I’m am struck by the tremendous irony in you signature:
“Those who sacrifice liberty for security
wind up with neither.”
“Ben Franklin”
It’s one of my favorite quotes. Then why’ve you aligned yourself with the Decmocrats/socialists who represent the very things he was warning against. He was fortelling despots like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Lenin, Castro, Chavez and the socialist, double-standard, power centralized governments they established.
It’s what we’ve been doing here since the 1930’s at an ever increasing pace, with only one minor slow down during the Reagan administration.
The Paineful Truth: I’m am struck by the tremendous irony in you signature:
“Those who sacrifice liberty for security
wind up with neither.”
“Ben Franklin”
It’s one of my favorite quotes. Then why’ve you aligned yourself with the Decmocrats/socialists who represent the very things he was warning against. He was fortelling despots like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Lenin, Castro, Chavez and the socialist, double-standard, power centralized governments they established.
K: Occasionally life keeps me away from my computer. So what exactly is your problem?
PT: It’s what we’ve been doing here since the 1930’s at an ever increasing pace, with only one minor slow down during the Reagan administration.
K: You need to rethink your premise. Actually the growth of government has been biggest during the republican administrations
of the last 30 years and especially during the village idiot two terms as witnessed by the largest growth in government spending
occurred during the reagan years and then during the village idiot years.
I believe I said that both parties have been socialist–Bush, for the most part (especially for the growth of government) has been even worse than Clinton. You assumed incorrectly that I was arguing from the Republican perspective. The Democrats have been openly much more so than the Republicans even though they dare not admit to their hyper-socialist agenda.
My question is about the discordance of your signature with your socialist objectives?
Ambiguous? Is slavery, tyranny or the double standard ambiguous? No matter how ambiguous you might believe liberty to be, certainly you can see the paradox in the original post (unless you believe such words are totally subjective and unusable except to whip up the hayseeds and others with menial IQ’s).
“Don’t be so Myopic”??? Seems to me that’s a fairly patronizing ad hominem? Don’t guess you’d care to take pick up the subject Kropotkin seems reluctant to address?
Libertarianism is the antithesis of socialism. Those who want to compress those two words into the same box are merely hoping for the explosion that all anarchists hope for. The first target of the anarchist is the dictionary, the quickest way to confusion–if you can get anybody to buy into it.
Capitalism is an economic system. Some want others in their servitude. Others merely want the freedom for others they had to seek opportunity. While still others are amoral, merely following the shortest distance between two points with total disregard for morality one way or the other while avoiding the pain of legal trespass. Socialism, on the other hand, can only come into existence and metastasize with a legal double standard–an elite and their useful idiots.
The Paineful Truth:I believe I said that both parties have been socialist–Bush, for the most part (especially for the growth of government) has been even worse than Clinton. You assumed incorrectly that I was arguing from the Republican perspective. The Democrats have been openly much more so than the Republicans even though they dare not admit to their hyper-socialist agenda.
K: let us start with your premise. You babbled something about “hyper-socialist-agenda” OK, what the fuck is that?
It doesn’t even mean anything. Start there and explain what the hell a Hyper-socialist-agenda is.
PT: My question is about the discordance of your signature with your socialist objectives?"
K: And once again with vague bumper sticker slogan. A socialist objective? and that is?
I think you need to understand exactly what you are talking about and then explain it to me because
I have no idea.
It doesn’t matter what I think about Big Brother socialism. I’m asking you to justify the use of Franklin’s words with your political views, however you care to define them. I call it socialism but if you’re calling it something else, lemme have it.
As it stands now, I can only assume that you’re using the quote to lead people to believe that what you’re advocating is liberty, while with your other hand you’re attempting to lead them to trade their security for it–whether you realize what you’re doing or not. I suspect you do, but mebby not.
Call me stupid if you want, but you’ll have to call Franklin stupid as well if you believe he was using a word (liberty) that would not communicate an obvious, commonly understood meaning. To claim otherwise is to say that we need to parse every word we use when we use it, even to the absurd point of dwelling on what the meaning of the word “is” is.
The problem is with your use of socialism.
I do advocate freedom and I do advocate what some have
term socialism. Now the problem is you see socialism in black and white
terms whereas it is not. Every country in the world is what is called a “mixed” system.
which means it has aspects of what one may call socialism, every country.
So the question is not about whither or not we have socialism, we do, every country
does, but the question is about the amount of socialism in every country. But ask yourself
why does every single country in the world have a mixed system? Perhaps because it is the right way
to go. You need to challenge your ideas about what is the best way to go in terms of the government.
You seem to be offended and yet I fail to really WHY you are so offended.
First you bring up multiple definitions for liberty, not it’s socialism. Ignoring your personal insult advising me on my “best way to go”, you’ve no idea where I’ve been. I used to be a socialist close to your brand, but I was never went so far as to promote the redistribution of wealth.
Yes, there are varying degrees of socialism, as I’ve pointed out both Democrats and Republicans are socialist. I think I’ve said that several times. Even state police is a form of socialism. You’re still trying to avoid answering the question. From what I’ve seen, you’re rabidly for the Democrats and against the Republicans no matter what they’re talking about. (I’m obviously still new here so if that’s a mischaracterization, please set me straight on whatever issue I might have missed. In any case the Democrats you’ve aligned yourself with have gone over the top following George Soros, the MoveOn.org witless fanatics, the two-faced demagogic elected officials and their enabling henchmen in the media in pursuit of near communistic socialism in this country and Europe. What they are is what Franklin is warning against; they take your vote, give you a place at the tit for it, and then eventually take that away like every other despot that ever lived
I’m not offended, I haven’t given you my permission to offend me. But I am disbelieving and frustrated that you and people like you have been so badly mislead by our government system of schools and universities, and I (and Franklin and Paine) can see where we are headed.
“When we contemplate the fall of empires and the extinction of nations of the Ancient World, we see but little to excite our regrets than the mouldering ruins of pompous palaces, magnificent museums, lofty pyramids and walls and towers of the most costly workmanship; but when the empire of America shall fall, the subject for contemplative sorrow will be infinitely greater than crumbling brass and marble can inspire. It will not then be said, 'Here stood a temple of vast antiquity; here rose a babel of invisible height; or there a palace of sumptuous extravagance; but here, ah, painful thought! the noblest of work of human wisdom, the grandest scene of human glory, the fair cause of Freedom rose and fell.”
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