That's part of it but I think this misses the point. As the Marxists say, "The State is the executive committee of the capitalist class".
Government, throughout history, has been the tool for the explotiation fo one class for the benefit of the other. Indeed, the State was forged in fire and blood.
They are living in a fairytale. Of course, this kind of propaganda is nothing new. For as long as there have been governments there have been attempts to justify it. "The rulers are gods and therefore have the right to rule," it once went. Now the justification has gotten more complex but it remains a deception.
Of course the government is a institution of control. What I am saying is that it needs not be fought and resisted at every turn and that it is possible to cooperate with our governments.
I admit I know little of Sweden and even less of it's State. I will give you some examples from the Untied States.
Transportation subsidies, land theft, tariffs, patents, inflation, government grants of monopoly privilege, etc.
I guess they need to be tied up? Anyway, that's fine but you said;
This is a case of "what is seen and what is not seen". I know little about Sweden in particular but you can bet the taxes you pay are the least, though the most obvious, of the villainies committed by the State.
In other words "I don't know Sweden but you can bet they're secretly evil".
Maybe the swedes are able to work with their government better than americans work with theirs?
Do you believe that all governments are abusing it's citizens? It sounds like what you are saying, but I'll let you explain before I start strawmanning.
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It is always easy to be tolerant and understanding...Until someone presents an opinion completely opposite to your own.
Of course the government is a institution of control. What I am saying is that it needs not be fought and resisted at every turn and that it is possible to cooperate with our governments.
Why cooperate with evil?
I guess they need to be tied up? Anyway, that's fine but you said;
Woops, lol. My point stands.
In other words "I don't know Sweden but you can bet they're secretly evil".
Correct.
Maybe the swedes are able to work with their government better than americans work with theirs?
What does that even mean?
Do you believe that all governments are abusing it's citizens?
All governments everywhere are criminal organizations that exploit one class of people for the benefit of another class.
You are extraordinarily critical of current government practices. But you desperately need to turn that critical eye on the utopian predictions found in your libertarian-fringe reading list. How can you be so skeptical of such commonsense practices as voting, but then swallow whole these vague, handwavey, and unsubstantiated promises that the unregulated free market will make everything better? It doesn't make any sense.
I just have to echo BS here again. ^THIS^ is so very very true.
And I think, Shining Blue-eyes, that we are falling into the common "UsvsThem" debate problem, so let me try and level with you. The system we have now is a FAR FAR cry from perfect. I know many people on this board are defending the current form of government we have against your utopia, but we all, all of us, also know that the system we are defending is super-extra-double flawed.
Really, what we are saying is that your system is super-extra-triple flawed. While the system we have is most certainly not the best, it does, at least, WORK. Governments have gone through natural selection to come out to what they are today. In the same way you can look at a human and say "well, if it had the inherent ability to fly would be better" you can look at the realistic governments we have and say "well if it was more efficient and sucked less it would be better."
However, fixing the government to "suck less" is often like trying to give humans the inherent ability to fly or something. Everything within it is inner connected. Its not as simple a system as the "libertarian-fringe," as BS called them, would have it. You can't simply say "add wings into the DNA code" any more than you can say "remove taxes."
You have these people sitting in armchairs dreaming up governmentless societies and flying humans, thinking they can fix the world with their simple and clear vision.
There exists no circumstance under which the benefits of a government exceeds the deadweight loss.
All parties will not, in fact, be better off. Most parties will be worse off due to the deadweight loss of government.
Really? There are never any circumstances? I mean, the part of this thread that caught my attention to begin with was the mention of the prisoner's dilemma - I just thought it odd because it's commonly used as an illustration of where there could be a use for the state - a free-rider problem.
Going over it quickly again...we should never expect two rational agents to pick the cooperative outcome, yet they'd both be better off if they did.. Let there be a credible entity with the ability to coerce - they'd both be better off if the tax + distortionary nature of said taxes was less than the difference in payoffs?
I mean, it works, if only by construct... In addition, we've assumed away bargaining, of course, but high transaction costs aren't unreasonable in many cases, especially when you're dealing with a nation, say with 300 million+ people. In fact, it can be shown that in the limit, the ratio of the private provision of a public good to the optimal quantity of the good goes to zero as the number of agents in the model grows arbitrarily large.
I'm not saying government intervention is the answer for everything...but no circumstances, really? What is your rationale for that to be true? Things are seldom black and white, in my experience at least.
It's an empirical fact. Do I really need to go through all the instances of tariffs, price controls, subsidies, land grants, and letters of outright monopoly that strangle[d] competition?
Oh, I don't deny that these things happen. I need proof that a) it is the general means by which monopolies arise; and/or b) monopolies would not ever arise without such intervention.
Like, proof in terms of statistics, equations, and so on. Not another quote.
It has nothing, or very little, to do with asymmetric information. It's a public goods problem.
From the point of view of the defense provider, it is an asymmetric information problem. You agreed with me that a defense firm would operate like an insurance firm. Asymmetric information is a key problem in that market.
Then someone steals your television and you're out of luck.
If they were a member of my community, I could take matters into my own hands. If they were not... well, how could an outsider guarantee that my house (or any house picked at random) wasn't protected by a defense firm?
If many protection agencies are inefficient, then fine. Only a few will emerge on the market and we'll figure it out. I think you overstate your case, however.
There is no reason to believe that the oil industry would be dominated by only a few companies. None whatsoever. There would certainly be more such companies than there are now.
I think your problem is that you assume a causal nature between government intervention and market dominance, when the link is hardly clear cut. Carnegie or Rockefeller didn't receive government subsidies from the get-go, yet they built monopolistic firms.
See above. Wal-Mart did not receive subsidies from day 1.
Although to be fair, I would concede to an argument that monopolistic competition or oligopoly is a far more common trend in markets than outright monopoly. Even in the English water example (which you didn't address, curiously) the market reached a (rather inefficient) equilibrium with a few dominant companies in monopolistic competition. It required government intervention to boost one of those companies to monopolist status.
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Do I Contradict Myself? Very Well Then I Contradict Myself.
Without the government existing as a bribe-taker, no one could form such exploitative monopolies.
Without the people corporatizing themselves into any collective framework existing as a bribe-taker, no one could form such exploitative monopolies. That's where the utopianism of individuality breaks down and why we have no true anarcho-capitalist states in existence. The last real attempt to create an anarchist state was during the Spanish Civil War, and it was crushed soundly.
The states rightists lost during the 19th century with the War of 1812, Nullification Crisis, and the Civil War. Considering the failure of the First American Confederacy under the Articles of Confederation and the Second American Confederacy under the Constitution of the Confederate States of America were both defeated in different styles of a coupe de'etat(one bloodless, the other not), what really makes a "third go" at a confederacy seem all that good.
Although to be fair, I would concede to an argument that monopolistic competition or oligopoly is a far more common trend in markets than outright monopoly. Even in the English water example (which you didn't address, curiously) the market reached a (rather inefficient) equilibrium with a few dominant companies in monopolistic competition. It required government intervention to boost one of those companies to monopolist status.
The thing is he's basically ignored the bulk of my historiography as well. "Oh we'll figure it out, it's really simple." That's been a part of really of a lot of von Mises Institute stuff I've read over time and even some of their youtube videos.
I'm just going to bootstrap someone else's argument:
Quote from Monopoly Theory[/quote »
Monopoly theory is one of the points of contention between Mises and Rothbard. Mises conceded the theoretical possibility of free-market monopoly - defining a monopolist as the single seller of a good with an inelastic demand curve at the competitive-price point. Rothbard rejected Mises' theory, arguing that there is no independent criterion for identifying the competitive price unless the government deliberately restricts competition.
Rothbard easily disposes of Mises' theory, but affords all too little attention to the modern neoclassical theory: namely, that there is always some degree of monopolistic distortion unless firms face a horizontal demand curve. For unless firms face a horizontal demand curve, a profit-maximizing firm sets its price above its marginal cost. In the absence of perfect price discrimination, this means that there is a "deadweight loss" - or unrealized gains to trade. In a footnote to Man, Economy, and State, Rothbard summarily dismisses this view without explanation: "A curious notion has arisen that considering MR [marginal revenue], instead of price, as the multiplier somehow vitiates the optimum satisfaction of consumer desires on the market. There is no genuine warrant for such an assumption."[31] Yet this is no assumption at all, but a conclusion. If, for example, a producer of a piece of software has to pay $1 to produce an additional copy of his program, but facing a downward-sloping demand curve sets the profit-maximizing price at $10, then there are unrealized gains to trade. Consumers willing to pay between $9.99 and $1.00 don't buy the program, even though it exceeds the marginal cost of production.[32]
Lest the reader presume that I uncritically embrace the ideal of perfect competition, let me emphasize that in my view, one of Rothbard's greatest achievements as an economist was to point out the innumerable ways that government creates monopoly.[33] Rothbard was right to explain why market monopoly is so difficult to maintain. Rothbard was right to point out that the existence of economies of scale, taste for variety, and other factors show that efforts to impose perfect competition by force are totally wrong-headed. Rothbard's should have just accepted the obvious drawbacks of imperfect competition, then pointed out its numerous attendant advantages.
