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Vladimir Putin accepts nomination for President of ruling United Russia party
- Thread starter Fog
- Start date
The bill of rights is the bill of rights. I didn't quote Jefferson, just said that he had the best idea of what this country would need/become well before most of the modern douches that YOU said were useless. Good to know that you have better knowledge than I do about what guys thought 300 years ago. Good on ya.
What people? I don't give a shit about any person other than those who give a damn about me. The rest of the society that feeds off of me can go to hell.
This is a classic smoke and mirrors that the mainstream loves to throw up to explain the mediocracy that is our current state of uselessness. I'll be happy to take your comments one at a time. No links below are politically motivated (if that's possible).
Driver's licences: What the hell do they do? Can you not agree that there are plenty of immature teens that have them? Do u feel that you're safer when that 16 year old aces that difficult test? Or when teens in NJ are forced by Kyleigh's law to purchase decals signifying they're not responsible enough to drive safely? Some may disagree with you... It at least makes you wonder how reactionary a federal/state legislature helps. It many cases, it sure as hell doesn't. How about the speed limit cams?? Which snot nose, minimum-wage earning kid gets the right to invade my privacy (by accessing said driver's licence, with my vital information) when I make the personal decision to speed? Don't get me wrong, I'm not an anarchist, and I deserve to get a ticket, but I sure as hell don't deserve to have my PPI accessed by a 3rd-party governmental contractor to fine me for said ticket.
FAA/FCC: Federal regulations are fine regarding commerce over state boarders that directly benefit the life, liberty and (ultimately due to other people's decisions negatively impacting life and liberty by a plane crash, per se) the pursuit of happiness of Americans. The FCC has recently absolutely been to the benefits of American's when it defends the Net Neutrality of all of us but against us when it decides to side with corporations that look to invade the basics of our every-day privacy. When the policies of the democratic or republican party whose own party members make up only 33% each or the electorate get to decide for the 100%, there is only one solution, and that's libertarian principles.
Public roads. I have NO problem giving more money to places that need money. But as shown perfectly by New York/New Jersey, there is very little chance that my tolls/taxes will actually go towards ROADS. There's a time that we need to pour money into a losing stock, oh wait...no there's not. Let's look at re-engineering solutions instead of simply forging along blindly.
Public Education. LOL...seriously? I can't even begin, but Detroit and Chicago have been well known problems for years. How have federal dollars helped? Can you give me 1 concrete detail????
The founding fathers that you so eloquently understand AND ALL OF OUR PARENTS figured out how to get smart without the DoE (founded in 1979!!!!)...how can you say they deserve a DOLLAR of my taxpayer funds?!?!?!?!
Classic, such a small period of time to cover for a 300 year history, again
Of which, itself is capitalism at its best
You and I can go back and forth about how piss poor deregulation is, but how much do you think a plane ticket would cost if the airline industry was called AMAIR (which is like AMTRAK, a losing venture for years!!!! But hey, at least we'll have a station named after our Vice Pres.)
Yeah, it's called the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Of which is impossible for our current government to even try and understand what society that is. The United States are united. And STATES. How idiotic can we be to think that federal interference will be at all valid or applicable to 51 (including Wash DC) states over 6 time zones??? Russia has 11, and it didn't work so well with them, either.
I think most of those "interests" has led us to the last wars we were in...of which none threatened the sovereignty of America or the individual rights of Americans.
I don't believe it has. Now if you want to say that isolationism has failed allies of ours, then yes. It has. And it's the audacity of our foreign policy that has led to our endless policing of the modern world. "Shit, the US will bale us out, let's sink our money into ourselves." Wonder when the last war that China OVERTLY began was...and they're pretty much kicking our ass in spending with OUR money. It's sick to think that we've somehow ended up on top by taking care of the rest of the world!!!!
LOL. Really? You think that Mexico or Canada or any invading horde of barbarians gives a shit that we give a shit? I appreciate your optimism that our policies as they stand now, increase our safety from these mauraders.
Have you seen the dollar lately? How's that central Euro doing for Greece, or Italy, or Portugal?
They aren't ALL fundamentally flawed. Just most, and need to be revamped/eliminated.
