Here's to perspective...

[Shepman]

Stan Shannon wrote:

But modern conservatives would embrace Goldware and Taft much more eagerly than modern liberals would do so for Jackson and Humphrey.

Barry Goldwater: "When you say "radical right" today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican party and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye." "Everyone knows that gays have served honorably in the military since at least the time of Julius Caesar. . .You don't have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight." "Do not associate my name with anything you do. You are extremists, and you've hurt the Republican party much more than the Democrats have."

[Shepman]

Stan Shannon wrote:

A little history lesson might be in order here.

You arrogant old man. You are Ilion all over again. X|

[Stan Shannon]

Shepman wrote:

You arrogant old man.

You disagree with my history lesson, but don't say why. Do you actually know anything about history, Shepman or, like most of your generation, have you spent your young life playing video games and eating cheetos? I will give Oakman credit for a least knowing enough about history to know what to google for.

Shepman wrote:

You are Ilion all over again.

You keep saying that as if its an insult. He and I agreed on a good many things, and disagreed on a good many others. The problem people had with him, including myself, is that he would not actually engage in debate. More like you, in fact, than I. So, if you disagree with my little historic discourse, why don't you try actually refuting it. It is a simple question, was, or was not, slavery (meaning actual enforced servitude, not someone making less money for their labor than you think they should) in our scoiety more common before the rise and evolution of free market capitalism or afterwards? And do you concur with Peter's observation that capitalism is somehow a threat to free labor? Maybe Oakman will come by and help you out.

Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

[Stan Shannon]

Point taken, as he become older and more senile he promoted more libertarian sounding arguments, just as Lee Atwater become more liberal sounding as cancer ate up his brain and James Brady did after having half his brain shot away. Yet all of these men, in their full intellectual vigor, were all rock ribbed conservatives. Many still consider Goldwater to have been the father of modern social conservatism. And like modern conservatives, he was compared to Hitler and Nazis etc for his efforts to control the growth of government. Which was as ironic then as it is now. "You Nazi bastard! You want to shrink the power and size of government!!!!" Come on, use some brains, who really sounds more like a Nazi, someone who is opposed to the government having the power to define human life, saying who can be legally destroyed, or those who are for government having that kind of power? Its a simple question.

Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

[Stan Shannon]

Shepman wrote:

It is possible to be a Libertarian and and be a Christian. It is also possible to be a Libertarian and not like Christians. That's probably what you have trouble understanding.

Not the point at all. The point is that these people are saying that they "trust their neighbors", but they cleary do not trust them enough to oppose the courts flagrant disregard for its own constitutional limits. They certainly do not trust them with the kind of political power that the original constitutional formulation provided for. We were supposed to have the power to define for ourselves at the local level whether or not abortion, or sodomy should be legal, or flags should be burned or whatever, or to have the constituion amended to allow or disallow those issues. To claim otherwise is to promote the theory that it is the purpose of government to actively suppress the creation of laws which might, in some way, originate from some kind of religious conviction. I, on the other hand, maintain that any governmetn with the power to do that is inherently tyranical.

Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

[Stan Shannon]

Shepman wrote:

I read and understood the entire previous post. Your straw man argument was a waste of bandwidth. It neither correctly restated what was said, no refuted anything.

No, actually, I quite elegantly demonstrated the irrationality of the libertarian ideal.

Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

[peterchen]

Confluence != causality. Oh, and try to match this timeline[^] with developments of free markets.

Stan Shannon wrote:

It ain't going to work

What "it"? And define "work", just once.

Stan Shannon wrote:

Trying to beat more work out of the poor beast is simply not going to provide the results you expect.

Now you sound like Ayn Rand (you know that this is no compliment from me, but I guess you consider it one nonetheless). It's just an attempt to smooth the inevitable valley. Economically, it's stupid, but it's still better than your ignorance covered behind "If it doesn't work for them, they are not using enough".