Rothbard made some mistakes in monopoly theory, but in 1962 he was still far ahead of his time. The theory of perfect competition was indeed grossly abused by economists and policy-makers, who e.g. confusedly "proved" that deconcentration was efficient by first assuming the unimportance of economies of scale, or "proved" the inefficiency of advertising by assuming perfect information. Since Rothbard wrote Man, Economy, and State, however, the better neoclassical theorists have wised up. There is now a large literature showing how the benefits of imperfect competition outweigh its costs. Some economists have elaborated upon Schumpeter's observation that perfectly competitive firms have little incentive to innovate. Others have analyzed the trade-off between product variety and atomistic market structure. Still others have discovered the benefits of advertising. In short, in neoclassical jargon, a powerful case now exists that free-market structures are "second-best" efficient: there is no feasible real-world way to improve upon them. Unfortunately, while Rothbard gave the Austrians a head start, this has not prevented neoclassical research from passing them by.
Political economics is designed off of physics, where as newer forms are more engaged in psychology and different metrics than physics such as biology. Equilibrium is a thermodynamics presumption based off of the original classical political economics presumptions using physics as a base. While the math may "work" people adapt differently than thermodynamic quaints.
It's good that you loathe corruption and those who participate in it but you miss the interests behind the corruption. I mean, it wouldn't happen if it weren't for people with money to spare and an industry to benefit from relaxed laws on export or stricter laws on import (just as an example). Using money to make more money is what corporations do. Buying unscrupulous politicians is merely a, well, a particularly unscrupulous way to go about it.
The thing that differentiates between private enterprise, what I work in, and public is that public is more cushy and less intense to fire. The largest internal problems from government though are really in the hardware expenditures. Competition is nice, but when oversight is lax we end up an "inverted Greek problem" in the States. Where the IRS enforces taxation, there is no such mechanism in many different governments.
The last time the US did an audit on itself it found huge gaps in its spending. As a continental power, the US cannot really follow a Swedish model. The closest we come in North America to a Swedish model are the Canadians, but the Canadians are less of a Social Democracy than Sweden is in terms of government intervention in the market.
While you cannot stop employee theft for small things like pens from the workplace, the major stuff though hits business and government hard. The way we fund our government in the States actually encourages certain types of behaviors. For budgetary purposes people have to spend every last dime or else fall short in their budget. The extra product "gets wasted" in storage to ensure the same commitment to budget. As each year budgets fluctuates like infrastructure, schools, and ect.
Budget flexibility is just one area where government can function better coupled with an audit system for contracts acting as a "night watchman" of the monies used for government.
I should probably find some of my books and bootstrap together something different on cultural criticism of consumption through capitalism.
Quote from Thomas Frank on the Bush administration: Sabotage by design[/quote »
Thomas Frank is back with another hunk of dynamite. His "What's the Matter With Kansas?" monopolized political discussion for over a year when it came out in the summer of 2004. "The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule" should monopolize political conversation this year. It's the first book to effectively tie the ruin and corruption of conservative governance to the conservative "movement building" of the 1970s, and, before that, the business crusade against good government going back at least to the 1890s.
Here, for example, is a splendid bit Frank pulled from the Journal of Commerce from 1928 about why it's best for business to wreck the state: "The best public servant is the worst one. A thoroughly first-rate man in public service is corrosive. He eats holes in our liberties. The better he is and the longer he stays the greater the danger. If he is an enthusiast -- a bright-eyed madman who is frantic to make this the finest government in the world -- the black plague is a house pet by comparison."
The guy who wrote that was a military contractor and former head of the national Chamber of Commerce. The genius of today's conservative movement, however, is that it doesn't need barons of commerce to say these things anymore. Conservatives have won over a species of the bright-eyed madmen -- kids writing for college newspapers, who can call themselves "principled" conservative "idealists," fighting the "battle of ideas" while carrying the water of corporate America.
We see the results before us. While the Bush administration "presided over one of the greatest expansions of federal spending in history, the number of federal employees actually decreased during Dubya's term of office." The conservative ascendency did not merely change the composition of government; they sold government off to business, piece by piece -- and, of course, it was sabotage by design.
I interviewed Frank by e-mail the weekend before his book debuted. The conversation ranged from the manicured lawns of academe to South Africa; one of the things you learn in the book is that for American conservatives, the two worlds intersect in a rather perverse way. I began the interview by asking him about one of the most successful conservative activist groups of the 1980s, the United Students of America Foundation, an offshoot of the college Republicans. He has located a curious smoking gun in the receipts of their tax-deductible donations that shows the conservative youth movement as rather less idealistic than today's Reaganauts like to remember. You wouldn't be surprised to learn that a conservative youth group was funded by business. You might be surprised, however, to learn that it was largely funded by certain apparently random businesses like bottling companies.
Why did, of all things, bottling companies become diehard funders of the conservative youth movement?
It's an interesting story. According to a report I unearthed from the mid-1980s, bottlers funded a certain right-wing student group because it was doing battle on campus with Public Interest Research Groups [PIRGs]. The PIRGs were then funded by student activity fees, and what they did was push for things like bottle bills in various states. Bottle bills raise the price of soda pop; bottlers were hence natural foes of PIRG.
The fascinating thing about this is the entrepreneurial angle. Campus conservatives had been trying to cut off the PIRGs' funding for years; at some point, though, they started approaching bottlers and other companies to, essentially, hire them to defund the left. They were proselytizing for the political war.
For me, this gets at an essential aspect of conservatism: In addition to being a movement it is also an industry, a field in which entrepreneurs can prosper. The right fights the left and gets paid for it. It was a predecessor of the conservative lobbying industry and the Gingrich/DeLay Congress generally.
Just incidentally, the group that raised money to fight the PIRGs was headed by Jack Abramoff.
The next jump in the story would seem like a pretty big leap. But you show that the next stop in Abramoff's political adventure was, of all places, South Africa.
He surfaced as the chairman of something called the International Freedom Foundation -- the IFF -- which had branches in Washington and in Johannesburg. They published a magazine and a bunch of newsletters, they sent out direct mail, sponsored conferences, gave out awards, the usual. Above all, though, they fought the critics of apartheid, in particular the African National Congress, Nelson Mandela's group. Naturally they did this by accusing the critics of apartheid of being secretly pink, if not flaming red.
It's uncomfortable to remember now, but the American right was pretty fond of the apartheid regime. Yeah, they made all the correct noises about how South Africa was moving in the right direction, how apartheid was not as bad as everyone said, but the bottom line for them was that we had to take South Africa as it was. It was too valuable an ally in the Cold War. Of course, they also shared a conspiratorial worldview with the apartheid government, making them soul mates in a larger sense.
The funny thing is, the IFF later turned out to be a project of South African military intelligence. For all its constant attacks on the left for being closet tools of the Soviet Union, the conservatives were the ones who were on the payroll of a foreign power -- discreetly, of course. Abramoff and Company were, once again, fighting liberalism for pay. This was pretty big news in South Africa when it came out during the Truth and Reconciliation hearings. Not so big here.
So the IFF folded shop when apartheid ended?
Actually, just a little bit before. The apartheid government was floundering by 1992 and at some point it pulled the plug on the group's funding. The IFF tried to struggle on for a short time on its own, but somehow that didn't work out. As with so many right-wing groups preaching the free-market gospel, this one couldn't make it without subsidies.
What was really fascinating about the IFF was the transformation it went through as the Cold War ended. Where once it had been a conspiracy-spotting organ of the hard right, it became libertarian. By 1991 or so it was obvious that apartheid was doomed. So the IFF's new task, strange as it might seem, was to try to depict the apartheid system as having been an offense against markets. The IFF -- a bought-and-paid-for front group of the apartheid regime, remember -- declared that the only true way to post-apartheid freedom was through complete privatization and deregulation of everything. Free trade was also essential. So their magazine puffed for NAFTA. It announced state-run electric utilities to be Stalinist. It called for the privatization of oceans.
There were other groups in South Africa taking the same line, and the idea was to set the stage for a post-apartheid future in which money and business would be safe from nationalization. And they got what they wanted.
How does this all relate to the scams that landed Jack Abramoff in jail?
There are a lot of parallels between what Abramoff did for South Africa and what he did for his clients as a lobbyist, but most of them weren't criminal. The key similarity is the concept of political entrepreneurship, of bringing market forces to bear on politics. Abramoff eventually became a lobbyist, sort of the ultimate political entrepreneur. Lobbying generally puts our relationship to our government on a paying basis, and Abramoff was one of its ablest practitioners.