I know that I'm not going to get a lot of likes or that most of AW is even going to give a shit, but our system is seriously jacked up. When congressmen appear as Hollywood celebreties at parades, there's a disconnect from what we elect them for and what they actually do. The LP isn't perfect, hell, nothing is as there are 330 Million Americans that all describe themselves as themselves...and that's what the LP capitalizes on, the drive of the many for the benefit of the many. I'm sick and tired of everyone complaining about how the 2 parties blow but then just decide what the hell offends them least and go with that party. It's sick and I'm sorry that I've got the balls to break off the beaten path (which really is only a few hundred years old) and find something that is different and want to try that.
I promise you, however, there will be no vote for parties that believe they "deserve" my vote. And I may not even vote for the libertarian candidate, but most likely, he/she will identify a lot closer to what I believe it is to be an American, than any one else out there. Good luck to all. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
If there were ever a post that would perfectly crystallize the essence of Libertarian thought, yours would be it. That said, the majority of your ranting just proves my point and exposes what lies beneath the carefully crafted veneer of the Libertarian platform. Lots of ground to cover, so I'll try to group things, then move from the general to the specific.
General observation #1, as I illustrated in my previous post, you take a government program or agency you dislike, then choose a single aspect of it to impugn (ignoring all good ones). I get it. It's a great rhetorical device, but it's hardly an intellectually honest assessment of reality or the facts. By distorting the true nature of things, you're blinded to possibilities outside of your own ideology. Hitler and Stalin were pretty good at that too.
Driver's Licenses: Standardization and adherence to basic physical and knowledge requirements. Yeah, I know you're going to talk about your aunt Sally who is legally blind but still passes the eye test at the DMV, but let's be honest, the VAST majority of people who go through the DMV drill to get their license are in possession of the basic things they need to drive safely. Anyone who has been to a 3rd world nation and seen the state of driving there, well, enough said. Your tangential objection to a driver's license because someone will see your PII is completely insane. Unless you live 100% off the grid, this is a bullshit excuse.
FAA/FCC: You conveniently sidestep this one with a net neutrality red herring (another cause célèbre for the tinfoil hat crowd). Libertarians would abolish these agencies. After all, if I want to broadcast my pirate radio station on whatever frequency I choose, interfering with commercial or military communications, that's a matter of personal liberty. If I want to get in a plane with no training and crash into a house, or another plane, that's my business. It's no different than having a bunch of unlicensed drivers crashing into each other.
Public Roads: Not sure where you're going with this other than complaining about tolls. I don't want to imagine your level of frustration when the government gets out of the road business and every road is a toll road. And, since private industry is going to be handling roads from now on, they're going to have to be making enough profit to make it worth their while, so the $6 toll you just paid to cross the golden gate bridge is now going to cost you $20. Sign me up.
Education: There's no doubt that public education has had its problems, particularly in urban areas. The system is in dire need of reform, but when viewed as a whole (especially compared to 90% of the rest of the world), it does a pretty decent job of providing a basic education to the vast majority of Americans. Every top performing school system in the world is funded by the state. When the Libertarians get rid of the public schools, how are all of those ill-served inner city families going to be able to afford a private education? Once again, you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Foreign Policy: Which wars were legit in your opinion? WWII? We had a pretty sophisticated, activist foreign policy during all of that to protect our interests and to keep our citizens from having to speak German or Russian when the dust settled. What's the threshold for you on when we ought to fight? Should we look the other way when we see genocide being perpetrated if we have the power to stop it? Don't you think there's a moral responsibility? What about the Cold War? Should we have just waited things out as the Soviets rolled through Europe and Asia until they were too powerful to keep from invading our homeland? Not sure where you're going with your Canada/Mexico/barbarian rant.
Misc: I'm not going to address the rest of your anger fueled ramblings because I don't really get your point, if you have one. You sound like a crazy person to most people reading your post. I get that you're frustrated, but the kinds of radical changes you're espousing aren't in anyone's best interests. We can argue Framer's intent until the cows come home, but at the end of the day, it's not what Americans want. If they did, then your party would be able to win elections. Proof is in the pudding.
On a side note, I don't want to play armchair psychologist here, but you are one angry motherfucker. I've noticed that over the last 4-5 years. I don't know if your filter just disengages when you're boozing, or if you're like that all the time, but that shit will eat you alive and take years off your life. You should talk to someone about that - PM me if you'd like to discuss it further.
Brett
'Preciate your comments. Disagree with most of it, but agree to disagree. The rest I'll address in a PM.
