It wasn't name calling.....
It was just pointing our the very obvious!
No Susie and OK, what is today called libertarianism are principles for a larger gov't system such as the federal level and yes many of the founders wanted a very limited gov't and in fact one effort to "keep the genie in the bottle" that didn't work was the Bill of Rights. Our founders wanted no system that in time would grow to become an empirical statist force like the European houses from which they rebelled and they did not want an American Empire on which "the sun never sets" as they had had enough of that. The hopes of doing that was to let the States and local jurisdictions handle for example all means of law enforcement and there also was no standing army. You guys hate the situation in Iraq? Well so do I but we invite disaster of foreign entanglements by the simple fact we demand our federal gov't do all these things for us and then when it defends it's means of delivering this at home we all stomp our feet and get mad! Services do not grow on trees so where does the money come from to pay for all of this? Where does Rome get her gold for more wine and circus? Charge the citizenry of Rome in the form of taxation or send forth the Legions to conquer the barbarians and take their gold. Oh, sometimes our legions are in 3 piece suits and carry briefcases instead of swords. I like to call that the Legions of Merchantile.
When the money at home does run short that's no problem as we have this so-called retirement plan we can rob..uh...well... I mean borrow from. BTW both of you would do well to read the history and the case law on this plan before you be it's champion. Try starting at SS's own website as you might be surprised at what they even admit. Hint: Helvering vs. Davis (SCOTUS 1937')
Oil companies showing a profit these days? Ah, the grand and lovely windfalls profit tax to show those greedy bastards they can't do this to us. We're doing it to ourselves as we refuse to cut back on our driving thus backing up their supply lines and forcing them to slash prices in order to move their inventory. Notice prices dropping lately as the capacity along the Gulf comes back on line? Capacity? Inventory? Price dropping? As for the windfall taxes, let's say the liars in charge get their way and pass the tax but the oil companies want to maintain their profit levels, then who pays and whose happy? Oil companies are because they still have the money even though a few extra bucks goes to Washington but that will come back after the lobbyist re-write the law as they own the Congressmen anyway. The liars in charge are happier because they have us thinking they're looking out for us and they also have more money for pork to buy more special interest votes (some pork even to the oil companies) with so what's wrong with this picture? Oh that's right I forgot to tell you that the real cheap gas will now be $3.50 a gallon so that windfall tax can be paid but tell that to comfort someone barely squeaking by in life now as it is. "What if" they (Congress)did absolutely nothing? Could it be the American people might start to get mad and curtail their driving thus raising the level of inventory thus forcing the prices to drop to move product? Could it be the American public would stop buying poor MPG vehicles and start buying high MPG vehicles instead? Could this also reduce pollution in the air as these vehicles that burn less fuel also put out less pollution per mile driven? Could it be the high price hybrids as the wealthy among us demand them more and more and thus the automakers ramp up to production thus on scale the prices come down as the cost is spread thinner and thinner per vehicle made and then the more modest and even lower income folks out there can also jump on the high MPG vehicle band wagon thus as a nation we just vastly reduced our need for foreign oil and we just cut our national pollution output. We did it. The citizens operating as an economic force did this. Not the gov't nor the business world as we told them what we wanted when we are left free in the market place. Do we have the guts or the smarts to do this?
But it's OK, uncle sammy will take some of this windfall money and give you a check every week to so-call make up the difference and pollutine won't change, mpg vehicles will stay the same and gas prices will only get higher overtime and the towel heads will get richer and they will jihad our asses again and again and we will have more wars and we'll need more gov't protection and taxes will go up and..... damn I'm getting dizzy going in these gov't contrived circles. It's called Hegelian Dialectics if you want a tag for it! LOL.
So the gov't check sounds pretty good right? OK, I make $70k a year working for the Big Brown but at what point does it become least effective from an economic sense to keep at Big Brown and instead join the Uncle Sammy Team and get that check? I can then slip around on the sly and pick up enough easy side money and I too can enjoy the good and easy life. How long before we reach this point and folks like you and I really face this scenario? In many sectors of society we have and it's growing.
No guys, you are correct that this country could not handle the freedom it had after the revolutionary war or for that fact much real freedom at all. If you will go back and read what I said was the foundational precept on which a true free society (libertarian if you will but that's not an absolute truism either) must live by and that is in all aspects of your life you must endeavor to never violate the life, liberty or property of another human being either by force or fraud. If you don't have that, nothing you do will ever work and everything you ever do will ultimately end in tryanny and misery. The wild west as so many of you like to tag libertarian thought was far from this precept but at the same time you'd do well to forget the Hollywood movies in thinking of this era as the Deadwood's in America we're not that common place. The Indians were not always the bad guys either and that's a fact on many fronts. Most frontier communities were tough and free but the people were peaceful and worked together as they had to to survive. Also most of these areas had no gold rush or strike it rich quick that tends to invite disaster and the badest side of man. If you add in democracy, rule by majority to this equation you not only get small segments of society by law being made to live or work only in cetain places to the will of the majority but the process speeds up as people begin to learn they can vote as a block to plunder the hard work of others. Convince the elected represenative that if he/she will vote to pass a law taking from a few what they have worked hard for that in mass a large block will vote to keep that person in office. That is a powerful incentive for anyone including me. There is a big difference betwen democracy and democratic republic and we've gone from the latter to the former contary to your beliefs of the outcome of the last 2 presidential elections.
It is irrelevant that you do or don't become whatever political tag you want to throw at me but if for one brief moment I can make you ask the simple question of "What If?" then that is all I'm out to do. "What if" my neighbor and I can live by the precept of do no harm to others and respect them then what do my neighbor and I need a gov't for in our relationship? What does it say about us when we force gov't in anyway? "What if" my other neighbor and I could do the same? "What if" my hole neighborhood could do this? "What if" my whole town? "What if" strangers out on the highway could do this? Just "what if?" Hmmmmmmm. "What if" some simple carpenter's son in times past taught a simple precept like this that if carried out,he also called this "the Kingdom of Heaven, could create a world that would be fantastic to live in?" Could it be that western classical liberalism, libertarianism, freedomism, common law, whatever you want to call it has it's roots with this simple carpenter's son and a nomaic desert leader who once lived in the ruling house of Egypt and made a historic journey to the top of a mount and from that formed in it's early years actually a very free society in which local peoples ruled themselves and handled matters among themselves but in due course they too choose to have a King and in the end that society of freedom came to an end.
What If?
hmmmmmm!