Along the way, he and his pal Michael Scanlon set up a whole bunch of hollow nonprofit corporations, at least one of which called itself a "think tank." And Abramoff continued to direct an army of pundits, particularly libertarian ones, although that's hardly a crime. He also steered his clients' money into the by-now-enormous conservative industry in Washington, essentially directing all sorts of advocacy groups in the war on liberalism. It's like he had stepped into the role of the Pretoria regime, running and subsidizing a whole army of American ideologues.
It's a striking story, even a breathtaking one, and yet it's not one we've heard much about before. The media seems to shrink from confronting the outright venality of the conservative movement. You told me you did one recent interview in which the interviewer seemed to think you wrote too much like an angry blogger, and thought you were too hard on convicted bribe-taker Duke Cunningham, the former congressman. Why this discomfort with the story you're telling?
Well, conservatives have been screaming for decades about how disrespected and downtrodden they are, and the media has finally learned the lesson. They are terrified of the famous "liberal bias" critique, and the tidal waves of criticism that will crash down on them if they examine conservatism straightforwardly. So they don't.
What they prefer instead is to talk about "both parties," and always to assume that everything in American politics is done simultaneously and in precisely equal measure by both sides. Believing this closes off all kinds of inquiry to you, blinds you to all sorts of not-so-subtle nuances and imbalances in the system.
There's also the problem that the things I focus on -- for example, that conservatism tends to be an organic product of business interests -- are things that disturb them. Journalists might be social liberals, but there are damned few of them who are ready to scrutinize the power of business or the benevolence of markets. Or the motives of entrepreneurs, even when they call themselves "political entrepreneurs."
My own observation, though, is that we have been living through a conservative era, that conservatives regard the state and corruption and political activity in a particular way, and that therefore these things need to be investigated. Yes, I know, the liberal era of 30 years ago had huge flaws, too, and its own pattern of corruption, its own favored groups, all of which are very, very well known. I know those things. Everyone knows them. But they happened a long time ago.
I think we need to talk about the people who are ruling us now -- how they think, what they have done with the state, and why it is that a new scandal seems to erupt every goddamned week.
Anyway, the arguments probably a bit incoherent, but I felt it was sort of interesting. The interview is 45 minutes long so I put in the article if anyone wants to read it and then if they want to watch the CSPAN interview or can't.
I probably should borrow an argument from some where else, but ah hell.
I think the YGO libertarian dragon falls within this tradition:
Southern tradition
The southern conservative thread of paleoconservatism embodies the statesmanship of nineteenth-century figures such as John Randolph of Roanoke,[106] John Taylor of Caroline and John C. Calhoun. It found modern expositors in the late Richard M. Weaver and Mel Bradford. Historian Paul V. Murphy argues that paleoconservatism is rooted in a group of intellectuals fascinated by antebellum culture and the Southern Agrarians, including Thomas Fleming, Clyde Wilson and Bradford. In the 1970s, Fleming, Wilson and Samuel Francis attended the University of North Carolina together, becoming what Walker Percy called "the Chapel Hill conspiracy."[47]
Murphy wrote that they developed "a particularistic politics of states' rights and localism, which they combine with a cultural and social criticism defined by Christian and patriarchal organicism."[106] He also says the Southern traditionalist worldview evolved into what appeared in "Chronicles" from the mid-1980s onward, a focus on national identity mixed with regional particularity, plus skepticism of abstract theory and centralized power. They also said the mainstream view of the old South was distorted. For example, Bradford said:
The way to look at the institution of slavery is not backward from 1991 but forward from the hundred years before 1860. Slavery was like the rising and setting of the sun, a fixture of life. In pre-Colonial times, everyone was racist, except a few Quakers. Jefferson thought that Negroes were not capable of taking care of themselves, that they were somewhere between helpless children and orangutans."[107]
In the 1995 "New Dixie Manifesto", Fleming and Michael Hill argued that Southerners are pelted with ethnic slurs, denied self-government and stripped of their symbols, including the Confederate flag.[108] Like any other people, they have the right to their history and cultural identity. "After so many decades of strife", they wrote, "black and white Southerners of good will should be left alone to work out their destinies, avoiding, before it is too late, the urban hell that has been created by the lawyers, social engineers and imperial bureaucrats who have grown rich on programs that have done nothing to help anyone but themselves."
Thomas DiLorenzo revisited the Southern paleo critique of Abraham Lincoln in his book, The Real Lincoln. He gives it a paleolibertarian twist, saying the president followed mercantilism, protectionism and the example of Alexander Hamilton.[109] He also said that the Civil War was about destroying the right of secession, not freeing slaves. Furthermore, he claims that the praise Lincoln commonly receives from conservatives is misguided:
The Gettysburg Address was brilliant oratory, but it was also political subterfuge. As H.L. Mencken pointed out, it was the Southerners who were fighting for the consent of the governed and it was Lincoln's government that opposed them. They no longer consented to being governed by Washington, D.C. Lincoln's admonition that government "of the people, by the people, for the people" would perish from the earth if the right of secession were sustained was equally absurd. The United States remained a democracy, and the Confederate States of America would have been a democratic country as well. Lincoln's notion that secession would "destroy" the government of the United States is also bizarre in light of the fact that after secession took place the US government fielded the largest and best-equipped army and navy in the history of the world up to that point for four long years.[110]
As for the 1861–1865 conflict, Clyde Wilson suggest it be referred to as "The War to Preserve Southern Independence." Fleming argues that secession was legal:
Those who hold the opinion (false and easy to refute) that the United States in 1860 were an amalgamated central state believe that the secession of South Carolina and the other Southern states was illegal, an act of wickedness that can be explained only by the desire of evil Southerners to defend slavery. Thus, in the upside-down and fact-free world of leftists like Harry Jaffa, the war was a "civil war" between the citizens of the same state or, better yet, a rebellion. Abolitionists clearly did not believe this, because after the War, they insisted that Southern states had left the Union and needed to be reconstructed. Everybody knew that it is a basic principle of international law, going back to Grotius at least, that in a confederated state the members have a right to leave.[111]
Francis, while endorsing "authentic federalism,"[112] stopped short at supporting a contemporary return to Southern secessionism, saying it is impractical and that the main political line of division in the United States is not between the regions of North and South (insofar as such regions can still be said to exist) but between elite and nonelite. He said that Middle Americans in both regions face the same threats.[113]
David Brooks, a neoconservative critic, says that paleocons do not dream of seeing slavery reborn. Instead, he concludes that they link rural communities to a transcendent order and ancient institutions:
They do not shy away from expressing their true beliefs, and if they supported slavery they would probably say so. They merely believe in the social hierarchies. In those southern communities, they say, social roles were crucial to happiness and ordered sociability. "Aristotle recognized that a well-ordered society protected an ascending order of good through the institutionalization of rank", Fleming and co-author Paul Gottfried wrote in their book The Conservative Movement. They are talking about the social pecking order in old-time towns—the folks who live on the hill, the merchants on Main Street, the village idiot on the green. On a larger scale, the paleocons contrast the virtues of the republic with the corruptions of empire. The empire throws its weight around in the world; the republic minds its own business.[41]
It's probably more of a generational thing as more kids take up the banner of paleoconservatism and libertarianism in the strain of the Austro-libertarians and the anarcho-capitalists. Basically, for myself "culture"[not including religion here, I'm a skeptic] is the focal point of reform where as his impetus is "government is bad, must smash."
Anyway, hope that highlights the division in American politics. Although YGO dragon calls himself a liberal, which is basically a conservative/classical liberal these days. Either way, labels are fairly useless and the gist is in the dog food.
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Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
Taxation is nothing but legal plunder. The IRS functions no differently than the mafia...
"Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Thus the beneficiaries are spared the shame and danger their acts would otherwise involve… But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to the other persons to whom it doesn’t belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime .Then abolish that law without delay… No legal plunder; this is the principle of justice, peace order, stability, harmony and logic"
-Frederic Bastiat
Just because something is legal doesn't make it right or just. Anyone who is going to argue this is an idiot. Look at the horrible things the Nazi's and Communists did. They were all voted into power by a majority. Just because the majority accepts something or because something is legal it doesn't mean it isn't tyrannical and unjust...
"There is in all of us a strong disposition to believe that anything lawful is also legitimate. This belief is so widespread that many persons have erroneously held that things are “just” because the law makes them so."
-Frederic Bastiat
Confusing justice with the law is a huge mistake. Let me give you an example. If the government made murder legal would you accept it? If the government sent an official to you and told you 51% of the population decided they didn't like you and you should commit suicide would you do it? I hope not. That is what democracy in its purest form demands though. Democracy is arguably the most tyrannical form of government because it masks injustices with claims of legality and majority acceptance...