Thats fine, I know I'm not going to talk any sense into you, but just so we're putting it all out there, these are the things you and your party support:
1. Unlicenced private pilots with no federally mandated training requirements.
2. Every road is a toll road.
3. Industry can pollute as it pleases.
4. Inner city/low income children get no education if they can't afford private school.
Really?
Brett
Spekkio
He bowls overhand.
Brett, you accuse Chunks and other libertarians of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, but you do the same in your counter-arguments.
Do you support gun license laws? Because in principle these are one and the same. The honest people, who probably would have learned the rules of the road and taken a driver's ed course anyway, will go through the process and pay their fees, and the dishonest people won't.
Regarding the FCC, you are right that we need some kind of organization, public or private, to ensure that people don't fight over frequencies. However, we don't need that organization to regulate the content of that broadcast. It also shouldn't restrict how many stations you can own in a given market or serve as a gatekeeper for entry into entertainment.
There are a significant amount of people in the U.S. who decide to drive without driver's licenses -- particularly illegal immigrants and teenagers with parents on vacation. I think Chunks' point is that driver's licenses don't really keep people as safe as everyone thinks; rather, they mostly just serve as another source of income to the state governments. I disagree that the average person who passes a written test with the required 65% of knowledge has the tools to drive safely. Besides, the DMV isn't the main reason people learn how to drive. Most people start driving in their teens when they still live as dependents with their parents. I don't think any self-respecting parent would let their child get behind the wheel without knowing the rules of the road or demonstrating that they can safely drive a vehicle, so the DMV is redundant in the large majority of cases. And I don't think most adults, out of self-preservation, would want to get behind the wheel without knowing the rules of the road and having an instructor.
Do you support gun license laws? Because in principle these are one and the same. The honest people, who probably would have learned the rules of the road and taken a driver's ed course anyway, will go through the process and pay their fees, and the dishonest people won't.
A lot of people mistake the Libertarian viewpoint that we should avoid nation building and waging wars in the Middle East for phantom WMDs with isolationism. This is not the case. Many Libertarians support international free trade in the same manner they support a domestic free market, which is the complete opposite of being isolationist.
Public education was largely held on the state and local level throughout the majority of our history. It belongs there, since individual communities are more in-tune to the needs of their people than the U.S. government. The federal government's involvement through acts such as No Child Left Behind has done little to raise the effectiveness of our public education. While Federal spending in this area pales in comparison to some of the other blood sucking programs, it's still one area where it is literally tossing money down the toilet.
Where he was going is that the fees paid for using a road don't necessarily go toward maintaining the road (btw, you mentioned $20 as an outrageous fee to cross the Golden Gate bridge...it's $14 to cross the Verrazano -- not too far from $20). The government is already making a profit via tolls and using that profit to subsidize other public programs. I do not support privatization of roads, but public highway agencies aren't as generous as you make them seem.
Regarding airlines, it would behoove airline companies to ensure they are providing a safe ride for their customers. That includes ensuring that their pilots are properly trained and certified and that their aircraft is materially ready to fly. No airline company would want to be labeled as an unsafe agency -- not if they want to stay in business.
Regarding the FCC, you are right that we need some kind of organization, public or private, to ensure that people don't fight over frequencies. However, we don't need that organization to regulate the content of that broadcast. It also shouldn't restrict how many stations you can own in a given market or serve as a gatekeeper for entry into entertainment.
Really? I don't see it that way - here's why:
Thus far, in our analogy, we haven't seen any of the "baby" part of the Libertarian philosophy. In order to make a valid comparison between the status quo and some alternative, you've got to demonstrate the superiority of the alternative, not just point out incidental flaws to the status quo. Until someone shows me some tangible advantages to Libertarianism, all I'm left with is bathwater. The reverse logic does not apply to the status quo. Let's do this blow by blow then:
DMV: Libertarians would abolish all licencing requirements, not just tweak the current system as you've suggested. Even if we accept a marginal benefit in safety and standardization (you can't really argue that the vision requirements are useless), you've got to demonstrate to me that the harm of the status quo would be outweighed by some tangible benefit of abolishing the DMV. Source of income? Of course, so what? We pay all kinds of fees and taxes to keep the government running. So, what's the overwhelming advantage of the Libertarian approach?
