the ability to change our government as time went by.
And here, I’m sure, is where you’d like to insert the word ‘statist’ and accuse me of wanting a eugenics program. In fact, I agree that our government should be limited, but they also need to be empowered to handle the problems of the 21st century. We didn’t invent capitalism to replace government, we invented capitalism to supplement government.
Comment by Levi — November 21, 2012 @ 6:30 pm - November 21, 2012
Shorter Levi. “Who cares about the constitution. Dead white guys wrote it.”
Now hush Levi, the adults are talking.
Comment by The_Livewire — November 21, 2012 @ 6:33 pm - November 21, 2012
ILC – You say you are for limited government. Fine. I believe you. Then you too are a statist because you believe sometimes it’s OK for the gov. to put a gun to your head and violently tax you. Then you too are a totalitarian because even limited government still makes red-tape decisions for the greater good.
So I am left wondering why you would link to such protectionist drivel.
Comment by mike — November 21, 2012 @ 6:33 pm - November 21, 2012
mike? Still support the Government relocating people because of a lie they made up?
Comment by The_Livewire — November 22, 2012 @ 9:33 am - November 22, 2012
Levi and the little letter mike, the sock puppet, are playing the same old games.
This is for Levi and little letter mike:
Representative democracy is the most liberal form of government to have ever taken root and lasted. Therefore, all of us who live within a representative democracy are liberals by definition when we are measured against all other forms of government.
So, take just the United States apart from the rest of the world and analyze it. Even though we are all liberals, we break down into groups who want to keep things as they were originally set up (conservatives) and those who want to go for real change in the way things were set up (leftists, progressives, liberal liberal.)
Out Constitution gave limited powers to the national government and named a few rights of the people (Bill of Rights) and left all unnamed powers to people and the states. The people and the states could then engage in a back and forth on regional levels to determine what should be regulated by the local or state government and even what the states should ask the federal government to do through amendments to the Constitution.
Statists view the national government as all powerful and the seat of micromanaging and micromanaging the air, the economy, the rules for using vaginas, seat belts on cars but not school buses, feeling up passengers before they board a plane, and so forth.
Conservatives see the balance between government and freedom as a constant battle between reasonable regulation in which the benefits outweigh the intrusions and for which there is a compelling state interest for intrusion. Hence, we conservatives understand why Johnny can’t take his Glock to school. We understand traffic laws. We understand guardrails. We understand sewers, clean water, zoning, food inspection, safe pharmaceuticals, public education, pollution control, fair labor practices, etc. In fact, conservatives, if anything, are rules nerds. When we say you can’t walk nude through the town, we mean it.
It is here that the demonizing, name-calling, venting statists always preform their Neanderthal chorus, to wit:
It is to laugh.
Poor Levi has no understanding of how highly complex colonialism was and that it was a global economy and it included the Roman empire, the ancient Silk Road, the Phoenician sea trade, the preservation and exchange of knowledge through the monastic system, the vast Indian commerce between Africa and China and funky Basques rowing and sailing tiny open boats to the Grand Banks for cod which they then salted down and changed the commerce of Europe. No, these people were all naifs and knuckle-draggers.
Growing population and cities were never challenged by sweeping fires, plague, cholera, diphtheria, social collapse, famine, starvation and civil unrest. In fact, the Bible never gets around to the issues of war, famine, conquest and death of populations. Everybody was just really dumb and plain.
No one knew a single thing about immigration. The American Indians never noticed the Spanish or Dutch or Swedes or English or French or Africans. And the colonials from different places never noticed one another. Atahualpa of the Tahuantinsuyu was never bothered nor was he ever bothered by the Spanish.
George Washington’s farm books and Jefferson’s farm books reveal that both men were stunning idiots when it came to preserving the land and air and water. Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac is crammed with ways to destroy the environment and poison your own nest in the most efficient ways possible.
But then Levi turns 180 degrees and declares:
This is just not true. Levi is all hot to have the government lay down all manner of rules, especially social rules, that he wants imposed and enforced. He would start with taking religious education away from the parents who would then be dragged kicking and screaming into Levi’s future. You can look it up. Levi wants a powerful central government that engineers society, that manages the individual’s choices concerning health, which transfers wealth, which determines fairness, equality, justice for individuals and groups and anyone that annoys them.
We didn’t invent capitalism, period.