“The best argument against democracy is a 5 minute conversation with the average voter”
-Winston Churchill
"I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious."
"The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society."
"To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical."
“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51 percent of the people may take away the rights of the other 49”
-Thomas Jefferson
"A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it."
-Alexis de Tocqueville
Now I'm sure a ton of people will jump at me and try to justify taxes, but the main point is that our current tax system is nothing more than tyrannical plunder. Even if taxes are a necessary evil the current "income tax" system is arguably the most unjust method of taxation in history...
“Fifty-one percent of a nation can establish a totalitarian regime,
suppress minorities and still remain democratic.”
-Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
"When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic."
-Benjamin Franklin
"As a rule, tyranny arises from democracy."
-Plato
The main problem is that everyone is brainwashed to believe that a democracy is the greatest form of government. In reality most political theorists and philosophers have all agreed that democracy is one of the worst forms of government.
Republic- The rule of the better part of the people in the interest of the common good.
Democracy- The rule of the worst part of the people for their own benefit.
"A Republic ought to take great care not to promote anyone to any important administration who has been done a notable injury by someone."
Niccolo Macchiavelli
^Hah. Look at our president. An indoctrinated racist and socialist. Just what Macchiavelli warns us about is what our democracy gives us. A man who believes he and his people have suffered at the hands of the "corporations" and "white america".
Now, here is what some of the countries founders would think of most democrats of this day and age...
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
-Samuel Adams
"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security."
-Benjamin Franklin
So, what we really need is a republic not a democracy...
"The republic is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind."
-Thomas Jefferson
“Republicanism is not the phantom of a deluded imagination. On the contrary, laws, under no form of government, are better supported, liberty and property better secured, or happiness more effectually dispensed to mankind.”
^Hah. Look at our president. An indoctrinated racist and socialist. Just what Macchiavelli warns us about is what our democracy gives us. A man who believes he and his people have suffered at the hands of the "corporations" and "white america".
So I take it you dont like the president.
Now, here is what some of the countries founders would think of most democrats of this day and age...
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
-Samuel Adams
"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security."
-Benjamin Franklin
How do either of these quotes have anything with just modern democrats and not modern republicans as well?
So, what we really need is a republic not a democracy...
"The republic is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind."
-Thomas Jefferson
“Republicanism is not the phantom of a deluded imagination. On the contrary, laws, under no form of government, are better supported, liberty and property better secured, or happiness more effectually dispensed to mankind.”
-George Washington
Um, are you not aware that the USA is a constitutional republic?
Um, are you not aware that the USA is a constitutional republic?
Thanks so much for this useful information. You obviously bring great knowledge to this debate. Sadly the US is a republic only in name. The US is as much a republic as Canada is a monarchy.
Sure, there might be some republican influences still present, but the fact remains that the US became a representative democracy with the passage of the 17th amendment.
The main problem is that everyone is brainwashed to believe that a democracy is the greatest form of government. In reality most political theorists and philosophers have all agreed that democracy is one of the worst forms of government.
...except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
- Winston Churchill again
Be honest now: did you set that one up deliberately?
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...except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
- Winston Churchill again
Be honest now: did you set that one up deliberately?
I've found it funnier to see how strict constructions have conniptions over the US Post Service in that it is a Constitutional construct but a socialist institution none the less which makes them hate it. It's a lot like arguing water rights, no one wants to really debate them in large quantities because of their sheer complexity and background.
Furthermore, the next question becomes for all those quotes are their original context. Some of them I'm also wondering the time stamps of whether some of them in particular occurred during the First Confederacy.
I'm gunna read this later probably and use it in a counter argument maybe, but posting it here for anyone that wants to read it:
A Theory of Competition Among Pressure Groups for Political Influence
Gary S. Becker
It's 34 pages.
The gist of the abstract is that each group exerts its influence and then achieve equilibrium in taxation versus services by the government rendered.
Furthermore, the next question becomes for all those quotes are their original context.
Plato is the big fumble there. His "republic", of course, was an Orwellian autocracy in which the menials exist solely to support the elite class (the philosophers, naturally), who keep them in like through heavy-handed censorship and outright lies. As a rule of thumb in political thought, if you find yourself agreeing with Plato, it's time to take a step back and reexamine your line of reasoning.
I also find it telling that kmzandrew neither quotes Polybius nor places the Founding Fathers' quotes in their Polybian context. That would blur the sharp distinction he's drawn between "republic" and "democracy", by emphasizing how democracy is an intrinsic part of a functioning republic.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Plato is the big fumble there. His "republic", of course, was an Orwellian autocracy in which the menials exist solely to support the elite class (the philosophers, naturally), who keep them in like through heavy-handed censorship and outright lies. As a rule of thumb in political thought, if you find yourself agreeing with Plato, it's time to take a step back and reexamine your line of reasoning.
Not to mention that his "democracy" was almost literally mob rule.
Aristotle at least got some things right.
Spitballing: Is it odd that this new guy opens up with a quote barrage? Is it like part of the fringe-libertarian certification training literature?
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Do I Contradict Myself? Very Well Then I Contradict Myself.
Sure, there might be some republican influences still present, but the fact remains that the US became a representative democracy with the passage of the 17th amendment.
The US has been a representative democracy since it's inception. A representative democracy is a type of republic. The founding fathers wanted a representative democracy in the form of a constitutional republic as opposed to a direct democracy (also a type of republic). The 17th amendment did nothing to change us from bieng a republic.
Oh wait, are you saying that Slavery was wrong? Since when was it wrong? What year did slavery become morally wrong? When Europeans outlawed it in Europe but kept it in the colonies? Or when it was financially better to hire subsistance labor? Because before America was it's own country it was a bunch of Europeans kicking ass, taking slaves and exporting the wealth of continants back to Europe. If you want to point the finger of evil, you might just want to look at your WHITE European neighbor and back in your own family tree.
Dude, think before you explode. It sounds like you're saying white American slaveowners (and lynch mobs, and corrupt election officials, and...) are free of blame because of Europe somehow.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
The US has been a representative democracy since it's inception. A representative democracy is a type of republic. The founding fathers wanted a representative democracy in the form of a constitutional republic as opposed to a direct democracy (also a type of republic). The 17th amendment did nothing to change us from bieng a republic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_democracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy
You seem to want to seperate democracy from republic. That would be a neat trick since democracy is a big part of what make a republic a republic.
If you had any reading comprehension skills you would understand the point I was making is that in a republic political power is restricted. It is considered a privelege and not a right as in a democracy...
Its really hard to consider the America the founders envisioned a democracy. The right to vote was restricted to white male landowners. Now a lot of people will say this was wrong, etc etc, but there was a very important reason for this. Only white males could attend University, thus they were really the only demographic that had any education in political theory and philosophy. There also wasn't social aid and other nonsense so if you weren't a landowner odds were you didn't have the money to be well educated.
Now, why is it good that only people who have political and philosophical knowledge engage in the political process? Because they know much more about the matters at hand and should have more principles than the uneducated masses. Just imagine you have a medical problem and you have 2 options... 1- you can go to a doctor for his opinion; 2- you can survey 100 random people and get their opinions. What would you do? Reason tells you to go to a doctor so why then do we let everyone vote?
Now, I like how nobody has really said anything to counter my statement that taxes are morally wrong and unjust and that they are nothing more than plunder. If everyone is going to get hung up on silly arguments about certain quotes let me present a new idea...
The best form of government is a constitutional monarchy.
There you have it. It is much easier to ensure the constitution is preserved in a monarchy and if the monarch ever drifts towards tyranny it is much clearer and easier to prevent than in a democracy.
If you had any reading comprehension skills you would understand the point I was making is that in a republic political power is restricted. It is considered a privelege and not a right as in a democracy...
That's not the standard definition. What you're describing is more commonly called "oligarchy" or "aristocracy". A "republic" is a mixed government, like the United States. Political power has always been a right here; it just hasn't always been a universal right (unfortunately).
Its really hard to consider the America the founders envisioned a democracy. The right to vote was restricted to white male landowners. Now a lot of people will say this was wrong, etc etc, but there was a very important reason for this. Only white males could attend University, thus they were really the only demographic that had any education in political theory and philosophy. There also wasn't social aid and other nonsense so if you weren't a landowner odds were you didn't have the money to be well educated.
Now, why is it good that only people who have political and philosophical knowledge engage in the political process? Because they know much more about the matters at hand and should have more principles than the uneducated masses. Just imagine you have a medical problem and you have 2 options... 1- you can go to a doctor for his opinion; 2- you can survey 100 random people and get their opinions. What would you do? Reason tells you to go to a doctor so why then do we let everyone vote?
Because when white male landowners get together to vote on laws, the laws they produce tend to be those that favor white male landowners.