Stan Shannon wrote:

Socialism

There's more than two things in this world, you know?. Err, no, you don't. :sigh:

Burning Chrome ^ | Linkify!| FoldWithUs! | sighist

[Stan Shannon]

peterchen wrote:

Oh, and try to match this timeline[^] with developments of free markets.

Some statistical outliers, but that all seems to correspond pretty well to the evolution of modern free markets. It is a question of : did the enligthement lead to a philosohical rejection of slavery and ending slavery lead to improved economies, or, did the enlightenment lead to improved capitalistic economies which created the conditions necessary for slavery to no longer be needed? I maintain that the latter was the dominant factor historically simply because throughout history economic evolution has tended to preceed cultural change which leads to philosophical change, rather than vice versa. But, granted, this might be an exception, although I don't believe that it was.

peterchen wrote:

What "it"? And define "work", just once.

"It" is the use of the state to manage the markets. And "work" is the actual successful realization of the goal to provide economic stability and resources to people.

peterchen wrote:

Now you sound like Ayn Rand (you know that this is no compliment from me, but I guess you consider it one nonetheless).

Well, fiscally speaking ,I am as much of a libertarian as anyone around here. (Actually, thats probably not quite true. I certainly believe that taxation for the purpose of the general welfare should be progressive in nature. But I don't believe that one class should be taxed to provide directly for another). I'm not a big fan of Rand, but she made some good points.

peterchen wrote:

It's just an attempt to smooth the inevitable valley. Economically, it's stupid, but it's still better than your ignorance covered behind "If it doesn't work for them, they are not using enough".

Capitalism is characterized by cyclic highs and lows. But the inevitable trend will always be upwards limited only by the environment's physical capacity to sustain it. When government chooses to smooth out the vallies, it has to borrow from what would later have been a mountain. That sends an economy into an inevitable downward trend. No government can force the markets to actually grow, and the notion that it can achieve stability has failed on every occassion it has been tried. It is doomed to failure.

peter

[Lost User]

More cheap money is being provided to tide over problems caused by cheap money. The bailouts are intended to legitimize the price rises funded by debt (or more fancily called leverage). I hope that the banking system changes for ever. It is no wonder that banks that were conservative have tided over the situation well -- for example: Wells Fargo required a down payment for home mortgages, and they are in the best shape. The retail banking business must be made separate from the investment banking and brokerage businesses. If an investor wants risk, he may choose it himself by consciously investing in risky propositions. Banks must not be allowed to use these low risk money to fund high-risk businesses. Throwing money at banks, and not asking them to be careful with deposit money; and asking for separation of riskier businesses is a crime. Governments across the world in power between 2003-2008 failed to curb price inflation of everything (real estate appreciated 500% during this period in many parts of the world), and now they wonder what happened. I just hope that they leave the down-slide alone.

[soap brain]

Stan Shannon wrote:

Not so much. An occasional mispelled word is no big deal. Poke tongue I rarely even proof read my comments. In the age of spell checkers, I actually think my spelling and grammer are pretty damn good.

How can you be comfortable accepting mediocrity? :confused: Even if it is only spelling and grammar, I don't know how you can sit there knowing that it could be improved on and not do so.

[Stan Shannon]

Ravel H. Joyce wrote:

How can you be comfortable accepting mediocrity?

Because I think being overly pedantic about spelling in a non-academic environment is more of a indicator of subservience to following arbitrary rules than it is an indicator of intellectual excellence. When I was in college and high school, long before the existence of spell checkers, my spelling was pretty much flawless. But even then, I liked to get all my thoughts dumped out on paper before I worried about spelling or grammer. The fastest way to write anything is just to do a brain dump, organize it, and finally proof read it. It is important to know all the rules, but been there, done that, and it ain't so important to continue to believe forever that it means much of anything other than arbitrary rules. After 30 to 40 years of working in an environment that requires little actual published written material, my spelling has obviously suffered a bit. So what?

Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.