The Constitution does not assume or call for any form of economic system. However, socialism and its brute brother communism require heavy handed state management and a constant flow of money from the individual to the “system” and that alone is incompatible with limited government.
Once the government has the individual by his food supply, shelter, and access to health care the state controls the the individual and we the people are the captive children of the state.
The struggle to keep Leviathan from eating us out of house and home goes on.
Levi and little letter mike assume that a powerful central government is the key to surviving the present and the future. They yearn to return to the good old days of emperors, kings, dictators, oligarchies, tyrants and politburos where the sheeple are herded for their own good by those who can see clearly that man controls the climate and that we are evolving into a super race of geniuses that the world has never known and that real Utopia is just around the corner where you are born, your life is managed and then you die and the worms eat you and there is no reason, whatsoever, for ever having lived at all.
Comment by heliotrope — November 22, 2012 @ 10:42 am - November 22, 2012
“Two great pieces on Benghazi & media bias”
“there is no evidence that Susan Rice was responsible for editing CIA talking points after the Benghazi attack, and that the DNI gave her what she subsequently went on TV with. End of scandal.”
Comment by Passing By — November 22, 2012 @ 1:24 pm - November 22, 2012
No one has said that Susan Rice was responsible for editing the CIA talking points.
Susan Rice was given edited talking points and like a good parrot she went out and delivered them.
Someone edited the CIA talking points. That is the scandal.
Susan Rice does not have enough of a mind of her own to be Secretary of State. If reading talking points is all that is necessary, just send the TeleprompTer around the world and let a local TV anchor read what is written on it.
Susan Rice had no reason to be talking about Benghazi whatsoever, other than to be the sock puppet chosen to cover for the DNI, CIA, State Department and President Obambi and his faithful side-kick, Joe Biteme.
Scandal is alive and well and stillhanging out there.
If you are the depth of genius they are depending on for mate and checkmate, best you take yourself to the pool where you can drown four year olds playing Marco Polo.
Comment by heliotrope — November 22, 2012 @ 2:15 pm - November 22, 2012
“If you are the depth of genius….”
“… has no understanding of how highly complex colonialism was and that it was a global economy … Growing population and cities were never challenged … No one knew a single thing about immigration… ”
“best you take yourself to the pool“
Comment by Passing By — November 22, 2012 @ 2:31 pm - November 22, 2012
Passing gas can neither read with the nuance of simple context nor can it understand irony.
You can find rooms full of such imbeciles waving graduate school diplomas at the HR guys passing out employment applications at Burger King.
America has just about dumbed itself down to the half wit level. That is to say, the Obama base. Omorons or moroons or some sort of “extra ‘o’” affinity group getting stroked or an Obamaphone in exchange for its drooling vote.
Comment by heliotrope — November 22, 2012 @ 4:42 pm - November 22, 2012
What I stated was not controversial. The social problems of today are not like the social problems of 200 years ago. Not even going to waste my time if you’re content to believe otherwise.
Have you looked it up? Please tell me where I’ve recommended imposing social rules. Religious indoctrination of children is a contemptible thing, but I’ve never suggested using the government to criminalize it and I know I’ve made that explicitly clear to you. So what are you talking about?
Comment by Levi — November 23, 2012 @ 1:59 pm - November 23, 2012
“People like you need people like me to drag you kicking and screaming into the future.’
What’s wrong Levi? You don’t like it when your fascist nature is brought up?
Comment by The_Livewire — November 23, 2012 @ 2:35 pm - November 23, 2012
Actually, what you stated was this:
And as can be clearly noted, it said nothing about “social problems”.
Now you’re trying to change the subject and run away because you know you lost the debate and made a fool out of yourself.
Meanwhile, to Livewire’s point, we can quote chapter and verse of you screaming and demanding that religious beliefs be criminalized and publicly shamed by government.
But of course, that only makes you more of a hypocrite when you snivel and demand anti-blasphemy laws for Islam. Indeed, you were humiliated and shown to be quite the coward when you were challenged to call for bans on Louis Farrakhan.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — November 23, 2012 @ 7:35 pm - November 23, 2012
“Actually, what you stated was this:”
And as can be clearly noted, it said nothing about “social problems”.