A doctor is an expert that you employ to get useful advice. You can be confident that his advice is useful to you because he is accountable to you: if he doesn't give good advice, he can lose his job. Universal suffrage is how we hold our political experts (our representatives) accountable to all the people they represent. Restricting the franchise would be like letting a doctor do whatever he wanted to black people without fear of consequence.
Now, I like how nobody has really said anything to counter my statement that taxes are morally wrong and unjust and that they are nothing more than plunder.
Because we've been debunking the claim for thirteen pages already, and you've added exactly nothing new to that discussion.
There you have it. It is much easier to ensure the constitution is preserved in a monarchy and if the monarch ever drifts towards tyranny it is much clearer and easier to prevent than in a democracy.
Prove it.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
White Europe did bad, ergo White America is not accountable for its actions? What about after US independence? USA keeps slavery 60 years longer than Britain, but that's still Europe's fault right?
The whole point of his first response to you as I understand it was to address the perceived notion of European superiority based on hypocritical practices. You guys are just going back and forth like children now: you're both getting pissy and saying one thing that the other guy takes to mean as something else.
It's like when I first start debating on forums... when I was like 14...
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"If you're Havengul problems I feel bad for you son, I got 99 problems and a Lich ain't one." - FSM
"In a world where money talks, silence is horrifying."
Now, I like how nobody has really said anything to counter my statement that taxes are morally wrong and unjust and that they are nothing more than plunder. If everyone is going to get hung up on silly arguments about certain quotes let me present a new idea...
First of all, because you didn't say it, you just quoted a bunch of other people providing no context to the quotations. Second of all read the last 4 pages of the thread.
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Asking people to remove quotes in their signatures is tyranny! If I can't say something just because someone's feelings are hurt then no one would ever be able to say anything! Political correctness is stupid.
Segregation. And the millions things like gerrymandering and voter suppression that followed it when it was made illegal.
If someone had claimed that white Europe had never done anything to harm black people I would have considered that just as stupid a statement. Obviously.
"White America", anyway, being the ethnic culture and power structure that is and has been dominant in the US throughout its history, favouring primarily light-skinned European descendants of a Protestant Christian persuasion but has been expanded to cover Italians, the Irish, Catholics in general etc as has been convenient (basically anyone who isn't too dark).
Don't forget Arabs are considered "white" as well:
Many Arab-Americans check 'white' on the U.S. Census. Why community leaders want to change that.
Ten years ago, when Sarah Kazem's dad filled out the U.S. Census form for the household, he racially identified his family of Egyptian descent as "white" when he answered the question on race. But this time around, Kazem, a 22-year-old Michigan resident, is going to make sure her dad marks "Some Other Race" and write in "Arab" instead.
"Why are we marking white when we're Arab?" she asks. But that is how the Census counts Arabs. After 20th-century Syrian immigrants won citizenship as "whites," Uncle Sam applied the label to all Arabs. To change that, a California-based group of Arab-American leaders formed the Arab Complete Count Committee and launched a campaign dubbed "Check It Right, You Ain’t White." The campaign—which has been circulated nationally through the Web—is an attempt to get people of Arab origin to write in their true ancestry.
"We're like an anomalous minority," says Omar Masry, 30, co-chair of the Orange County-based committee. "It seems we get counted or magnified whenever something bad happens, but where there's an opportunity for minorities, we feel marginalized."
If the campaign is successful, experts say the official Arab-American population could swell from an estimated 1.2 million people to more than 4 million—a leap that could help the group coalesce into a distinct and formidable political block.
The problem: many Arabs, fearful of terrorism-related witch hunts, are reluctant to fill out the census form at all, much less self-identify unnecessarily as Arabs. "There's fear of profiling, especially heightened after 9/11," says Masry, who is an Irvine, Calif., city planner of Lebanese and Saudi descent. "So what we try to do is educate Arabs that, by law, the information they provide can't be shared." (The Census Act prohibits the disclosure of individually identifiable information.)
"The laws that govern our confidentiality are very strict," says James Christy, regional director of the U.S. Census Bureau in Los Angeles. "We don't share information with any other agency; it's not allowed, and it's not done."
After being contacted by community leaders with concerns that Arab-Americans are fearful of filling out census forms, the bureau hired Arab-speaking specialists, such as Manar Fakhoury from Claremont, to work directly with the population, Christy says. "Throughout the years, Arabs have become distrustful of the government," Fakhoury said. "We understand they've been hurt in the past, but we reiterate that the census is safe."
Masry contends that an inaccurate count negatively affects Arab-Americans' political influence. "When policymakers and pundits in the political sphere see these artificially low numbers, it's easier for them to cast us as this minority-fringe element."
"We want to assimilate to the point where we are accepted and heard, but still want to hold onto our identities," says Ahmad Ullah, 25, a financial analyst who is primarily of Pakistani descent but also part Arab. "We want our political leaders to include us in dialogue concerning foreign policy in the Middle East."
Helen Samhan, executive director of the Arab American Institute Foundation in New York, says some Arab-Americans do not feel the need to create a separate identity. Being classified as white, she says, "is a reflection of acceptance into the majority culture, one that was not so easily offered to the pioneer immigrants a century ago."
But for other Arab-Americans, the racial categories designated by the Office of Management and Budget—which handles the classification standards of federal data on race and ethnicity—can be confusing or irrelevant."Those who have recently immigrated or who have come of age in the distinctly diversity-conscious America of the past several decades often relate more with American minorities and people of color," Samhan says. "The sting of racial profiling, discrimination, and cultural intolerance some have felt, especially since 9/11, has only added to the feeling of being distinct from the white majority."
While reluctant to identify as such on government forms, many Arab-Americans still strongly identify with their origins. "You don't stop referring to your culture just because you were born here or have been here for a long time," Kazem says. "Ethnicity and culture are strong in our families, so we'll always be American as well as identify with our mother cultures and pass them along to our children."
These issues have also become part of Arab-American comedy. "We're an underrepresented group," says comedian Dean Obeidallah, who is half Palestinian, half Italian.
"A lot of Arabs do not respond to the census, and they don't realize that it gives us more influence politically to have people know how many of us there are in this country." He raised the issue along with colleagues Aron Kader and Maysoon Zayid on their recent "Arabs Gone Wild" comedy tour, which had stops in Los Angeles and Anaheim, Calif., a city dubbed Little Arabia because of its high concentration of Arabs.
And if Arabs are still fearful of identifying their ethnicity, the activists are deploying humor too: "We [joke that Arabs] are already being tracked," Masry says. "Or you remind people that whether you're Arab or whether you're any other group, you've already lost your privacy or you've given it away by posting your life on Facebook."
Ashmawey is deputy editor of InFocus News, a Muslim newspaper in Los Angeles, and a part-time temp for the Census Bureau.
There really is no one singular "white culture" in the United States. The regional differences are notable between a Southerner, Northerner, Westerner, and ect. The North and South were very divided long before and after the Civil War, and the culture itself are still quite different beyond the accent.
So to say that "white America" has been some monolithic force in American history is quite contrary to its actual cultural and religious history.
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Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
Black people don't have access to the same levels of education, the same levels of household stability or the same levels of economic stability as white people. This is all explicitly because of things that have been done by white people to black people. When suggestions are made that perhaps particular measures need to be taken to help lift black people out of their over-representation in poverty and crime statistics there are inevitably whites who insist that there's no racial component to poverty in the US and that anything that acknowledges the social effects of the idea of race is in fact the real racism (or "reverse" racism, as if there's one way that racism is supposed to go).
You think it's just rich vs poor when in reality the layers of privilege are divided up in rich/poor, white/minority, straight/gay, man/woman and so on.
How does anyone have less access to education, household stability, or economic stability? We all have an equal opportunity. Here are examples that actually show the opposite of what your saying:
As far as I know, there is nothing that forces companies to hire a certain amount of whites, but there are , in some cases, stipulations that require them to have a certain amount of minorities.
Skullclamp cannot really be considered a best for it was banned upon release. I think the best card/most broken card on that list has to be Bloodbraid Elf. That card was too busted.
Black people don't have access to the same levels of education, the same levels of household stability or the same levels of economic stability as white people.
umm BS. they have the same access. as far as family goes that comes more from cutural issues than someone suppressing them although al sharpton and jesse jackson would have you think otherwise.
When suggestions are made that perhaps particular measures need to be taken to help lift black people out of their over-representation in poverty and crime statistics there are inevitably whites who insist that there's no racial component to poverty in the US and that anything that acknowledges the social effects of the idea of race is in fact the real racism (or "reverse" racism, as if there's one way that racism is supposed to go).
it is reverse racism when you start giving more advantages to someone just because their skin isn't white. i do believe it was UM that was nail for doing that exact same thing on their enrollement program.
Equal oppertunity is suppose to be equal oppertunity.