FAA: This is closely related to the above. Nobody said anything about commercial pilots, so you can toss that argument right out the window. I'm sure the airlines would implement a system to maintain safety. I'm talking about joe citizen. If you're going to argue that people should be able to drive automobiles without a licence, then you have to apply that same logic to private pilots. If the DMV standards don't keep automobile drivers safe, then neither would having training standards for private pilots, right? If joe citizen logs 10 hours in Microsoft Flight Sim and feels he's ready to buy a plane and fly him and his family around, that would be OK with you? Let's hope he doesn't crash into your house or the airliner your family is traveling on. Yeah, accidents happen even with licenced pilots, but you can't honestly argue that things would be safer without private pilot licenses, because you'd be an insane person.
FCC: I agree that the FCC shouldn't have control over content like it does. That's a flaw in the way it currently does business. But remember, the Libertarians aren't interested in tweaking the FCC's authority - they would abolish it. The result is frequency management anarchy. How is this better than the status quo, even with it's faults?
Foreign Policy: You can't just toss out a red herring of low hanging fruit like the war in Iraq and suggest that it is the posterchild for active foreign policy or even interventionism. I get that there's some nuance and range in what constitutes isolationism, but we're talking about core Libertarian beliefs. Case in point, Ron Paul thinks our involvement in WWII was wrong - he's written as much in the past 20 years. Let's cut to the chase on this one: Either you believe that keeping the Soviets out of Europe (admittedly through massive US aid, Marshall Plan, containment, etc) was good policy or bad. If you think it's bad (like Ron Paul), then you're going to have to sell me on the upside of letting Stalin turn the Eurasian continent into one giant super-communist state whose openly stated political aim was the complete assymilation of capitalism by force. That WOULD have happened absent our "intervention."
Education: We're not talking about Federal vs. State responsibilities here. Remember, we're talking about core Libertarian beliefs, and they would get ALL forms of government out of the education business. Yeah, no child left behind was probably a bad policy, but what's the Libertarian alternative? How do Libertarians account for the lower class who couldn't/wouldn't afford private schools? Nobody seems to be able to give me an answer on that anoying little detail. There isn't a single example in the world of a nation-wide private education system. I wonder why?
That's all I have energy for. Let's face it, this all just boils down to dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs. People just want to grab hold of this ideological shiny object because they think it's a panacea for all their woes. "Freedom, man!" "Founding Fathers, man!" "I don't want The Man telling me what to do, man!" Nobody wants to do the intellectual heavy lifting to figure out if any of this pie in the sky nonsense has any chance of producing any actual benefits when applied to a complex society like ours. It's the same kind of communist mind-fuck perpetrated by V.I. Lennin on the Russian people. It's fucking laziness.
Show me the money, Spekkio. Show me the money.
Brett
Ron Paul and others like hims foreign policy alone is enough to keep me voting for anybody but him regardless of political party.
The man and his supporters actively and completely regard the stationing of any US troops or equipment off our shores as some kind of afront to the rest of the world and a constitutionally illegal waste of money. He refuses to see that our national interests as well as our economic well being go hand in hand with our power and ability to influence in the world. Things like Combined Task Force 151, or our troops training with foreign Military's to better aid them in their ability to maintain good order on the high seas or maintain stable governments so our big companies like Boeing and GE which employ Americans can offer somebody a product and not worry about that country turning into the next Bosnia overnight, that kind of action would be suspended under a president like Paul or other hard core libertarian "non-interventionists." So great the world just became a whole lot less stable and harder to predict... That ought to be just all sorts of fun for buisness growth and trade.
And never mind the devastating effect of reducing our National Influence in the realm of deploy-ability of forces to a region for sustained operations. Close every overseas base... Bring home all our forward deployed and propositioned equipment... we can just set up as fortress America and use our bombers and subs and cruise missiles to keep peace in our region. Because moving pieces of military equipment is just like a magic trick apparently. Despite what some Air Power think tank would sell a politician, you cant truly effect a nations policy with cruise missiles and selective air strikes. The 12 years between Desert Storm and Iraq, the Libyan debacle, the decade NATO spent on Bosnia ought to demonstrate that. And not to be blowing my services horn, but Pride aside for the Marines on here, your mighty MEU may work great for a quick band-aid on a dust up of some kind but your job it to hold the beachhead/airport/etc so we can bring in a sustained war fighting capability. We can put an Army Corps sized element anywhere in the world in 45 days. Thats three divisions (82nd, 101st, and 3rd ID being the primary) of long duration sustainable firepower. We couldnt do that without places like Ramstein where we own all the Ramp space or forward deployed tankers in air bases all over the world to give you enough go juice to move that massive log train attached to a force of significant enough size to do anything other than watch. You need to be able to say to any despot or regional pain in the ass "We are the United States and our national interests in your region are X, if you fuck with my koolaid I will do everything diplomatically up until the point where Ive pleased the rest of the world and I will reserve the right to lay open waste to your regime. Think of Korea and Japan as a great example. Take all our stuff out of Japan and the western pacific, do you think we could do anything but watch if that region went to hell in a hand basket. And that is a massive economy that we do a metric shit ton of trade and business with.