“You’re talking about a pre-Industrial backwater of a few million people and comparing it to the richest, most powerful, heavily populated country in the world. In 2 centuries, technology has improved more than it had for the previous 100,000 years of human existence. Nobody who founded your ‘tightly limited government’ could have ever conceived of the complexity of the global economy, or about problems related to population growth and immigration, or knew anything at all about ecology and pollution.”
Comment by Passing By — November 24, 2012 @ 1:20 pm - November 24, 2012
Actually, Passing By, Heliotrope pointed out excellent examples of people who did in fact know quite a bit about all of these things you mentioned.
Which is why Levi ran away screaming.
These sort of things are typical; on the whole, liberals are quite ignorant in comparison to conservatives.
Probably because, as we see from you, liberals really don’t think beyond their endless repeating of Obama Party talking points.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — November 24, 2012 @ 4:17 pm - November 24, 2012
Indeed, heliotrope. Levi hasn’t a clue how the United States came to be his “richest, most powerful, heavily populated country in the world [i]n 2 centuries [with great new] technology.”
The U.S. became it, because of the tightly limited government that the founders had set up. No other country in history had done it so well, because no country in history had had such a wisely defined and limited government before.
And the U.S. is in crisis now (with worse to come under Obama), again because the U.S. has “progressively” departed from limited government these last 10, 80, 100 years.
What follows in your “but” clause, Levi, negates your claim to be in favor of limited government. If you are too dumb to understand that, it’s not my fault.
Just so. That’s anything but a limited government.
Well, we must admit that Levi wants one or two limitations on government: it can’t tell him when to not have sex, or when to not smoke pot. But that’s it. Everyone else must have their freedom taken away – such as their right to keep what they have earned, to form contracts on no one’s terms but their own, and even their right to buy light bulbs – that Levi may “drag us kicking and screaming into the future.” How poetic, that ‘Levi’ is an anagram for ‘Evil’.
Because capitalism is what productive people do naturally, when they are left alone. Capitalism can’t be separated from limited government. The two go together. By definition, limited government focuses on the impartial protection of individual rights to life, liberty and property. When people live under such a government, they get up each morning and work and do business with each other under voluntary terms, terms of mutual, private benefit. The Founders knew that well. They intended it. And that’s what capitalism is.
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — November 25, 2012 @ 5:26 pm - November 25, 2012
(continued) Obama’s corporatist, Bailout City, Welfare City, Destroy the Currency, 20 Trillion Deficit, “Don’t Reform Entitlements Just Add New Ones” economic system is anything but capitalist. Since it is the precise economic model favored by Mussolini, Hitler and the early (pre-liberalization) Franco, Obama’s economic system might rightly be called fascist.
Again: pot, kettle, black, meet mike.
A limited government – one to which individuals have delegated a part of their right of self-defense, that protection of life, liberty and property may become impartial and rule-based – is, by definition, the opposite of a totalitarian government. And comments which pretend otherwise, might be one definition of “drivel”.
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — November 25, 2012 @ 5:39 pm - November 25, 2012
“After careful research along these lines, I came to the annoying conclusion that Keynes had been 100 percent right in the 1930s. Previously, I had thought the opposite. But facts were facts and there was no denying my conclusion. It didn’t affect the argument in my book, which was only about the rise and fall of ideas. The fact that Keynesian ideas were correct as well as popular simply made my thesis stronger.”
“The final line for me to cross in complete alienation from the right was my recognition that Obama is not a leftist. In fact, he’s barely a liberal—and only because the political spectrum has moved so far to the right that moderate Republicans from the past are now considered hardcore leftists by right-wing standards today. Viewed in historical context, I see Obama as actually being on the center-right.”
“At least a few conservatives now recognize that Republicans suffer for epistemic closure. They were genuinely shocked at Romney’s loss because they ignored every poll not produced by a right-wing pollster such as Rasmussen or approved by right-wing pundits such as the perpetually wrong Dick Morris. Living in the Fox News cocoon, most Republicans had no clue that they were losing or that their ideas were both stupid and politically unpopular.”
“I am disinclined to think that Republicans are yet ready for a serious questioning of their philosophy or strategy. They comfort themselves with the fact that they held the House (due to gerrymandering) and think that just improving their get-out-the-vote system and throwing a few bones to the Latino community will fix their problem. There appears to be no recognition that their defects are far, far deeper and will require serious introspection and rethinking of how Republicans can win going forward.”
Comment by Passing By — November 27, 2012 @ 11:36 am - November 27, 2012