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Thanks to Epic Graphics the best around. Thanks to Nex3 for the avatar visit ye old sig and avatar forum
Frankly I agree with the analysis of this book, but more of a econo-cultural aspect void of race. Robinson uses blacks as the center piece. The basic argument is that there is now a three tiered society. The first are the educated elites, the middle class, and the perpetual underclass. He suggests a Marshall Plan, I disagree with this strategy, on the grounds that after Two Reconstructions the failure to uplift a handful of segments in this country where as the total whole is unnecessary.
Book review:
Book Review: Eugene Robinson's 'Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America'
[spoiler]
Quote from Book Review: Eugene Robinson"s "Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America"[/quote »
By Lawrence Jackson
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Eugene Robinson's new book, "Disintegration," opens with an account of a Washington dinner party dripping with influential Americans whom the reader can only assume are white. But these kingmakers, gathering shortly after the election of Barack Obama, turn out to be black.
Robinson proposes that this group -- which included Eric Holder, soon to be nominated as attorney general; Valerie Jarrett, an Obama fundraiser who has Oprah Winfrey's private phone number; Franklin Raines, a banker with a reputation nearly as bad as Kenneth Lay's; and Soledad O'Brien, a hard-charging, racially ambiguous newscaster -- signals the fulfillment of Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream. Even if it does, a small part of Robinson regrets the achievement of the hallowed plateau. He contends that the exercise of respectable power by these black people actually splinters a formerly coherent and unified black community.
Robinson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post, carves modern American blacks into four categories. His dinner-party comrades are members of a tiny group he calls the Transcendent class of wealthy blacks, composed chiefly of athletes, singers and media darlings. The Transcendents are more than offset by the regular black headline-makers, a "large minority" of African Americans that sociologists famously called the underclass in the 1980s and that Robinson now labels the Abandoned. A third group he identifies is the Emergent, people who are biracial, the children of parents from Africa or the African diaspora, or, like Obama, both.
Although Robinson calls for a "domestic Marshall Plan" to tackle African American "poverty, dysfunction, and violence," he gives the heart of the book to the fourth group, the one he identifies with: the nebulously defined black Mainstream, a "middle-class majority with a full ownership stake in American society."
The notion of what constitutes a middle-class life has changed over the years. In the 19th century, Americans still clung to Thomas Jefferson's hope of yeoman farms. After World War II, a middle-class life meant home ownership, a college education, an annual vacation and the possibility of a cozy retirement. Always there was the hope that children would attend better schools, build larger homes and enjoy more material prosperity than their parents.
Being middle class means something different in 2010, and most black families with two college-educated parents are up to their ears in lingering school loans, extravagant mortgages and consumer debt. In other words, these black Americans compose a class without wealth, a feature common in the white upper-working class, as sociologists Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro reminded us in their 1995 book "Black Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality."
Sadly, Robinson skirts this issue, among others. He suggests that educated, financially secure black women living alone are "blazing another trail" to "redefine the concepts of household and family." This is glib at best, and at worst it cynically casts black women as the engineers of something beyond their control: a socio-historic dynamic that graduates many more women than men from college every year. Robinson contents himself with upbeat platitudes to reinforce a worldview in which Transcendent, Emergent and Mainstream have something deeply symbolic in common with American whites: In unison, they "lock their car doors when they drive through an Abandoned neighborhood."
Robinson is among the group able to take the fullest advantage of King's sacrifice, and his concern seems more closely aligned with King's focus on the "content of our character" than on the civil rights leader's other battle with "the inner city of poverty and despair." The ongoing plight of the black American poor -- really a people who never recovered from slavery -- bears an eerie similarity to the lives of black people living in Congo, Sierra Leone or Liberia. Americans like to keep a lot of distance between themselves and Africa, and African Americans who are not materially successful stir residues of guilt regarding the African genocides of our own day and the genocides of slaves and Native Americans. The mass incarceration of blacks is parallel to enslavement and peonage laws, as recent books by Michelle Alexander ("The New Jim Crow") and Douglas Blackmon ("Slavery by Another Name") make clear. As King understood, the black experience is shaped as much by the harshness of American society as by the content of the black character.
The black Mainstream that produced King was long on courage, determination and compassion, but short on cash. It was, and is, really a lower middle class, now tethered to an urban setting with compromised educational structures and weakened public services, and is only superficially like the white middle class. Consider this: Black autobiographers Malcolm X, Chester Himes, Nathan McCall and Dwayne Betts all seem to qualify for Robinson's Mainstream, yet all served prison time for armed robbery between 1929 and 2005. It is difficult to dismiss 80 years' worth of poignant testimony that black American "middle class" lives are extraordinarily different from those of their white counterparts.
Robinson evades the fact that the boundary between the black Mainstream (whose "historic" gains he admits are "precarious") and the Abandoned is a highly porous one. What often happens is that the Abandoned follow the Mainstream from one part of a city to another and then from the city to the suburbs and back again. It's a scenario of boom and bust that for more than a century has swamped ambitious black migrants who take advantage of residential and employment opportunities and then, 20 years later, have to pack up and move again in the face of a socio-economic tsunami. It happened to them in the inner cities of the 1960s, the larger metropolitan areas of the 1980s and the foreclosed suburbs of the 2010s. Moving is portrayed as a success, but the cycle of run-ruin-run should not really be thought of as part of the hearty prosperity of a new class. Robinson advocates gentrification as a solution to black urban blight, but that ship "been done sail," as it were. The next wave of the black Abandoned is already tucked into suburbia, in Dekalb County, Ga., and Prince George's County, Md. Ironically, these are Robinson's twin geographic locales that exemplify the successful black middle class.
Lawrence Jackson is a professor of African American studies at Emory University.
[spoiler]
Over the last generation the wealth has gradually risen to the top, and not "trickled back down." Some people do indeed have the intelligence and will to move on up, but in specific areas they want to be with their families. Fundamental investments are lacking state side, industries in urban regions are slow, and the creeping fungus of the black market is overtaking multiple rural communities that were once the refuge from the dirge of the cities.
The Age of Individual Responsibility gave rise to a shell of a nation and was a sham. An age of mutual collective and individual responsibility is what builds nations, not this ideal of "everyone can make if they try really hard." Look at the story of Horatio Alger himself and the boys he tried to help that swindled him. It was not so much what Alger said or did, but the myth he perpetuated as well as the kind of help he tried to engage in were insubstantial and woefully inconsistent to be responsibly used.
Morality is often connected to socio-economic status, and the "culture" of being poor is one of the most loathsome to be entrap within. Culture itself is multidimensional and takes both individual and collective efforts to change. Individual responsibility is a nice epithet, but it takes someone to give you a job, it takes someone to give you an education, and it takes someone to give you the opportunity to succeed. We short change people by not giving the gift of opportunity, and is why we as a nation are falling behind.
The question I always return to is, "How to be equal without being too equal?"
I cannot claim to know the answers, but as a man that has moved beyond poverty and racism I must say that it has been a combination of multiple factors that have been to my advantage that has allowed me to prosper. I got lucky and moved on with my life, other people I once knew were stupid and are losers or dead from drugs or violence.
So how am I supposed to measure my success versus theirs? Just merely personal responsibility? Darwinism? Luck? Chance? Determinism? Personal responsibility?
I do not know the answer, what I do know is that I cannot deny a combination of multiple factors in my life that has led me to success. Working to increase the culture of personal responsibility than the cult of personal responsibility gussied up as an axiomatic response to complicated problems is not socialism. It is the American way.
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Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
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I guess they need to be tied up? Anyway, that's fine but you said;
In other words "I don't know Sweden but you can bet they're secretly evil".
Maybe the swedes are able to work with their government better than americans work with theirs?
Do you believe that all governments are abusing it's citizens? It sounds like what you are saying, but I'll let you explain before I start strawmanning.
Why cooperate with evil?
Woops, lol. My point stands.
Correct.
What does that even mean?
All governments everywhere are criminal organizations that exploit one class of people for the benefit of another class.
I just have to echo BS here again. ^THIS^ is so very very true.
And I think, Shining Blue-eyes, that we are falling into the common "UsvsThem" debate problem, so let me try and level with you. The system we have now is a FAR FAR cry from perfect. I know many people on this board are defending the current form of government we have against your utopia, but we all, all of us, also know that the system we are defending is super-extra-double flawed.
Really, what we are saying is that your system is super-extra-triple flawed. While the system we have is most certainly not the best, it does, at least, WORK. Governments have gone through natural selection to come out to what they are today. In the same way you can look at a human and say "well, if it had the inherent ability to fly would be better" you can look at the realistic governments we have and say "well if it was more efficient and sucked less it would be better."
However, fixing the government to "suck less" is often like trying to give humans the inherent ability to fly or something. Everything within it is inner connected. Its not as simple a system as the "libertarian-fringe," as BS called them, would have it. You can't simply say "add wings into the DNA code" any more than you can say "remove taxes."