Libertarians have this strange idea like if the United States would not go about poking its nose into other nations because we are trying to stay top dog that the rest of the world will just start holding hands and skipping along to a happy land of blow jobs and ice cream for everybody.
The man and his supporters actively and completely regard the stationing of any US troops or equipment off our shores as some kind of afront to the rest of the world and a constitutionally illegal waste of money. He refuses to see that our national interests as well as our economic well being go hand in hand with our power and ability to influence in the world. Things like Combined Task Force 151, or our troops training with foreign Military's to better aid them in their ability to maintain good order on the high seas or maintain stable governments so our big companies like Boeing and GE which employ Americans can offer somebody a product and not worry about that country turning into the next Bosnia overnight, that kind of action would be suspended under a president like Paul or other hard core libertarian "non-interventionists." So great the world just became a whole lot less stable and harder to predict... That ought to be just all sorts of fun for buisness growth and trade.
And never mind the devastating effect of reducing our National Influence in the realm of deploy-ability of forces to a region for sustained operations. Close every overseas base... Bring home all our forward deployed and propositioned equipment... we can just set up as fortress America and use our bombers and subs and cruise missiles to keep peace in our region. Because moving pieces of military equipment is just like a magic trick apparently. Despite what some Air Power think tank would sell a politician, you cant truly effect a nations policy with cruise missiles and selective air strikes. The 12 years between Desert Storm and Iraq, the Libyan debacle, the decade NATO spent on Bosnia ought to demonstrate that. And not to be blowing my services horn, but Pride aside for the Marines on here, your mighty MEU may work great for a quick band-aid on a dust up of some kind but your job it to hold the beachhead/airport/etc so we can bring in a sustained war fighting capability. We can put an Army Corps sized element anywhere in the world in 45 days. Thats three divisions (82nd, 101st, and 3rd ID being the primary) of long duration sustainable firepower. We couldnt do that without places like Ramstein where we own all the Ramp space or forward deployed tankers in air bases all over the world to give you enough go juice to move that massive log train attached to a force of significant enough size to do anything other than watch. You need to be able to say to any despot or regional pain in the ass "We are the United States and our national interests in your region are X, if you fuck with my koolaid I will do everything diplomatically up until the point where Ive pleased the rest of the world and I will reserve the right to lay open waste to your regime. Think of Korea and Japan as a great example. Take all our stuff out of Japan and the western pacific, do you think we could do anything but watch if that region went to hell in a hand basket. And that is a massive economy that we do a metric shit ton of trade and business with.
Libertarians have this strange idea like if the United States would not go about poking its nose into other nations because we are trying to stay top dog that the rest of the world will just start holding hands and skipping along to a happy land of blow jobs and ice cream for everybody.
Hey, I had to fight fire with fire. At least my dissertations are interesting and fun to read.Anyone reading this thread with the long post?
Brett
I think that Libertarianism is more popular today than it has been in the recent past because very few people remember what it was like before we had a lot of the things the government does or what it regulates. A perfect example is our interstate system, something that several Libertarians I know think we should have never constructed. A big part of the reason that Eisenhower spearheaded it's development was that he remembered it took him 62 days to drive from DC to San Francisco during an Army exercise in 1919 using the existing roads. Without it our country would probably be much different and arguably quite a bit less prosperous.
Libertarianism might be a good philosophy on paper but once it hits the light of day it runs into a harsh reality where some people and persons who aren't use and abuse whatever system they find themselves a part of to their own advantage to the cost of others.
Libertarianism might be a good philosophy on paper but once it hits the light of day it runs into a harsh reality where some people and persons who aren't use and abuse whatever system they find themselves a part of to their own advantage to the cost of others.
Dunno, got any new news? Here's my prediction: he gets elected as President again and life goes on just as it did before.
Brett