BB Advocating "Conservatives" Take Heart

[Phaedrus]

Although I don't think that you are truly conservatives (most conseratives can read, write and debate points with some degree of eloquence) the self-proclaimed ultra-conservatives of the Prescription poli-sci forum can take heart in the fact that all may not be lost in our relationships in Europe.

In Germany, a man has been fined approximately $ 850.00, publicly chastised for condoning terrorism, and forced to change his child's name, because the child is named Osama bin Laden.

Bear in mind there is no law currently on the books in Germany regarding naming your kids. The state just said, "F*ck it, we'd better do something to seem more anti-terror after all this anti-US rhetoric," and off they went.

Full story here.

Would stuff like this be what you'd like to see in the US? Seems that way, judging by some of your posts.


Phaedrus

 

[PatPatriot]

I certainley wouldn't.As a matter of fact it just shows you how paranoid the german govt. is.They can see they went the wrong direction on this.The problem is all these "enlightned" countries are for this global baloney bullshit, but they have to be lead. they have come to the realization that they were following the wrong leader.Now they are over correcting.You will see a lot of these gutless back stabbing countries take it out on their population, because of the weakness of leadership.
Just like liberals in the USA when a social program fails,they never admit it, they just want to tax more to "correct" it.

 

[Phaedrus]

Are you suggesting that conservatives in the US do not do the exact same thing when a program fails? The only thing a bureacracy is capable of producing is demand for more bureacrats, no matter what it's "orientation" when it comes to the tastes great/less filling style two-party system in the US.


Phaedrus

 

[PatPatriot]

Ill give you that to a point, conservatives in the US for the most part believe in less goverment and more self reliant life style, less tax. republicans at least preach that if not live by it, where democrats are just marxist and their sole purpose is the redistribution of wealth.

 

[Phaedrus]

Looks like a three-card monty game to me; the causes of the right appeal to you and offend the left; the causes of the left offend you and appeal to others. The government of this country has been under Republican leadership for thirty-four out of fifty-eight years since WWII, yet has grown geometrically in that time.

Conservative policies seem to center more around protection: protection from terrorism, protection from crime, protection from drugs, protection from "unfair" foreign trade practices, etc. Liberal policies seem to center more around Ponzi scheme-like social planning and therefore sounds substantially more ludicrous to most rational ears.

But the demonstrable failure of say, the war on drugs, has not led to one single attempt to rethink or reshape the policy towards them. The call is for more prisons, more penalties, more manpower, more latitude, more money. The war on terror is going to dwarf that folly, and since most of the policies will by their very nature incite people to retaliate and therefore be labeled *terrorists* regardless of whether or not they in fact are, it will only be a continuing downward spiral which will bleed liberty from the peaceful, non-terrorist population while prompting terrorists to perform ever-increasingly bold attacks to thumb their noses at the system in place, which will naturally result in a call for more manpower, greater latitude, more money, etc. to better *protect* us.

If you've never read it, I recommend The Tyranny of Good Intentions by Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence Stratton. Although written by Libertarians and largely embraced by ACLU-style liberals the book is very compelling and illustrates some modern-day examples of the worst predictions of Mencken, Mises, etc., taken from the judicial system in the US. The gradual erosion of liberty is the only way for either side of the political fence, conservative or liberal, to maintain and increase it's power, and when it comes down to it, increasing power for himself is all any politician in any country in any party and in any age really cares about.


Phaedrus

 

and the alternative is?.....all i hear is negativism......how about a better idea.....it`s easy to be a professional dissident.....you are quite the bomb thrower.....let`s hear some solutions to all the imperfections of democracy.....

 

[Phaedrus]

Sorry; I so long ago came to believe that what I want to see in this country will never come about in my lifetime, that I forget to mention it in debate.

I feel that both sides of the liberal v. conservative argument are wrong, because at the end what both of them want is to usurp as much power, money and authority from me as possible, in order to get me to follow rules with which I do not agree, provide financial support to causes which I would not voluntarily support, and potentially interfere with relationships (typically trade relationships) which I would otherwise carry out voluntarily and to mutual benefit with other parties. The solution is to do one of the most difficult grown-up challenges we all face: admit that they have screwed up and abandon the effort. The clarion call for more, more, more in the face of repeated failures at a given task is all one sees in government; never the possible admission that the idea is either a) not worth pursuing or b) noble but simply unattainable.

The representative causes on both side can be summed up with the war on drugs for conservatives, a pointless zero-sum game which has been played for thirty years now with only negative results, and Social Security on the liberal side, a collosal Ponzi scheme which you or I would go to jail for attempting to emulate yet which so many Americans mistakenly believe is their birthright.

Both should be scrapped, as should all similar programs. The government should not be "made smaller" as the Reform Party posits; it should be gutted and stripped to the bone, the bones cleaned with muraic acid and left in the sun to dry, then put back in power as a lean, effective and controlled system of representative government which concerns itself only with the barest minimum of matters concerning it's populace.

People get so sucked into their Republican versus Democrat, liberal versus conservative arguments that they fail to see that both sides of the debate are controlled by the same moderator, and both will lead us t the same end ultimately, as it is all a monstrous game to those in power. You get in, get it while it's good, and get the hell out before anybody catches on. Congressmen and presidents are paid their salaries for life, regardless of what they do while in office. I have to not only show up for work but do a better job for a reasonably competitive price or I will be jobless and hungry before too much longer.

I guess more succinctly put, I want to live within a system of goverment produce results, rather than failure, and when the occasional failure does pop up (as it inevitably will in life) the reaction is not to dump more and more funds, manpower and latitude on it, but to realistically reassess the situation and the solution of abandonment to become a realistic option.


Phaedrus

 

[FunkSoulBrother]

The US patent system is another example of something that needs to be broken up and rebuilt.

 

well, it is a small world after all....phaedrus and i agree on something....although i guess a n alternate plan on an internet gambling forum is a little much to ask.... as said by ralph nader,"The two-party system would be indicted under anti-trust laws if it were a market... It is a deliberate, open conspiracy against democracy that leads to a poverty of public dialogue." ...Joseph Hazlett also found the limited political debate disturbing: "The monopolization of the American political process has stifled the free-market exchange of ideas and prevented their expression"....i agree totally with these statements.....and i am a little surprised that libertarianism hasn`t garnered a larger following than it has... .unfortunately, attempts at third party inclusion have been led to often by the likes of racist george wallace and socialist norman thomas....in theory,a great idea....in practice,very difficult to realize...but,the system as it is now set-up,is basically a monopoly.....that is true....

[This message was edited by sphincter on 04-04-03 at 10:04 PM.]