You have these people sitting in armchairs dreaming up governmentless societies and flying humans, thinking they can fix the world with their simple and clear vision.
But, real life is seldom clear and never simple.
Really? There are never any circumstances? I mean, the part of this thread that caught my attention to begin with was the mention of the prisoner's dilemma - I just thought it odd because it's commonly used as an illustration of where there could be a use for the state - a free-rider problem.
Going over it quickly again...we should never expect two rational agents to pick the cooperative outcome, yet they'd both be better off if they did.. Let there be a credible entity with the ability to coerce - they'd both be better off if the tax + distortionary nature of said taxes was less than the difference in payoffs?
I mean, it works, if only by construct... In addition, we've assumed away bargaining, of course, but high transaction costs aren't unreasonable in many cases, especially when you're dealing with a nation, say with 300 million+ people. In fact, it can be shown that in the limit, the ratio of the private provision of a public good to the optimal quantity of the good goes to zero as the number of agents in the model grows arbitrarily large.
I'm not saying government intervention is the answer for everything...but no circumstances, really? What is your rationale for that to be true? Things are seldom black and white, in my experience at least.
My Cube
Oh, I don't deny that these things happen. I need proof that a) it is the general means by which monopolies arise; and/or b) monopolies would not ever arise without such intervention.
Like, proof in terms of statistics, equations, and so on. Not another quote.
From the point of view of the defense provider, it is an asymmetric information problem. You agreed with me that a defense firm would operate like an insurance firm. Asymmetric information is a key problem in that market.
If they were a member of my community, I could take matters into my own hands. If they were not... well, how could an outsider guarantee that my house (or any house picked at random) wasn't protected by a defense firm?
Handwaving in bold.
How is my case overstated?
I think your problem is that you assume a causal nature between government intervention and market dominance, when the link is hardly clear cut. Carnegie or Rockefeller didn't receive government subsidies from the get-go, yet they built monopolistic firms.
See above. Wal-Mart did not receive subsidies from day 1.
Although to be fair, I would concede to an argument that monopolistic competition or oligopoly is a far more common trend in markets than outright monopoly. Even in the English water example (which you didn't address, curiously) the market reached a (rather inefficient) equilibrium with a few dominant companies in monopolistic competition. It required government intervention to boost one of those companies to monopolist status.
Very Well Then I Contradict Myself.
Without the people corporatizing themselves into any collective framework existing as a bribe-taker, no one could form such exploitative monopolies. That's where the utopianism of individuality breaks down and why we have no true anarcho-capitalist states in existence. The last real attempt to create an anarchist state was during the Spanish Civil War, and it was crushed soundly.
The states rightists lost during the 19th century with the War of 1812, Nullification Crisis, and the Civil War. Considering the failure of the First American Confederacy under the Articles of Confederation and the Second American Confederacy under the Constitution of the Confederate States of America were both defeated in different styles of a coupe de'etat(one bloodless, the other not), what really makes a "third go" at a confederacy seem all that good.
The thing is he's basically ignored the bulk of my historiography as well. "Oh we'll figure it out, it's really simple." That's been a part of really of a lot of von Mises Institute stuff I've read over time and even some of their youtube videos.
I'm just going to bootstrap someone else's argument:
http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/whyaust.htm
Political economics is designed off of physics, where as newer forms are more engaged in psychology and different metrics than physics such as biology. Equilibrium is a thermodynamics presumption based off of the original classical political economics presumptions using physics as a base. While the math may "work" people adapt differently than thermodynamic quaints.
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
If you want to show me a Utopia that works, then show me a perfect human first.
The thing that differentiates between private enterprise, what I work in, and public is that public is more cushy and less intense to fire. The largest internal problems from government though are really in the hardware expenditures. Competition is nice, but when oversight is lax we end up an "inverted Greek problem" in the States. Where the IRS enforces taxation, there is no such mechanism in many different governments.
The last time the US did an audit on itself it found huge gaps in its spending. As a continental power, the US cannot really follow a Swedish model. The closest we come in North America to a Swedish model are the Canadians, but the Canadians are less of a Social Democracy than Sweden is in terms of government intervention in the market.
While you cannot stop employee theft for small things like pens from the workplace, the major stuff though hits business and government hard. The way we fund our government in the States actually encourages certain types of behaviors. For budgetary purposes people have to spend every last dime or else fall short in their budget. The extra product "gets wasted" in storage to ensure the same commitment to budget. As each year budgets fluctuates like infrastructure, schools, and ect.
Budget flexibility is just one area where government can function better coupled with an audit system for contracts acting as a "night watchman" of the monies used for government.
I should probably find some of my books and bootstrap together something different on cultural criticism of consumption through capitalism.
One point is Thomas Frank:
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/280212-1&start=102
Interesting read on "Sabotage by Design" to "Starve the beast" to get "smaller government:
http://www.salon.com/books/int/2008/08/07/thomas_frank
Anyway, the arguments probably a bit incoherent, but I felt it was sort of interesting. The interview is 45 minutes long so I put in the article if anyone wants to read it and then if they want to watch the CSPAN interview or can't.
I probably should borrow an argument from some where else, but ah hell.
I think the YGO libertarian dragon falls within this tradition:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoconservatism#Southern_tradition
I fall more into this tradition:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditionalist_conservatism
It's probably more of a generational thing as more kids take up the banner of paleoconservatism and libertarianism in the strain of the Austro-libertarians and the anarcho-capitalists. Basically, for myself "culture"[not including religion here, I'm a skeptic] is the focal point of reform where as his impetus is "government is bad, must smash."
Anyway, hope that highlights the division in American politics. Although YGO dragon calls himself a liberal, which is basically a conservative/classical liberal these days. Either way, labels are fairly useless and the gist is in the dog food.
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
"Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Thus the beneficiaries are spared the shame and danger their acts would otherwise involve… But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to the other persons to whom it doesn’t belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime .Then abolish that law without delay… No legal plunder; this is the principle of justice, peace order, stability, harmony and logic"
-Frederic Bastiat
Just because something is legal doesn't make it right or just. Anyone who is going to argue this is an idiot. Look at the horrible things the Nazi's and Communists did. They were all voted into power by a majority. Just because the majority accepts something or because something is legal it doesn't mean it isn't tyrannical and unjust...
"There is in all of us a strong disposition to believe that anything lawful is also legitimate. This belief is so widespread that many persons have erroneously held that things are “just” because the law makes them so."
-Frederic Bastiat
Confusing justice with the law is a huge mistake. Let me give you an example. If the government made murder legal would you accept it? If the government sent an official to you and told you 51% of the population decided they didn't like you and you should commit suicide would you do it? I hope not. That is what democracy in its purest form demands though. Democracy is arguably the most tyrannical form of government because it masks injustices with claims of legality and majority acceptance...
“The best argument against democracy is a 5 minute conversation with the average voter”
-Winston Churchill
"I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious."
"The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society."
"To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical."
“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51 percent of the people may take away the rights of the other 49”
-Thomas Jefferson
"A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it."
-Alexis de Tocqueville
Now I'm sure a ton of people will jump at me and try to justify taxes, but the main point is that our current tax system is nothing more than tyrannical plunder. Even if taxes are a necessary evil the current "income tax" system is arguably the most unjust method of taxation in history...
“Fifty-one percent of a nation can establish a totalitarian regime,
suppress minorities and still remain democratic.”
-Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
"When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic."
-Benjamin Franklin
"As a rule, tyranny arises from democracy."
-Plato
The main problem is that everyone is brainwashed to believe that a democracy is the greatest form of government. In reality most political theorists and philosophers have all agreed that democracy is one of the worst forms of government.
Republic- The rule of the better part of the people in the interest of the common good.
Democracy- The rule of the worst part of the people for their own benefit.
"A Republic ought to take great care not to promote anyone to any important administration who has been done a notable injury by someone."
Niccolo Macchiavelli
^Hah. Look at our president. An indoctrinated racist and socialist. Just what Macchiavelli warns us about is what our democracy gives us. A man who believes he and his people have suffered at the hands of the "corporations" and "white america".
Now, here is what some of the countries founders would think of most democrats of this day and age...
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
-Samuel Adams
"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security."
-Benjamin Franklin
So, what we really need is a republic not a democracy...
"The republic is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind."
-Thomas Jefferson
“Republicanism is not the phantom of a deluded imagination. On the contrary, laws, under no form of government, are better supported, liberty and property better secured, or happiness more effectually dispensed to mankind.”
-George Washington
So I take it you dont like the president.
How do either of these quotes have anything with just modern democrats and not modern republicans as well?
Um, are you not aware that the USA is a constitutional republic?
Thanks so much for this useful information. You obviously bring great knowledge to this debate. Sadly the US is a republic only in name. The US is as much a republic as Canada is a monarchy.
Sure, there might be some republican influences still present, but the fact remains that the US became a representative democracy with the passage of the 17th amendment.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
I've found it funnier to see how strict constructions have conniptions over the US Post Service in that it is a Constitutional construct but a socialist institution none the less which makes them hate it. It's a lot like arguing water rights, no one wants to really debate them in large quantities because of their sheer complexity and background.
Furthermore, the next question becomes for all those quotes are their original context. Some of them I'm also wondering the time stamps of whether some of them in particular occurred during the First Confederacy.
I'm gunna read this later probably and use it in a counter argument maybe, but posting it here for anyone that wants to read it:
A Theory of Competition Among Pressure Groups for Political Influence
Gary S. Becker
It's 34 pages.
The gist of the abstract is that each group exerts its influence and then achieve equilibrium in taxation versus services by the government rendered.
http://www2.bren.ucsb.edu/~glibecap/BeckerQJE1983.pdf
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
Plato is the big fumble there. His "republic", of course, was an Orwellian autocracy in which the menials exist solely to support the elite class (the philosophers, naturally), who keep them in like through heavy-handed censorship and outright lies. As a rule of thumb in political thought, if you find yourself agreeing with Plato, it's time to take a step back and reexamine your line of reasoning.
I also find it telling that kmzandrew neither quotes Polybius nor places the Founding Fathers' quotes in their Polybian context. That would blur the sharp distinction he's drawn between "republic" and "democracy", by emphasizing how democracy is an intrinsic part of a functioning republic.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Not to mention that his "democracy" was almost literally mob rule.
Aristotle at least got some things right.
Spitballing: Is it odd that this new guy opens up with a quote barrage? Is it like part of the fringe-libertarian certification training literature?
Very Well Then I Contradict Myself.
Why thank you.
No, not in name only. It is a functioning republic. Please learn what a republic is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic
The US has been a representative democracy since it's inception. A representative democracy is a type of republic. The founding fathers wanted a representative democracy in the form of a constitutional republic as opposed to a direct democracy (also a type of republic). The 17th amendment did nothing to change us from bieng a republic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_democracy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy
You seem to want to seperate democracy from republic. That would be a neat trick since democracy is a big part of what make a republic a republic.
Dude, think before you explode. It sounds like you're saying white American slaveowners (and lynch mobs, and corrupt election officials, and...) are free of blame because of Europe somehow.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
If you had any reading comprehension skills you would understand the point I was making is that in a republic political power is restricted. It is considered a privelege and not a right as in a democracy...
Its really hard to consider the America the founders envisioned a democracy. The right to vote was restricted to white male landowners. Now a lot of people will say this was wrong, etc etc, but there was a very important reason for this. Only white males could attend University, thus they were really the only demographic that had any education in political theory and philosophy. There also wasn't social aid and other nonsense so if you weren't a landowner odds were you didn't have the money to be well educated.
Now, why is it good that only people who have political and philosophical knowledge engage in the political process? Because they know much more about the matters at hand and should have more principles than the uneducated masses. Just imagine you have a medical problem and you have 2 options... 1- you can go to a doctor for his opinion; 2- you can survey 100 random people and get their opinions. What would you do? Reason tells you to go to a doctor so why then do we let everyone vote?
Now, I like how nobody has really said anything to counter my statement that taxes are morally wrong and unjust and that they are nothing more than plunder. If everyone is going to get hung up on silly arguments about certain quotes let me present a new idea...
The best form of government is a constitutional monarchy.
There you have it. It is much easier to ensure the constitution is preserved in a monarchy and if the monarch ever drifts towards tyranny it is much clearer and easier to prevent than in a democracy.
That's not the standard definition. What you're describing is more commonly called "oligarchy" or "aristocracy". A "republic" is a mixed government, like the United States. Political power has always been a right here; it just hasn't always been a universal right (unfortunately).
Because when white male landowners get together to vote on laws, the laws they produce tend to be those that favor white male landowners.
A doctor is an expert that you employ to get useful advice. You can be confident that his advice is useful to you because he is accountable to you: if he doesn't give good advice, he can lose his job. Universal suffrage is how we hold our political experts (our representatives) accountable to all the people they represent. Restricting the franchise would be like letting a doctor do whatever he wanted to black people without fear of consequence.
Because we've been debunking the claim for thirteen pages already, and you've added exactly nothing new to that discussion.
Prove it.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
The whole point of his first response to you as I understand it was to address the perceived notion of European superiority based on hypocritical practices. You guys are just going back and forth like children now: you're both getting pissy and saying one thing that the other guy takes to mean as something else.
It's like when I first start debating on forums... when I was like 14...
"In a world where money talks, silence is horrifying."
Ashcoat Bear of Limited
First of all, because you didn't say it, you just quoted a bunch of other people providing no context to the quotations. Second of all read the last 4 pages of the thread.
Don't forget Arabs are considered "white" as well:
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/02/28/a-write-in-campaign.html
There really is no one singular "white culture" in the United States. The regional differences are notable between a Southerner, Northerner, Westerner, and ect. The North and South were very divided long before and after the Civil War, and the culture itself are still quite different beyond the accent.
So to say that "white America" has been some monolithic force in American history is quite contrary to its actual cultural and religious history.
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
How does anyone have less access to education, household stability, or economic stability? We all have an equal opportunity. Here are examples that actually show the opposite of what your saying:
[URL="http://www.firerescue1.com/fire-products/fire-department-
management/articles/747895-Judge-orders-FDNY-to-hire-minorities/"]http://www.firerescue1.com/fire-products/fire-department-management/articles/747895-Judge-orders-FDNY-to-hire-minorities/[/URL]
[URL="http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-new-york-times-pays-execs-extra-if-they-hire-minorities-and-women-2010-3"]http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-new-york-times-pays-execs-extra-if-they-hire-minorities-and-women-2010-3[/URL]
As far as I know, there is nothing that forces companies to hire a certain amount of whites, but there are , in some cases, stipulations that require them to have a certain amount of minorities.
umm BS. they have the same access. as far as family goes that comes more from cutural issues than someone suppressing them although al sharpton and jesse jackson would have you think otherwise.
it is reverse racism when you start giving more advantages to someone just because their skin isn't white. i do believe it was UM that was nail for doing that exact same thing on their enrollement program.
Equal oppertunity is suppose to be equal oppertunity.
Thanks to Epic Graphics the best around.
Thanks to Nex3 for the avatar visit ye old sig and avatar forum
Frankly I agree with the analysis of this book, but more of a econo-cultural aspect void of race. Robinson uses blacks as the center piece. The basic argument is that there is now a three tiered society. The first are the educated elites, the middle class, and the perpetual underclass. He suggests a Marshall Plan, I disagree with this strategy, on the grounds that after Two Reconstructions the failure to uplift a handful of segments in this country where as the total whole is unnecessary.
Book review:
Book Review: Eugene Robinson's 'Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America'
[spoiler] [spoiler]
Over the last generation the wealth has gradually risen to the top, and not "trickled back down." Some people do indeed have the intelligence and will to move on up, but in specific areas they want to be with their families. Fundamental investments are lacking state side, industries in urban regions are slow, and the creeping fungus of the black market is overtaking multiple rural communities that were once the refuge from the dirge of the cities.
The Age of Individual Responsibility gave rise to a shell of a nation and was a sham. An age of mutual collective and individual responsibility is what builds nations, not this ideal of "everyone can make if they try really hard." Look at the story of Horatio Alger himself and the boys he tried to help that swindled him. It was not so much what Alger said or did, but the myth he perpetuated as well as the kind of help he tried to engage in were insubstantial and woefully inconsistent to be responsibly used.
Morality is often connected to socio-economic status, and the "culture" of being poor is one of the most loathsome to be entrap within. Culture itself is multidimensional and takes both individual and collective efforts to change. Individual responsibility is a nice epithet, but it takes someone to give you a job, it takes someone to give you an education, and it takes someone to give you the opportunity to succeed. We short change people by not giving the gift of opportunity, and is why we as a nation are falling behind.
The question I always return to is, "How to be equal without being too equal?"
I cannot claim to know the answers, but as a man that has moved beyond poverty and racism I must say that it has been a combination of multiple factors that have been to my advantage that has allowed me to prosper. I got lucky and moved on with my life, other people I once knew were stupid and are losers or dead from drugs or violence.
So how am I supposed to measure my success versus theirs? Just merely personal responsibility? Darwinism? Luck? Chance? Determinism? Personal responsibility?
I do not know the answer, what I do know is that I cannot deny a combination of multiple factors in my life that has led me to success. Working to increase the culture of personal responsibility than the cult of personal responsibility gussied up as an axiomatic response to complicated problems is not socialism. It is the American way.
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.